The school of mirrors, p.32
The School of Mirrors, page 32
“Is it because I’m pregnant again, Marie-Louise?” she asks. “Is it because he is thinking of leaving me? Divorce is getting so easy now.”
Before Marie-Louise has the time to protest, Gabrielle adds, “George says I always see nothing but the bad in everything.”
What can Marie-Louise say to that but offer assurances that country air will lift Gabrielle’s spirits? So will being with her mother or having a good night’s sleep with no interruptions, or taking brisk walks in fresh air for constitution. She repeats the necessity of eating liver or kidneys every day, of drinking red wine, rather than white, to fortify the blood. Reaching into her bag, she extracts a jar of goose-grease salve she has brought with her and puts it on the side table. Had she known Gabrielle was leaving, she would’ve brought two.
François-George has had enough of biting on the teething ring and throws it out of the crib again. It rolls for a brief moment and then topples flat.
As Marie-Louise stands to leave, Gabrielle cocks her head. “Why do they hate him so much?” she asks.
“Hate Danton? Who on earth told you that?”
But Gabrielle Danton is no longer speaking of her husband. She means the king now. The prisoner of the Temple. And his poor children. The boy, especially, the dauphin. Still too young to understand what is happening to him. “George says I’m just like all women. Ignorant of historical truth. That I should only speak of what I know. But I know the king is not a criminal. So why put him on trial? Can we not forgive him for whatever he has done? We have won, haven’t we?”
“Pierre says they still argue about it at the Convention,” Marie-Louise says. “Whether he should be tried at all. I’ve heard they want to send him to America. To a farm in Virginia.”
Gabrielle shakes her head. “There will be a trial,” she says grimly. “Then they will kill him. I’ve heard them say it, right here, in this apartment. Louis must die so that the nation can live.” And then she adds, “My husband will vote for his death. And so will yours.”
November
EVER SINCE JEAN-LOUIS LEFT for Louis-le-Grand, the door to his room is kept wide open. It looks painfully tidy, Marie-Louise thinks, every time she passes by. Books are lined up from the tallest down, Bezout’s grammar followed by Cours de Latinité. Next to them a thick notebook in which Jean-Louis recorded everything he could find about Lapérouse’s voyage of discovery. The intended trajectory of the two ships, La Boussole and Astrolabe, which should have brought the expedition back to France in 1789, the reports from captains who encountered them on the way, speculations on their recent whereabouts. She should put a writing table in here for when Jean-Louis comes home in the summer, but maybe not yet.
In the judgment of the principal and four examiners Jean-Louis Vernault has been accepted as an aspirant for one year, the letter from the college said. After which he will have to submit to another examination.
An aspirant? Not a full scholar?
It still goads her, the memory of Pierre’s harshness that day.
Is this the best my son can do after the expense of all this tutoring? At the very school where Maximilien Robespierre received a special award? I’m talking to you, son. Look me in the eye. What awaits a man who cannot sacrifice a pleasure today for the firm goal of the days ahead? Can you answer this simple question, son? Fully? To my satisfaction?
Jean-Louis shot her a look of such anguish then.
She wonders how he is managing this year of probation? Without a tutor, at the dormitory, beset by temptations? And if he fails the exam?
Pierre’s voice weaves into these thoughts: He is fifteen years old, Marie-Louise, for God’s sake. What do you have in mind for him? A nursemaid on call?
Still only fourteen, she insisted.
Turned fourteen in June, Pierre said, so he is fifteen. There is only one way to count.
Marie-Louise recalls Jean-Louis in his Louis-le-Grand boarder’s gown, his trunk tightly packed. As the school instructed, she put the quills and the ink bottle in a separate box, away from the books, writing paper and linen.
Anxious, she thought her son.
Serious, Pierre said. Belatedly realizing the gravity of the moment.
Jean-Louis’s first letter home was short: The school is very good. My bed is comfortable. My Latin professor is very good. The food is quite good, though not as good as at home, please tell Hortense.
“So much for an elegant turn of phrase,” Pierre said. “Or erudition.”
“Give him time,” she said, imagining Jean-Louis in the dark dormitory room at night, listening how around him breaths thicken, turn into coughs, sniffles, grinding of teeth.
In her reply Marie-Louise wrote that everyone was well, and that the house felt empty without him. To lighten the mood, she described household mishaps. Mice got into the pantry and made a nest under the flour sack. Did he remember his old penknife he believed lost? Hortense found it. Someone put it into the tool drawer, in the cellar, but there is no way of knowing who. Jacques blamed Suzette, Suzette blamed Jacques, which is a proof that nothing much changes, does it? Everyone, including neighbors, was sending good wishes, urging him to eat well, wear a scarf and gloves and apply himself to his studies.
Jean-Louis’s second letter covered a whole page. He listed all his professors: Masters La Garde, Germain and Le Provost. He was learning the history of insects and political science. La Garde taught Latin and Jean-Louis liked him because he was young and told them excellent stories. The school rules were strict. No talking in the courtyard. No tardiness. No trading of any kind among students. No personal gifts of any kind, no formation of exclusive relationships, which meant he had to talk to everyone whether he liked them or not. Yes, he did pay attention to the law students. They left the college in the morning and returned right before the evening meal.
Answers to Pierre’s questions, obviously. Diligent, meant to please.
Marie-Louise has seen Jean-Louis twice since his departure. The first time she went to Louis-le-Grand during their afternoon break knowing she wouldn’t be admitted inside without the principal’s permission but grateful for the sight, through the railings, of her son strolling through the courtyard, stopping to talk to another boy.
It is called Equality College now, Maman, Jean-Louis would remind her if he could hear her thoughts. Also, it is recreation, not a break.
That day she tried to see him like a stranger might, how tall he was, how beautifully formed. Commanding, she would describe him, if this was a word fit for a first-year grammarian, already transformed by this new life that has claimed him.
The second time was a formal visit, granted by the principal, Citizen Champagne.
Since visitors are not allowed inside the dormitory itself, not even mothers, she was brought to wait in a small reception room, empty but for a table and two chairs. The table was stained by melted candle wax, its surface scarred and uneven where someone had meticulously removed carved inscriptions. Prints nailed to the wall showed the planting of a liberty tree and the removal of the royal statue from what is now the place de la Révolution: Louis XV on horseback, tied up with ropes, being pulled down to the ground. On the wall, in big letters: Be the children of light against the demon of darkness.
Jean-Louis walked in, still her son but different. His thick curls were cropped quite short and there was a touch of gauntness to his cheeks, dark circles under his eyes. She longed to embrace him, but would he not be embarrassed?
“Are you warm enough?” she asked, her voice hoarse, strangely timid.
“Yes, Maman.”
“Is your bed comfortable? Do you have enough linen?”
“Yes.”
“How is the food?”
“Good. You really shouldn’t worry.”
The master who had brought her into the waiting room gave her what must have been a well-worn welcoming speech. He emphasized how the college prepared young men as social beings, for participation in society not as it used to be before the revolution but as it would be from now on. How it developed the student’s character, not just cultivated his talents, helped him to avoid mistakes arising from his own negligence, stressed the formation of work habits. “I teach Latin,” the master said. “A medium for the formation of taste, a training ground for expression.” And then he warned her against agitating Jean-Louis’s memories of home. “Growing up is hard enough,” he said.
Marie-Louise thought it excellent advice.
They had only half an hour together. At her request Jean-Louis accounted for his days: Rising at half past five, reading in the study hall before breakfast, classes interrupted by meals and recreation. By nine in the evening he was back at the dormitory. Did he find it difficult? No. Did he have trouble understanding lectures in Latin? Sometimes. But he was studying hard, every day. “We are improved by what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” That was Aristotle, he told her with pride. His favorite by far.
“Not Lapérouse?”
“Aristotle is a philosopher, Maman. Lapérouse is an explorer. Each belongs to a different category. You cannot compare them. It would be a fallacy.”
She longed to throw her arms around his bony shoulders. Feel his heartbeat. Breathe in the faint smoky scent around him. A ray of sun came through the window, making him squint. She had a vision of him as a boy, in the kitchen watching Hortense gargle with one of her infusions. “Look, Maman, Hortense is calling monsters,” he said, giggling. Then on her lap, his body sinking into hers, asking her in his piping childish voice: “Do we all have to die, Maman?”
“Why don’t you write more often, Jean-Louis?”
“I don’t know what to write about.”
“Anything, really. What you learn in class. Who your friends are.”
“I don’t know who they are. It’s not that you can ask, Maman. It would be prying. They wouldn’t say anyway.”
“I don’t mean things they would have to tell you. Just what you see.”
“Even if it is boring?”
“Not boring to me.”
Slowly, he was becoming himself again. Shoulders softening, his dark blue eyes locking with hers. Mindful of the master’s warning, she steered the conversation away from home. Last night, he admitted, he didn’t sleep well, for the boy next to him had a nightmare and kept screaming. The master came and took him away to the infirmary. Then the boy was fine.
“What’s his name?”
“Gaston.”
“Gaston who?”
“Gaston Parot.”
“From Paris?”
“I’m not sure. But he knows an awful lot about making candles.”
By the end of the visit, he let her cover his hand, feel it cup under hers. Cold, in spite of his protests that he was warm enough. Then he confessed to losing his nightcap. Perhaps another boy mistook it for his, though Gaston said it was surely stolen. He would be reprimanded for negligence if he didn’t find it. Which would make Papa upset.
“I’ll send Suzette with another.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
Time measured by an hourglass, grains of sand dripping slowly, forming a mound. When it was time for her to leave, the Latin master walked her back to the gate. Only then she noted his weak left arm, held close to his body. Breech birth gone wrong?
She inquired how Jean-Louis was doing in Latin. Three times already Pierre has mentioned that next year the concours général of colleges would be held at the Jacobin club. There will be a big celebration, he said, with parents in the gallery, a delegation of the National Convention present. How he would like to see his son there, among the winners. Erasing the shame of being admitted as an aspirant, not a scholar.
“He needs to work harder on his grammar,” the Latin master said after a pause Marie-Louise tried to disregard. His chin was bristly, she noted, spotted with patches of black and gray stubble.
“His father wants him to become a lawyer.”
“Then he will.”
Her heels made a clickety sound as they crossed the courtyard, not as fast as she would wish, for the master lingered, slowing her down. He pointed out the windows of the dormitory, the library, the classrooms. One wing of the school was cordoned off with thick ropes. “Soldiers’ quarters,” he said. “Parents ask about it a lot, but we guarantee no disruption for the students.”
By the gate he cleared his throat. “One more thing to always keep in mind, Citizeness Vernault,” he said. “The college has a duty to all pupils, especially those of lesser abilities, who are all the more in need of our help.”
The words sent a chill through her. Was Jean-Louis in danger of failing? Already?
“There is no need to think the worst,” the Latin master concluded rather stiffly. “Many boys of slower mind, cultivated by skillful and patient hands, have become valuable men of whom we are all proud now.”
* * *
At breakfast, Suzette brings in fluffy, buttery omelets, a luxury possible only because Gabrielle Danton has sent butter and sugar, which has nearly vanished from shops. Trouble in the West Indies, Pierre says, but he has no good explanation for why bread is up from nine sous to eighteen.
“Greed,” Hortense says. Besides, she has heard bakers add chalk to the dough. She wouldn’t put it past them to add nails as well, to make the loaves heavier. She also suspects Cecile of carrying on with a National Guardsman. For what other reason could there be for a pair of laced shoes? Polished every day?
With coffee, Suzette delivers a pile of letters. The one on top is from Pierre’s youngest sister, Charlotte. Marie-Louise met her sisters-in-law only once, when they came to Paris for the wedding, and she much preferred the older one, Diane, who laughed in such a natural, winning way and made no fuss over Pierre, like Charlotte did.
“Guess what this is about?” Pierre asks, breaking the seal, his eyes skimming the page. His new spectacles, like Robespierre’s, have green lenses, which everyone now claims to be easier on the eyes but which give the skin around them an unhealthy tint. He has abandoned his wigs, and wears his hair cropped short, like a Roman senator. It’s the latest fashion, as is always wearing riding boots instead of shoes, and wider cravats that reach up to the chin.
Short hair becomes him. Pierre is a handsome man.
“First your beloved brother becomes a delegate, then his letters get shorter and shorter, and he no longer even replies when you remind him of his promise to visit.”
“You promised we would visit?”
“Probably. She does know how to whine quite effectively. Wait . . . there is a post scriptum. Your visit would, of course, be an indulgence at the time when patriotism commands us to sacrifice.”
“Uff. Saved.”
“Barely.”
“Still saved.”
Nothing from Jean-Louis today.
Most of the letters end up crumpled on the floor the moment Pierre opens them. Appeals for help or favors. Threats, curses, promises of divine retribution for Pierre Vernault’s part in the destruction of the natural order. Backed up by prophecies for the future. Nostradamus. Thomas Moult, whose “cyclical and true” predictions have been reprinted again.
“From the enslaved populace, songs, chants and demands while princes and lords are held captive in prisons. A great nation will govern itself without a prince, nobles or priests.” All making Pierre sneer: As if the future were already cast in stone for centuries ahead!
One letter, though, is different. Marie-Louise knows it the moment Pierre’s face flushes.
“Who brought it?” he asks Suzette, who has come back to clear the breakfast plates.
“I don’t know, Master,” Suzette says, fingering the ribbons of what was once Aunt Margot’s bonnet.
“Hortense!” Pierre yells, repeating his question when Hortense comes, her apron splattered with grease.
“A boy,” she says. “Cheeky one, too. I gave him a slice of bread, for he looked half starved. ‘You are feeding a true patriot,’ he said.”
“Is he still here?”
“No. Gone already.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to inquire who gave him the letter?”
“Is this what I’m supposed to do now?” Hortense asks, her jaw set. “Interrogate all messengers?”
Hortense, always on guard about her position, puffs herself up, readying for a fight. “This house is almost as bad as the Convention,” Pierre has laughed. To which Marie-Louise replied, “It is worse. You don’t have to eat what other delegates cook. If you anger Hortense, she will burn your roast.”
“It is common sense, not another requirement,” Pierre says now, waving Hortense away with scoffing impatience. She leaves with her head held stiffly, letting the door slam behind her. Master’s outburst will be discussed in the kitchen in all its minute details, for hours. Picked at like meat off bones. The injustice of it, unreasonable, heartless. Marie-Louise will have to intervene, go through all the tedious rituals of appeasement.
She can see her husband the way he must look to the servants. The chin jutted forward. The steely assurance in his voice. Harsh, they must think him, unyielding. Except Jacques perhaps, whose thoughts are a mystery.
“What is it, Pierre?” she asks.
“I don’t know yet,” he says, crumpling the letter and throwing it toward her.
She picks it up, smooths the paper flat.
I cannot, Monsieur, stay silent any longer and keep you ignorant of the fact that I am in possession of papers signed by the Secretary of the Comptroller of Finances that detail considerable sums of money you received from Versailles.
Blackmail?
Pierre’s voice seethes with indignation. “Royalist scum . . . ever since we put Louis Capet in prison . . . such are their dirty tactics.”
Marie-Louise’s eyes return to the letter.
I intend to send the documents in my possession to the President of the National Convention unless you can convince me otherwise.
Unlike countless anonymous letters that end in the fireplace, this one is signed: Bertrand Dillaud, residing at 56 rue de la Croix. There was no need to scold Hortense after all.
