Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (12 page)

“May I have some madeleines?” he asked. His father motioned for him to enter, and Gérard scampered over the shiny parquet floor, soon followed by his nurse.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Vincent,” she said, “he couldn’t sleep and said he wanted to come say good night.”

“Quite right, too,” said his father. “Here’s a madeleine, my boy; here’s two, and here’s two for you not to forget to give your sister. I’ll ask her tomorrow.”

“She’s asleep,” Gérard said.

“Then you give them to her for breakfast,” said Paul. “Now go and kiss your mother good night. Again.” And Gérard ran around the long mahogany table to where his mother sat opposite his father and kissed her, my sister leaning her head down and her son rising on tiptoe, his cookies clutched in both hands. Nurse followed him out, silently enclosing us within the orchard of the Chinese emperors.

Then, just as Monsieur Dubourg’s fruit liqueur was poured, and I had taken my first sip, we heard Gérard’s voice again, sounding genuinely afraid. “I can’t go,” he said.

Marguerite started to rise, and I said, “No, I’ll go.” I wanted to escape from the political conversation, which Gérard could have overheard, standing outside the door. The boy stood beneath the stairway now, his feet rooted on the marble floor, with Nurse trying to pull him up the stairs with one hand; her other held a small brass candelabrum.

“He’s being most unreasonable,” she said. “I think he’s just making up an excuse not to go to bed.”

“What’s the matter, Gérard?” I said.

“It’s the demons,” he said. “They’re at the top of the stairs.”

We stood under the chandelier in the vestibule and looked up into the darkness. The servants were enjoying their own Christmas dinner and had not lit the sconces upstairs. “I’ll go first,” I said. “You and Nurse right behind.” Then I thought of something. “Where’s your hoop?”

“In my room,” Gérard said in a small voice.

“We will put it by your bed, and nothing will get past it,” I said.

“But it’s upstairs.”

We took our first steps. I could hear the branches of the poplar by the side of the house scraping the window at the top of the stairs, and even I felt a little frightened by the dark. Fear, like courage, is contagious, so I proceeded up the stairs, Nurse’s candelabrum raised high behind us, in our soft moving sphere of light.

Then we heard a knock below us at the door. I turned and stood still. Then we heard it again. Three taps, then silence, then three more taps. Neither the Dubourgs nor we were expecting anyone, but why was I suddenly afraid? Had a four-year-old’s mood infected mine?

Nurse, perhaps thinking that it wasn’t her duty to open doors, stood there, and Gérard followed me to the door. I opened it a few inches and saw Monsieur William standing there, a hat under his left arm.

“I wanted to wish you
Joyeux Noël
,” he said. “I have brought you a little present.”

“You should not come to chez Dubourg uninvited, but come in; it’s cold.” Monsieur William closed the big door behind him, and Gérard held on to my dress and looked up at the tall stranger. “Monsieur William, this is my nephew, Gérard. Gérard, Monsieur William is from England.”

The foreigner bent over and said, “Do you know the game of hitting horse chestnuts against each other?”

Gérard shook his head no.

“It is done with string tied to the chestnut and a stick, and you swing the nuts against each other.”

“Why?”

Monsieur William squatted so he could be at the same level as Gérard.

“To see which one is the stronger. The weaker one cracks. But one must find the right horse chestnut. I have seen some excellent ones near here.”

“There is a chestnut tree at my house,” said Gérard. “I have a secret hiding place near it. No one can ever find me there.”

“Well, I am good at hide-and-seek. Perhaps I can play it with you there.”

“Could
play,” I said. “You don’t know if you’ll ever go to Blois.”

“Your wise aunt is helping me learn your beautiful language.”

“You don’t know how to talk?”

“Not very well. Often, others misunderstand me.”

“Me too,” said Gérard, and he reached into the pocket of his dressing gown. “Would you like a madeleine?”

“That is very kind of you.” Monsieur William looked at me. “May I?” he asked me.

“If that is not one of his sister’s.”

“Hers are in my other pocket,” Gérard said, in a somewhat insulted tone.

“I must give you something in return, then,” Monsieur William said. He rummaged in the deep pocket of his English cloak. “Here.”

He held out his rock. “This is a stone that has a lot of stories to tell. I showed it to your aunt, but she...wasn’t interested in it.”

Gérard held it and examined it. “What kind of stories?”

“Do you know the word
imagination
?” Gérard nodded. “It’s a big word for me too,” Monsieur William said. “If you use your imagination, that rock can tell you stories about a new and better world.”

“You will need lots of imagination,” I added.

“I can do it,” Gérard said, again rather offended at my words.

Nurse was looking down at the Englishman and her charge.

“Well, now that we have found that the darkness holds nothing dangerous, only Monsieur William, Nurse can take you back to your room. Remember to put the hoop by your bed.”

“I think this is a magic rock,” Gérard said. “I’ll put it in the hoop to frighten the demons.”

“It may bring more,” I whispered to Monsieur William. “Good night, Gérard.”

He turned and looked at us as Nurse led him up the stairs, his feet finding their own way, and he forgot about the darkness.

“You sacrificed your precious rock,” I said to Monsieur William.

“It’s for the future generation.”

“You’re really incorrigible. You do know this is a royalist household.”

“I figured as much, as Monsieur du Vivier is of that persuasion. I apologize. I have a grave weakness for speaking my mind.”

“The English must be a frank race.”

“I hope I have not given offense.”

“Not to me. I hate politics. And I love Gérard, and I’m glad you’ve given him a present that can help take his mind off the demons.

Though I think the demons are caused by politics. That’s one of the reasons I hate it. But my manners are terrible—would you like something to drink, Monsieur William?”

“No, thank you. I have just come to bring you something. I’m afraid I was a bit excited about it and wanted to give it to you straightaway. I am not a patient man. May I?”

I nodded, and he reached into an inner breast pocket of his cloak and pulled out a scroll, tied with a red cloth ribbon. He presented it to me with a slight bow. He looked excited, like a child himself. “Open it,” he said.

I unscrolled it. It was a poem, in French, titled “By the Loire.”

“Did you write this?”

“And translated it into French. I’m afraid my dictionary is weary of my company.”

No one had ever written a poem for me before; or rather, translated one for me. “Thank you, Monsieur.”

“You haven’t read it yet.”

“Was it what you were writing yesterday?”

“I started writing about Switzerland, and after talking to you, my thoughts moved to France.”

“I hope I didn’t disturb your muse.”

“Read the poem, please.”

And so I roamed where Loiret’s waters glide

Through rustling aspens heard from side to side,

When from December clouds a milder light

Fell where the blue flood rippled into white.

“It’s beautiful. The blue flood did ripple into white. Even though the aspens were across the river.”

“I crossed the bridge and walked where you envisioned Joan of Arc defeating the English.”

“This is as lovely as any description I read in
Romance of the
Rose
.”

“You are very kind. But it’s only four lines; the
Romance
is thousands.”

“Was not translating your work an excellent lesson?”

“Mademoiselle Vallon, I have inquired of Monsieur du Vivier if he knew of a language tutor—”

Just then the tall doors to the dining room swung open, and Maman stood there, regarding us quizzically, then glided toward us, with a faint rustling of a silk underskirt.

“Maman, this is Monsieur William, who has come from England. He brought me a Christmas present.” I realized I made it sound as if he had come all the way from England to deliver me a present. I felt like a little girl who couldn’t get her words right.

“I am honored,” Monsieur William said and bowed slightly.

“My pleasure, Monsieur.” Maman nodded.

“He brought me this poem, Maman. He wrote it himself. And translated it into French.” I showed it to her. She looked at the four small lines.

“That’s very charming,” she said.

Monsieur William twirled his hat in his hand.

“Would you take a drink, Monsieur?” I asked again, so Mama would get the idea. “Chez Dubourg is famous for its fruit liqueurs.

Maman, Monsieur William has walked from—”

“Rue Royale,” he said. “Above a hosier and hatter’s shop.”

“I wanted to stop at one of those shops on our way here,” I said.

“Perhaps I would have met you earlier.” I thought that that was also a stupid thing to say. I wanted Maman to invite him to stay.

“Thank you, I just came to give you this. I must leave before it starts to storm again.”

Maman, as if suddenly remembering her manners, said sweetly, “Monsieur, perhaps you would like to sample one of our Christmas madeleines.”

“May I have another madeleine?” we heard Gérard shout from his door at the top of the stairs. It was amazing how sharp his ears were when it came to delights, or terrors.

“That is very kind, but I already have one,” Monsieur William said. Maman looked completely nonplussed. “I must go. Goodnight.
Joyeux Noël.
”

And he was out the door in a gust of cold wind.

“Maman, how can you be so cold?”

“I invited him for dessert.”

“Only when you knew he was going.”

“What was he doing here unasked?” She spoke as if she were keeping the Revolution itself from her door.

“He is not so formal as we are, Maman.”

“These are the changed times.” She looked fiercely at me.

“I will invite him next time.”

“You know nothing about him.”

“I know a good deal.”

“Marie-Ann...Annette, come here.” She led me into the front salon.

She sat beneath the half-lit chandelier, and I perched on a nearby ottoman. I wanted now to be back in the dining room with the rest of the family.

“Annette, there is something I have been trying to tell you since you were sixteen, and you didn’t understand it then, but with more maturity, you may grasp it now. I will try one last time, and I will make it brief.”

“Maman, I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you? Do you know that to live properly in the world, in any capacity, demands sacrifice, and of women are demanded the greatest sacrifices?”

“Of what sacrifice do you speak, Maman?”

“Even the most honorable of men know nothing of what love means to a woman. They feel pleasure, and that is their aim. A woman believes that love itself is her whole aim and pleasure merely one branch of a vast tree, deeply rooted in her heart. She believes it is her profound duty to care for this tree, nourish it each day, and give all of its fruits exclusively to one man and to her children. This in itself demands a sacrifice that men cannot comprehend.”

She sounded like one of the righteous characters from
Les Liaisons
dangereuses
, but all the same, I had never heard her talk like this.

Maman went on, “But believing in that tree of perfect love and happiness can be a chimera for unsuspecting women. Therefore I’ll speak to you of another, even more virtuous sacrifice: the belief in that tree with its ever-blooming branches must in itself be sacrificed if prudence demands it. A woman gives happiness rather than delights in it, and if she must give it contrary to the direction she herself would choose, then her greater pleasure is in following that duty, since her own happiness was not her aim in the first place. Are you following me? It seems to me that you are still attached to the fancies of youth, that in your mind you have fallen prey to that chimera. But at twenty-two, there is no reason for you to be such a child.

“A man must be well-born, have a fortune and the advantage of birth. Do not scoff at these requirements; they are more necessary now than ever; life can be ruinous, and prudence dictates that above all, in times of misfortune we cling to the values that have always served us well and do not abandon them for the fallacious ones springing up; for instance, that one’s station in life is not of consequence. Now to the point: a young man’s character one can never be wholly sure of, but a foreigner’s, even if he
is
well-educated? One who can only afford to live above a hosier and hatter’s shop; one whose notion of self-advancement is to write
poetry
?”

I said nothing, and her tone was softer when she spoke again. “So I say to you, my dear, be careful of the belief in that tree that exists only in one’s imagination; know that one can derive the purest happiness from sacrifice; and never allow the passing fancies of the heart to vanquish prudence, or you will be left with nothing.” She sighed, and her tone changed back. “Now it is high time to return to our coffee.”

She rose from her chair.

“What about Papa?”

She slowly sat down and regarded me, then continued in her soft tone. “Your father,
ma chérie
, was an honorable man from a good family whose social level matched mine. He worked from a sense of social duty, not from necessity. We had a mutual respect, an affection-ate regard that forms the basis of lasting happiness in marriage. You think, Annette, it is nothing to be without love. I tell you it is nothing to be without fortune or a good name. If it is nothing either way, you must make your choice.”

She suddenly extended her hand out to me, and I grasped it. I don’t think she had touched me for years.