Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (63 page)

The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the Sea:

Listen! the mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make

A sound like thunder—everlastingly.

Dear Child! dear Girl! that walketh with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

“And so it will be when I am not with you, when I have gone back to England,” William said. “The Supreme Being is with you when I am not, as is this poem, as are my thoughts.”

Marguerite and I corresponded throughout the peace, but when autumn came and they were due to cross the Channel, Paul had been sent on another trip. He worked hard, knew a lot about wine, and had made himself invaluable to the British company. Marguerite was afraid that by the time he came back, though, the war would start again.

She also said that since I had mentioned that William was friends with a writer named Coleridge, she had taken notice recently of a short poem by Coleridge in the
Morning Post
the other day. Had it anything to do with me? She only asked because it had my name in it. But since when was I a “courtesan”? She had perceived a certain attitude that the English had toward French women, she said. It was an epigram, called “Spots in the Sun,”

But always we find the pious man

At Annette’s door, the lovely courtesan!

I wrote her back that yes, the pious man did seem to be William, and no, I was not a courtesan. Do they have courtesans anymore? And that probably no one in all of England knew the truth of that poem except she, William, Dorothy, and perhaps Mary. I’m sure Coleridge was having a fine private joke, I said.

Dorothy wrote to us that William had married. She said she had become very ill and couldn’t attend the wedding, but by the time the wedding breakfast was finished, for weddings in England
always
were in the morning, she had recovered and accompanied the bride and bridegroom on the journey back north, to “our” home, she said.

She wrote that, loving the fresh air as he does, William preferred to walk behind the carriage, and that while she and Mary rested at an inn, he walked up to a waterfall in the rain. My brother can sniff out a waterfall, she said. But I don’t think you have waterfalls along the Loire, do you? It’s rather a flat river. She said where they lived they could see mountains every day, and that made William happy. That and how she and Mary cared for him. She wished us well and that we might avoid the belligerence of France, which must be all about us.

Apparently, they had a happy life together. Dorothy was a great help in the house and in raising the children. Many years later, her illnesses overcame her, and William and Mary ended up taking care of her for the rest of their lives.

William Wordsworth was a product of a short era. He did not belong to his generation, nor did he belong to his uncle’s. His was a short time of great hopes when anything was possible. Somehow, I had got entwined in the fall of those great hopes. I do not think he could separate anymore the fall of his ideals for the world with the fall of our ideals together.

So he was an exile in the lovely land of his youth. His youth, with its unbounded hopes, was forever around him untouchable. His personal sorrow he translated into world sorrow, and he came to believe that things not working out as he had wanted was symbolic of something larger.

...those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet a fountain light of all our day....

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind.

It would not be wholly objective of me to say that William’s poetry started to wane about a year after his marriage, but I have read all the French translations that we have now, and it seems that one could make that statement. He also kept going back to his youth in his poetry, as if he were trying to find something there that he had lost long ago, or that he had forgotten that he even once possessed.

While we were at Calais, Napoleon declared himself First Consul of France, and the war soon commenced again. The Vincents never had time to visit.

In November of 1804, more than two years after my stay at Calais, and a month before Napoleon crowned himself emperor, a long, tube-shaped package arrived at our cottage. When I opened it, I saw it was an oil painting of a river winding through steep bluffs, with green forests extending on both sides of the river. The river disappeared in the background amid endless forests. There was nothing striking about the painting except for the color of the water and the sheer vastness of the landscape. One could notice a little figure on the shore of the river, perhaps fishing. The painting was not signed.

The next day Angelique appeared with her new
ami
, Marc, as he simply called himself, whom she had met in the Chouans. He had been marooned when Napoleon abandoned his army in Egypt and had made it back across North Africa. His father ran a sugar import business in Blois whose barges traveled upriver from Nantes. But the ships that unloaded onto those barges had to run the British blockade.

Besides his own bitterness at having to make a rather long walk home, Marc also wanted to end the war for business reasons. He worked at a warehouse during the day and often with the Chouans at night. If he and Angelique married, I thought, Maman could have her sugar merchant son-in-law after all.

Angelique came in with a new green cloth ribbon in her hair, kissed Claudette, twirled Caroline around in a simple dance step, and said, “A
gabare
from Nantes docked near Marc’s warehouse yesterday. It brought something from far away.”

And behind her, through the open door, strode the marquis. He didn’t have his old cloak and sword dangling and pistols at his belt, but wore a fashionable double-breasted coat with long tails. He doffed his tall hat, bowed, and kissed my hand.

“I apologize,” he said, “that I have no venison to bring you, or even a wild lily. But I did send you a painting.”

We all gathered around the landscape that I had left on a chair, not knowing what to do with it. “That’s how vast America is,” the marquis said. “But do you see that little figure beside the river?” We all assented that we saw it, but could not make it out clearly. “That is I, pondering what to do in all this vastness, wondering why I am so far away from another river, which I love. This one in the painting is called ‘the Hudson.’ What kind of name is that? Is that the name of a noble river?”

“So what brings you back?” I asked, “when you had all that land to paint?”

“I have so many paintings,” he said, “ I filled my rooms with them.

I couldn’t go out my door without bumping into paintings. I finally got tired of them. Gave almost all of them away, except this one and one that is now hanging in the château de Beauregard, if I may say so. But it wasn’t having too many canvases of rivers and woods that made me leave.”

“He was back to his old tricks,” Angelique said to me. “I didn’t know who the Marquis de La Roques was during the Terror, but I had heard of him. Apparently he had something to do with the creation of the Blonde Chouanne.”

“But who’s there to fight in America?” I said. “Indians?”

“No, they were my friends, and they’re all dying off. A tragedy right there. One of them, though, brought a black man to my back door one night. Without a lantern, they just stood there in the dark with my candlelight on them. The Indian in a waistcoat with his sleeves rolled up, who helped at the farrier’s now, and a tall black man in tattered clothes, with bare, bloody feet and frightened eyes. He had come hundreds of miles on those bare feet, helped by others like my friend. Now I became an outlaw again, by aiding him. Then my rooms became a regular stop for others. I even went south to a place called Kentucky and helped people cross a river. It was called the O-hi-o; that’s a little better than Hudson, I suppose. But that’s where I got in trouble. Angry men who had lost valuable investments followed me up the Hudson. I gave my paintings away, went downriver and across the sea and so to the door of—who is this lovely lady?”

He bowed and kissed Caroline’s hand.

They all stayed for dinner of cabbage, onions, roast chicken, and fresh bread that Caroline had baked.

“I always thought you were a pirate,” Claudette said to the marquis.

“I’m now a civilized gentleman,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“The distinguished Edouard finally retired from the count’s service. I’m the new valet of the château de Beauregard. I’ve had experience. Everyone in America works, so I became the butler in the household of a man who owned a shoe factory. Can you imagine? They liked my accent. He made very nice shoes, and I got a free pair for working there. So you’ll have to call me ‘valet,’ and not
‘
marquis,’” he said and laughed.

We all laughed. It seemed so absurd.

“His château and lands were confiscated long ago,” Marc said to me.

“I was never a very good marquis.”

“What
was
your château?” I said.

“Poncé sur la Loire,” he said nonchalantly.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“You’ve seen it?” the marquis said. He poured himself some tea made of mint from our garden. “When?”

“Years ago. My father and I were returning from his pilgrimage to Vendôme. He had had me read all the Greek myths that year and now wanted me to see paintings of them done on ceilings of a giant stone staircase. So we asked permission at the château and soon were looking up at Perseus holding his shield in front of Medusa’s ugly hair; at Jason slipping the fleece from under the sleeping dragon. I loved them. But then we paused on the next landing, and do you know what we saw? Pegasus,” I said, “drinking from a well by a young man holding a golden bridle, then flying, his white wings spread wide over the blue sea. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

“They were on their way to kill a monster,” the marquis said.

I suddenly remembered something else. “There was a young man, a boy, really, sitting on the floor, painting the Pegasus.”

The marquis had lifted his cup and he put it back down. He stared at me. “That was
you
?” he said, “the little girl who peered over my shoulder and asked, ‘What are you drawing?’”

“You were rather rude. You didn’t answer.”

“I was
working
. I saw you later, wandering back and forth in the maze. I heard you finally calling for your papa.”

Angelique and Marc laughed.

“You were the one who showed me the way out, who shouted down from the window and pointed,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”

“I haven’t thought about the château for a long time,” he said. “In ’89 they burned it. Left my father’s body there before his own door.

The gardener and I put out the fire, finally. I think we may have saved about half the château. But I didn’t care anymore. I haven’t been back.”

He drank from his clay cup of tea. Caroline and I had made that cup. If the marquis noticed it was an odd shape, he didn’t say. I had never heard him talk about his personal life. I didn’t even know he
had
a personal life. He was always just “the marquis,” the head of the Philanthropic Institute.

The table was silent. He looked at his cup a moment, then smiled at me.

He wanted to let me know that it was all right, I think.

“The château de Beauregard is the place for me now,” he said. “It’s more grand. More things for a valet to do.”

“Well, what shall we call you besides ‘valet’?” I said. “We don’t even know your Chris tian name.”

“Call me Jean-Luc,” he said. “My name is Jean-Luc. I hear we ’re getting an emperor soon. We ’ll be like a lot of ancient Romans.”

“But haven’t we been stupid?” Marc said.

“What?” said Angelique.

“Look who’s staying at the château de Beauregard regularly. Top marshals of Napoleon. What better way to find out information, to pass it on? All one has to do is keep one’s ears open while one glides down the hall like the perfect valet. I think our marquis hasn’t retired at all.”

We all looked at him.

“I’m just a humble valet,” he said. “Why would I want to be anything else?”

No one said any more about it. I thought perhaps Marc was right, but I liked the marquis now simply as Jean-Luc.

After dinner the gentlemen built the fire up, and Jean-Luc told more stories of America, then Angelique and Marc left, and Claudette and Caroline went to bed, and Jean-Luc and I told stories of long ago.

He wanted me to start, so I told him of dances, and of hunts, and of meeting a forbidden lover in the steep dark streets, and of fleeing enemies through snowy forests, and of a priest who never stopped telling his beads for the five days I hid him, and of a marquis turned outlaw, who was a friend in a friendless world. Then he told of bribing prison guards with money I had stolen, of Chouans singing, of a green mask that, on a whim, he had placed at the bottom of a sack, and of a fast horse.

“I saw her,” he said, “grazing peacefully at the château de Beauregard. She’s eternal.”

“I’d like to see her again,” I said. “I never get out to Beauregard without a horse.”

“I’ll arrange it,” he said.

And he did. I went often to Beauregard, where he was a splendid valet to the aging but lively count. Jean-Luc also came often to our cottage. He became my very good friend.

He supplied me with a mare sired by Le Bleu, and together we used the old caves in the tufa cliffs as well as, occasionally, the lodge in the service of the Chouans. But we went on no more raids. “A valet is a more dignified person than a marquis,” he said. “He cannot also be a pirate. Besides, you and I, Madame,” he said to me, “when I came back, I found out they had made legends out of us. It’s quite amusing. There are all sorts of things I didn’t know I ever did, or you—now
you
may have done them. But don’t you think it’s better to keep some things in legend?”