Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (8 page)

“Eau-de-vie.”

“You’re too young to drink that by yourself.” He requested one.

“Enjoying the fête?”

“Very much so.”

“It’s good to see so many elegantly dressed ladies in these republican times. What are you called?”

“Mademoiselle Annette Vallon.”

“I am Monsieur Letour of Bordeaux. My father owns a grand vineyard in the Médoc, and I’m the personal guest of the vicomte and vicomtesse de Fresne d ’Aguesseau. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?”

I nodded. The vicomtesse had snubbed my mother once because, though my father’s family was old and respected in the Loire region, it had no title. Then, as if to make up for a rudeness that, after all, wasn’t intentional but just a reflex of her class, the vicomtesse said to Maman, “What a lovely coiffure,” and to me, “What nice amber ringlets.”

“Are you from Orléans?” Monsieur Letour asked.

“From Blois.”

“I visited the grand château there on my tour. It is an amazing montage, this wing of one century, that wing two centuries before, old Catherine de Medici’s room with secret panels hiding shelves where she kept poisons.”

“I never really liked her.”

“But she was better than her son Henri III.”

I could hear the oboes stepping lightly over the buzz of voices. It had been months since I had talked at a fête to a strange and eager young man. It can be very tedious. Monsieur Letour from Bordeaux continued to tell me about the history of my city. “I was in the actual room on the second floor where Henri III murdered the duc de Guise, who ruled Paris. Do you believe in phantoms?”

“It depends.”

“I think I heard the ghost of Henri telling his mother, ‘I alone rule France! The King of Paris is dead!’ Do you know what I heard her phantom answer?”

I remembered the line that every schoolchild in Blois knows. “I forget,” I said.

“She said, ‘I hope that you have not now become the King of Nothing!’ Isn’t that clever? ‘The King of Nothing’!”

“Perhaps that could be said about our present king, shut away, as he is, in the Tuileries.”

I had willfully committed an indiscretion, and Monsieur Letour regarded me as if trying to assess if I were a revolutionary in a blue satin gown with a lawn kerchief and sleeve ruffles. I was bored with acting as if nothing had changed, as if the King were still hunting happily on the vast grounds of Versailles. Monsieur Letour finally decided to overlook my bad manners. I was just a woman, after all.

“The King of Nothing,” he went on, “then killed the duke’s brother, just to make sure, I guess, then burned both bodies and let the Loire take the ashes. He thought of everything.”

“I like that the windows aren’t symmetrical,” I said.

“What windows?” asked my guest.

“Of the château.”

“Oh, they are horrible.”

“They were made to harmonize with what was inside. No one cared about symmetry,” I said.

“That wouldn’t happen now,” said the man from Bordeaux, “though the vicomte and vicomtesse both say contemporary architecture—”

Then from the door I heard a familiar voice calling, “Annette! Annette!”

“Pardon me. It’s my sister.” I went to greet Marguerite and Paul, handsome in his gray velvet coat but looking a little tired, and my younger sister, Angelique.

“The dancing is going to start,” said Marguerite. “I know how you hate to miss the first one.”

“You will join us, won’t you?” Paul asked.

“And bring your new friend,” whispered Angelique. “He’s already missing you.”

I could feel his eyes on me and wanted to slip with my sisters into the ballroom. Instead, remembering my manners, I returned to the table. “Who are your sister’s friends?” my guest asked.

“Her husband and my other sister.”

“You have a good-looking family.”

“Thank you. They say the dancing is beginning.”

“Shall we go?” We left our glasses on the table. My heart lifted at the sight of dancers forming into circles in the little jewel of a ballroom. Angelique raised the tip of her fan, and we joined them.

“Who is your friend?” she whispered to me. I had forgotten his name. I only remembered whom he wanted me to associate him with, the vicomte and vicomtesse. He stood beside me, conspicuous in his nonidentity, and I looked helplessly at Angelique.

“May I present myself. I am Monsieur Letour of Bordeaux and guest of the vicomte and vicomtesse de Fresne d ’Aguesseau.” I noticed Angelique raise her eyebrows. I presented my family, and he had just time to kiss Angelique’s hand before the music started.

I love dancing. I do not care who my partner is. When I move to music, nothing else exists for that time. My partners sometimes think the enchantment is of their making. I let them think that, as long as it does not interfere with my transport. This was a lovely minuet, and I recognized in it the lightness of the young Austrian composer who had recently died. His music belongs to the old world of refined movements, of lace and silk rustling, of courtesy and charm (though Papa had seen him play in Paris once, and it seems from what he said, Herr Mozart would be now what is called a citizen, not a subject, and would not have cared for ceremony, though his music soars in an ordered universe of grace).

I could see the gloved hand of Monsieur Letour being extended toward me. I smiled and whisked forward and back. Gloves are convenient things. His powdered face smiled back, and the lace at his wrist brushed the folded fan dangling at mine. Under the chandelier of a hundred wax tapers his powdered wig gleamed white, and the music picked up my feet. They knew the right steps, and I had no thought of them. Over the green silk collar of Monsieur Letour I saw a wigless, fair-haired stranger standing by himself at the door.

His hair was wet from the rain and hung loosely to his shoulders. He looked like a citizen. His face was suntanned and without powder.

He stood there unsmiling and seemed nervous, as if he would at any minute bolt back out into the winter night.

When the minuet was over, Marguerite brushed by me, waving her fan, and smiled. It was cold outside, but the fire in the hearth and the warmth of the dancers in their velvets and silks were making pearls of perspiration under the ringlets on the back of my neck. I excused myself and walked toward the door and felt the cool air from the hall on my bare shoulders and throat. The strange fair-haired man stood at the edge of the hall and the ballroom, as if he were about to enter either one, but having no immediate purpose, hovered there, glancing at the thronging people and fingering one of the buttons on his plain brown frock coat. For a moment I was in the path of his glance.

He stared at me, then purposefully looked at the orchestra, as if he were inspecting to see if the candles were properly fixed on the music stands.

The cooler air in the hall felt good, and the music started again, sounding beautiful without anyone to interrupt it.

“Mademoiselle Vallon.” Madame Dubourg was dressed for a grand occasion in a
robe à la turque
, an embroidered red satin robe, over a skirt of Chinese silk with stripes that looked faintly like bamboo. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Yes, thank you. A fine chamber orchestra.”

“I forgot that you know so much about music. You studied singing and dancing some years ago with that handsome teacher, did you not? I saw you dance with him at the château de Beauregard. Both so charming and accomplished.”

“Thank you.”

“Annette, I want you to do me a favor. Will you talk for a moment with an Englishman from Cambridge University? He was invited here tonight by his landlord on the rue Royale, Monsieur du Vivier, who is a friend of my husband. Monsieur du Vivier made the mistake of promising the Englishman he would introduce him to Orléans society. So now he is here, and I don’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t know anyone; his French is poor, and his clothes are worse. But I hear he is an educated gentleman. I will introduce you.”

She ushered me over to the damp-headed stranger, and when she presented me to him, his eyes regarded me sharply. Madame Dubourg mumbled an awful foreign surname. As she left us she said in my ear, “Get him to practice his French. If he is going to come to our fêtes, it is embarrassing to have him looming around in silence.” Then he and I were standing alone together at the entrance of the ballroom.

“How long have you been in France?” I asked.

“About a month.”

“How do you like it?”

“I like it very well.” His French was not as bad as Madame Dubourg had said. It was just slow.

“Lovely music, isn’t it?”

“It’s very pretty.” Then he ventured on a longer sentence. “I like watching the people dance. Do you like to dance?”

“Yes, very much.” In the long pause I thought he was going to ask me to accompany him to the floor.

“I am afraid I do not dance very well,” he said. I could see him translating and conjugating verbs in his head. His eyes would wander to the ceiling as he spoke. When they returned to me, they were the opposite of his speech. They looked on after his sentence had ended, as if they were speaking after his words had stopped. They certainly made more interesting conversation. What were we going to do if he could not dance?

“Shall we sit over there?” I asked. We sat down on a small settee in the music room, but the harpsichordist had gone to have his brief supper. Only two or three people were left in the room. I saw the unfinished liqueur glasses still sitting on the table. On the wallpaper next to us a bird, its tiny mouth open, sang surrounded by a forest of blossoms. As soon as the foreigner sat down, he looked at me again with his eyes that seemed not embarrassed to stare, and now it was I who looked away.

He started on his own: “This is a very grand house. I have seen something very interesting here.” He was out of his depth. He could not tell me what was so interesting. “On the...walls there are...”

He flapped his arms, as if he were about to take off from the settee. I almost laughed and stopped myself. I didn’t want to embarrass him.

He was wonderfully different.

“Birds,” I said.

“Birds, of course,” he said. “I know that word. How stupid of me. Isn’t that amusing that
bête
, ’stupid,’ is the same word in French as
beasts
. I don’t think that beasts are necessarily stupid. I know many humans who are more stupid than some horses I’ve known.”

Now I did laugh, not at him, but at his delightful insight.

“What did you say you were called?”

“William Wordsworth.”

“You have an unpronounceable name.”

“Try it.” He had a gently mischievous smile.

I could not get my tongue and lips around his foreign name, and mangled it.

“Close,” he said. “William, with an
L
as in ‘Loire.’ Then Wordsworth.”

“William.”

“Very good.”

Then I mangled his surname again. It came out something like “Woodswoods,” and he laughed and said he preferred it.

“I am supposed to be helping
you
with French.”

“Who says?”

“Madame Dubourg.”

“Ah, that’s why you are talking to me.”

“Why do the English have such difficult names, when so many of their names are French?”

“From William the Conqueror.”

“William,” I repeated.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I will call you Monsieur William and never try your horrible surname again.”

“Monsieur
Williams
would be better.”

“Why?”

“Because it is an actual name.”

“What does that matter? I am making up your name.”

“What is yours again?”

“You have forgotten? It’s easy to remember.”

“Tell it to me.”

“Annette Vallon.”

“Annette Vallon.” He said it to himself, softly. “I have not talked to many people since...I have been in France.”

I smiled at his effort and his success. “People need to have more patience,” I said.

“I want to engage a tutor, but it’s expensive.”

He stared at me with his glowing blue eyes. His hands were straight out in front of him and folded on the table. They were near mine.

“Will you teach me French?”

He was so sincere and intense, he made me laugh again. “I will be your tutor for a night.” He looked at me and smiled, waiting. “Have you seen Paris, Monsieur
William
?” I pronounced his name with difficulty, and he nodded.

Now he had to perform. He looked at the ceiling, then started enthusiastically: “I visited the Champ de Mars...where in July, the National Guard shot innocent people...who were demanding the abdication of a worthless king—”

There was no one else in the room, but it was still a royalist house, and I didn’t want the Dubourgs or their servants to hear their foreign guest abuse the King. “Did you see any of the historic sights?”

“I loved the Pantheon. I took my shoes off so I...could feel the same cool marble on my feet as the ancient Romans. I loved their worship of...forces, intelligences in nature, all complementing each other.”

The Dubourgs, devout Catholics, would also find this disagreeable, but I liked it. At least he was practicing his French. A servant entered and was clearing away the liqueur glasses and sweeping crumbs from another table. “Monsieur William, as a foreigner, what was the most interesting thing you saw?”

He didn’t pause at all. “Without question, it was the Legislative Assembly. I had a letter of introduction from an English lady, a fine poet named Charlotte Smith, which allowed me to listen to a debate in the assembly on...a revolt of the negroes in Saint-Domingue. They spoke too fast for me, and everyone was agitated. I’m afraid I didn’t follow it well....But I thought it was noble that they even debated these people’s fate. In England the negroes aren’t even...considered people. The Revolution has brought such new thinking.”

“Did you see anything else?” I thought he might mention something to do with the arts.

“Charlotte Smith’s letter also...admitted me to the Jacobin Club. I met a fascinating man there, who dined with me, for he spoke English, having traveled in England and America. His father was a caterer, and now this man is one of the most eloquent and altruistic voices of the new France. He founded the newspaper
La Patriote Française
. Perhaps you’ve heard of him, Jacques-Pierre Brissot.”