Mistress of the Revolution (42 page)

In the afternoon of the 27th of September, I prepared to go to the main Courthouse. My only hope was the memory Pierre-André had kept of me. I gazed at myself in the cracked mirror hanging above the chest of drawers in my garret. It reflected a pale, hollow-eyed face and a countenance matching my widow’s dress. I shook my head in dismay. Would he recognize in me the blooming girl of fifteen he had met by the river, or even the young woman of the Champ de Mars, with a rose between her breasts?

I took Aimée to Manon and kissed my daughter good-bye, or farewell, depending on the outcome of my attempt. I repeated to myself for the hundredth time the reasons for my decision to seek Pierre-André’s help. Aimée, poor child, saw my anguish and did her best to conceal her own. She held back her tears and threw her little arms around my neck. I left with Manon a note to my sister Madeleine, begging her to forgive my trespasses and to raise my daughter as her own. I asked Manon to find a way to send it if I did not return within twenty-four hours. Aimée squeezed my hand and I was off to the courthouse.

After entering the great gilded gates, I took a long look at the flights of stairs leading to the front doors. To my right was, through a small locked courtyard, the entrance to the prison of La Conciergerie, where were held those scheduled to appear before the 17th of August Tribunal. It might be the first step on their journey to the guillotine. I shuddered and looked away. I crossed the
Cour du Mai
, the main courtyard, and climbed the monumental stairs. Once inside the sprawling building, I asked an usher for directions to the premises occupied by the Tribunal. It was shortly after six in the evening.

A gendarme, who did not seem much older than me, was seated at a desk in a white and gold antechamber. I told him that my name was Labro and that I came to see Citizen Coffinhal to report a conspiracy related to the massacre of the Patriots on the 10th of August. The guard went down a hallway. He returned after a few minutes.

“Citizen Coffinhal has no time for you,” he said. “You must report the facts to Citizen Fouquier, the head of the Grand Jury. You’re in luck; he’s still at work. I’ll take you to him directly.”

I sat in one of the chairs facing the gendarme’s desk. “I am not leaving. I want to speak to Citizen Coffinhal and no one else.”

The gendarme looked unhappy. “Well, when Citizen Coffinhal says no, I leave it at that. I don’t see why I should make him cross. Citizen Fouquier, on the other hand, is good-humoured and soft-spoken, especially with the ladies, I mean female citizens. So it’d be wise of you to talk to him.”

“No, that would not do at all,” I said, looking straight at the gendarme. “Citizen Coffinhal and I are from the same country. I have documents of the utmost importance that are written in my native language, which is also his. If I cannot see him tonight, I will have to send him word that you would not let me speak to him. He will probably be very unhappy, because this is an urgent matter.”

The gendarme hesitated. He sighed and disappeared once more. I heard a voice shouting upstairs. The gendarme returned, a little paler, and asked me to follow him.

We went down the hallway and up a corkscrew staircase. I was shown into a room on the second floor of one of the medieval towers. From the window, one could see the Seine glowing grey in the light of the late afternoon. Across the river, the ragged offerings of the used clothes peddlers, hanging from poles, floated gently in the wind like the flags of poverty.

The room was furnished with a marqueterie desk, in front of which were two chairs for visitors. A hat
à la
Henri IV, upturned in front, with black feathers, a matching cape and a gilded medal on a tricolour ribbon, all part of the new judges’ uniform, lay on a small table. I could not help noticing that the hat was the same shape as the one worn by the Representatives of the Nobility at the opening of the Estates General, except for the dark colour of the feathers.

Pierre-André, dressed in black down to his stockings, was seated at the desk. He was reviewing papers and gave no sign of looking up when I entered. He said in the Roman language, without rising or inviting me to have a seat: “Come to the point, Citizen Labro. I hope for your sake that you are not disturbing me for nothing.”

Pierre-André had used the patriotic
thou
. Yet, in his mouth, it brought to mind the past. I forgot all of the speeches I had rehearsed for the occasion.

“Citizen Judge,” I said, also in the Roman language and in the familiar style, “you may remember me…”

He muttered an oath and rose from his chair, which screeched against the stone floor. For what seemed a long time, he stood glaring at me.

“As if one could forget the likes of you! How could I fail to recall the name of Labro? The very first lie you told me. And those amazing disclosures of yours are nothing but lies too, are they not?” He raised his voice. “Answer me, Citizen. You come here under an assumed name and false pretenses, and then you stand here stupidly staring at me. You are still the same, imagining that you can lie with impunity. But times have changed, if you have not. Answer me, or I will call the gendarme to have you arrested.”

I mustered all of my resolve and fixed my eyes on his face. “Yes, Citizen Judge, I lied. It was the only way to see you.”

“You wanted to see me! At last! After you have ignored me all these years! It must not have been worth your while to call on me after I rescued you at the Champ de Mars. That was after all only a minor service. I guess your situation feels a bit more unsettled these days, and this gives you a higher regard for my society. There is nothing I find so heart-warming as a disinterested visit from an old friend. So tell me what brings you here. Be brief. I have not all night to chat with you.”

“I was arrested at the end of August and imprisoned at La Force.”

“Ah, yes. Hébert and the
people’s court
at La Force let you go. Not for long. We keep an eye on characters like you. You will find that real judges are not so easily mollified by your charms and your tears. Now let us come to the point. Why are you here? In one sentence.”

“I need a Civic Certificate under the name of Labro, and my Section refuses to give it to me.”

“What do you imagine?” he asked, sneering. “That the purpose of the Civic Certificates is to allow aristocrats to hide under a false identity? And what has it to do with me?”

“I thought that you might help me obtain mine.”

“No less! How so?”

“By telling my Section that you can vouch for me. They will listen to you.”

He stared at me. “You are asking me to lie to your Section? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“You rescued me last year, Pierre-André. I thought that you might be so generous as to help me again.”

I reached for his hand. He drew back. “I do not recall allowing you to use my given name.”

“I am sorry, Citizen Judge.”

“Spare me your apologies. Here is what I will do for you, and I hope that you will be grateful, for a change: I will let you go this time.” He pointed towards the door. “Leave before I change my mind.”

I looked straight at him. “No. Have me arrested if you want, but at least hear me before calling the gendarme. In any event, if I do not receive my Civic Certificate, it is only a matter of days before I go back to jail.” I took a deep breath. “For years I have wished to tell you these things. I wanted to marry you. Oh, I wanted it so. I wanted to elope with you. I did not hesitate for a moment when I received your letter. I was on my way to join you at the crossroads of Escalmels that night when my brother caught me.”

“I know. I knew the next morning. Your brother summoned Jean-Baptiste to Fontfreyde to tell him that you had tried to elope, that it aggravated my case because it established my
seduction
of you, a crime punishable by the gallows or the wheel.” Pierre-André stared in the distance. “I waited all night for you at the crossroads. I kept hearing your step, your voice in the rustle of the wind. I thought I saw your figure in every wisp of fog, in every shadow. I waited for you until dawn. Only then did I abandon hope.” He shook his head in anger. “What a fool I was! Two weeks later, I heard that you had married Peyre.”

“But I was forced to do it. I remained locked in a cellar until the very day of my wedding. Even so, I would not have married the Baron, but my brother threatened to have you sentenced to death. I wanted to save you.”

“At the time it drove me insane to think of you in that man’s bed. But it does not matter now.” A pulse was throbbing at his temple. “What matters is that, after your widowhood, when you were free, you became a whore.”

I smarted under the insult. “I had but one lover,” I said. “I became his mistress to support myself and my daughter.”

“Let us not quarrel about my choice of words. Financial inducement is as good a reason as any for a woman to prostitute herself. I believe that it is even the most common.”

“My husband had left me penniless. I had no other choice except entering a convent.”

“No choice? You knew that I was in Paris, you knew of my profession. Nothing would have been easier than to find me. I lived less than a mile from you, but for all you cared, I might just as well have been in Persia.”

“So you wanted to see me again?”

“Did I
want
it? I might even have been enough of an idiot to marry you.”

Startled, I looked up at him. “You still loved me then?”

“Oh, I was cured of my illusions when I heard that you had become Villers’s kept woman. That was better than marrying a lowly attorney, was it not?”

“I would never have guessed that you still cared for me.” Tears came to my eyes. “If only I had known…. I too wanted to see you, but I was ashamed to seek you.”

Pierre-André was gripping the back of his chair with both hands, his knuckles white. “But now you are not ashamed to seek me?”

“I am, but there is more than my life at stake. What would happen to my daughter if I died? I hesitated a long time before coming here. I knew that you would despise me all the more for it. Yet even if there were only one chance in a thousand that you would help me, I could not afford to let that chance pass.”

“I see. Now, My Lady, you are desperate enough to humble yourself before the vile commoner you used to scorn. The stuff of tragedy. This brings us back to an earlier question of mine to which you have not responded. What made you believe that I would help you?” His eyes narrowed. “What do you imagine? That I have treasured your memory to this day? That I have hoped all these years for this moment? That I still love you?”

For a moment I caught myself wishing it were true. I shook my head sadly. “I only hoped that, even if you had stopped caring for me long ago, you might feel pity for my plight.”

“Your plight! I feel exactly the same pity for your plight as for that of all other aristocrats, which is to say that it does not keep me awake at night.” He walked from behind his desk and stood in front of me. “Now let us forget about pity, and love, and old times. Let us have a serious talk, Citizen. What have you to offer that could tempt me?”

“I have diamonds of great value.”

“I take no bribes. I find it repulsive, as well as extremely dangerous, in my situation. Anything else?”

I hesitated.

“There has to be something else,” he added, frowning. “What is it? It must be interesting, or you would not have so much trouble saying it. I am impatient to hear it. Come, Citizen.”

I closed my eyes. “You may have me,” I said under my breath.

“Louder, please. I am not hard of hearing, but when you mumble, I cannot understand you.”

“You may have me,” I repeated.

He raised his eyebrow. “
Have
you? I have not the advantage of understanding the jargon of the nobility. We live in a Republic now. Nobody owns anyone else. What do you mean?”

I bit my lip and kept silent.

“I might have some idea of what you propose,” he continued, “but in matters of such delicacy, I would not want to be presumptuous and assume too much. Be more clear.”

“You may…” I could go no further.

“All right, Citizen, I will help you of your little difficulty. Are you by any chance offering to have intimate relations with me?”

In spite of the humiliation, I was relieved. “Yes.”

He paused. “Is your offer valid for one time only, or an entire night, or several occasions?”

“As you like.”

“Excellent. And you would, I suppose, leave to my discretion the manner, or manners, in which I would have the pleasure to enjoy your person.”

My cheeks were burning. “Yes.”

“Really I am flattered by the improvement of my standing in your eyes. Last year, I did not deserve a simple visit, and now you find me worthy of…”

I drew a deep breath.

“My apologies,” he continued. “I did not mean to shock you by the coarseness of my language. Let me rephrase in a genteel manner. You are offering me something of immense value, something more precious than your diamonds: the leftovers of the great lords of the Court. I should be grateful, I suppose, like a lackey who is presented with the scraps from his master’s table. Truth be told, Citizen, I was beginning to worry whether such a proposal would be forthcoming in the course of our conversation.”

He looked at me from head to toe. “I have not failed to observe the manner in which you are dressed. In itself, it did not seem likely to lead to anything. Then I thought again. A person of your experience would know that some men are aroused by modest attire in an attractive female. It does leave more to the imagination. There is still another possibility: you may have thought that your widow’s costume would set forth your woeful situation and mollify me without any recourse to indecent offers. You know from past experience my delicacy of behaviour and may have hoped that I would help you without expecting a return. You were saving your interesting proposition for the very end, in case everything else failed. This must mean that you have played all of your cards.”