The Porcelain Dove (16 page)

Thank le bon Dieu they did so! For my mistress was not so cheered by her sister's presence as she might have been. First, the episode of the mock-trial still rankled, even after so many years, madame holding her sister's ill-judged championship entirely to blame for the extremity of her own sentence. Second, Mme de Bonsecours, though well-
intentioned, was a monstrous poor sick-nurse. Her own health was rude, her nerves comfortably cushioned. When she should have murmured, she bellowed; where she should have soothed, she braced. And whenever I was present, she insisted upon asking me what I thought of this play or that actress, as if my mistress could possibly be interested in my opinion on theater gossip. I was puzzled how to interpret her attentions. Was she trying to woo me away from my mistress' service? Did she think to make a friend of me? Neither prospect appealed; and yet I liked to hear her talk of Paris and Versailles, of the haut monde's flutterings, the philosophes' feudings, the courtiers' polite grapplings for power. Concerning Mme la marquise de Bonsecours, I continued to be hopelessly of two minds.

Concerning Eveline Réverdil, on the other hand, there was but one mind to hold. She was like a sheep—a very pretty sheep, to be sure, snowy of wool, mild of gaze, with a most gentle and mellifluous bleat. Herself a mother of four, she took pity on madame's ignorance and spent hours in reading the whole of M. Rousseau's
Èmile
to her and telling her tales of her own children, how they wept and laughed for no rational cause, like the little savages Nature had made them. Madame drank down her common sense like a tonic wine, and was soon sufficiently recovered to converse and eat with her guests.

What peaceful weeks those were, to be sure—a Saint-Michel's summer of the spirit, blessedly warm, serenely golden, and all too brief. In the evenings after dinner, the company would gather in the Miniature salon to drink coffee and listen to the comtesse play upon the clavichord. She was possessed of a delicate touch and a set of études written especially for her by the Austrian emperor's young Kappelmeister Mozart. I remember once when madame, in the first flush of M. Rousseau's views on family unity, insisted that both M. Léon and Justin be present at one of these impromptu concerts, with Pompey and myself in attendance to keep them quiet.

That afternoon hangs in my mind like a painting, a conversation piece by Saint-Aubin, for example: "Music at Beauxprés," or "The Clavichord." A soft autumn light falls through the windows of a noble salon hung with hundreds of miniature portraits. The left middle ground is occupied by a satin-wood clavichord at which is seated a plump blonde lady in green and pink plaid. Balancing the composition on the right is a chaise longue supporting a pensive beauty in a gown of painted silk. An Indian shawl covers her feet; her hand rests on a
small liver-and-white spaniel. Clavichord and chaise frame a group of two men and a lady in the center background. The lady is large and florid, but vastly elegant nonetheless in purple lustring and silver lace. Her clever gaze is turned on a small, sleek man who gestures with a lorgnon towards the painting's central figure: a dark, sharp-faced gentleman in a cerise coat who, half-turned from the scene, gazes out the window. In the foreground, off to the right, a small black page in a feathered turban and a silver collar kneels beside a stout child wallowing in an abundance of white satin skirts. Behind them, a pretty young servant in a striped sacque holds a sleeping infant in a cradle-board.

What this pleasing picture fails to show is that M. Léon—who was tied to my chair by his leading-strings—was beating his little wooden cat on wheels against Pompey's leg. Pompey endured his attentions stoically, although his jaw would tighten when M. Léon got in a particularly shrewd blow. Neither he nor I made any attempt to take the toy away. Better that Pompey's leg should be bruised than that the will of the heir of Malvoeux should be crossed, especially in company.

Falls and trills of notes, golden as the autumn light, spilled from the clavichord. Please may M. Léon stay quiet, I prayed. Please may Justin not awake.

There was a small commotion at my feet as the vicomte de Montplaisir, bored with trying to make Pompey cry, reeled in the silver bauble tied to his waist and prodded it at my ankles. I shifted my feet away. Encouraged, he hauled himself upright and brandished the bauble as high as he could reach, poking at his brother's face with the well-chewed wolf's fang at its tip.

"Is it not sweet," said madame languidly, "that such a young child should so dote upon his brother? See how he tries to share his favorite bauble with him? When I see them together, I rejoice with M. Rousseau in the unspoiled goodness of little children."

Pompey gave a soft whimper, which could equally well have been of pain or mirth. Hearing it, M. Léon left off trying to poke out his brother's eye and, clambering onto Pompey's thighs, thrust the bauble in his face instead. Pompey flinched. M. Léon crowed and had at him again.

"I wonder," said the marquise, "at seeing my nephew still bedecked in satin and whalebone and wound about with leading-strings.
You are become such a disciple of Jean-Jacques, sister, that I would not have been astonished had young M. Léon sat before us barefoot and clad only in a linen smock."

Monsieur turned from his contemplation of the gardens. "My dear marquise, I beg you recall this discipleship you speak of is a thing of yesterday. Before our charming musician introduced them"—monsieur bowed gallantly to the comtesse—"Adèle was as ignorant of la methode Jean-Jacques as of the craft of carpentry."

"That is not so, husband," said madame indignantly. "I have often heard M. Rousseau mentioned in Paris, although, to be sure, no one took the trouble to explain his ideas to me as Mme Réverdil has done. I quite intend to direct mère Boudin to leave off Justin's swaddling-bands, at least at night when he can come to no harm."

"Do you really believe, sister, that leaving him unswaddled now will make a man of him when he is grown?"

Madame's face settled into a fretful sulkiness. "There's more to it than that, Hortense, as you very well know."

"I dare say. But Jean-Jacques is so
impractical
, sister. Consider his ideal tutor, for instance. Where does there exist such a prodigy of nature, who will teach your child for love of teaching alone? And if you did find him, would you not fear lest he might prove more naïf than his pupil? Furthermore, this wise and patient pedagogue who bids mothers suckle their own infants and fathers teach their own sons has sent
his
children to be brought up in a home for foundlings."

"No one likes testing his own theories, marquise," said comte Réverdil smoothly. "Besides, the children were bastards, and he quite unable to afford their keep. Considering the circumstances, we must not condemn him, but rather commend his charity in sending them to a home for foundlings rather than drowning them like puppies, which I suspect he would have preferred."

"You know the man, Réverdil?" asked monsieur.

"I dined with him twice or thrice before the affaire Saint-Lambert in '57. A suspicious, uncharitable man, with the imagination of a fasting saint and the humor of a rutting bull. To frown at him is to offend him; to jest with him is to make him your enemy for life."

"You are very hard, comte," said madame.

The comtesse, having come to the end of her étude, lifted her hands from the keys and folded them in her lap. "My dear," she said gently, "only consider that M. Rousseau has said harder things than that of men who call our husbands friends."

Madame's head came up and her eyes widened pitifully, like Doucette's when she's being scolded. "Oh, dear. Is he quite wrong then? And
Èmile
, is it all lies? I vow, I don't know what to think, I don't indeed!"

Temporarily in accord, Mme de Bonsecours and monsieur lifted their eyes to the ceiling while the comtesse hastened to reassure madame that a philosophe's private actions may safely be divorced from his abstract musings.

"Indeed, my dear duchesse," added her husband, "a philosophe's opinions may safely be divorced one from the other. For as many as prove pure gold, so many more will prove to be dross. Take that Italian, for example: Vico of the New Science. Have you read the book, marquise?"

"The man who believes our far ancestors to have been giants? Charming nonsense, I thought it."

"And yet that nonsense contains more than a grain of sense. That our far ancestors were giants I believe no more than you. That they might have deduced quarreling gods from the voice of the thunder, I think very likely. Do not our ignorant peasants to this day ascribe metaphysical meaning to simple natural phenomena?"

"Alas," said the marquise, "they do. And their evil auguries so far outnumber their benign ones that I sometimes wonder how they find the courage to set foot outside their houses for fear of encountering a hare or a magpie or some other sign of doom."

"Peasants are savages," said monsieur coldly. "Vicious, credulous, and wholly self-interested. My chief quarrel with M. Rousseau is this same fairy tale of man's natural goodness, which is no less an offense to the rational mind than the church's fairy tale of original sin."

M. Léon was beginning to pout. I exchanged with Pompey a look of purest anguish. Which would be worse, I wondered, to disrupt the debate by taking him away or by allowing him to howl?

"We all know of M. Locke's argument of the
tabula rasa,
" Mme de Bonsecours was saying, "that a child's mind is as a blank white page upon which his teachers write their wisdom. How, then, can man be said to have a natural state at all?"

The comte answered her. "A child knows to suck at the breast and to weep if he is hungry. The natural state of man, then, is the same as a beast's. Like a beast, he is born neither good nor evil."

"Yes," said monsieur suddenly. "Yes, Réverdil, that's what I have always believed. Anyone who has ever observed an infant must know
that man is born possessed of only his five senses. 'Tis education alone that distinguishes a nobleman from a peasant, a philanthropist from a thief, a physician from a murderer—"

Mme de Bonsecours laughed. "Nothing, my dear Malvoeux, distinguishes a physician from a murderer, excepting that the latter is hanged for his work and the former is paid. However," she said hastily, seeing monsieur offended, "your point is well taken. Pray continue—education."

Monsieur turned to look out over the ducal gardens. "I believe we owe nothing to our fathers save a certain cast of countenance, perhaps, a tendency to height or corpulence or weakness of sight. In that, a man is no different from a horse bred for its endurance. But character—by which I mean judgment and will—that is added on to a child by education, not set in his blood by nature. My son is heir only to my title and lands, not to my vices and virtues nor to the crimes and philanthropies of my ancestors. Once his reason is informed and matured, this child, this
tabula rasa
"—here monsieur flourished his hand towards the vicomte de Montplaisir, who was staring at his father with owl's eyes—"will be a new man, a disciple of Science and Reason, untouched by the false superstitions of religion and—"

At that moment, M. Léon lost patience. He opened his plump mouth and gave forth such a shriek as would have caused the Devil himself to clap his claws over his ears and flee to the relative peace of Hell.

For a moment, monsieur stood foolishly pointing at his screeching son, then shouted at Pompey to quiet him. Justin woke and began to wail; madame helplessly wrung her hands. Doucette jumped down and yapped at M. Léon, who swiped her across the muzzle with his bauble and roared again with infantile rage. I thrust Justin into Pompey's arms and picked frantically at Léon's knotted leading-strings. The comte Réverdil began to laugh. The last thing I heard as we made our untidy retreat from the Miniature salon was Mme de Bonsecours saying, "Ah, brother-in-law! Your
tabula rasa
seems to have opinions of his own. How does
that
fit into your theory, I pray?"

When the Réverdils at last resumed their interrupted journey, they invited my mistress to accompany them to Lausanne, which invitation she readily accepted. Monsieur, who'd a wide acquaintance among the scientists there, came with us.

Oh, how I loved Lausanne! And Bordeaux, where monsieur went
sometimes in the spring to visit the bird markets, and Brittany, with its gray stone villages and the gray sea beyond. I liked the sea, at least to look at: flat as the fields around Paris, as I remember, with a sheen to it like taffeta, and white birds crying mournfully overhead. Mountains are very well, but I'd like to see the sea again. And Paris. How I long to see Paris.

Two hundred years! Surely it has changed in that time. The last I heard, the customs walls were down, the monasteries and convents defaced, the Bastille demolished to its very foundations. What has risen in their place, I wonder? Does the hôtel Malvoeux still stand in the rue des Lions, concealing its splendors behind a grim, gray wall? What is sold in the shops along the Palais-Royal? Who buys there? Are there still bourgeois in France?

Jean says I wonder too much. This is Paradise, he says. I wished for it, and my wish came true. I'm warm and fed and safe, as I had asked. Why can't I rest content?

Why not indeed? Everyone else is content. Colette has her eternal quest for why and how, which she pursues through the myriad books and collections of Beauxprés. Sixteen lifetimes were barely sufficient to bring them together, she says. Twenty lifetimes are not sufficient to understand them. Especially when she devotes so much time to the writing and performing of plays.

Before Colette began to grow, Adèle and I found the time in Paradise hanging heavy upon us. My old tasks of making and mending were taken over by our dexterous servants, and while Adèle could still design and embroider, even the finest stitches and most astonishing designs must pall. So we beguiled a decade or so in wooing our little resident ghost down from the tree she'd been haunting with games and tales and a golden ball; another twenty years in watching her grow first more solid and then older, and in teaching her how to read and write.