Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (10 page)

When I was past the bridge I heard, “Mademoiselle Vallon! Annette Vallon!” I turned and saw Monsieur William, running through a passel of bargemen, each twice as wide as he. He stopped beside me, slightly out of breath. “It’s a beautiful morning,” he got out.

“I wonder you notice it, Monsieur William; you seemed to give it little account.”

“Ah, I was writing.”

“What do you write?”

“I scribble poems. It is what I do.”

“A scribbler? I was reading the scribbling of Jean de Meung’s
Romance of the Rose
on my way to Orléans.”

“I know that poem, in its translation by our poet Chaucer, of course.”

“You should read it in French sometime, Monsieur. What were you scribbling about, may I ask?”

“I’m trying to...capture my sensations when I saw the Alps, on the journey I told you about last night. I walked by the river to help me remember the torrent at Chamouny.”

“You weren’t walking.”

“May I join you now?”

I nodded and he took the river side as we headed west with the current. We were silent, and I began to wonder if this was a good idea, to promenade with an odd foreigner along the quai. Would a friend of my mother’s see us and remark to her that I, who refused to see young men of good families outside of a ballroom or a musical soirée, had been seen strolling unchaperoned by the river? But those proprieties had relaxed somewhat with the Revolution, even among conservative families. It was no longer strange to see a young woman walk by herself, or talk with a gentleman without her mother or an older lady nearby. But I also wondered if it would be comfortable for me to converse more with this poet who had found the Legislative Assembly, the Jacobin Club, and the ruins of the Bastille such fascinating sights.

He was looking away from me, down at the banks of the river.

“I am looking,” he said, “for those beautiful stones you said were along the Loire.”

“I think you will have a hard time this time of year,” I said.

“Why do you say they are more beautiful?”

“They are round and smooth and do not have the rough edges of the rock you showed me last night.”

We were near stairs on the quai Cypierre, and Monsieur William ran ahead down the stone steps and strolled slowly along the banks, eyeing the shallows. I thought, what do I have better to do than to play this game with the odd Englishman? And I followed him along the banks of the Loire. There were still barges here, but not the fleet of
gabares
. Monsieur William suddenly clapped his tricorne hat on his head and stuck his bare hand into the icy water.

“How’s this one?” He held a small, smooth stone up to me.

“Like that, but more round.” I stepped in my high boots to the edge of the bank. Under my long cloak my skirts trailed in the slush of mud and snow, then in the water, as I knelt by the bank and heard the thin ice under my boots crackle. I looked down into the cold water and took my glove off, stuck it in my teeth, and thrust my hand into the glassy river. My hand ached instantly, and I ran my fingers over the different textures of the stones, and finally pulled one out. It was cold and dripping in my hand as I took it up to Monsieur William and placed it into his hand. “It’s smoother and larger and has beautiful specks in it.”

“But you’ve had more practice.” He threw his stone far out into the current.

“You’ll have to do that with your one from the Bastille now, too.”

“It’s my souvenir for my friends in England.”

“You can find better souvenirs.”

“I shall keep this one,” and he tossed it up and down. We walked back to the stairs. “You’re the first French lady I’ve really talked to.

Are they all so...” I looked over at him in his pause, wondering what he was trying to say about me, “knowledgeable about the geology of their region?”

I laughed. In our short acquaintance, this was not the first time that his freshness and ingenuousness had made me laugh. “Monsieur William, I’m sure, if I were visiting England, that English ladies could tell me just as much about rocks and rivers from their region.”

“I think it is a unique ability,” he said, forming his phrases with deliberation, “to look closely at objects, to really see them.” We were on the quai again now, going back in the direction from which we had come. Two carts, one laden high with wood, the other with coal, creaked and lumbered past us from the quai du Châtelet. “That is one of the...distinctions a poet must make, between merely
looking
and truly
seeing
. Did I get my verbs right?”

“I believe so. I am not a poet, though, Monsieur William.”

“Ah, but you are,” he said. His words seemed to come more quickly when he talked about poetry. “The first task is to develop the ability to perceive, to
see
, and you, Mademoiselle, have that.”

“You can tell all that from how I talked about rocks?”

He made a peculiarly Gallic shrug and said, “But of course.”

“What is the second task, Monsieur Poet?”

“The second is...look across the river, and tell me what you see.”

“I see the aspens shimmering on the quai des Tourelles, where Joan of Arc, after being wounded with an arrow that went through her shoulder and out the back of her neck, pulled it out herself; after the saints appeared before her and calmed her pain, she again attacked the hated English, who, convinced now that she had supernatural aid, surrendered on the spot.”

Now it was Monsieur William’s turn to laugh. “You’ve proved my point. You are a poet. The second task is the use of the
imagination...
blended with perception. You have two eyes that both must be used to an extent one rarely uses them: the naked eye, and what Plato calls ‘the eye of the mind.’ ”

“What about the heart?”

“You’re ahead of me. The third task is, the poet must teach. He is either a teacher, or nothing. And to teach anything worthwhile, one must know the language of the heart.”

“I thought only children and lovers knew that.”

“The poet is a child, or sees with the child’s eyes, and he is always in love.”

“With what, Monsieur? For surely you don’t mean that the poet is a libertine.”

“With his life, with rivers, with woods, with mountains.”

“What about people—does he love them?”

“He sees the ones whom others don’t see, the beggar under the bridge, the orphan in the doorway, the widow by the window.”

“Monsieur William, you are doing well with your French.”

“I just need to practice it more. With someone who will listen. Others with whom I tried to converse don’t have the patience. Then you also ask the right questions.”

He had been looking out over the river or at the ground as he was talking, concentrating on his words; now he looked directly at me, and his bright blue eyes stunned me again. I could hardly tell whether the rest of his face was attractive or plain. His eyes looked at me, and that was all. “I find you are agreeable to listen to. Few men converse with such passion, especially in a language that is not their own.” We had just walked past the narrow street I was to turn into. “We may speak just a little more before I must return to chez Dubourg. Tell me about where you are from.”

“From the north of England. I am always in love with our mountains, and when I am away from them, I want to return to them—except when I was in Switzerland last year. Other young men, fresh from universities, make the tour of Europe to see the great capital cities. I wanted to see the Alps. I also love rivers. I was born with a river running behind my house.”

“So was I—well, almost—I could see it from my window. Pardon me, continue.” His reddish brown hair looked very fair in the winter sun. He had an aquiline nose, what is called a nose of strong character.

“Tell me more about the house,” I said.

“I liked the library. I opened the window, even in the rain, so I...

could hear the river while I read.” He stopped and smiled. I felt honored for some reason, that he was sharing that with me. “We lost the house when my parents died—first my mother, then a few years later, my father,” William said.

It was less noisy along this part of the quai, and the river made no sound against the ice at its banks. I didn’t say anything.

“When my parents died, I was sent to live with my grandparents.

My grandfather was very strict, and I was...punished often.”

“Why?”

“One time I destroyed a family portrait with a riding whip. I was very proud of being punished.” He paused again, and a horseman suddenly rode past, splashing mud on us. Monsieur William didn’t seem to notice. “I remembered the house in which I was a child, Mademoiselle, in that house where I...could always hear the river, and the river was very blue from the small stones of its bed.” Then his tone shifted: “I was wrong—I’ve just remembered the third task of the poet, or you’ve made me remember it, and it is not teaching, as I said; I apologize; it precedes that, for it is part of the art of composition: the task of
memory
, of course.”

He stopped. He had so much to say and had to say it so slowly.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Take as long as you like. Take all the time in the world. Most men talk quickly and say nothing. It’s far preferable that you speak slowly and say everything—at least about poetry.

You’re already far more eloquent than when I met you.” He glanced keenly at me, perhaps to make sure that I was not being ironic, and, with his eyes on his feet or the river, and pausing after every phrase, he continued.

“You know the muses themselves are the daughters of Memory, in Greek mythology.”

I didn’t know that.

“Think what that must mean, according to the ancient Greeks, regarding the relationship of memory to inspiration, of how important it is. Let me illustrate with you as an example. First you do not merely look, but
see
the quai des Tourelles, across the river, secondly, you reshape it through your
imagination
, perhaps touched by compassion; lastly, if you write about it, you will conjure your perception of the quai up again out of
memory
, which shall add to it the power of calm reflection and the greater value that only time can bestow upon it. Then all those together may
teach
the reader something, if you are lucky.”

“Monsieur William, you ought to be a professor.”

“I—excuse me; I am slow with the conditional tense—”

I waited and smiled. His phrases were worth waiting for.

“I
would not have
the patience to mark exams,” he said, and laughed. “Especially ones from a student such as I was. When everyone else was studying hard, I was reading Richardson’s
Clarissa
. I knew enough to pass. An exam, unlike a poem, does not have to be perfect.”

“Monsieur William,” I said, “since you have enlightened me so much regarding poetry today, I have a thought of my own about writing. It’s a secret, though.”

“I like secrets.”

“I like to write too.”

He laughed again.

“I said that you were a poet.”

“Oh, I aspire not to write poetry, Monsieur. That is beyond me. I remain in the earthly sphere.”

“What is your subject?”

“I observe. I listen.”

“That you do. I wish you well, Mademoiselle, in your literary endeavors.” He made a slight bow.

“And you too, Monsieur.”

He stopped walking. He put his hat on, then took it off again.

“Mademoiselle,
would
you...”

“Yes?”

“...care to be my French professor again, if I...
were
—I hate the subjunctive—to bring to you a translation at chez Dubourg, perhaps at a future fête to which Monsieur du Vivier, my landlord...
might
invite me? All of that was hard to say.”

“That would be very kind of you to work on a poem on my behalf.

And it will be highly edifying. Now, if you please, I must be returning to chez Dubourg. I am a guest there, you know. I am really from Blois.”

“Then we are both foreigners,” he said. “Joan of Arc was blessed by the archbishop in Blois; that’s all I know about the town, I’m afraid. Until the next fête, Mademoiselle. It has been a great pleasure.”

“Until, then, Monsieur.” And, “Yes, it has,” I added softly to myself, as I turned. Then I looked back at Monsieur William, already distant on the quai. He must have really walked all the way from London to Lake Como and back, I thought.
Some
men do not lie.

I glanced at Gérard’s intense face as he molded shapes out of dough. I was keeping the children occupied on Christmas afternoon while Maman and Marguerite rested, and we were sitting at the zinc-covered servant’s dining table in the kitchen.

Marie and I were creating horses out of dough, but hers were much better than mine. She already had four good ones beside her. I had one that resembled an amphibious dog and was well into my second, which I was really trying to make look more like a horse.

“Gérard, what are you making now?” I asked. He had one rabbit beside him. It was all ears.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Have you seen your papa and Etienne?” I asked Marie.

“Talking in the library,” said Marie, without raising her eyes from the curve of the horse’s tail. “They’re always talking in the library about politics.” She had recently turned ten and had begun to be aware of the volatile nature of the world around her. The Varaches’

daughter, Louise, had been Marie’s friend. I don’t know what she had told Marie of the reasons her family was emigrating, but I do know Marie missed her, and now, confronted with a life without her best friend, found herself helping me more in tutoring her younger brother and engaging him in some of her own old childhood pas-times. Perhaps she was too old to make shapes out of dough, but this was a cherished tradition, which she had done every year since before Gérard was born. They baked their animal shapes that then became Christmas cookies.

“You would think that they would get tired of talking about politics, especially on Christmas,” Marie said.

“It is a mouse. There are his ears. There are his eyes,” Gérard said.