Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (13 page)

“Don’t be left with nothing, my girl.”

I didn’t want to disagree with her. I didn’t know when the last time was that she had talked to me softly, and I didn’t know when she would again.

When the vicomte and vicomtesse de Fresne d ’Aguesseau invited the Dubourgs for an Epiphany soirée, they included—or should I say deigned to include—their guests from Blois. I had not seen their mansion for five years and was looking forward to sitting on a certain carved couch, embroidered with a scene of a white horse, the hooves of its back legs raised and in the act of kicking a wild boar, cowering beneath them. In a meadow behind it, another boar runs away.

Etienne had an appointment with a friend in Orléans from the Sorbonne, and Marguerite and Paul wished to spend Epiphany, the climax of the Christmas season, with their children, so Angelique and I joined Maman and Monsieur Vergez at the vicomte’s soirée.

Now I again sat across from my stepfather in our family carriage, and he opened his engraved silver box and took a pinch of snuff, and I glanced out the window at the huge triple doors of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, rose windows above each door. The problem with a rose window, however, is that it needs light to make it truly beautiful.

This was a particularly gloomy January evening; even though it was the day on which the Magi arrived at Bethlehem, no such bright star lit the glorious windows of the Holy Cross; the only light was in the corner of the square, where a group of beggars stood around a small fire.

Nor was there any star above the brick mansion of the vicomte, one of many across from a larger mansion in which kings have stayed on their visits to Orléans, before the current days when they were exiled from Versailles and confined to a dilapidated palace along the Seine. I noticed that, over the doorway, the ancient coat of arms of the Fresne d ’Aguesseau family had been discreetly painted over.

Angelique and I passed through the vestibule behind Maman and Monsieur Vergez, surrounded by women’s rustling silks, gold or silver braid glinting on gentlemen’s culottes, knee-breeches, buckles shining on shoes. It had been years since I had seen so many beautiful people. And there was the short and jolly Monsieur Dubourg, gesticulating with the vicomte, a slim taciturn man in black and white silk, and Madame Dubourg, her height putting her on the level with the vicomtesse’s old-fashioned tiered coiffure, leaning down and listening to the vicomtesse, in her royalist dress of white taffeta, the mode the Queen had made famous.

When we passed the dining room I glanced through the open gilded doors at the tapestry of Joan of Arc, sword in hand, light on her face, attacking the English where Monsieur William’s aspens now whispered. We heard music playing from one of the salons and followed the sounds into a crowded room. Two elderly ladies with powdered hair and rouged cheeks sat rigidly on my couch of the stallion and the boar. I could see one of the white hind legs raised behind one of the tight blue bodices. The ladies looked brittle, as if should one of them fall off the couch, she would break.

The music sounded Italian, not French, perhaps that of Niccolò Piccinni, and in spite of the crowd, Angelique and I, arm in arm in our white muslin dresses with long tasseled waist sashes (hers gold, mine blue), promenaded around the edge of the room. I liked the new flat pumps that had come into style in rebellion from high heels and after Rousseau’s statement that clothes should be useful, not luxurious. We looked at the beautiful people and nodded at a few ladies we had met in Orléans in previous years. They wore little jewelry now—and what they wore was clearly paste.

The National Assembly had issued an edict that all women were to give their jewelry to the government, as proof that their values had shifted from vanity to patriotism. It could then be used to help pay to build a new army. Of course, the men in the assembly who created the edict were not about to donate their silver snuff boxes. I was sure most of these women’s jewels, though, did not go to make new cannon.

They were probably hiding discreetly in the back of a drawer, waiting for a more felicitous time to dazzle the world once more.

Angelique and I each took a glass from a servant standing, still as a statue, by the wall, seated ourselves by a small tulip wood table, and sipped the chilled, sparkling Vouvray, which tasted fine in the warm, full room with a fire burning high in the huge hearth. I looked around the room for Monsieur William, thinking that his royalist landlord would invite the foreigner to see the best society in Orléans. But perhaps Monsieur William was not interested. He was probably writing in his room.

The music stopped, and it wasn’t long before I saw a gilt-wood chair beside me pulled close to my own by a black silk arm, and suddenly it was not the frank face of the Englishman but the smiling facade of Monsieur Leforges, under a tightly curled wig, that looked into mine.

I almost gasped and caught myself. I wanted to leave immediately, but before I could say anything, he asked us courteously if he could join us. Angelique, who was only twelve six years ago and didn’t know him at all, and who always appreciated the company of handsome and polite men, said, Yes, of course. He presented himself as Monsieur Leforges of Orléans, the conductor of the small orchestra we had just heard, and sat down.

He gave me a sardonic smile, lost on Angelique, patted my knee under the table, and rested his hand there until I pushed it off. His arrogance knew no bounds. I knew he was going to play a game now, in front of my sister, as if he and I had never met. He knew that I did not want to introduce him as my old
ami
.

I had often wondered, since I was sixteen, what would be my response if I should ever see Monsieur Leforges again. I had created a thousand clever and proud things to say, and now I could not remember one of them. Angelique gave her name and said we were from Blois, and when I failed to give my name, she looked strangely at me.

She went on to say that the music was charming, and that it seemed that all the fashionable society of Orléans had come. He said that was always the case at a soirée chez Fresne d ’Aguesseau. I could feel his eyes on me, and I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of my looking at him, or of thinking he had made me uncomfortable.

I said, “Angelique, we go
to many such soirées at the château de Beauregard, do we not?” Which wasn’t true, for the count hadn’t held any since my father died—or since the Revolution started, for those events happened at about the same time.

Angelique was silent, and our self-invited guest answered that he had once taught music and dancing in Blois, at which Angelique clapped her hands together. She said, “If you were at the château de Beauregard,” she said, ”perhaps for a moment, as you changed partners in a
contredanse
, you danced with Annette, or with my other older sister, Madame Vincent.”

“Very unlikely,” said Monsieur Leforges, “because I would have remembered anyone as charming as your sister here, and if your other sister had any resemblance to the two before me, well, I would have remembered her too.” He then said that an unfortunate incident, however, forced him to retire from Blois and kept him from returning.

I realized I had neglected my Vouvray, but the silence at our small table, as we awaited Monsieur Leforge’s explanation, made me place the glass soundlessly back on the veneered tulip wood.

“It actually had to do indirectly with your count,” he said. “He may not be as kind a man as you may think. I won’t go into the unpleasant details here, but suffice it to say that a rival instructor, in whose best interests it was to stop my growing success in that town, spread salacious rumors about me. The count, who prided himself on his noblesse oblige to the town, believed the slanders and publicized them, he thought, in his hasty judgment, to save other pupils from being ‘ruined ’—as he put it”—here Angelique gasped and waved her fan painted with butterflies—“so I lost my pupils, my reputation, and even had to leave Blois, a town of which, in my short time there, I had grown rather fond.”

He had put his hand back on my knee. I tried surreptitiously to push it off, but through the fine fabric of the muslin, he pinched the flesh above my knee so hard I almost cried out.

“How horrible,” my sister said.

“It was very humiliating,” he said. He kept pinching hard. I had to bite my lip. “A certain young woman, it seems, out of jealousy of my attentions, purely professional of course, to another female pupil, was implicated in this crime to my honor. My rival instructor never used her name, naturally, but spread the rumor that I had ruined ‘a certain young lady.’” He pinched extra hard, then let go. “You know how people are eager to listen to vile gossip, quick to believe it, and deaf to the voices of justice or reason.”

“Yes,” said my sister, “that’s always the case.”

“Well, I’ve built my reputation back here in Orléans: witness, I am invited to play at the best soirées local society has to offer. But next autumn I have been invited back to Blois to instruct a new generation, and, I tell you charming ladies, if I ever meet that man who slandered me or the lady who helped him, my revenge will be swift and sure.”

“I’m afraid they would deserve it,” Angelique said.

“I recall my humiliation in Blois only with extreme pain, and as it is indelicate to discuss such a matter with strangers and with ladies, I beg your forgiveness for my having made it a topic of conversation; it was only because your native town reminded me of memories I would rather forget.”

I finally looked again at my lover of six years ago. He seemed older, with a few lines near his eyes. The smile that played about his lips seemed to be stretched tight, like a mask that is too small. “Monsieur Leforges,” I said, “as it is not ours to judge, isn’t it also not ours to exact revenge? Isn’t the desire for revenge the most degrading of emotions; shouldn’t you, as a conductor of sublime music, try to raise yourself above such pettiness?”

“Mademoiselle, you speak as one pure as divinity itself would speak, but alas, I am a mortal man and susceptible to all his weakness.”

“What if one of his weaknesses, Monsieur,” I said, “is to deceive others, to speak as guilefully as the serpent in the garden itself?”

“Then, Mademoiselle, a certain young lady would pluck and eat of a fruit she never should taste. And whose crime is that? Who must be punished for that? Not the serpent, surely.”

“Your conversation has become entirely too metaphysical,” said Angelique. “And I apologize, Monsieur; my sister is not in the best of humors tonight. May we return to the intriguing topic of supposed slanders?”

“I regret, Mesdemoiselles, that I must return instead to my orchestra, for our pause for refreshment is over.”

And he vanished behind a lilac taffeta dress, and soon we heard the strains of his musicians again.

“Well, you were rude,” my sister said.

I didn’t say anything, and Angelique regarded me for a long time. “That was either very rude,” said my sister, “or”—she let the silence hang there—“or...did you know him, Annette?”

Angelique was young and flirtatious but not stupid.

“He was my ‘disgrace’ that I’m sure the servants whispered about around the house years ago—or still do.”

“Then he’s just a big liar.” She laughed a small, discreet, but delicious laugh. “And I just thought you were misanthropic or too proud where men were concerned. I am impressed.”

“Angelique—”

“Well, I shall defend you in all things now, Annette. Now that I know how the world has mistreated you.”

“It wasn’t the
world
—”

“Excuse me, Mesdemoiselles, may I—?”

My sister nodded before I looked up to see a cavalry officer in his high-collared light blue jacket with gold lace, red cuffs, and red sash with gold cords and tassels, shining white trousers, saber, and black boots standing there in all his glory. He had under his arm a beautiful shako, a hat of blue cloth and black leather, with more gold cords and tassels—someone must do quite a business in them, I thought. My favorite item of all was a tall white plume. He was young, smiling, and fairly took both my sister’s breath and mine away. I thought at that moment that soldiers should be purely for show; who would want to shoot at such a wonderful costume? We made our introductions to Captain Alivons, and he took the chair that Monsieur Leforges had left unoccupied, keeping his left hand on his shako. The plume nodded well above the table and looked, in this context, a bit ridiculous.

I asked him what one always asks an officer—to what regiment he belonged—but Captain Alivons was an anomaly. “My regiment, Mademoiselle, is no more, as half of its officers have emigrated, and the more intelligent of the other half are about to emigrate. And that is the case with half of the regiments in the entire French army.”

“With all of these halves leaving, do we have any regiments at all?” I asked.

“Soon, none of any consequence,” said the captain. “At least none that can sit a horse. I shall reunite with my other officers soon, though, when I myself emigrate and join the grand émigré army.”

“Are you going to England, then?” Angelique asked.

“Yes, to where they still respect monarchy and one’s station in life.

I’m lodging right now with an Englishman. Rather a strange fellow, though.”

“A tall gentleman,” I said, “from Cambridge?”

“Yes, that’s right. How did you know?”

“A Monsieur William?”

“My sister knows a good deal about this foreigner,” Angelique said.

“I did not know anybody did. He has an unpronounceable surname, so we just call him ‘Guillaume.’ He spends his time either outside,
walking
”—he pronounced the word with great distaste, in order, I assume, to remind us that
he
, Captain Alivons, was a
cavalry
officer—“or reading and writing in his room.” All three of these occupations seemed beyond the good captain’s ken. “He also has some strange ideas, but my fellow officers are working on him. Excuse me—” and the captain placed his shako on the table, dashed off in the direction of the statue-like servant, and, before Angelique and I could remark on him to each other, returned with three full glasses. My sister and I hadn’t finished our first two.