Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (36 page)

Annette, we owe you everything.

Now Paul is saying that, when he gets his position secure with the British Bordeaux company, we’ll get an English cottage, with
our own roses. I, though, am waiting for the French government to
change again and don’t want to put down roots here. The English
papers, however, say the King is going to trial. Everyone here thinks
France is a most barbarous land now, taken over by criminals. They
may be right, but it’s still the most beautiful land on earth. I don’t
think I shall ever learn the harsh language of the British, but they
are polite to us. They have the reserved nature of your Monsieur
William, with, as far as I can see, none of his passion or sensibility.

He is unique, I’m sure, even among his own people. I must go and
fetch Marie now from the hotel where the Varaches are living, for
now. Marie has drawn a beautiful picture of the Loire and of you
standing on a cliff above it, looking down at the river. Your hair is
down and the wind is blowing it back. She showed it to me and it
made me cry. Gérard misses his good friend so, as do I, your loving and most grateful sister, Marguerite.

When I wrote back, I didn’t mention my imprisonment. I said Monsieur Vergez had been a bit testy, so Angelique, Claudette, and I were staying for now with the Dubourgs. That was a very comfortable arrangement, I said. I congratulated Marie on her paintings and told Gérard not to forget to make Christmas cookies for me. I had to stop writing at that point, for I suddenly started to cry. When I went back to the letter, I told Paul that I was sure he would make a fine British businessman. It was so easy to be cheery about everything in a letter. I missed them so. I wrote that too, as my last sentence. I added their address in Southampton, and it felt strange to be writing to England.

In late November, when we had been in Orléans for three weeks and I was over eight months pregnant, Jean brought another letter to me. He said it had taken him a while to get Vergez’s servant to warm to him and to entrust Jean with picking up the mail regularly. Jean was afraid we might have missed some letters. This one was, itself, about a week old:

My Dearest Friend—

With the disorganized state of affairs in France, did my letters
not get through to thee? Though I have waited impatiently for the
post each day, I have received no word. I have sent some half a
dozen letters, since the first day I arrived here, but my chances seem
to be no better than if I had placed them in a bottle upon the high
seas. Is the Committee of Surveillance holding them? Do they check
every letter to Blois? Therefore I grow increasingly anxious about
you and the baby, as well as impatient as to when I can procure the
necessary papers to proceed safely back to you. So I have decided to
return to Blois tomorrow, with or without papers.

I must write, then, as if you will receive this letter: Every interesting hour I spend in the company of the Girondins, I am aware, is
less compelling because I cannot share it with my dear Companion. I
long constantly to be telling you this thing and that thing, about what
I see and hear. Your dislike for politics would be mitigated by the
sheer drama of the moment. Citizen Brissot told the Jacobins again
that they must take the blame for the September massacres. He even
accused them of turning the revolutionary government into their own dictatorship. And in return they call Brissot unpatriotic. The script
of the National Assembly could have been written by Sophocles.

Brissot has no lack of courage or conviction, but his speeches have
not hastened the process of obtaining my new papers—my only real reason for being here—for no one knows whether they should do him
a favor or not. Power shifts every day.

Everything now in Paris is either the conflict between the Girondins and the Jacobins—a conflict that will decide the fate of the
Revolution—or the coming trial of the King. I myself have written
in support of Brissot and his uncompromising patriotism and am
working with the journalist Antoine Gorsas, who has become disillusioned with the Jacobins and is writing for Brissot’s paper. These
Girondins are the most dedicated and articulate men I have ever
met. Their tragedy is that the world cannot keep up with their ideals.

I wrote last night:

—all cannot be: the promise is too fair for creatures doomed to breathe terrestrial air.

I longed for your company at their dinners at the Reunion Club with Brissot, Roland, Vergniaud, and the novelist Louvet, who stood up before the Assembly and denounced Robespierre, the master
of the Jacobins’ slander, trickery, and vying for power. You, who
see through all hypocrisy and pretense, would have appreciated the
sincerity of these Girondins. The future of perhaps all of Europe
now hangs on what will happen here in the next months. Meanwhile,
my Beloved is about to bring into this glorious and frightening world
a new soul, straight from the lap of heaven. I pray that I, in some
small way, may make the world a better place for her arrival, that
you are indeed safe and well, and that our love triumphs with ease
over the petty powers that work to separate us. I will be at chez Vincent in several days—adieu most tenderly

Thy dearest Friend, William.

I wrote to William immediately in Paris—his address was in care of the journalist Gorsas—just in case he had been held up and didn’t leave for several days. I told him how glad I was that he had arrived safely in Paris and to come to Orléans, not all the way to Blois, but I knew my letter would go east as he went west. I added a hasty message on the Vincents’ flight and how it had been caused by Paul’s protection of Pierre, but said nothing of my own imprisonment. I said how Monsieur Vergez must have kept or destroyed any of William’s letters that found their way to his address—for the name Vallon in Blois still meant chez Vallon, the house he occupied. But I said how nice it was to be here, now, in Orléans with the Dubourgs, to walk again where he and I had walked along the quai, and where he had written beautiful verses about the river. I said I was in the city where we had fallen in love, that Orléans would always be special in my mind because of that. If he were here, I added, he could feel the baby kick and see my ignominious progress on the pink cap.

But when I put the pen down, I was overtaken with worry that William would make the trip without papers and be arrested along the way, or be picked up by the Committee of Surveillance if he called at chez Vincent or was recognized in Blois. He knew many people there from the old Friends of the Constitution club. What if he had asked one of them and been denounced as a spy or for associating with counter-revolutionaries? Poor William did not know what had become of the reputation of Paul Vincent.

I hoped his work for the Girondins was too exciting for him to leave, but I knew William’s resolution—once he decided to do something, whether it were to walk from the Channel across the Alps to Lake Como and back, or to write a long poem that would take him a year to complete, or to come to France by himself in the midst of revolution and against the wishes of his family, nothing would stop him.

I had no appetite and could only drink Claudette’s tisane and eat some boiled potatoes. I wanted my child to have a father who was not in prison—and who was alive. I had no desire to walk about the room anymore. The letter that I had been waiting so long for had left my mind as agitated as the November wind that shook the shutters now, so the Dubourgs’ servants had to close them all tight against the first real winter storm. William could be out in it, I thought, or, if we are unlucky, languishing in the cold dampness of the Beauvoir.

The Dubourgs, Claudette, and Angelique all worried about me.

They said, This is not the time for you to distress yourself over something you can do nothing about. Your baby needs you to be calm, to rest. So I drank the tea and read
Héloïse
again, to be amused, but it did not amuse me. It made me think about distressed lovers.

A single candle stretched its flame across my page. Writing was the only thing that calmed the thoughts that unflaggingly paced through my mind. This time, however, I was not recording or reflecting in my diary, but starting a prose version of my favorite poem, the medieval epic
The Romance of the Rose
. I thought more people would read it now if it were in prose. But I suppose I really did it for myself.

I went from the writing table to my bed, blew out the candle, closed the bed curtains, and fell asleep as I listened to the wind in the shutters. In my dream Claudette knocked softly on the door and opened it, a candle in her hand illuminating her happy face. “Madame,” she said. “He is here.
Monsieur la Valeur des Mots
.” I had made a joke about his name once when I had translated its meaning to her, “the worth of words,” but I had never actually called him that. Now, in the dream, it was his regular name. “
Monsieur les Mots
is outside in the rain,” Claudette said. There was a panic in the dream about him being stuck outside. I went to the window and opened the shutters. I thought I could feel the cold rain blowing into my face. William stood below me, and he was singing. In my dream I recognized the melody of the Annachie Gordon song, about the sailor who came back too late and his lady had died. Then I saw a big black dog in the rain. It was behind William, coming out of some alley. I didn’t like the look of the dog. I called to William, but he didn’t hear me. He just lifted up his voice in the rain and finished his song. The dog crouched right behind him, as if ready to pounce.

Then my eyes opened suddenly. Thunder shook the shutters. In my mind I still heard William singing. I almost went to the window and looked out.

That afternoon this letter came, forwarded by Jean:

My Dearest Friend:

I walked to chez Vincent in search of thee and found a bevy of National Guard. I went to chez Vergez, hid in the stable, and
noticed La Rouge was not there. I knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. I will leave this note in the post for chez Vergez and
hope, somehow, it will find you. I am leaving for Paris now. I pray
to your Lucette and to the Almighty Protector that you and the baby
are safe.

I will find you, even if it takes years.

Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend,

William.

Perhaps he’s walking through Orléans right now, I thought. I madly wanted to run out to the rue de Bourgogne. Perhaps he would pass along that old Roman road, going east. I convinced Claudette it was logical, and we stood there for an hour in the rain, carts splashing mud on our skirts and coats, Claudette holding an umbrella and I scouting every tall pedestrian. “It
is
possible,” I said. “What if he came through Orléans, right near my door, and we both of us didn’t even know?”

“What if he went through Chartres, Madame? I heard Mademoiselle Angelique say
that
is the more logical route, the one you yourself said he took when he left Vendôme. Lovers,” Claudette said, “are not the most logical people.”

“I am always logical,” I said.

Claudette shrugged, made a sound like
poof
as she exhaled, and continued, as I scanned the gray street. People stared at us as they passed. “When I had to leave Benoît,” she said, “to come here, he was not logical. He said he would leave the count’s service and get a position in Orléans. That might not be so easy, I told him, and what about when we return, after Madame Annette’s baby is born, I said, and you, Benoît, are still stuck in Orléans, polishing a harness in some dim barn by a noisy street. Then, working in the count’s service, in his grand château with fresh game to eat, will sound very desirable to you, Monsieur Benoît the Groom of the château de Beauregard. That is what I told him, so he stayed with the count.”

“Your story is not at all like my situation, Claudette.”

“It is the same principle,” she said. “A woman, with a belly as big as a house, will stand in the rain, when it is not logical or good for the baby. Monsieur William—
Monsieur les Mots,
as you called him once—”

“What did you say?”

“You made a joke once about his name and called him—”

“Yes, but what made you think of that?”

“I was only trying to make a joke, to enliven our dull hour, waiting on this street for no purpose.”

“Claudette, have you seen a black dog?”

“Madame?”

“A big, black dog in the rain.”

“I think we should go in, Madame.”

“It was in a dream, Claudette. A dream I had last night about Monsieur William, and you called him that funny name in my dream also.”

“I do not know about the name, Madame,” she said, “but I do know—it is just an old superstition—but where I am from in the country, a big black dog in a dream is not a good sign. I think we should go in. Have some soup. Put your feet up on the settee. Work on your long story. Monsieur William, I was going to say, he can take care of himself. He is a resourceful Englishman. Rain does not bother him. Walking long distances is nothing to him. And he loves you. He will find a way, as he said in the letter.”

“Even if it takes years,” I added, and we left the old road in the rain on which Joan had once entered in triumph.

Two weeks later I received another letter forwarded from Jean.

My Dearest Friend,

I just received your dear letter from Orléans! I rejoice that you
are safe and well.

On my return from Blois, Citizen Brissot succeeded in obtaining my new papers and a travel pass for me. The pass, however, is
only good for two weeks. Brissot added that, since the anti-foreign sentiment continues to be strong with the constant threat from the
Austrians, if I cared for my safety I should not wait to depart. It is
not my safety, right now, for which I primarily care.