Madame Tussaud

“Absolutely not,” Curtius says firmly. “We are going to see a murderer, not a circus.”

“But I can carry the bags.” The offer is tempting. “I can hold the ink while you dip the quill.”

My uncle laughs. “Perhaps you can carry the umbrella over my head.” It is pouring, great sheets of rain that haven’t let up since dawn.

“Yes!” Yachin exclaims. “I can do that.”

I give him a look, and his shoulders sag. “I never get to go anywhere,” he grumbles.

Curtius and I walk on, ignoring his plaintive cries from the door of the Salon. “Did you bring him back something from Versailles?” my uncle asks.

“Not yet. I’ll find something this week.”

“Please. Or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

As we pass the sign for The Auricular Communications of the Invisible Girl, I notice that the potted plants on either side of the steps look waterlogged and forlorn. Even the ferns disagree with this downpour. Henri emerges from the doorway, and his long frock coat with silk-faced lapels is already wet. I watch as a raindrop glides down his nose and lands on his mouth. Without noticing, he licks his lips gently and pulls his hat farther down on his head.

“We tried to hire a cabriolet,” my uncle says cheerfully. “But in this weather—”

“A little rain doesn’t frighten me,” Henri says, though it will likely be a thirty-minute walk. “But the Marquis de Sade … are you sure?”

It is me he is asking, as if I am likely to be deterred by a madman in a cell. “Of course. Patrons have been asking for him.”

“He’s a rapist, Marie.” Henri falls into step with me. “They say he paints his cell with—”

“I know.” I have heard the stories. Everyone has heard them. This is why we are going. “They’ve warned him we are coming, and he’s agreed.”

“I’m sure he’s agreed to many things. That doesn’t make him less dangerous.”

“You can admit it,” I tease him. “A part of you wants to know if the rumors are true.”

We are the only group outside for some distance. Even the ecailles, who sell sugared barley water in the winter and oysters in the spring, have taken shelter beneath the eaves.

“Not everyone has the same prurient interests as you.”

“It wasn’t my idea! It was my mother’s.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” Curtius tells Henri, who looks astonished.

Because my mother spends her time cooking, everyone who comes to our Tuesday salon imagines she has no interest in the world outside her kitchen. The only man who has never underestimated her is Curtius.

I look around the gloomy streets and think of Versailles, where everything is bright and cheerful. How will the deputies of the Third Estate feel when they arrive, dirty and hungry, to see the well-fed courtiers in their diamond buckles and ermine muffs? It is bound to be a disaster, and will certainly cause resentment. I recall my introduction to the palace, when the women whispered behind their bejeweled fans and courtiers watched me through the high, arched windows. Though I had been dressed by one of the finest marchandes in Paris and was walking with the sister of the king, it is a place where I could never belong. All the silk and taffeta in the world cannot change the fact that I am untitled.

As we near the Bastille, the rain drives harder. The streets have turned into rivers, carrying along mud and excrement. Even the boys who are normally crying Passez, payez have abandoned their jobs of laying down boards for passersby who pay a small fee to spare their shoes. So we are forced to cross the streets without them. I lift my hem, and we choose the least waterlogged paths. Henri’s coat is all but ruined. It will take days to clean and then dry by the fire. I had thought to make an agreeable figure in my new hat and rabbit’s fur muff, but I see that I shall be lucky simply to look presentable.

As we reach the Bastille, I look up at the mighty stone walls. What must it be like to be locked away in a tower so tall that only birds may reach it? The marquis has been in and out of prison for more than twenty years. First, for the brutalization of a young prostitute named Mademoiselle Testard, who was whipped nearly to death by a cat-o’-nine-tails heated in the fire. There were other atrocities committed against the woman, actions with crucifixes so vile that Madame Elisabeth would faint to hear of them. Myself, I wonder if they are true. I wonder, too, about his wife, who is supposed to have hired six young girls at his behest and taken them to the remote Chateau de Coste, where the women believed they were to act as servants. Instead, they were taken in chains to a dungeon, where it is said that the marquis used whips and heated irons to satisfy himself with them. If this is true, then I will see it in his face. I will know by the eyes and the set of his jaw.

We cross the drawbridge and pass beneath the portcullis. Henri reaches out to take my arm under the pretense that the ground may be slippery. But I know the truth. This is a haunted place, where men have lost their lives for nothing more than offending the king, a place where no one wants to be alone.

“Have you been here before?” I ask him.

“No. My family was kind enough not to request a lettre de cachet when I told them I wanted to follow in Jacques’s footsteps.”

I laugh, despite the solemnity of the moment. We approach a long table where a dozen guards are playing dice. The men wear the riband of the Order of Saint Louis, and none of them appear the way I would expect prison guards to be, fiendish or cruel. Their wigs are heavily powdered, and their golden military badges catch the light of the candles.

“I wish to speak with the governor of the prison,” Curtius says. When one of the men asks what sort of business we have inside, my uncle replies, “We have come to visit the Marquis de Sade.”

A middle-aged man separates himself from the group. The bejeweled hilt of the sword at his side is extraordinary, and his attire is more befitting the court than a prison. “I am the Marquis de Launay,” he replies, “and I am the governor here.” He has dark eyes and a strong, square jaw. He must have been a handsome man in his youth. He looks at our clothes and is obviously shocked that we have chosen to walk in the rain.

“There were no cabriolets to be had,” Henri explains.

The marquis sighs heavily. “No. Not on days like this. I will have my men find one for your return.”

After introductions are made and we pass through the prison, Henri releases his hold on my arm. Despite the forbidding entrance with its iron gate, there is almost nothing menacing about this place. Heavy tapestries have been hung along the walls to keep in the heat, and somewhere—perhaps in one of the cells—a man is playing the violin.

“Are prisoners allowed instruments?” Curtius asks.

“Of course,” de Launay says. “Books as well. What else would keep them occupied?”

“But they must pay for these privileges,” I guess. Why else should the king care if his prisoners are entertained unless it’s to make money?

De Launay turns to my uncle. “She is quick. Yes,” he says to me as we walk. “They must pay a fee to bring an instrument inside. They may also have coffee, and wine, and their own fire … for the right price.” He winks, and I wonder what else may be had for the right price.

“It’s not what I expected,” Henri admits.

“No,” my uncle says thoughtfully.

Perhaps there are prisoners languishing in the dungeons below our feet. But the ones shut behind these doors of heavy wood and iron do not seem to be suffering. “How many prisoners do you have?” I ask.

“Oh, not many,” de Launay confides. “Only seven.”

“I thought there would be hundreds of prisoners,” I admit. “Thousands.”

“Did you think we were imprisoning a foreign army? How would hundreds fit on the bowling green? There must be room for socializing. Imagine hundreds of prisoners at billiards.”

Bowling and billiards? “And do all of the men belong in here?”

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” de Launay answers me. “These are rapists and murderers. A few are vicious thieves.”

“None have come unfairly?” Curtius asks. “Shut up for offending the king?”

De Launay stops. “Our king is just, Monsieur. Such things do not happen.”

“What about Voltaire?” Curtius challenges. “Voltaire was sent here.”

“More than sixty years ago. Those mistakes don’t happen in this reign.”

“So, for all of Marat’s ranting,” Henri says quietly in my ear, and the warmth of his breath on my skin makes