Madame Tussaud

We stop in front of a white building with broken green shutters.

“Would you like to come inside?” Yachin hesitates. “My mother would be happy—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Henri says gently. He’s been so kind to Yachin. Someday, he will make a wonderful father. “Go upstairs, and tell your parents about the cockades.”

“And return only when your family says it’s safe,” I add. “That could be a day, a week, even a month. They will know.”

As soon as he is gone, Henri takes my arm. What would it be like to walk these streets without him? “The guardsman is right,” he says as we hurry back to the Boulevard du Temple. “We should be wearing the tricolor.”

“In support of Revolution? On Thursday, I have to return to Versailles—”

“As a tutor?” Henri stops walking. “Marie, the king has lost half of his army. A king without an army is a king in name only. What good will it do the Salon for you to be known as a royal tutor?”

“We … we don’t know what the future holds for the National Assembly. The queen might call on her brother in Austria for help, and all of this will turn to dust.” I continue walking, and Henri follows. “Remaining with the royal family is prudent,” I say. “They still love the king in the provinces. Robespierre wrote to Curtius last week; his letter arrived after Lafayette visited. It’s his greatest concern.”

“That the king is popular?”

“That the peasants won’t understand the cause for liberty. It could all go either way,” I tell him.

“Agreed. And until we know which way it’s going, we should wear the cockade.”

When we reach the Boulevard, there are half a dozen carriages outside the Salon, and none of them belong to men we know. The horses have been decorated with tricolor sashes. Even the coachmen are wearing multiple cockades. “Guardsmen?” I ask.

“Or members of the National Assembly.”

I open the door to the Salon, and two dozen men turn around to stare. Only one has a familiar face, and he’s the only one not dressed in a blue coat with white lapels and leggings.

“Marie! Henri!” Camille moves through the crowd. I search the room for Lucile, but she’s not here. “Where have you been?” he exclaims. “You almost missed everything. They s-s-stormed the Invalides this morning. Eighty thousand of them!”

“Eighty thousand?” Henri is sure he’s heard wrong, but Camille is nodding in triumph. Does he understand what this kind of anarchy means? Without a king, the only ones left to govern us are men who wish to take the king’s place. What happens if the National Guard should fail?

“They’ve captured thirty thousand muskets,” Camille is saying. “And more than a dozen cannons. Now they need gunpowder, and we know where that is kept.”

“The Bastille,” Henri guesses.

“There’s no point in going to Versailles anymore. The Revolution is happening here!”

My uncle emerges from the crowd of men, and now—like them—he is dressed as a member of the National Guard. “Some of the crowd are making their way to the Bastille. The National Guard has to be there.” He looks to Henri. “Will you stay with Marie?”

“Of course,” Henri replies, taking my hand.

“And Maman?” I ask.

“Upstairs,” Curtius says. He turns and faces the two dozen guardsmen. It’s like watching an actor onstage. It isn’t real. It can’t be real. If I touch his face, it will be wax and all of this just a moving tableau. But as the men file past, I smell the powder on their skin and the leather of their shoes and know that it’s happening.

Curtius stops at the door to embrace me. “Tell your mother I’ll be back for tonight’s salon,” he says in German.

Camille has moved to join the men, armed with a quill and a notebook. Henri and I watch them disappear down the Boulevard du Temple, and when he closes the door, I am speechless.

WHEN CAMILLE RETURNS, he is trying to catch his breath. No one shows up on our doorstep without panting anymore. “The B-B-Bastille,” he gasps, and I usher him inside. “The Bastille—”

“What about the Bastille?” Henri snaps irritably. It is three in the afternoon, and we’ve been waiting all day for word. My mother’s food has gone cold, and the three of us have been sitting downstairs by the window, watching every passerby.

“They’ve stormed the Bastille!” Camille cries.

I hurry to shut the door, and Maman fetches Camille a chair and a drink. He makes a great show of taking both, keeping us in suspense. Then he tells us how a mob of a thousand men approached the gates, demanding that the Marquis de Launay surrender the fortress’s thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder. But de Launay refused, saying he would have to write to Versailles and wait for instructions from the king. As the crowd grew, a carriage- maker climbed to the top of perfume shop next to the gates and cut the chains to the massive drawbridge.

“And as the bridge came thundering down, the crowd rushed into the inner courtyard. They thought the guards were letting them inside, and the guards thought the mobs were storming the fortress. So the king’s soldiers opened fire!”

“And Curtius?” my mother cries.

“Curtius was calling back the mobs, but no one could hear him. Not over the shouts and the cannon fire.”

“Mein Gott,” she whispers, and I take her hand. Why did he agree to this terrible job? What if something should happen to him?

“Where did the cannons come from?” Henri asks.

“One was a silver-plated gift to Louis the Fourteenth. It was taken from his armory at the Invalides. The irony!” He laughs. “The end of the Bourbons, brought about by the riches of their ancestors! And as soon as the cannons were lit …” Camille pauses. He wants to be sure his audience is listening. “Surrender. De Launay surrendered with his white handkerchief.”

“How many people were killed?” I ask.

“At least a hundred. But those men will be remembered. I will remember them. And every man who was there and survived the battle will be hailed as a Vanquisher of the Bastille, including your uncle.”

“What about the Swiss Guard?”

Camille sobers. He knows my mother has three sons in the Guard. “The ones who could be found were taken into custody.”

“They’re the king’s guards!” I exclaim. “Who has that power?”

“The National Assembly. And more important, the Paris Commune, acting on behalf of the National Assembly from the Hotel de Ville.”

“The Paris Commune?” I repeat. “Who are they?”

“Men who’ve been elected to do the Assembly’s wishes. And their wishes are to arrest the enemies of the people.”

“Those men were simply following de Launay’s orders,” I say heatedly. “The king’s orders.”

“They fired on good citizens.”

“Citizens who were trying to overrun the Bastille!”

“Well, some of them escaped,” he says tonelessly. “They took off their coats and were mistaken for prisoners.”

“And the actual prisoners in the Bastille?” Henri asks.

“Freed. Released from decades of unfair imprisonment.”

“Even the Marquis de Sade?”

“He was transferred to the insane asylum at Charenton several days ago. But all the others were set free.”

“There were only seven prisoners,” I say. “We toured the Bastille in April.”

“Seven or seven hundred,” Camille replies. “Those men were put there by lettres de cachet and they are symbols of tyranny. And the mob today showed the ancien