“Thank you,” she says with real affection, and my heart breaks for her.
SINCE THE NATIONAL Assembly has moved from the Salle des Etats to the Salle du Manege, we must change the backdrop of our tableau. This time it’s Wolfgang, not Henri, who helps Curtius, and while the sawing and painting go on, Abrielle peeks around the workshop door. I’m reminded of a little mouse, and when Yachin sees her and shouts, “Come in!” she freezes in the doorway.
“It’s fine,” I say and rise from my stool. “This is our workshop.”
She takes a tentative step inside. I can see how this place could be intimidating: on the far wall are the bodies of all the previous figures we’ve ever done, and on the shelf above that are a dozen wax heads we no longer need. Jars of teeth and glass eyes line shelves around the room, and baskets filled with hair clutter the ground.
“Are—are those real?” she asks. She points to the eyes.
Yachin snickers, and I give him a sharp look. “They are glass.”
She steps farther inside, and now she can see the discarded tableau of the royal family at dinner. A letter came last week asking if we would loan this exhibit to Versailles. With the chateau sitting empty, the National Guard has hit upon a way to make money: installing our wax figures in the Petit Trianon and charging visitors ten sous to see what life used to be like. It’s a terribly offensive idea, but the request is more than a simple request: it’s a command. All we can do is negotiate what percentage of the ten sous will be ours.
Abrielle steps closer to
“The faces, yes. Curtius makes the bodies.”
She circles the table, and I catch Yachin grinning from ear to ear. He has seen this before. The disbelief, the fascination, then finally the questions about how long the models take to sculpt, what kind of wax we use to make them, and how long they will last. Abrielle asks all of these things and more. “But what will happen to this? It won’t stay back here forever?”
“As soon as the backdrop for the National Assembly is finished,” I tell her, “Curtius and I are taking this tableau to Versailles. They want to display it in the Petit Trianon.”
Her eyes go wide. “And you’re going today?”
“Yes.”
She begins to tremble. “My father will be there. He’s the only one with the keys to the Trianon.” She sits on the nearest stool, and I go to her.
“Perhaps you should come with us,” I say gently.
“No.” She shakes her head, and tears roll down her cheeks. “He doesn’t want to see me again. He said as much before the coach began driving away. He doesn’t care what happens to me. To either of us.” She looks down at her belly, and now Yachin must understand why she is here.
“He allowed you to pack your clothes,” I say helpfully. “He might have given them away, or sold them.”
“Because he was too angry to care. He just wanted me gone.” She looks up at me through her tears. “I was his little girl. His only child,” she adds, “and I betrayed him.”
I’m glad that Wolfgang’s not in the room. It would be too painful for him to hear this. “Do you regret the child?” I ask quietly.
She lifts her chin. For the first time since arriving, she looks like a woman. “I have no regrets over this baby, and no regrets over choosing Wolfgang. I only wish I’d had the courage to tell my father that I wanted to marry him. I should never have waited until this happened. I knew better,” she admits, “but I was a coward.”
That afternoon, as Curtius and I are riding to Versailles, I tell him what Abrielle said.
“Then Wolfgang is lucky,” my uncle replies. “If she were full of regret, he would have to live with her resentment for the rest of his life.” Curtius sucks thoughtfully on his pipe. “He’ll become a private soldier,” he predicts. “Or join the National Guard. I can speak with Lafayette.”
This is exactly what my uncle does, and in three days, my brother is made a captain of the National Guard. I hope it enrages Edmund as much as it enrages me to think of what he did. The baron would have discovered his daughter’s pregnancy on his own. But to learn about it from another soldier? It’s embarrassing, and worse, it is unforgivable.
Wolfgang and his wife will be moving to their own apartment now, so Curtius and I oversee the packing of Abrielle’s chests. My mother wipes away her tears, and I exclaim in German, “What’s the matter with you? On Noel, you were upset that Wolfgang was here.”
“That was five days ago. I’ve changed my mind now.”
1790
WE WATCH THE NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS FROM OUR BALCONY, and with every explosion, Paschal squeals with delight.
“Look at the colors!” Henri shouts.
But I can’t. When Curtius said everyone was coming tonight, I assumed he meant everyone who had been with us on Noel. He didn’t say that Marat, on the run from the king’s authority, would be coming here to hide. So while Henri is explaining the science of fireworks to me, my eyes wander to the shadowy figure in the corner. His head is wrapped with bandages soaked in vinegar, and the stench is repulsive. His face is covered with open sores. Curtius whispered to me that he caught these from hiding in the city sewers.
This is my first clue that the year 1790 will be filled with unpalatable news.
On the thirteenth of February, the National Assembly passes a law forbidding monastic vows and dissolving every ecclesiastical order. Nuns are dragged into the streets to be whipped, and monks are given six months to marry or be killed. The Pope, without his own army, without any real power at all, sits in the Vatican while convents all across France are closed. Priests who are allowed to remain with the Church are instructed on the new order of things: before the Pope, before salvation, before even God Himself, there is the nation.
In the Church of Saint-Merri, the priests must wear the tricolor cockade over their holy vestments, and the altar has been defaced to read, “Glory be to God
Seven days later, news comes from Austria that Joseph II, the queen’s eldest brother and the Holy Roman Emperor, has died. He has been her greatest hope, and now Leopold II, a brother she’s never really known, has inherited the crown. Madame Elisabeth tells me this has crushed the queen. If Leopold refuses to offer his help, where will the king turn?
It is blow after blow for the royal family. In the spring, when Marie-Therese is to celebrate her First Communion, there are no gifts or celebratory feasts. The ceremony is held at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. The king does not dare to attend, and the queen is forced to watch from behind a curtain. Madame Elisabeth confides that Marie-Therese asked her father why her friends could celebrate their First Communions, while she could not. She was told that any sort of fete would be too extravagant. In this, I feel sorry for Madame Royale. Every child across France receives gifts for this passage. When I ask if the dauphin was in attendance, Madame Elisabeth’s face turns pale. “He had a fever,” she says quietly. “The doctors say he is coughing up blood.”
At some point, I think, God must look down and take pity on the royal family. But the terrible news doesn’t stop. In April, the National Assembly votes to transfer all four hundred million livres of church property to the state. Camille and Marat applaud this new law as saving the nation. Catholics, they write, have secret royalist tendencies, and schools run by the Church teach pupils to love God and,
But no one is thinking about who will run the hospitals and poorhouses when the anniversary of the Bastille approaches. Instead, a celebration—larger than any celebration to come before—is planned for the fourteenth of July. The National Assembly is calling it the Fete de la Federation. On the Champ-de-Mars, a tremendous stadium has been built for the occasion. Tens of thousands of people flood into Paris to take part in the festivities. The fete begins with deputies from foreign nations parading with their flags to remind us that we are one people, one race,
