Madame Tussaud

worrying about the cries of the people, as the moon goes on its course without being stopped by the cries of dogs.”

“That’s the kind of talk that began this Revolution!”

Curtius finishes his tea. “Exactly. And this dog is tired, Marie. You should find some sleep as well. Perhaps we’ll reopen the Salon tomorrow.”

Chapter 49

SEPTEMBER

2, 1792

Terror is the order of the day.

—ANONYMOUS

BUT THERE IS NO REOPENING THE SALON. THERE ARE RIOTS in the Palais-Royal demanding that more soldiers be sent to guard the prisons, and when Robespierre arrives, fidgeting with his glasses and in search of my uncle, I tell him, “He is recruiting volunteers.”

“But I need him here!” Robespierre exclaims. He looks past me to the caissier’s desk, where Isabel is teaching Paschal how to write tickets.

“Would you like to come inside?” I ask. “My mother is making lunch.”

“There’s no chance I can eat,” he replies. But he comes inside and begins to pace.

Isabel exchanges a look with me, and I shake my head. Robespierre is to be humored. If he wishes to pace, we must let him. “Is there something I can help you with instead?” I ask.

“It’s going to be a massacre! Curtius—”

My uncle bursts through the door as if summoned by the heavens. “They are killing the priests in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres!” He looks at Robespierre. “What are you going to do? The mobs are moving from prison to prison!”

“What are you going to do?” Robespierre cries. “You are the National Guard.” He looks as though he may faint. “We must stop this.” Now he is tearing at his cravat. “What can the National Guard do?”

“Men like Danton and Marat have called for an uprising, and now they have it.” My uncle is brutally honest. “We are a group of men with muskets and pistols and no real leadership. We can do nothing to stop this!”

Isabel sends Paschal to his room, and my mother appears with sauerkraut and cold beef. But no one has the stomach to eat.

“I can’t go outside,” Robespierre worries. He begins to pace again. “Find out what is happening,” he begs. “See if they will listen to you!”

For two hours after Curtius leaves, we watch Robespierre move back and forth. One moment he is hopeful, shouting, “We will win this war and liberty will prevail!” The next moment he is railing against the queen and her Austrian allies. Then there is a rumbling in the distance, and Robespierre stops pacing.

It is the sound of a mob moving down the Boulevard du Temple.

“Go upstairs and join Paschal,” I tell Isabel. She is gone before the pounding on the door begins.

“Don’t open it!” Robespierre exclaims. “They could be assassins.” The pounding continues, and sweat begins to glisten on his forehead. I go to the window and open the curtain. “In the name of liberty,” someone shouts, “open the door!”

“Do it,” my mother says in German, “or they will beat it down!”

“What is she saying?” Robespierre demands. He is practically gasping for air.

“That we must let them inside.”

His eyes go wide, and he pats down his wig.

“You should sit,” I tell him, and he takes a chair at the caissier’s desk. I open the door and steel myself for whatever horror they have brought for me. A young man separates himself from the mob and holds up a head for everyone to see. Oh, God. I stagger backward.

“I am Jean Nicholas, and I have come with the head of the Princesse de Lamballe!”

Immediately, I recoil. The queen’s dearest friend, her closest confidante. When everyone else fled from the palace, the Princesse de Lamballe remained. Robespierre rushes to the door, and the crowds cheer. “Is that her?” he asks swiftly.

I don’t want to look. But I must. I would know her face anywhere. The paleness of her skin, the blue of her eyes, the symmetry of her features. She was the envy of every woman at court. They have taken her head and speared it on a pike. The mobs begin to laugh as Jean lifts the pike in the air so that her curls bob up and down. Then he grabs the crown of the princesse’s hair and pulls it from the pole.

“Citizeness Grosholtz.” He thrusts the head at me. “Will you do us the honor of a mask?”

“Where did this come from?” Robespierre demands.

“La Force prison,” Jean Nicholas says loudly. He is obviously the leader of this mob, for they grow silent to listen to him speak. “Today, we have done a great service to the patrie by ridding Paris of its traitorous priests and whores!”

“I cannot watch this.” Robespierre flees back into the house, and I am left alone with the mob. Jean Nicholas is still holding out the head. He will kill me if I refuse it. I think of Isabel’s words. I have chosen this, and now I must do my duty. I hold out my hands and can feel the presence of my mother behind me. “I will get the plaster,” she whispers.

I take the head, and my stomach clenches. It smells of powder and blood. Her eyes are open, fixed on whatever horror was in front of her when she was murdered. And her neck—her long, elegant neck—has been severed as if with an ax. The guillotine’s cut is swift and clean. This … this is a butcher’s work. I sit on the steps. There is a restlessness in the crowd. My mother appears, and they watch her tie my apron. Now there is excitement. I am a performer dancing with death for their pleasure. Here, let me entertain you. I press the plaster against the princesse’s face. I expect her to cry out and resist. But there is nothing left of her personality. I wonder what they have done with her body.

“Aren’t you interested in how this came to be?” Jean asks.

I know what is best for me, and so I lie. “Of course. Did you raid each of the prisons?”

“We began at the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres,” he boasts, “where three hundred priests were sent back to God.” The mob laughs, and I concentrate on the princesse. The dead have fewer horrors for me now than the living. “Then we went on to La Salpetriere and Bicetre.” Bicetre is a prison for children and religious men. “When our work there was done, we discovered the Princesse de Lamballe in La Force.”

I remove the plaster, and my mother helps me pour beeswax into the hardened mold. I will not hear him. If I ignore him, it will all go away.

“Her last words were ‘God save the queen!’ even as they were tearing off her clothes.” He laughs. He is a madman.

“I am finished.” I give him the head and the terrible death mask. He wants a blond wig and paint for her eyes. “I have a wig, but no more paint.”

He searches my face, to see if I am another lying aristocrat. But he can watch me all day. I know how to command my features. “A wig will be fine,” he says at last.

My mother fetches the hair we once used for Madame du Barry. Her model is hidden now, along with anyone who cannot be safely called a patriot. I fit the golden curls onto the princesse’s wax head, and Jean Nicholas lifts his hat to me.

“To the Temple!” he shouts. And the mob echoes his cry.

When Curtius returns, we learn how the Princesse de Lamballe met her savage end. “They cut off her breasts and tore out her heart,” he says quietly, and I am glad that Isabel and Paschal are upstairs. “But her death came swiftly compared with the prostitutes in La Force.”

“Enough,” Robespierre pleads. “Enough! I must go,” he says weakly.

Curtius and I stare at him. These are his mobs, his country, his “liberty.” This is the violence he summoned by encouraging the masses to rise up against their king. What did he think would happen? Did he imagine we would