Madame Tussaud

all be planting liberty trees and singing songs?

He pauses at the door. “And there is nothing the National Guard can do?” he asks Curtius.

“Many soldiers are part of the rampaging mobs. They have guns and powder, and there is nothing to stop them.”

Their passions forge their fetters, I think. I remember this line from Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and the night Henri read the pamphlet to me. I think of Henri now, walking the streets of London, and my heart aches. I can still feel the warmth of his skin against mine and smell the scent of almond oil from his hair. But I am thankful he isn’t here to see this.

THE NEXT MORNING, the Assembly begins distributing free wine. “A bottle for each patriot!” We lock our doors, and Curtius does not report to the Palais-Royal. By the end of the weekend, fourteen thousand prisoners have been killed. Thousands of women and children are among them.

Chapter 50

SEPTEMBER

21, 1792–J

ANUARY

17, 1793

The Nation has condemned the king who oppressed it.

—MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE

WE HAVE A NEW GOVERNMENT. THIS ONE IS CALLED THE National Convention, and its members have sworn to defend the patrie and keep its citizens safe. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and Camille have all been elected. And the Marquis de Sade, newly released from his asylum and calling himself Citizen Sade, has been made a member as well. These are the men who shall build a “New France,” and on the twenty-first of September, their first act is to abolish the monarchy.

The proclamation is read on every major street corner in Paris. I am in the workshop preparing a National Convention tableau when Isabel shouts for me to come. Immediately, I join her at the door and listen.

“From this day forward,” the crier shouts, “the king shall be known as Citizen Capet. Anyone who is interested in the day’s executions can read the list here.” The boy holds up a newspaper, and a few timid citizens creep forward to buy one.

“What does it mean?” Paschal whispers. We are a city of furtive glances now. The patrons who buy tickets for the Salon do so in silence. No one wishes to bring unwanted attention to themselves. The only place where you are allowed to speak openly and cheer is the Place du Carrousel, when the guillotine falls.

“It means the king is no longer a king,” Isabel explains. She returns with Paschal to the caissier’s desk, and I can see he is confused. He takes a seat in a chair that is much too big for him and furrows his tiny brow.

“But why?” he asks.

“Because that is what the National Convention has declared,” his mother says.

“And now the National Convention is king?”

“No one is king,” I tell him. “Everyone is the same. Just like you and me.”

“But if everyone is the same, what will the old king do?”

THE ANSWER COMES on the eleventh of December. Instead of opening the Salon de Cire, I stand on the Boulevard and whistle for a carriage. When an empty coach arrives, our family of five step inside, and Curtius tells the driver, “The Salle du Manege.” We ride most of the way in silence.

I think of the letter I’ve had from Wolfgang as the carriage draws closer to the crowded Manege. He, Michael, and Abrielle are living in grand style in London, with good food and all the comforts of home. He has seen Henri and found him an apartment. Every corner he turns, he is meeting another emigre. “When are you coming to us?” he wrote. “Convince Curtius and Maman and take the first opportunity that arises, Marie. It will only get worse.”

I stare out the carriage window at the overcast skies. The worst has already come. Our army has had some success in Valmy, and the Prussians have retreated, leaving the Austrians to fight this war alone. The National Convention has declared this victory. “You see,” Marat wrote on his most recent placard, “defeat is not in our destiny!” Flush with success, the National Convention has put the king on trial. In the history of France, no king has ever been tried for crimes against liberty.

“This is a circus,” Curtius says critically as we enter the Salle du Manege. There are thousands of people, all pushing and talking and eager to see a king who’s not a king. We find seats in the public gallery on the second floor. I search below us for any sign of Madame Elisabeth and the rest of the royal family. “They won’t be here,” Curtius says. “They were not allowed to come.”

So every commoner in France may watch while the king argues for his life, but not his wife and children. “Do you know who the ki—who Louis Capet’s lawyer will be?” I ask.

“I heard it is a man named Tronchet,” my uncle says. “He was Capet’s second choice.”

“The first didn’t want to defend him,” I guess.

“Only two citizens volunteered their services. A lawyer named Malesherbes and the actress Olympe de Gouges. She wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman. She might have been one to include in the Salon de Cire,” my uncle says sadly, “if she had not put her neck beneath the blade like that.”

A bell begins to ring, and an expectant hush settles over the crowd; I see that Paschal has taken his mother’s hand.

A deep voice announces, “Citizen Louis Capet,” and the king is led through a pair of double doors into the middle of the room. The sound of rustling fabric echoes in the hall as thousands of bodies shift to get a better view. He is dressed in green, from his embroidered culottes to his long silk coat. There is no chair provided for him until the president of the Convention decides he may be seated. And this is how the trial unfolds. With a hundred little slights to a man who never chose his birth.

“This is all a show,” my mother says. “They will find him guilty, and the only question is what his punishment will be. I will not go back.” She has changed since losing Johann and Edmund. She is not as strong as she used to be.

So it is Curtius and Isabel who join me in the Salle du Manege, day after day, as the lawyers present their cases to the members of the National Convention. Louis Capet on Trial is our first tableau, then we add Bertrand Barere, since he is the president and is arguing the case against the king. Curtius prints an excerpt of his final speech on a sign, including the words, “The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants!” I wince when I see it, but this is the news.

THE TRIAL IS over on the fifteenth of January, and though we try to convince my mother to come to hear the verdict, she firmly refuses. “History will remember this,” she says. “I do not need to.”

The crowds are overwhelming. But on this day, they are silent. The driving rain echoes on the roof, and the candles sputter each time the doors are opened. They have accused the king of tyranny, and we listen as they read out all thirty-two charges for the last time. Then the voting begins. First, they must decide whether the king is guilty. If so, they must determine what the punishment will be. Bertrand Barere stands before the Convention and announces, “As proposed by Marat, this will be an oral vote.”

There is a murmuring in the audience. Now, anyone who dares to vote for the king’s innocence will be exposed as a traitor. More than seven hundred deputies approach the bar, and each man announces his verdict. By the afternoon, every deputy has declared Citizen Louis Capet guilty.

“The vote on punishment will now begin.” Barere takes his seat at the head of the Convention, where the king should be. Citizen Capet is not here today. He will never be seated in a place of power again, and everyone in this hall is conscious that they are witnessing history.

“They will banish him,” I whisper to Isabel. “They cannot vote for death.”