Michel too cared little for his appearance. My mother was forever at him to shave close, and to trim his nails, and to cut his hair, for he would go about looking as rough as the charcoal burners.
But Robert… For one thing, his hair was always powdered, which instantly gave him distinction. His jackets and breeches were from the best tailors. His stockings were silk, never worsted, and his shoes either pointed or square, according to the current fashion. He would return to Cathie and me in the evening as immaculate as when he had sallied forth in the morning—or the other way round, depending upon the shift—and his conversation, instead of being about his working day, which I was accustomed to from both Pierre and Michel, would be fresh and amusing, frequently scandalous, more often than not malicious, and generally bearing upon some lively topic of Court circles.
These were the days when gossip was becoming rife about the Queen. Her extravagance, and love of balls and theatergoing, were well known; and although the birth of the Dauphin had caused general rejoicing, and made a fine occasion for festivities and firework displays throughout the capital, there was much sniggering and chatter at the same time, with whispers that the child had been sired by anybody but the King himself.
“They say…” Objectionable phrase, a hundred times repeated by my brother, who, with the Queen as patron of the glass-house at St. Cloud, ought to have known better.
“They say” the Queen has half a dozen lovers, the King’s brothers among them, and doesn’t even know herself who is the father of her son…
“They say” that her latest ball gown cost two thousand livres, and the dressmaking-girls who made it were so worn out with getting it put together in time that half of them died in the process…
“They say” that when the King comes home exhausted from hunting and goes straight to bed, the Queen disappears into Paris with her brother-in-law le comte d’Artois and her friends the de Polignacs and the princesse de Lamballe, and that they wander in the worst quarters disguised as prostitutes…
Who started the rumors nobody knew. It certainly amused my brother to spread them, and he always insisted that he got them at first hand.
When I was staying with Robert and Cathie in the spring of 1784, I was the unwitting cause of an incident that was to have a marked effect upon my brother’s future. I was due to leave Paris on the 28th of April, and on the day before, the 27th, the author Beaumarchais was to present the first performance of a new play, Le Mariage de Figaro, at the theater. Robert was determined to see the play—all Paris would be there, and it was said to be profoundly shocking, full of allusions to happenings at Versailles though disguised in a Spanish setting—and nothing would content him but that I must be present too.
“It will be an education, Sophie,” he insisted. “You are far too provincial, and Beaumarchais is all the rage. If you see this piece you may spend the rest of the year discussing it at home.”
This last was quite unlikely. Michel would mock, my mother would raise her eyebrows, and as to Pierre, he would only tell me that here was further proof of the decadence of society.
However, as it was my last day I allowed myself to be persuaded. We left Cathie in St. Cloud in charge of young Jacques and set forth ourselves in a hired carriage, myself in a gown made up by the dressmaker in Montmirail, but Robert a perfect dandy.
The crowds were immense outside the theater, and I was all for driving straight back again to St. Cloud, but Robert would have none of it.
“Take my arm,” he said. “We’ll get ourselves inside at least, if you promise not to faint. Afterwards, leave all to me.”
We pushed, we struggled, we finally gained entry. Needless to say, not a seat to be found.
“Stay here, and do not move,” commanded my brother, placing me beside a pillar. “I will contrive something. There is sure to be someone I know,” and with this he disappeared into the crowd.
I would have given anything to be in Cathie’s shoes, minding young Jacques. The heat was intolerable, and so was the stench of paint and powder from the chattering women about me, all of them in “grande tenue,” dressed up in frills and furbelows.
I watched the orchestra come in and take their places. Soon the overture would begin, and still there was no sign of my brother. Then, over the heads of the crowd, I saw him beckon me and, stammering almost as badly as my brother Michel, I made my excuses and edged my way towards him.
“Couldn’t be better,” he murmured in my ear. “You shall have the best seat in the theater.”
“Where… what?” I began, and to my horror he led me towards a box close to the stage, where a magnificently dressed nobleman, wearing the grand cordon bleu, was seated entirely alone.
“The duc de Chartres,” whispered Robert, “Grand Master of the Supreme Orient and of all Freemasonry in France. I belong to the same Lodge.”
He knocked on the door before I could stop him, made a secret masonic sign of recognition, so he told me afterwards, and in a few hurried words explained the situation to the King’s cousin.
“If you could possibly give my sister a seat,” my brother said, pushing me forward, and before I knew what was happening the duc de Chartres was offering me his hand, and smiling, and pointing to the chair beside him.
The orchestra started the overture. The curtain rose. The play began. I saw nothing, heard nothing, too acutely conscious of my brother’s audacity and my own agony of embarrassment to be aware of anything that happened on the stage. Never before, or since, have I endured hours of such misery. I could not join in either the laughter or the applause; and when the entr’actes came—there were four of them—and the box filled with friends of the duc de Chartres, all of them splendidly dressed, eager to discuss the play, I sat motionless, my face scarlet, never daring once to lift my head.
The duke himself must have been conscious of my confusion, for he wisely left me to myself, and did not again address me; it was only when the play was over, and Robert advanced from the back of the box to fetch me, that I caught his eye, managed to dip a curtsey, and retreated with my brother into the crowds below.
“Well?” said Robert, his eyes shining with pleasure and excitement. “Wasn’t that the most delightful evening you have ever spent in your life?”
“On the contrary,” I replied, bursting into tears, “the most hateful.”
I remember him standing there in the foyer, staring at me in utter bewilderment, while the hordes of painted, powdered, and bejeweled ladies filed out past us to their waiting carriages.
“I just don’t understand you,” Robert repeated again and again, as we rattled back to St. Cloud in our hired conveyance. “To have the chance of a seat beside the future duc d’Orléans, who happens to be the most influential and popular man in the whole of France at this present time, and when one little word in his ear might make your brother for life—and all you can do is to blub like a baby.”
No, Robert did not understand. Handsome, gay, debonair, perfectly self-possessed, he had yet not grasped the fact that his young sister, with her smattering of education and her provincial dress, belonged to a world that he had long left behind him, a world which, despite its apparent backwardness and rustic simplicity, had greater depth than his.
“I would rather,” I said to my brother, “work a whole shift before the furnace in le Chesne-Bidault than spend another such evening.”
The adventure had its sequel. The duc de Chartres, who was to succeed his father as duc d’Orléans in the following year, lived at the Palais-Royal, and in face of much opposition he pulled down a number of properties overlooking his gardens and designed an entirely new layout. His palace was now surrounded with arcades, where the people of Paris could wander at will, and beneath these arcades were cafés, boutiques, restaurants, billiard rooms, “salles de spectacles,” and every sort of device to catch the public eye. Above these ground-floor premises were gambling rooms and clubs.
To wander in the Palais-Royal, to look in the boutique windows, to
mount the stairs or even to penetrate to the back quarters to see the peculiar temptations more than occasionally lurking there, had become the most popular pastime in Paris. My brother took me there one Sunday, and, although I pretended to be amused, I was never more shocked in my life. It did not altogether surprise me therefore, knowing Robert’s audacity, that having once dared the presence of the future duc d’Orléans he should venture to do so again. The soirée at the theater, and renewed thanks for the great honor bestowed upon his little sister from the provinces, furnished the excuse for a visit to the Palais-Royal. He took care to leave behind him some two dozen crystal glasses for the personal use of the prince, which were accepted with a further exchange of masonic signs and symbols.
Some three months after the presentation of Le Mariage de Figaro—which was later banned by the King because of its shocking allusions to Court society, all of which had passed over my head—my brother Robert, while continuing to act as first engraver in crystal at the glass-house of St. Cloud, also became the proprietor of a boutique, No. 255 Palais-Royal.
Here he displayed not only objets d’art engraved by himself at St. Cloud, but certain other curiosities of oriental design, rather more costly, for the purchase of which the prospective customer needed a special introduction, and was then obliged to step into a curtained inner room.
“I suppose,” remarked my mother in all innocence, when she heard about the Eastern bric-a-brac, “that Freemasons like to exchange objects of a ritual nature.”
I did not disabuse her.
6
When the lease of le Chesne-Bidault became due for renewal in the autumn of 1784, my mother decided that the time had come for Michel to take full responsibility. For one thing, we had a new landlord. The whole property of Montmirail and its dependencies, including the glass-house, had passed out of the hands of the Bois-Guilberts into those of a Monsieur de Mangin, a rich young speculator who threatened to spoil the forests by selling timber at exorbitant prices and making all sorts of changes. He held some high position at Court, calling himself Grand Audiencier de France, and had been instrumental in buying St. Cloud for the Queen.
My mother disliked speculators on principle—she had seen too much of it with her eldest son, and the ruin it could bring—and she preferred to retire from the management of the glass-house before she saw the whole forest destroyed before her eyes. As it turned out, the new owner of Montmirail let the forest and the foundry alone and ruined himself over another property in Bordeaux, but my mother was not to know this when she made over the lease of le Chesne-Bidault to my brother Michel.
Michel at once went into partnership with a lively young friend of his called François Duval, who, although hailing originally from Evreux in Normandy, had been managing the ironworks near Vibraye for the past few years. The pair had struck up a great friendship, Michel, who was the older by three years, always the more forceful of the two, and his partner the aider and abettor of all his schemes.
My mother raised no objection to the partnership. Indeed, young Duval was a favorite of hers, making a point of asking her opinion on every sort of topic from ironwork to market prices, all done with tact and an air of modesty. That he had been primed by my brother did not strike my mother until the deed of partnership had been signed, but it would have made no difference had it done so.
“I like young Duval,” she continued to say. “He respects superior knowledge, and has pleasant manners to his elders and betters. We shall all get along together very well.”
The fact that she intended to stay on for a while at le Chesne-Bidault, despite having handed over the lease, had not occurred either to my brother or to his friend, and they were hard put to it to get rid of her.
“They are starting to f-fell the f-forest,” Michel would say. “Soon almost all the area b-between here and Montmirail will be d-devastated.”
It was not true, of course. Not an axe had been taken to a single tree, beyond what was usual in the ordinary course of felling.
“That doesn’t concern us,” replied my mother calmly. “Under the terms of our lease we have a long-term arrangement for the supply of timber for fuel.”
“I was th-thinking,” continued my brother, “of the natural b-beauty of the surroundings. You had b-better move to St. Christophe before it is all s-spoiled.”
My mother would smile and make no comment, knowing perfectly well what was in his mind. Then young Duval would have his turn, going about the business in a different way.
“I wonder, madame,” he would begin, “that you are not more anxious about your properties in the Touraine. I am told the frosts have been exceptionally severe this winter, and many of the vines destroyed.”
“I have relatives,” my mother would answer, “who take care of my vines for me.”
“No doubt, madame”—young Duval would shake his head—“but it is not the same as being on the spot oneself. You know how it is if one leaves one’s possessions to others.”
My mother would regard him steadily, and thank him for his concern, but I could tell from the twitch at the corner of her mouth that he had not deceived her. She was careful never to interfere in any way with the management of the foundry, but she continued to care for the welfare of the families, besides supervising the household for her son and his friend.
Edmé spent most of her time these days with Pierre and his wife in Le Mans, for she was much more intellectual than I was, and Pierre used to instruct her in the evenings in history and geography and grammar, with more than a smattering of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques.
Thus I remained the daughter at home, acting as general aide to my mother, and confidante at the same time to my brother Michel and his friend.
“You know w-what you must do,” Michel said one evening when the three of us were alone—it was between melts, so that there was no night shift for either of them, and my mother had gone early to bed—“you must pretend to f-f-fall in love with F-François here, and he with you, and then my mother will be in such a f-fright she will take you off to St. Christophe instantly.”
The idea was brilliant, no doubt, but personally I had no desire to leave le Chesne-Bidault and disappear with my mother to the Touraine.
“Thank you,” I replied. “I am quite incapable of acting a part.”
Michael seemed disappointed. “You w-wouldn’t have to d-do anything,” he urged, “just sit about s-sighing a great deal and not eating m-much, and when François entered the room you would look d-distressed.”
It was really too much. First Robert using me to advance his affairs in Paris, and now Michel trying to push me into a pretended infatuation for his friend.
“I’ll have no part in it,” I said, in great indignation. “You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking of such a deception.”
“Don’t tease your sister,” put in young Duval. “We will excuse her if it is such an ordeal. But you cannot prevent my paying attention to you, can you, mademoiselle Sophie? Seeming red and uncomfortable in your presence one moment, and desirous of sitting close to you the next. It may well have the right effect upon your mother.”
How this reprehensible conduct affected my mother mattered very little, as it turned out; what mattered was the change it brought about in both François Duval and myself.
The game began with all sorts of private jokes and winks, nods between Michel and his friend, and various stratagems to leave us alone together, later to be surprised by my mother. But instead of being outraged at the discovery of her daughter sitting either in silence or in conversation with a young man, she appeared quite unmoved, even conniving, and would say, on entering the room, “Don’t let me disturb you. I have only come for some writing paper, and will write my letters upstairs.”
This resulted in François and myself taking advantage of our opportunities to get to know one another better. He proved not so entirely under Michel’s influence as I had imagined, and was very willing to exchange that influence for mine. Nor did I tur
n out to be the homely daughter-of-the-house and general go-between that he had at first envisaged, but instead a young woman with plenty to say for herself, and a capacity for affection into the bargain. In short, we did fall in love, and there was no playacting about it. We went hand in hand to my mother and asked for her blessing on our betrothal. She was delighted.
“I saw it coming,” she declared. “I said nothing, but I saw it coming. Now I know that le Chesne-Bidault will be in safe hands.”
François and I looked at one another. Could it be that, unknown to us, my mother had been busy planning this from the start?
“You shall be married as soon as Sophie attains her majority,” said my mother, “which will not be until the autumn of ’88. She will then come into her portion of the inheritance, and I will add to it from my own settlement. Meanwhile, you will continue to grow in mutual affection and understanding. It never hurts young people to wait.”
I thought this unfair. My mother had been married herself at twenty-two. We were both about to protest, but she cut us short.
“You have forgotten Michel, haven’t you?” she asked. “It will take him some time to adjust to this new state of affairs. If you take my advice you will keep your betrothal secret, and let him get used to the idea by degrees.”
So Michel remained in perfect ignorance of the fact that François and I had become attached to each other, and did not discover the truth until much later.
Meantime, my brother Robert was in trouble again, and serious trouble too. It dated back to the sale of la Brûlonnerie. He had, it now appeared, entirely without my father’s or my mother’s knowledge, mortgaged that property and all its contents to a merchant in the rue St. Denis in exchange for a jeweler’s shop called Le Lustre Royal. At the time of his bankruptcy, when he had sold la Brûlonnerie to pay his debts, he had ignored, or conveniently forgotten, this mortgage. Now, the arrears of rent for the shop in the rue St. Denis having mounted, the merchant, a Monsieur Rouillon, wished to foreclose on the mortgage of la Brûlonnerie, and discovered that the property had already been sold in 1780. He at once sued my brother for fraud. The first we heard of the affair was a desperate letter from Cathie to tell us that Robert was imprisoned in La Force. This was in July 1785.