Then we saw Robert come out of the hôtel de ville—he was still surrounded by Electors and other officials—but they none of them responded to the crowd. They were talking anxiously among themselves, and a murmur began to spread from one to the other of us waiting in the place beyond. “The danger isn’t over yet… the fighting continues…”
Then the mayor of la Ferté came forward and held up his hand for silence, and we could just catch his words above the murmur of the crowd: “The National Assembly are in control of Paris, but an army of brigands, six thousand strong, is said to have fled from the capital, fully armed. Every man must make himself available for a citizen’s militia. Women and children and the infirm and elderly are to remain within doors.”
Now joy had turned to panic, and the people strove this way and that to free themselves from the crowd, to offer their services, to go home, to get away—no one knew which—and the tocsin kept ringing from Notre-Dame-des-Marais so that the mayor’s voice was drowned by the sound.
Robert pushed through from the hôtel de ville towards us, and we made our way to the carriole at the Petit Chapeau Rouge. There were others trying to do the same thing, and much confusion, with the horses restless and stamping, and Robert kept calling out to everyone, “Warn the outlying parishes and communes to sound the alarm from the churches. Forewarned is forearmed. Vive la nation… Vive le duc d’Orléans.” His words seemed to increase the confusion rather than allay it, and I heard people asking, “What has happened? Is the duc d’Orléans to be King?”
At last we were safely aboard the carriole, with François urging the horse forward and out of the town, and so down the road to Montmirail and the forest beyond.
By now it was dusk, and the road home seemed dark and forbidding. Poor Jacques, still clutching fast to my hand, kept saying, “What if the brigands come, what shall we do, will they kill us?”
Robert bade his boy be silent—I had never heard him so sharp with the child before—and then he told us how the Bastille had been stormed four days earlier. Some nine hundred persons had taken the fortress, and forced the Governor to surrender. “The people cut off his head with a butcher’s knife later,” whispered my brother. And yes, it was true, there had been a plot by the aristocracy to overthrow the National Assembly, but it had failed, and the comte d’Artois and all his friends and the Prince de Condé had fled to the frontier, “taking with them, so I hear,” said Robert, “all the gold in the kingdom.”
“But the brigands?” I asked, as fearful as Jacques. “What is the truth about the brigands.”
“No one knows,” replied my brother with strange satisfaction. “In Dreux they say that six thousand were on their way from the other side of Paris, and had joined up with Pitt’s mercenaries. That is why I spread the news in every town at which we stopped from Dreux to Bellême. The driver of the diligence has instructions to report it as he continues his journey to Le Mans.”
I thought of Pierre and his wife and children, who might be at Bonnétable, through which the diligence would pass. Pierre would at once leave for Le Mans himself, to offer his services to the municipality, or rather to the committee which had vowed to take it over. Yet surely it was in the forest of Bonnétable that we had first heard of brigands?
“Robert…” I asked, taking my brother’s arm, “what do you see for the future? Where will this all end?”
My brother laughed. “Don’t talk about the end,” he said. “This is only the beginning. This isn’t just another Réveillon riot, you know. What has happened in Paris will happen throughout the country. This is revolution.”
Revolution. I thought of my mother at St. Christophe. She was alone in her small farm property, except for her servants and the cowman and his family nearby. Who would look after my mother?
Robert shrugged aside my fears. “Don’t concern yourself,” he said. “They are all patriots in the Touraine. My mother will be the first to wear the blue and rose cockade.”
“But the brigands?” I persisted.
“Ah yes,” replied my brother, “I had forgotten the brigands…”
By now Jacques had fallen asleep on my shoulder, and I sat stiff and straight to support him during the remaining drive to le Chesne-Bidault. We had passed Montmirail, and were through the forest and nearly home, when a group of men sprang up from the side of the road and surrounded us.
Thank God—it was Michel and his patrol. For a moment we paused for Robert to seize his hand and give him the news; then, as we were about to proceed and turn down the road to the foundry, Michel said, “The brigands have been seen. One of the women was gathering sticks in a clearing, and she heard a movement and saw a dozen men, their faces blacked, crouching in the undergrowth. She ran back to the foundry to give warning. I sent word to the commune to give the alarm.”
Even as he spoke, across the warm night air came the thin high summons from the church bell at le Plessis-Dorin.
9
I believe none of us slept that night except Jacques and Robert. Jacques dropped into the bed I had prepared for him with all the exhaustion of a child who had been more than ten hours on the road, and his father—after showing us the pistol concealed under his coat—observed that, as one who had watched the storming of the Bastille, it would take more than a dozen black-faced brigands to prevent him from sleeping. For myself, I dragged my way upstairs and undressed and got into bed, but the sleep for which I yearned would not come to me. I could hear François moving about below, giving orders to another patrol of workmen to relieve Michel and his band in the forest, and this going to and fro in the foundry yard disturbed the farm animals nearby. The cows lowed, the horses were restless in their stalls—for since the disturbances began we had not dared let any of the cattle graze by night.
Michel must have warned them at Montmirail and at Melleray, for the bells from these churches sounded the tocsin as well as from le Plessis. I could hear the peal coming from beyond the forest, the deeper note of Montmirail on the hill sounding more urgent and more ominous than the little reedy warning from our own parish.
I kept thinking of the brigands, thousands of them, so Robert said, from the prisons and the back streets of Paris, hungry, armed, and desperate, let loose on our countryside, some of them even now crouching in the forest where Michel and his band had been patrolling, biding their time to seize our crops, slaughter our beasts.
Presently François came upstairs and lay down by my side, but he did not undress, and he too laid a pistol on the chair beside him.
Perhaps I slept—I have no idea how long. I know I awoke heavy-eyed and weary. Nor did my condition make fatigue any easier to bear, for I was by now seven months gone with my first child.
I found Jacques awake and downstairs and demanding his breakfast from Madame Verdelet in the kitchen, and my two brothers, with my husband, in conference in the master’s room. They fell silent at my entrance, and ironically I enquired whether I had disturbed a Freemasons’ gathering.
“You don’t know, Madame Duval,” said my brother Robert with a smile, “how near you are to the truth. We should have posted a watch on the door as we do usually in our Lodges. No harm done, though. Our discussion is finished.”
He got up from his chair and began parading the room in his usual restless fashion. I glanced at the others. My husband François looked thoughtful. Michel, on the contrary, was tense and excited, with his eyes on his eldest brother.
“Well, come on, let’s g-get on with it,” he said impatiently, “no point in s-sitting here. The s-sooner everything is organized the b-better for everyone.”
Robert held up his hand. “Keep calm, keep calm,” he replied. “I leave you and François to work out the business of your own patrols between you. As to myself and Jacques, all I ask is the loan of the carriole, which I will return to you here within a few days.”
“Agreed,” said Michel. “I’ll s-see about it s-straight away.” He seized the excuse to be off and out of the room, while I saw François wat
ching me doubtfully.
“What has been decided?” I asked suspiciously. “You don’t mean to take the child off again before he has recovered from his journey and his fright?”
“Jacques is as tough as I am,” Robert said, “and none the worse for yesterday. It is my intention to take him today to my mother at St. Christophe…” St. Christophe, a journey of some fifteen leagues or more, and heaven knew how many thousand brigands at loose about the countryside.
“Are you mad?” I protested. “When we none of us know the state of the roads between here and the Touraine?”
“The risk will be mine,” said Robert, “and I foresee no difficulties. In any event, we shall be ahead of the brigands, and part of my purpose in traveling south will be to alert the countryside.”
I thought so. The safety of his boy meant little at the present time. His mission was to sow disunity, and whether the object was to satisfy his own warped humor or to obey the orders given by the duc d’Orléans’s entourage did not matter to me. I cared only for my nephew of eight years old.
“If,” I said to my brother, “you intend passing coins with your patron’s head upon them as an encouragement to violence, as you did before the Réveillon riots, that is your affair. But for mercy’s sake don’t drag your son into the business.”
My brother raised his eyebrows. “The Réveillon riots?” he repeated. “What in the world has a workmen’s rising, easily quelled, to do with the revolution of the whole nation?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, “but do not tell me the two are disconnected, and that your friends have no interest in fermenting trouble.”
Once again I saw my husband look uncomfortable—I was reminded of the time before our marriage when he hoped to shield Michel from disgrace—but Robert laughed, in his inimitable fashion, and patted my cheek.
“My sweet Sophie,” he said, “don’t confuse the duc d’Orléans, whose only desire is to serve the people, with princes like the comte d’Artois and the comte de Provence, the King’s brothers, whose one interest is to hold fast to privilege and damn the bourgeoisie. They are the men who seek to spread disorder through France, not the duc d’Orléans.”
“In that case,” I said, “you must be accepting pay from their agents too.”
Had I thrown a brick at his head he could not have looked more startled. He stared at me for a moment, but quickly recovered his composure and shrugged his shoulders.
“My little sister is overwrought,” he said lightly, then turning to my husband he added, “If you knew your business properly she would be hanging about your neck instead of arguing with her brother.”
This put me on my mettle. François would never desert me in my hour of need as Robert had deserted Cathie.
“I stayed by your wife in a dangerous hour,” I told my brother, “and I will stay by your son. If you insist on taking Jacques to St. Christophe today, then you can have me with you for the journey.”
At this François came forward, protesting that I was in no fit state for a long day on bad roads. There was no need for panic, he said; the report about brigands being seen in the district the night before had been a false alarm. I should respect his wishes if I stayed at le Chesne-Bidault.
“And you,” I asked him, “what are your plans for today?”
He hesitated. “The parishes in the district must be alerted,” he said, after a moment. “Trouble may come tomorrow, or the day after. As Robert says, forewarned is forearmed.”
“In other words,” I said, “you and Michel have both agreed to play Robert’s game. Instead of blowing glass, you will blow rumor across the countryside. In the circumstances, I should prefer to be with my mother at St. Christophe.”
So… Robert must be pleased with himself. He had succeeded in causing trouble between husband and wife, besides sowing dissension between Paris and la Ferté-Bernard.
“Your first tiff?” he enquired. “No matter, a few days absent from one another in these early months works wonders. I shall be pleased to have you as nurse to Jacques, Sophie, providing you keep your mouth shut on the journey and leave me to do the talking.”
We left as soon as I had gathered a few things together, summoned Jacques from playing in the furnace yard, and given directions to Madame Verdelet to see to things in my few days of absence.
She was much concerned at my going. “Is it because of the danger?” she asked. “Are the brigands near us after all?”
I consoled her as well as I could, but as we drove away from the glass-house I saw many of the families watching me from their dwellings hard by, and I had an uneasy feeling that they believed I was deserting them.
As we passed through le Plessis-Dorin we saw the curé, Monsieur Cosnier, standing outside the church with a group of his parishioners. Robert drew rein to have a few moments’ conversation with him.
“Is it true the brigands are within a few miles of us here?” asked the curé anxiously.
“No one knows,” replied my brother. “It is essential to take every precaution. These vagabonds will stop at nothing. It might be safest to have all the women and children within the church, and then sound the tocsin without ceasing should you be attacked.”
As we turned onto the Mondoubleau road I looked round behind our carriole and saw the curé giving directions to the excited group around him.
For myself, I could think of nothing more likely to cause panic and consternation among a crowd of women than to be shut up within a church without their menfolk, and to have the incessant clanging of that same church’s bell sounding its warning from the belfry above their heads.
At Mondoubleau we fell in with one of our journeymen carriers, who told us that word had come the night before via Cloyes and Châteaudun, from the diligence on the Paris route through Chartres to Blois, that brigands had been heard of in thousands, and it was all a plot of the aristocracy to break the power of the Third Estate. The tocsin was ringing here, just as it had been in our small parish of le Plessin-Dorin, and people were standing about in the streets in anxious groups, not knowing what to do.
“Is all safe at le Chesne-Bidault?” asked the journeyman, surprised, no doubt, to see me in the carriole beside my brother and nephew.
Before I could reassure him, Robert shook his head doubtfully and answered, “Brigands were seen in the forest there last night. We have put a strong guard round the foundry itself, for these villains are said to be burning everything on sight.”
He spoke with such sincerity that I was instantly afraid: had my husband’s words earlier that the reports were false been said to soothe me? Perhaps the foundry was in truth surrounded, and François had allowed me to go with Robert and Jacques to ensure my greater safety.
“You told me…” I began fearfully, but Robert whipped up the horse and we were once more on our way, leaving the honest journeyman staring after us in great perplexity.
“What is the truth?” I asked, in renewed agony of doubt—for had I, after all, done wrong in leaving my husband to his possible fate at le Chesne-Bidault? Were hordes of brigands even now setting fire to my home and everything I held dear?
“The truth?” repeated Robert. “Nobody ever knows the truth in this world.”
He jerked the reins, whistling a tune between his teeth, and I was reminded of that time long ago when he had dispatched the consignment of glass to Chartres without my mother’s knowledge, giving a masked ball on the proceeds. Was he playing upon my fear today, and the fear of hundreds like me, just as he had once played upon my mother’s ignorance—and all to inflate his sense of power?
I glanced at him as he sat beside me, the reins in his hands, his eyes on the road, with the boy Jacques behind his back, and I realized a fact I had forgotten because of his eternally youthful appearance—that my eldest brother was now nearly forty years old. None of his trials and troubles had done anything for him except to make him, if it were possible, more of an adventurer than ever before: one who gambled, not only with his own and
with other people’s money, but with human failings as well.
“Take care,” my father used to say, when first instructing Robert in the art of blowing glass. “Control is of supreme importance. One false movement and the expanding glass will be shattered.” I remember the dawning excitement in my brother’s eyes—could he, dared he, go beyond the limits prescribed? It was as though he longed for the explosion that would wreck his own first effort and his father’s temper into the bargain. There comes this supreme moment to the glass-blower, when he can either breathe life and form into the growing bubble slowly taking shape before his eyes, or shatter it into a thousand fragments. The decision is the blower’s, and the judgment too; the throwing of the judgment in the balance made the excitement—for my brother.
“At St. Calais,” said Robert suddenly, his voice breaking in upon my thoughts, “we may be first with the news. In any event, it would be wise to call in at the hôtel de ville.”
I was sure then that I was right. Whether he was in the pay of the duc d’Orléans’s entourage, of the King’s brothers, even of the National Assembly itself, was not of primary importance to my brother. What had driven him from Paris to le Plessis-Dorin and onto the road today was that same desire for self-intoxication which had made him buy the glass-house of Rougemont twelve years before. He was drunk with a power that he did not possess.
We found St. Calais quiet. All seemed as usual. Yes, said a passer-by, there had been talk of disturbances in Paris, but nobody had heard of brigands. My brother left the reins in my hands and was absent for some twenty minutes at the hôtel de ville.
Throughout the whole of that long, hot summer’s day, as our road took us through one parish after another, with nearly all the inhabitants out working in the fields, there was no sign of agitation—only the dust we brought with us on our own wheels; yet whomsoever we passed, whether it was an aged man slumbering under the shade of a tree, or a woman standing at her door, Robert would hail them with the news that brigands were on their way south from Paris threatening the peace of the countryside.