“I must go,” I said, rising from the chair, sick suddenly with distaste, and despising myself for it—God knows, I thought, if this helps Robert’s loneliness then he is welcome. She asked what name she should give when her husband came, and I told her Duval, Madame Duval. We bade each other au revoir, and she shut the door of the boutique behind me.
It was raining again, and in the palace gardens the old leaves of autumn lay scattered that had been in bud when last I came. I hurried away, not wishing to linger in a place so haunted by poor Cathie’s ghost and the young living Jacques, bowling his hoop before me. The shuttered windows of the Palais-Royal, and the yawning sentries of the National Guard, proclaimed another world from the one I had known in spring.
I retraced my steps, disheartened, to the Cheval Rouge, and found Michel on the doorstep, about to set forth in search of me. Instinct, I don’t know why, made me hold the secret. I told him I had been to the boutique and found it shuttered, with no one there. He accepted this as natural. If Robert was near to bankruptcy once more, his boutique would be the first to go.
“C-come on, let’s walk the streets,” urged Michel, with all the impatience of a newcomer to the capital. “We can f-find Robert later.”
To chase the glooms away I let myself be led by him, it hardly mattered where, over much of the same ground that I had already covered. Michel knew none of it. Finally we came to the Tuileries, where the King and Queen now lived. We stared at the great palace, or what we could see of it beyond the court, and watched the Swiss Guard marching to and fro, and wondered, as many a provincial must have done before us, whether the King and Queen watched us from the windows.
“Imagine it,” said Michel, “all those rooms to house f-four people. F-five, if you count the King’s sister. What do you suppose they d-do all day?”
“Much as we do,” I suggested. “Perhaps the King plays cards with his sister after dinner, and the Queen reads to the children.”
“What?” said Michel. “With all the c-courtiers looking on?”
Who could say? The place looked gray, forbidding, on this December day. I remembered the Queen stepping from her coach to go to the Opera that evening more than ten years ago, a porcelain figurine that a breath could shatter, with the comte d’Artois giving her his arm, and the pageboys in attendance. Now he was an émigré, one might almost say a fugitive, and the Queen was hated, by all accounts, and forever plotting the downfall of the Assembly from behind those windows in the Tuileries. Whether this was true or not, one thing seemed certain; the days of operagoing and masked balls were over.
“It’s dead,” said Michel suddenly, “like looking at a s-sepulchre. Let’s l-leave them there to rot.”
We walked back by the quays, where at least, so Michel said, however stinking it might be, there was some sign of life and labor, with flat-bottomed timber barges warped against the riverbanks, and husky fellows shouting to one another. I need not have feared for my brother’s provincial looks. There were few people in this part of Paris to put him to shame. Beggars were everywhere, and he would have had no money left to settle our account at the Cheval Rouge if I had let him give to all of them.
“If it was these folk who b-broke the Bastille down, you can hardly b-blame them,” observed Michel. “If I’d been here I’d have razed the T-Tuileries to the g-ground as well.”
He had a wish to see where the Bastille had stood, and we found our way there finally, and looked at the heap of rubble and blocks of stone that once had been a fortress. There were gangs of men with picks working on the site.
“That was the d-day!” said Michel. “What I would have g-given to have been among those who stormed it.”
I am not so sure. The Réveillon riots, and the shouting before the Abbey of St. Vincent, had taught me all I wished to know of insurrection.
By this time it was long past noon, and both of us were hungry, and exhausted too. Like all strangers to the capital, we had walked too far, with little sense of direction. The Cheval Rouge could be east, or west, or just beside us, for all we knew. We found a small café nearby, not much of a place and none too clean, but we dined there and ate well, and the lad who served us told Michel that we were in the Faubourg St. Antoine. I remembered then that it was somewhere here that Robert had his laboratory.
When we had finished eating I asked for the rue Traversière, and the lad pointed with his finger. It was barely five minutes distant. Michel and I discussed what we should do, and we decided to go to the laboratory—I knew the number—and see if our brother was there. I warned Michel to wait outside. I wanted to talk to Robert first alone.
The rue Traversière seemed endless, all warehouses and stores, and I was glad of Michel’s company. It was full too of laborers who stared, and carters backing their great drays, cursing their horses.
“I can’t m-make it out,” said Michel suddenly. “You’d think Robert would have been content to stay at la B-Brûlonnerie. He’s like Esau—selling his b-birthright for a mess of pottage. Not even that. Can you t-tell me what he’s gained in life by this?”
He pointed at the gray-black buildings, the filthy street with the sewage running down it, the savage carter whipping his pair of horses.
“Nothing,” I answered, “except the right to call himself Parisian. It may not mean much to us, but it does to him.”
We came at last to No. 144. A dank, tall house, adjoining a little court. I made a sign to Michel to stay outside, and crossed the court and read a list of names scrawled upon an inner door. I at length descried the faded lettering “Busson,” and an arrow pointing to the basement. I groped my way down the stairs, coming to a passageway where crates were stacked, and beyond it to a large bare room with a center furnace—this must be the laboratory—unlighted, of course, and debris and dust upon the floor, the litter of weeks unswept.
Voices, and the sound of hammering, came from a small room nearby, the door half-open. I picked my way across the litter of the laboratory and there, in the small room, I saw my brother seated at a table covered with paper, all in great disorder, while a workman knelt on the floor hammering nails into a crate. Robert lifted his head as I entered, and for a second his expression had all the surprise and panic of an animal trapped. He instantly recovered, and sprang to his feet.
“Sophie!” he exclaimed. “Why, in the name of God, didn’t you let me know you were in Paris?”
He took me in his arms and kissed me, telling the man to leave his work and go.
“How long have you been here, and how did you find this place? I apologize for the mess. I’m selling out, as you probably realize.”
He gestured with a half laugh, and shrugged his shoulders, watching me closely at the same time, and I had the impression that it was not the disorder for which he apologized, but the poor quarters themselves. The word “my laboratory,” when he had used it in the past, had conjured to my mind a fine big place, well fitted-up and orderly; not this dim cellar, with a window grating high in the wall to the street above.
“I came yesterday,” I told him. “I’m putting up at the Cheval Rouge. This morning I called at the boutique in the Palais-Royal.”
He drew a long breath, stared at me a moment, then burst into a laugh.
“Well?” he said. “So now you know my secret—one of them, that is. What did you think of her?”
“She’s very pretty,” I replied, “and also very young.”
He smiled. “Twenty-two,” he said. “Straight from that orphanage at Sèvres. She knows nothing of life, she can’t even sign her name. But I found out all about her parentage from the people who had the orphanage, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. She was born in Doudan, her father a merchant in a small way, and the mother was a niece of the famous Jean Bart, the privateer. She has good blood in her.”
Now it was my turn to smile. Did he really think I cared about her parentage? If he liked her well enough to marry her, this was all that mattered.
“You know more about her
family than she does of yours,” I remarked. “I never knew you had a brother who was proprietor of a château between Le Mans and Angers.”
For a moment he was disconcerted. Then he laughed once more, and, dusting the one chair, made me sit down upon it.
“Ah well,” he said, “she is so innocent, and it makes for excitement. I think she enjoys my lovemaking the more, believing me a seigneur hounded by misfortune. A glass-blower on the verge of bankruptcy is no great catch. Why break a young girl’s dream?”
I looked about me at the tumbled papers and the disorder of the room.
“It’s true, then?” I asked. “You’ve come to it again?”
He nodded. “I’ve given power of attorney to a friend of mine, a lawyer of the old Parliament, Monsieur Mouchoux de Bellemont,” Robert answered. “He will deal with all my creditors, see to the sale of this place and the boutique too, and if he can salvage anything—which I doubt—place it to Pierre’s credit in Le Mans. In any event, he will write to Pierre after I have gone, telling him all the circumstances, which are too involved to tell you now.”
I stared at him. He was making a pretence of clearing the papers.
“Gone?” I asked. “Gone where?”
“To London,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I’m emigrating. Clearing out of the country. There’s nothing here for me anymore. And they want engravers in crystal over there. I have work waiting for me with one of the foremost London glass manufacturers.”
I was dumbfounded. I had thought he might go out of Paris, to Normandy, perhaps, where there were several glass-houses, or even come back again to our neighborhood, where he was respected and known. But not to leave the country, not to emigrate like some scared member of the aristocracy who could not face up to the implication of the new régime…
“Don’t do it, Robert,” I said. “I beg of you, don’t do it.”
“Why not?” His voice was sharp. He gestured angrily, scattering some of the papers on the table onto the floor. “What is there to keep me here?” he cried. “Nothing but debts, more debts, and a certainty of prison. In England I can begin life anew, with nobody asking questions, and a young wife to give me courage. It’s all settled, and no one will make me change my mind.”
I saw that nothing I could say would persuade him.
“Robert,” I said gently, “Michel is with me. He’s waiting in the street above.”
“Michel?” Once again the trapped animal look came into his eyes. “Did he go with you to the Palais-Royal?” he asked.
“No, I went alone; nor did I tell him you had remarried.”
“That wouldn’t worry me, he would understand. But this, my going away…” He paused, staring straight in front of him. “Pierre would argue by the hour, yet have the consideration to see both sides of the question. Not Michel. He’s a fanatic.”
I felt depression come upon me. I had done wrong to bring Michel. Had I known of Robert’s intention to emigrate I never would have done so. For my eldest brother had chosen the right word. Michel would never understand. He was indeed a fanatic.
“He’ll have to know,” I said. “I’d better fetch him.”
He crossed over to the window grating and shouted. “Michel?” he called. “Come along down, you rascal. Michel?”
I saw my brother’s feet pass the grating above our heads and pause a moment. Then came his answering shout, and the feet moved away. Robert crossed into the laboratory, and in a few moments I heard them greet one another, and the sound of their laughter, and they came back to the little room together, arm in arm.
“Well, you’ve run me to earth like a baited badger,” Robert was saying, “and there’s nothing left of my equipment, as you can see. The place is cleared. But I’ve done good work here in my time.”
I saw by Michel’s puzzled look that he was as surprised as I had been to find Robert, his admired eldest brother, in a basement lair.
“I’m sure of it,” he said politely. “No p-place looks its best when it’s bare, and the fires are out.”
Robert, to evade the issue, suddenly bent and picked up a package from the floor.
“Here is salvage anyway,” he said, unwrapping the object and placing it on the table triumphantly. “The famous glass.”
It was the goblet, engraved with the fleur-de-lys, that had been blown at la Pierre for Louis XV nearly twenty years before.
“I’ve copied it before and will do so again,” said Robert. “A glass with this device will sell for double its value where I’m going.”
“Where are you going?” asked Michel.
I had the hot feeling of unease that comes before disaster. Robert glanced at me, with mock embarrassment, and said, “Tell him what you found today at the boutique.”
“Robert has married again,” I said. “I wanted to have his permission before I told you.”
A warm smile came over Michel’s face, and he went and clapped his brother on the shoulder.
“I’m so very g-glad,” he said, “the best thing you can do. S-Sophie was an idiot not to tell me. Who is she?”
Robert began his explanation of the orphanage, and Michel nodded his approval.
“She sounds a b-beauty,” he said, “without any airs and g-graces. I expected you to remarry, but feared some haughty young woman with aristocratic p-prejudices. Well, if you’ve sold this, and your boutique too, where do you p-plan to live?”
“That’s just it,” said Robert. “I’m obliged to leave Paris. As I’ve already explained to Sophie, my creditors are after me, and I refuse to face another period in La Force.”
He paused, and I saw he was thinking out how best to deliver his blow.
“I am all in f-favor of your leaving Paris,” said Michel. “How you have stood the city all these years is b-beyond me. Come to us, mon vieux. If not to le Chesne-Bidault, at least within d-distance of it. Why, you might make some arrangement with the present t-tenant of la Pierre. Everything’s changing hands. With so many f-frightened landowners running from the country like rats, the opportunities are boundless. We’ll f-find something for you, never fear. Forget your debts.”
“It’s no good,” said Robert abruptly, “it’s too late.”
“Nonsense,” replied Michel, “it’s n-never too late. Trade has been bad these last months, I know, but it’s p-picking up every day. There’s a great future ahead for all of us.”
“No,” said Robert, “France is finished.”
Michel stared at him. He looked as though he had not heard aright.
“That’s my opinion, anyway,” said Robert, “so I’m clearing out, emigrating. I’m taking my young wife to London. They need engravers in crystal there, and, as I’ve just told Sophie, I have work waiting for me. It’s been arranged by friends.”
The silence hurt. I felt sick, looking at Michel’s face. He had gone white, and his eyebrows, meeting in a straight line above the bridge of his nose as my father’s had done, were pencil dark in contrast.
“By f-friends,” he said at last, “you mean, by t-traitors.”
Robert smiled, and took a step towards his brother.
“Come now,” he said, “don’t jump to conclusions. It just so happens that I have no great faith in what the present Assembly are going to do for trade or for anything else. These past few months in Paris have taught me much. It’s all very well to be a patriot, but a man must see to his own future. And as things are at present, there’s none for me here in France. That’s why I’m quitting.”
When Robert had gone bankrupt, the year my father died, Michel had been absent in le Berry. The family shame had somehow passed him by, leaving him untouched. If he considered it at all, I believe he understood Robert to have been unfortunate. At the time of the second trouble, in ’85, Michel was too much concerned with the running of le Chesne-Bidault, and his growing friendship with François, to worry overmuch about his eldest brother. Robert had always been extravagant, his fine friends had let him down. But this was different.
/> “Have you written to t-tell Pierre?” he asked.
“No,” said Robert, “I shall do so before I leave. In any event the lawyer who has power of attorney for my affairs will write a full explanation to him.”
“What about Jacques?” I asked.
“I’ve arranged for that as well. Pierre will act as guardian. I’ve suggested that Jacques should remain with my mother. I take it she will provide for him. It will be up to him to make his own way in life.”
He might have been speaking about some crate to be dispatched. Not the future of his son. The unconcern in his voice was nothing new to me. This was the Robert with whom I had journeyed to St. Christophe, the man who had lost Cathie, the man who lived from day to day. It was a being unknown to his youngest brother. I could tell, by Michel’s eyes, that the illusion of a lifetime had been destroyed. Whatever tales Robert had told him when he was with us at le Chesne-Bidault after the Bastille fell, of patriotism, and of a new world dawning, were now shown up as fables. Robert himself had not believed a word of them.
Perhaps losing my first child had made me hard. Nothing Robert could say or do would ever again surprise me. If he chose to leave us this way, although my heart yearned after him it was his choice, not ours.
I had not realized Michel would take it the way he did. His faith was shattered. He put his hand up to loosen his cravat. I thought for a moment that he was going to choke; his face had turned from white to dullish gray.
“That’s f-final, then,” he said.
“That’s final,” Robert repeated.
Michel turned to me. “I’m g-going back to the Cheval Rouge,” he said. “Come with me if you are ready to d-do so. I shall take the d-diligence in the morning. If you want to s-stay here, that’s for you to decide.”
Robert said nothing. He had turned pale too. I looked from one to the other. I loved them both.