“You can’t part in this way,” I said. “In the old days it was the three of you against my father when things went wrong. We have none of us ever quarreled. Please, Michel.”
Michel did not answer. He turned on his heel and began to walk away through the laboratory. I threw a helpless look at Robert, and went after him.
“Michel,” I cried, “we may never see him again. Surely you will wish him luck, if nothing else?”
“Luck?” echoed Michel, over his shoulder. “He’s g-got all the luck he needs in that glass he’ll t-take with him. I thank God my f-father did not live to see this day.”
I looked back again at Robert, who was staring after us, a strange, lost figure amidst the disorder of his papers in that bleak basement room.
“I’ll come to you in the morning,” I said. “I’ll come to the Palais-Royal to say goodbye.”
He gave a shrug, half amusement, half despair. “You’d be wiser to take the diligence and go home,” he said.
I hesitated, then went quickly to him and put my arms round him. “If things go wrong in England,” I told him, “I’ll be waiting for you. Always, Robert.”
He kissed me, a smile that meant nothing flickering for a moment on his face.
“You’re the only one,” he said, “the only one in the family to understand. I shan’t forget.”
Hand in hand we crossed the debris of the laboratory, and followed Michel up the stairs. The workman had disappeared. Michel was waiting for me in the little court.
“Look after le Chesne-Bidault,” Robert said to him. “You’re as fine a craftsman as my father, you know that. I’ll take the glass with me to London, but I’ll leave the family honor in your hands.”
I felt that one gesture from Michel then might have made Robert stay. One smile, one clasp of the hand, and they could have fallen into argument, delayed decision, and somehow saved the day. Had it been Pierre standing there in the court, there would have been no bitterness. Illusions might be destroyed, compassion would remain. Michel had been cast in a different mold. Whoever hurt his pride hurt all. Forgiveness was not a word in his vocabulary. He stared across that small dank court at Robert, and there was so much anguish in his face that I could have wept.
“Don’t t-talk to me of honor,” he said. “You’ve never had any, I s-see it now. You’re nothing but a traitor and a f-fraud. If this country fails in the future, it will be b-because of men like you. Like y-you.” The old endearment, the “thou” between brothers, faltered on his tongue, and he turned, almost ran from the court and into the street, saying it still, stammering all the while, “Like y-you, like y-you.”
The years vanished. He was a child again, wounded beyond his comprehension. I did not look back at Robert. I ran into the street after Michel, and walked beside him up the rue Traversière until, by the mercy of heaven, we found a wandering fiacre, hailed it, and drove to the Cheval Rouge. Michel went straight to his room and locked the door.
Next morning we took the diligence together, saying nothing of Robert or of what had passed. It was only at the end of the day, with our journey nearly done, that Michel turned to me and said, “You can tell François what happened. I never want to speak of it again.”
The brightness of the new world had faded for him too.
13
Robert’s emigration was a profound shock to the family. His marriage was accepted as natural, if somewhat hasty, but to abandon his country just at the moment when every man of intelligence and education was needed to prove the worth of the new régime was something only contemplated by cowards, aristocrats—and adventurers, like my brother.
Pierre, stricken at first almost as much as Michel, found fewer grounds for condemnation when the lawyer’s papers arrived from Paris. There was little doubt that every sou obtained from the sale of the boutique in the Palais-Royal, and the laboratory in the rue Traversière, must go to pay Robert’s creditors, and even so they would not be paid in full. Once again he had lived beyond his means, promising goods that he had never delivered, entering into negotiations with merchants the terms of which he could not fulfill. Had he not fled the country, months in prison would surely have been his fate.
“We could all have joined together to pay his debts,” said Pierre. “If only he had consulted me, this tragedy would have been avoided. Now he has lost his name forever. No one will believe us if we say he has gone to London for a few months to perfect his knowledge of English glass. An émigré is an émigré. They are all traitors to the nation.”
Edmé, like Michel, refused to mention Robert’s name again. “I have no eldest brother,” she said. “As far as I am concerned he is dead.”
Now that she had left her husband she passed her days helping Pierre in his work as notary, writing letters for him as a clerk would do, and seeing his clients for him too, when he was busy with the affairs of the municipality. She was as good as a man at the work, Pierre said, and finished it in half the time.
My mother did not concern herself much with the political implications of Robert’s act. It was the fact that he had abandoned his son that grieved her most. Naturally she would keep Jacques, and bring him up in St. Christophe, until such time as Robert might return; for she refused to believe he would not return within the year.
“Robert failed in Paris,” she wrote to us. “Why should he succeed any better in a strange country? He will come home, once the novelty has worn off and he finds that his charm cannot fool the English people.”
I had two letters from him soon after his arrival in London. All was couleur de rose. He and his young wife had found lodgings without difficulty, and he was already working as engraver to a large firm and, so he said, “made much of by his employers.” He was picking up English fast. There was a coterie of Frenchmen and their wives settled in London in the same district as themselves—Pancras, he called it—so they were never at a loss for company.
“The duc d’Orléans has a house in Chapel Street,” he wrote, “where Madame de Buffon keeps house for him. He spends most of his time at the races, but I am told on good authority that he is likely to be offered the crown of the Low Countries. If this should come about, it might very well make a difference to my plans.”
It did not come about. The next we heard of the duc d’Orléans was when we read in the Le Mans journal that he had returned to Paris and presented himself to the Assembly to take the oath to the Constitution. This was in July of 1790, and for the whole of the month I expected to hear that Robert, faithful to the entourage, had returned to Paris too. I hoped in vain. A letter came at last, but brief, giving little news except that his wife, Marie-Françoise, was expecting her first child. As to the duc d’Orléans, there was no mention of his name.
Meanwhile, we ourselves had survived our first nine months under the new régime, and, although the paradise they promised us had not yet come about, business was brisk. We had no cause to complain.
There was no repetition of the previous winter’s severity, nor of last year’s famine, though prices were still high and people grumbled. What kept us all alert and interested were the decrees forthcoming from the Assembly, month by month, substituting new laws for the whole nation.
The old privileges abolished, there was not a man now in the kingdom who could not better his position and rise to high office if he had the wit and initiative to do so. The legal system was reformed, much to my brother Pierre’s satisfaction, and a judge could no longer pronounce guilt—a civil trial must be held before a citizen jury. In the army, a common soldier could become an officer—and because of this many of the existing officers emigrated, and were no great loss.
The greatest shock to those who still held to the old ways was the reform of the clergy, but to men like my brother Michel it was the supreme achievement of that year of 1790. The religious orders were suppressed in February. That was only a beginning.
“No more f-fat friars and b-big-bellied monks,” cried Michel gleefully, when we heard the news. “The
y’ll have to work for their l-living in the future like the rest of us.”
On the 14th of May a decree was passed giving all the Church lands and property to the nation. Michel, who commanded the National Guard of le Plessis-Dorin—made up, it must be admitted, almost entirely of his own workmen from the foundry—had the supreme satisfaction of going to the presbytery and handing a copy of the decree in person to his old enemy the curé Cosnier.
“I could hardly c-contain myself,” he told us afterwards, “from putting all the v-village cows and pigs into his strip of f-field, to prove that the land belonged to le P-Plessis-Dorin, and not to the Church.”
Worse was to follow, though, for poor Monsieur Cosnier. Later in the year, in November, the Assembly declared that every priest must take an oath to serve the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, now part of the State—the Pope’s authority was no more—and if a priest refused, then he would be replaced in office and forbidden to give the sacraments.
The curé Cosnier would not take the oath, and the curé Cosnier went…
“I’ve waited t-two years for this,” said Michel. “When the Assembly m-makes up its mind how and when to s-sell Church lands, I shall be the f-first to buy them.”
The Assembly above all needed money, to bolster the tumbling finances of the nation, and they issued bonds called assignats, representing Church lands, to those patriots who wished to acquire them in return for ready cash. The more assignats a man held, the greater a patriot he appeared to be in the eyes of his fellow countrymen, and later, when the actual land began to be distributed, he could either exchange the assignats for the land itself or for its equivalent in coinage.
It was a mark of civic pride to be known as an “acquirer of national property,” and in our district of Mondoubleau, Loir-et-Cher (for all the départements of France had been regrouped and renamed under the new system), my brother Michel and my husband François headed the list of those patriots bearing the title.
It was in the February of ’91 that Michel redeemed his assignats, buying up a bishop’s château and the land belonging to it somewhere between Mondoubleau and Vendôme, which cost him some thirteen thousand livres—and all because of his hatred for the Church.
He had no intention of living there himself. He put a man in to farm the land, and he would go over there and walk about the acres, and stare at the place feeling, I suppose, that in some way he had revenged himself upon the curé Cosnier, and—in some curious fashion—upon his eldest brother too. Robert had squandered money he did not possess, defrauding his associates. Michel, in the name of the people, would somehow make good the loss.
I do not pretend to explain how his mind worked, but I do know that little by little, as Michel became an “acquirer of national property,” so there developed in him, at the same time, a love of power for its own sake. I remember—and this was before he bought the land, and so must have been in the November of 1790—that I was visiting the Delalande family one afternoon, for their little girl was sick. I was about to leave, when Madame Delalande said to me, “So our men are off with the National Guard this evening to Authon.”
It was the first I had heard of it, but I had no wish to appear ignorant before her, and answered, “I believe so.”
She smiled, and added, “If they return fully loaded as they did a year ago, during the time of the forest patrols, we shall all benefit. They say the château de Charbonnières is a fine place, stacked to the roof with fine furniture. I’ve told my André to bring me back some bedding.”
“The duty of the National Guard is to protect property, not to seize it,” I answered coolly.
She laughed. “Our men interpret duty in their own fashion,” she replied, “and anyway, everything belongs to the people these days. Monsieur Busson-Challoir says so himself.”
I went back to the master’s house, and as the three of us sat down to dinner I enquired about the expedition. François said nothing. As usual, he flashed a look at Michel.
“Yes, you heard right,” said my brother shortly, “b-but it’s not the château we’re going after, it’s the owner.”
“The owner?” I repeated. “Isn’t he Monsieur de Chamoy, who commands a garrison at Nancy, away on the frontier?”
“The same,” answered Michel, “but a t-traitor, by all accounts. Anyway, I’ve had word he’s in hiding at his château of Charbonnières, and the G-Guard under my command are going to get him.”
It was not my business to interfere. If Monsieur de Chamoy was a traitor, it was the duty of the National Guard to apprehend him. I knew the château, only a short way away, within easy marching distance, this side of Authon, and I knew Monsieur de Chamoy too; he had bought glass from us in the old days, a pleasant, courteous man, rather a favorite with my mother. I thought it unlikely he would be a traitor. He was a serving officer, and he had not tried to emigrate.
“Don’t forget your manners when you arrest him,” I said. “The last time he came here was after our father died, and he called to offer sympathy.”
“He won’t get any s-sympathy from me if he t-tries to evade arrest,” answered Michel. “A cord round his wrists, and a kick on the s-seat of his breeches.”
They set out as soon as it was dark, about seventy of them, fully armed, and when they did not return the following day I feared the worst—another butchery like Ballon, and this time our men the murderers. There was no question of brigands now, nor of grain hoarders, and the countryside was quiet.
I summoned Marcel Gautier, one of the younger workmen who, because of a sore foot, had not accompanied the others, and bade him drive me to Authon. I had acted godmother to his baby two months before, and he was willing to please me.
It was a raw, damp day, and we took the small carriole, in which Robert and I had driven to St. Christophe. When we arrived near the château of Charbonnières we found a junction of roads there barricaded, and some of our men on guard. No one was allowed through without permission, but they recognized me at once and let us pass. The National Guard were standing about in front of the château, André Delalande apparently in command, and one of the first things I saw, among the pile of loot in the carriageway, was a great pile of bedding. He had remembered his wife’s request.
He came up to the carriole, somewhat surprised, I think, to see me, but saluted and told me that the bird had flown—some spy had informed Monsieur de Chamoy of his danger, and he had fled before the National Guard arrived. Because of this, my brother and my husband had gone on to Authon to question the people there.
I bade Marcel turn the carriole round and continue to Authon, and as we wheeled in front of the château others of the Guard emerged, some half dozen of them, bearing chairs and tables, and clothing too. Marcel took a sly look at me, but I said nothing.
The road entering Authon was cordoned off, but the sentries recognized the carriole once more and let us through. We drew up before the hôtel de ville, where a small crowd had gathered in consternation. When I enquired the reason, I was told that the commandant of the National Guard had commanded a house-to-house search for Monsieur de Chamoy.
“He is not here,” a woman cried from the crowd, “none of us have seen him in Authon. But it makes no difference. The Guard insist on turning every house upside down.”
Indeed, I could see some of them at it as I watched. There was Durocher, who should have known better, pushing some shopkeeper before him with his musket, demanding admittance to the grocery beyond, with two small children running in front and crying.
I descended from the carriole and went up the steps into the hôtel de ville. And there were François and Michel, seated at a table with two of the workmen on sentry-go behind their chairs, and standing to attention before them, gray with fear, a little man whom I took to be the mayor. No one noticed me as I stood by the door, for all eyes were directed at Michel.
“You understand I have my d-duty to do,” he was saying. “If de Chamoy is f-found hiding in any house in Authon, you will be made respo
nsible. Meanwhile, we shall remain here for at least f-forty-eight hours, to allow time for a thorough search to be made. We d-demand free quarters for ourselves and our men for that p-period. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, mon commandant,” said the mayor, bowing and trembling, and he turned to another frightened official at his side to give his orders.
Michel murmured something to François at his side, and I saw my husband laugh, and sign some paper with his usual masonic flourish.
I could tell by their faces that they were in high good humor. To scare the mayor, to quarter themselves upon the little town, was like a boyhood prank all over again; Michel might have been playing Indians with Pierre in the forest long ago.
It was not a game, though, for the mayor. Nor for the townsfolk whose homes were broken into, and who were forced to feed our men.
Then François lifted his eyes and saw me. He turned bright scarlet and nudged Michel.
“W-what are you doing here?” asked my brother.
“I only wondered if you would be home for dinner,” I replied.
Somebody tittered, one of the young workmen, I think, who had lately been recruited to the National Guard. Michel banged his hand on the table.
“S-silence,” he shouted.
There was an instant hush. The mayor turned whiter than before. My husband kept his eyes fixed on the paper before him.
“Then you can go b-back at once to le Chesne-Bidault,” said Michel. “The National Guard is here to s-serve the nation, and when the nation’s b-business is settled, the Guard will return. Vaillot, Mouchard, escort Madame D-Duval outside.”
The two guards walked on either side of me to the door, and I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that, if my intrusion had caused my brother and my husband to lose face, it had done little else besides; except, perhaps, to make them harsher with the mayor.
Marcel and I took the road back to the foundry, and as we left Authon I saw yet another detachment of the National Guard come out and scatter in the fields on either side of the road, hallooing to one another, probing the ditches with their muskets, for all the world like boarhounds after prey.