My mother made a last attempt to dissuade him from this new course. “Give up the idea,” she pleaded. “Come home, or, if you will, go back to la Brûlonnerie and work under your own tenant. Here in the country everyone knows one another, we are all established. In Paris new houses are continually being set up that come to nothing.”
Robert turned to her impatiently. “That’s just it,” he said. “In the country you are set in your ways, the life here is—well, frankly provincial. Nothing will ever advance. Whereas in Paris…”
“In Paris,” my mother finished for him, “a man can be ruined in less than a month, with or without friends.”
“Heaven be thanked I have friends,” returned Robert, “men of influence—Monsieur Cannette is a case in point, but there are others—men even closer to Court circles who have only to say the right word in the right quarter and I am made for life.”
“Or finished,” said my mother.
“As you will. But I would rather play for high stakes than for none at all.”
“Let him go,” said my father. “Argument is useless.”
The glass-house was set up in the rue des Boulets, Robert was made director of it, and in six months’ time Monsieur Cannette, the Court banker, had lost so much money that he sold the enterprise over my brother’s head, and Robert was asking Cathie’s father Monsieur Fiat for a substantial loan to tide him over “temporary” difficulties.
Then came a long silence. Robert did not write to us at le Chesne-Bidault, nor did we visit Paris, for all of us at home were in a state of agitation over my father’s health. He had fallen from his horse riding back one day from Châteaudun, and was in bed six weeks or more, with my mother and Edmé and I taking it in turn to nurse him. The news came at last, not by word of mouth or by letter, but in a trade journal that my father took monthly, which one of us bore up to his bedroom when he was but partially recovered.
The journal was dated November 1779, and the item ran as follows:
“Monsieur de Quévremont-Delamotte, a banker in Paris, has asked permission of the Minister of the Interior to manufacture glass in the English method at the glass-house of Villeneuve-St.-Georges, outside Paris, formerly maintained by the Bohemian glass manufacturer Joseph Koenig. Monsieur de Quévremont-Delamotte has already spent the sum of twenty-four thousand livres upon this establishment, while it was under the direction of Monsieur Koenig, whose talent and intelligence proved, however, to be smaller than Monsieur de Quévremont-Delamotte had anticipated. He reserves to himself the usual privileges and letters patent, and intends to install as director of this enterprise Monsieur Busson l’Aîné, who has wide connections in the region. Monsieur Busson was brought up in the glass-house of la Pierre by his father Monsieur Mathurin Busson, who has written papers for the Académie on flint glass. Thus Monsieur Quévremont-Delamotte has every expectation that work of the highest possible standard will be forthcoming from the glass-house of Villeneuve-St.-Georges, thanks to the care and skill of his young director.”
Edmé and I did not read the piece in the journal until later. The first we knew of it was when the furious clanging of the bell in the passage below sent us both hurrying up to my father’s bedside. He was lying half across the bed, the front of his nightshirt stained with blood, and blood on the sheet as well.
“Call your mother,” he gasped, and Edmé flew downstairs, while I tried to support him on the pillow. It was the second time he had suffered such a hemorrhage; the first was immediately after he had fallen from his horse. My mother came instantly, the surgeon was sent for, and although he pronounced my father to be in no immediate danger he warned my mother that any undue shock or excitement might prove fatal.
Presently, when my father was easier, he pointed to the journal, which had fallen on the floor during all this commotion, and we guessed the reason for his sudden attack.
“As soon as I can safely leave him,” my mother told me later, “I shall go myself to Paris and see if anything can be done to prevent further mischief. If Robert has agreed to go to Villeneuve as manager only, no great harm may have been done. If, on the other hand, he has committed himself financially, then he is heading for a disaster worse than the one he sustained at Rougemont.”
We could but wait and see. My father’s health appeared to improve, and my mother left him in my care and proceeded to Paris. When she returned home a week later we learned at once from her face that the worst had happened. Robert had not only become director of the glass-house at Villeneuve-St.-Georges, but had agreed to purchase the property from Monsieur de Quévremont-Delamotte for the sum of eighteen thousand livres, payable within six months of the date of signature.
“He has until May of next year to find the money,” said my mother, and I had never seen her before with tears in her eyes. “He will never do it. Thousands have already been sunk in this particular foundry, and it would need many more thousands spent on it before it could begin to show a profit. It needs a new furnace and new sheds, and the workmen’s lodgings are worse than pigsties. Most of the money spent so far has gone in putting up temporary buildings for the English craftsmen brought over by the last owner, Koenig, who, it now seems, did nothing but drink all the time.”
“But why has Robert attempted it?” I asked. “Did he give any excuse at all?”
“The usual one,” replied my mother. “He is supported, so he said, by ‘influential’ friends. A certain marquis de Vichy is interested in the project, and according to your brother may ultimately buy the glassworks from him.”
“In that case,” put in Edmé, “why did Robert bother with the property in the first place?”
“Because,” returned my mother fiercely, “what he has done is known in trade circles as speculation. Your brother is a gambler. There is the crux of the matter.”
Then she softened. She put out her arms to us both and we tried to console her. “I am to blame,” she said. “All his high-handed folly is due to me. We are both too proud.”
Now Edmé was near to tears. “You are not proud,” she protested. “How can you accuse yourself? Robert’s behavior has nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, yes, it has,” replied my mother. “I taught him to aim high, and he knows it. It’s too late to expect him to change now.” She paused, and looked at each of us in turn.
“Do you know what grieved me most,” she said, “more than my anxiety for his future? He never let me know, during all these past months of silence, that Cathie was expecting a baby. They had a little girl, born on the 1st of September. My first grandchild.”
Robert a father… I could not imagine him in the role, any more than I could see Cathie as a nurse. She would be better pleased with a doll.
“What have they called her?” asked Edmé.
My mother’s face changed very slightly. “Elizabeth Henriette,” she replied, “after Madame Fiat, naturally.”
Then she went upstairs to break the news to my father.
During the next few months we heard rumors, but no more. The marquis de Vichy had lost interest in the glass-house at Villeneuve-St.-Georges… My brother had approached another banker… Monsieur de Quévremont-Delamotte was said to be considering an association with his former partner, Joseph Koenig, in a foundry at Sèvres…
My father was still not well enough to travel, and he sent Pierre up to Villeneuve-St.-Georges early in February to bring back news.
Pierre at twenty-seven, no longer the carefree youth he had been at seventeen, was yet hopeful enough that Robert would succeed in his new undertaking.
“If he does not succeed,” he told my father, “he can have all my savings, for I don’t need them”—proof that his heart had not changed, despite his maturer years. Alas, it needed more than Pierre’s savings to protect my oldest brother from the shame of bankruptcy.
Pierre returned from Villeneuve-St.-Georges at the end of the month with a lock of the baby’s hair for my mother, a clock of exquisite workmanship whose crystal surround had been de
signed at the glass-house there by Robert himself for my father—and a copy of a deposition signed before the judges of the Royal Court at the Châtelet in Paris, admitting Robert’s insolvency.
My father, ill as he was, accompanied by my mother and myself, and leaving Pierre in charge of Edmé and le Chesne-Bidault, set forth a fortnight later for Paris. I looked out of the windows of the diligence with very different feelings from those upon my first visit nearly four years before. Then, with my father hale and hearty, and I myself full of expectation and excitement, the journey, though exhausting, had been all pleasure; now, in bitter weather, my father ill, my mother anxious, I had nothing to look forward to but my brother’s public disgrace.
Villeneuve-St.-Georges lay in the suburbs of Paris to the southeast, and we proceeded directly there, after resting one night at the hotel du Cheval Rouge in the rue St. Denis.
This time, unlike the day of our unannounced arrival at Rougemont, Robert was not standing in the courtyard to welcome us, and here was no imposing structure or grandiose château alongside, but a straggling collection of buildings in a poor state of repair, with two furnace houses separated from one another by a wide ditch full of broken masonry and rejected glass. There was no sign of life. No smoke came from the chimneys. The place had already been abandoned.
My father tapped on the window of our hired vehicle and hailed a passing laborer.
“Has work ceased entirely at the foundry?” he asked.
The fellow shrugged his shoulders. “You can see for yourself it has,” he replied. “I was paid off a week ago, like the rest, and we were told we were lucky to get what we did. A hundred and fifty of us suddenly without work, and families to keep. Not a word of warning. Yet there was stuff going out of here to Rouen and other cities in the north, crates of it, every day—someone’s been paid for it, that’s what we say, but where’s the money gone?”
My father was much distressed, but there was nothing he could do. “Can you find other employment?” he enquired.
The workman shrugged again. “What do you expect? There’s nothing here for any of us, with the foundry closed. We’ll have to take to the roads.”
He was staring at my mother all the while, and suddenly he said, “You were here before, weren’t you? You’re the director’s mother?”
“I am,” replied my mother.
“Well, you won’t find him in the master’s house, I can tell you that. We broke the windows for him, and he legged out of it, taking his wife and child.”
My father was already reaching for coins to give the workman, and the fellow accepted them with an ill grace, not to be wondered at under the circumstances.
“Return to the rue St. Denis,” my father told the driver, and we turned about, away from the desolation of my poor brother’s foundry, where he had left behind him not only a failed venture but the ill will of one hundred and fifty hungry workmen.
“What do we do now?” asked my mother.
“What we might have done in the first place,” said my father. “Enquire of Cathie’s father in the rue des Petits-Carreaux. She and the child will be there, if Robert is not.”
He was mistaken. The Fiats knew nothing of what had happened, and had not seen Robert or Cathie for at least two months. Coolness on the part of the Fiats—doubtless because of the loan made to their son-in-law, and pride and loyalty on the part of their daughter—had caused this temporary estrangement.
When we arrived back at the hotel du Cheval Rouge we found a message from Robert awaiting us. It was addressed to my mother.
“Word has reached me that you are in Paris,” it said. “No need to worry my father, but I am at present confined in the hotel du St. Esprit, in the rue Montorgueil, pending the hearing of my case. I am engaged in drawing up a list of my debts and assets, and should like your opinion. I am confident that the assets will amount to more than the debts, particularly as la Brûlonnerie is still mine, and there is also a portion of Cathie’s dot due to me from her parents. The marquis de Vichy let me down, as doubtless you have already heard, but I am not concerned about the future. English flint glass is all the rage, especially in Court circles, and I have it on good authority that Messieurs Lambert and Boyer are to obtain permission to set up a glass-house for the purpose of developing flint glass in the park of St. Cloud, under the direct patronage of the Queen. If I can get out of this present scrape without too much difficulty, I have every hope of being employed there as first engraver, as I am the only Frenchman in the country to understand anything of the process. Your affectionate son, Robert.”
Not a word about Cathie and the child, nor any expression of sorrow for what had happened.
My mother passed the letter in silence to my father—it was useless to attempt to hide the truth from him—and together they went to see my brother in his hotel. They found him well and in excellent spirits, totally unmoved by his insolvency.
“He had the effrontery to tell us,” my father—who appeared to me to have aged ten years during his hour with his son—told me afterwards, “that it was good experience to fall into such misfortune. He has given power of attorney to some associate at Villeneuve, as he is forbidden to sign any bills himself.”
My father showed me the statement, signed by the judges, of the preliminary hearing on the very day we had traveled to Paris.
“In the year 1780, on March 15th, in the Chambre de Conseil, before us, judges of the Court, appointed by the King, in Paris, appeared le sieur Tréspaigné, resident in Paris and at the glass foundry of Villeneuve-St.-Georges, having power of attorney for sieur Robert Busson, the owner of the glassworks at Villeneuve-St.-Georges, who was ordered to appear before us and has asked us to appoint whomever we shall judge right to carry out the examination of the accounts of the above named Busson, declared insolvent from the statements deposed at the Record office, conforming to the Ordinance of 1673 and the Edict of the King, dated November 13th, 1739. For this matter we have called the sieur Tréspaigné named above, giving him power to call all the creditors of the said Busson to appear in person by special order, in this Court, before us, Judges of the Council, and to show and establish their titles of creditors, in order to have them examined and verified as the case may demand.
“This is the official verbatim report of the Court which was made. Signed. Guyot.”
I handed the document back to my father, who was preparing to go out once more and seek further advice from the best lawyers in Paris, but my mother dissuaded him.
“You will kill yourself,” she told him, “and that would help neither Robert nor anyone else. The first step is to consider what he calls his assets, and I have the papers here with me.”
As she sat herself down in the hotel bedroom, she might have been home at le Chesne-Bidault reckoning up the weekly expenditure in her ledger. Something had to be salvaged from the wreck of her son’s affairs, and no one was better suited to the task than his mother.
“Where is poor Cathie and the baby in all this?” I asked.
“Hiding in lodgings,” she replied, “in Villeneuve-St.-Georges.”
“Then the sooner somebody brings them here to Paris the better,” I said, having more sympathy at this moment for his wife and child than for my brother.
We went to Villeneuve the following day, and found Cathie and the little Elizabeth Henriette lodging with one of the journeyman-carriers and his wife, a couple named Boudin, who had taken no part in the window-breaking at the master’s house, but had been seized with pity for the master’s family. Cathie herself had been too upset, and too proud, to go home to her parents.
She looked wretched, her pretty face spoiled with weeping, her hair tangled and unkempt, a very altered Cathie from the young bride who had shown us round the château at Rougemont. To make matters worse the baby was ill, too ill, she declared, to be moved. My mother dared not leave my father alone at the Cheval Rouge, so it was decided, with the consent of the good couple Boudin, that I should remain in the lodgings at Ville
neuve-St.-Georges to help Cathie.
A most miserable few weeks followed. Cathie, already distraught over Robert’s disgrace, was in no way capable of looking after her baby, whose sickness, I felt sure, had come about through wrong feeding and neglect. I was only sixteen, and hardly wiser than my sister-in-law. We had to depend upon Madame Boudin for advice, and although she did everything possible for the baby the poor little thing died on the 18th of April. I think I was even more upset than Cathie. It was so needless a loss. The baby lay in the small coffin like a waxen doll, having known seven months of life, and would have been living still, I felt certain, if Robert had never gone to Villeneuve-St.-Georges.
My mother came for us the day after the baby died, and we took poor Cathie home to her parents in the rue des Petits-Carreaux, for, although Robert was now staying at the Cheval Rouge with my parents, his affairs were still unsettled and the final reckoning would not be until the end of May.
Robert’s list of creditors was formidable, even greater than my father had feared. Quite apart from the eighteen thousand livres owed to Monsieur Quévremont-Delamotte for the glass-house at Villeneuve-St.-Georges, he had debts of nearly fifty thousand livres to merchants and dealers all over Paris. The total amounted to something like seventy thousand livres, and to meet this appalling sum there was only one answer, and that was to sell the single worthwhile asset he possessed—namely, the glass-house at la Brûlonnerie, given to him in trust at his wedding, valued by my father at 80,000 livres.
It was a bitter blow to my parents. Here was the glass-house where my father had first served as apprentice under Monsieur Brossard, and where he had taken my mother as a bride, which he had later developed with my uncle Déméré as one of the foremost foundries in the country, now to be sold to strangers to pay my brother’s debts.
As to the smaller creditors, the wine merchants, the clothiers, the house furnishers—even the liveryman who had supplied a carriage for Robert to drive to Rouen and back on some extravagant purchase of material never used—all these debts were paid by my mother out of her own private income, derived from small farm-rents in her native village of St. Christophe.