It takes hours to view all the unburned corpses. One young soldier has not been stripped. He has been left to lie in his shredded Swiss uniform, a pool of blood like a halo around his head. The sun reflects from his gilded epaulets, and this is the image I carry with me when we return my brother’s body to the Boulevard du Temple. Although I am conscious of my uncle’s sorrow, of my mother’s hysteria, and of Henri’s announcement that Edmund could not be found, it all passes as if it were a dream.
THERE IS A funeral the next morning. Johann is buried quietly in the Madeleine Cemetery, and our neighbors are told that Wolfgang and Abrielle have perished with him. A cross is provided for Edmund, but since there is no body, no services can be held. Curtius tells me that Marat and the giant Danton were behind this. That if not for their influence, the massacre of the Swiss Guards would never have happened.
I storm through the Salon and rip their figures to pieces in a rage. I would burn them in the courtyard if I thought it would not attract the attention of the Assembly. At night, Henri is strong for us both. I sleep in his chamber, where there are no images to haunt me, and in the morning, I return to the Salon to comfort my mother in her weeping. Then, as though our family has not suffered enough, Curtius tells me about Yachin.
I am sitting in the workshop when my uncle appears and closes the door. He sits on a stool across from me, and my grip tightens around my cup of coffee. In the two days since the massacre, there has been no word from Yachin or his family. “Marie,” he begins, and I shake my head. His eyes are filled with tears, and I will him not to say it.
“No,” I whisper.
Curtius reaches out to take my hand. “I am sorry.”
“No!” I cry. It is too much to bear. “How—”
He tells me how the mobs sought out foreigners, looting their homes and then burning them down. “They tried to board a ship,” he tells me, “possibly the same ship that Wolfgang took. They were caught at the port and killed.”
“But his siblings,” I protest. “They would not have killed children.”
Curtius’s face is grim. “They have been buried at Petit Vances.” A Jewish burial ground.
So this is anarchy. This is life without order or laws, the way our ancestors lived it before chieftains and kings. It is impossible to believe that everyone—Johann, Edmund, Yachin and his entire innocent family—is gone. Paris has become a city of ghosts, and everything I see reminds me of them. I sit at the window of the Salon and remember the France of only three years ago. Philip Astley’s circus was entertaining the king, and Rose Bertin’s shop sold powdered poufs to women draped in diamonds and ermine cloaks. I can hear Yachin telling passersby that they must come to see the queen, that there is not a better likeness anywhere in France.
I will never hear his voice again.
Three days after Johann’s funeral, his widow and their seven-year-old son, Paschal, come to live with us. They will stay in the room that Wolfgang and Abrielle once occupied. When I tell this to Henri, my voice breaks. “Will you take me to your laboratory?” I ask him. “I want to be in a place where everything makes sense.” Where there are rules, and it is impossible for life to defy them.
He shows me what he is working on. A great planisphere clock with five circular plates.
“What do they all do?” I ask him.
“Guess,” he challenges me.
I study the four smaller plates first. “This one is for the days of the week.” That is easy. “And this one is for the phases of the moon.” But the other two …
“A tidal calendar for our northern ports,” Henri says. “And the phases of Jupiter’s Io.”
“You can’t possibly know the phases of another planet’s moon.”
“They’re right here. But the largest plate is the most interesting.”
I look at the golden disk in the center of the clock. There are so many rings and dials. “The outer ring tells the time,” I say, “and the smaller ring indicates the months and the signs of the zodiac. But that is all I can make out.”
He points to various abbreviations. “For telling time in cities all across the world.”
There is London, Rome, Boston, and a place I have never heard of named La Californie. It is unbelievable. “You should be teaching at the Académie,” I tell him.
He smiles. “I prefer the laboratory.”
So while the sans-culottes are tearing down a kingdom, Henri is studying a distant moon.
Chapter 47
AUGUST 28, 1792
Five or six hundred heads cut off [would assure] your repose, freedom, and happiness.
—JEAN-PAUL MARAT
IN LOSING THREE BROTHERS, I HAVE GAINED A SISTER. ALTHOUGH Isabel has greater cause than any of us to abandon herself to despair, she is the one who washes the dishes and cooks the food when my mother is too ill with sorrow to get up. It is Isabel who marches into my mother’s room and demands that she leave her bed for good—that this is what Johann would want her to do now that several weeks have passed. And it is Isabel who insists that the time has come to reopen the Salon.
She sits across from me in the workshop, sorting glass eyes by color while I finish the model of Rochambeau. From the moment she arrived, she has kept herself busy. Cooking, cleaning, sorting, arranging, playing with Paschal. I suspect this comes from not wanting time to think. “It is very kind of you to help my mother the way you do,” I tell her.
She looks up at me, and every emotion registers on her face. I imagine the tableau I would create of her. The Butcher’s Daughter, I’d call it. And people would recognize simply from the width of her mouth and the set of her eyes that she is strong, earnest, a hard worker. “It is the least I can do,” she says. “Your mother and Curtius have been kind to take us in.”
I put down my paintbrush. “Of course. You are family.”
“Not all families are as generous,” she remarks. “So when do you reopen the Salon?”
“When men like Marat and Danton are no longer in power. My brother warned me,” I tell her. “Edmund said that we would be planting the seeds of anarchy.”
“Marie, you cannot blame yourself.”
“We were part of it!”
“Then every citizen who ever put on a tricolor cockade was part of it. This is your business. My father butchered lambs for a living. Some were our pets. But that was his work.”
I think of the royal family, imprisoned now in the medieval fortress known as the Temple, and wonder if Madame Élisabeth has remained so resilient. Everyone who was found with them in the Tuileries that night was sent to La Force prison, including the beautiful Princesse de Lamballe. How do you live knowing you have caused other people’s misery?
“You must reopen the Salon,” Isabel says. “Johann always believed in this. He believed in you. My little sister was all he would talk about.” I search her face for the lie. “It’s true. When he wasn’t talking about Paschal or the Swiss, he was talking about you. Whatever happened in that courtyard, Marie, he died a happy man.”
She didn’t see the corpses. She doesn’t understand …
“I know that they were slaughtered,” she whispers. “But I’ve seen animals die, and death is quick. What is important is the happiness that came before it.”
THAT EVENING, I speak with my mother and Curtius in the kitchen. Though it’s Tuesday night, there will be no salon. I doubt there will ever be gatherings in our house again. I join them at the small table where my mother would normally be preparing food for our guests. Instead, she and Curtius are entertaining Paschal.
“Marie!” my nephew exclaims. He is a lovely child, with dark curls and expressive eyes.
“What do you have here, Paschal? Hot chocolate?”
“Do you want some?” he asks.
“No, thank you,” I say. “But perhaps you can go and find your mother. Tell her we will be having coffee soon.” Paschal slips out the door. I turn to my mother. “Isabel believes we should reopen the Salon.”
“I don?
??t have the time for that right now. Paschal—”
“Can sit with you at the caissier’s desk. Maman, Johann and Edmund are dead. But two of your children are still alive, and you have two grandchildren, one of whom is here. I understand that you are still grieving. But we will always be grieving. So what do we do? Let the rest of our lives turn to dust because evil exists and has stolen something from us?” Her lower lip trembles, but I continue. “What do you wish to teach Paschal?” I ask her. “Strength or weakness? I know what you taught me, and it was always strength.”
“Anna,” Curtius begins, “Marie is right.”
There are tears in her eyes, but there is also resolve.
Though it is not a joyful event, we reopen the Salon with new figures of the generals Luckner and Rochambeau, and Paris has not forgotten us. The lines are as long as they have always been, filled with jostling children and sans-culottes. My mother and Isabel sit at the caissier’s desk with an excited Paschal between them. I show Isabel the books and how to write a ticket. “Is it always like this?” she asks me. She is impressed. “No wonder …”
No wonder Johann was so proud.
I am expecting the model of Rochambeau to be the greatest draw. I hear women in line wondering aloud what he’ll look like, and men guessing that he will be tall, as all generals ought to be. But it’s the model of Lafayette that causes the greatest stir. It begins with one man remarking loudly that a traitor like Lafayette should not be displayed. Then a group of sans-culottes begin shouting to the other patrons to come and see.
“It’s true. A model of Lafayette!” I hear someone cry.
“Why would they display an enemy of the patrie?”
“Because they speak German, just like the queen!”
I rise from the desk and hurry into the workshop, where Curtius is modeling soldiers. “They are about to riot in the Salon,” I cry, “over the model of Lafayette!”
He follows me out the door, and the crowd around Lafayette’s figure has grown even larger. Women are tearing at his clothes, and a man has taken out his dagger to scratch at the waxen face. My mother and Isabel are at the door, trying to keep people from pushing inside. In a moment, it will be a stampede.
“I am responsible for this model!” Curtius shouts, but no one can hear him. He stands on the desk in Jefferson’s Study, where the figure of Lafayette is conferring with the ambassador. “I am responsible for this model!” he shouts again, and this time the angry patrons stop to listen. “And as its creator,” he lies …
I hold my breath. As its creator what?
“I sentence Lafayette to the guillotine!”
It is madness. Shouting, applauding, whooping madness. The men pick up the figure of Lafayette and follow Curtius to the window, where he drags his wooden replica of the guillotine onto the street. Outside, the crowds start singing “La Marseillaise,” and the women begin waving their cockades in the air.
Henri steps from the door of his exhibition and comes to stand at my side. “More publicity?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper, sick with dread. “It was this or they would have killed us.”
He studies my face to see if I am jesting. Then I take his hand and close my eyes.
Chapter 48
AUGUST 29, 1792–SEPTEMBER 2, 1792
The vessel of the Revolution can arrive in port only on a sea reddened with torrents of blood.
—LOUIS ANTOINE DE SAINT-JUST, REVOLUTIONARY AND LAWYER
“MARIE.” SOMEONE IS SHAKING MY SHOULDER. “MARIE, WAKE up. It’s already eight.”
I open my eyes and see Henri’s face in the fresh morning light. His long hair curls around his naked shoulders, and his chest is covered with a blanket.
I rush from the bed, and the two of us find our clothes. I watch in the mirror as Henri pulls on a pair of striped brown trousers. Every showman in Paris is now a sans-culotte. The only benefit that I can see is that it’s easier to dress. He waits while I slip on a white chemise gown and helps to tie the blue ribbon in the back. Then he sits on the bed. “Marie,” he begins, and I can hear from his voice that this will not be light conversation. “You were almost killed yesterday.”
I come here to escape the world, not be reminded about it.
“We had the chance to escape. And now the chance has come again. A chemist has offered Jacques a passage to London on a ship that’s supposedly bound for Rouen. He isn’t going. But I am. I want you to come with me. The mobs have taken your brothers. They have taken Yachin, and they will take your family if we don’t escape.”
For the past two weeks we have slept together as husband and wife. “Stay,” I say desperately. “I will marry you. I want to marry you.”
But Henri is firm. “Then marry me in London.”
“And risk crossing the Channel?”
“Wolfgang made it safely. You have heard from him. Marie, the Austrians are coming, and when they’re at the walls, what do you think this city will be like?” He stands from the bed. “Come with me.”
“And do what? Be what when we get there? Beggars?”
“Showmen.”
And start all over? Without a house, without a place to exhibit? “What about your laboratory?” I ask. “What about your planisphere clock?”
“It will be here. Jacques will take care of it. And if it’s all destroyed, then there will be others.”
“My mother and Curtius will never leave.”
“Then they will have each other. As well as Isabel and Paschal. But if they stay, death is the risk they are taking. Is it one you’re willing to take? There are things I still wish to accomplish in this life. I have no intention of meeting my end here. Aren’t there things you still wish to do?” he presses.
I think of Johann and Edmund, who will never have the chance to pursue their dreams. “Of course. But if the ship is leaving tonight,” I tell him, “there is no time to pack. No time for anything—”
“There will never be a perfect time. You can’t plan this out like a tableau. Either you love me enough to leave or you don’t.”
I think of my family, of the Salon. “Henri, I’m sorry …”
There is devastation in his eyes. “Me too.”
ISABEL SITS ON my bed and holds me while I weep, deep, racking, uncontrollable sobs. She pushes the hair away from my face and whispers that my uncle doesn’t know what to do for me and that my mother is beside herself with grief. A small figure stands in the doorway, hesitant to come in, but Isabel beckons him forward. Paschal climbs into my lap. He puts a tiny hand on my cheek. “Be happy, Tatie.” Paschal calls me by the affectionate word for aunt, but I am afraid I may never be happy again.
“You chose this,” Isabel reminds me softly. “You could have gone.”
I look at her through my tears, unsure I’ve heard right. “Would you leave?”
“My place is with your mother. But you have an entire life ahead of you. A man who would be your husband. You chose this,” she repeats.
For the rest of the morning, I stay in my chamber with Henri’s letter. “When you are ready to live in London,” he wrote, “come and find me. However long it takes, I will be waiting.” I read the words over and over again, and when the pages are so stained with tears that the ink begins to run, I let them dry by the window and cry myself to sleep.
I am being crushed by the heat of the afternoon when a voice wakes me. “Marie?” Isabel knocks on the door. When I don’t answer, she turns the knob and lets herself in. She sets a tray on the table beside me. There’s a pot of coffee, and the scent fills the room. “The Prussians have taken Longwy,” she says. “All the Imperial army needs to do now is cross the Marne Valley and the road to Paris is stretched out before them.”
I sit up in my bed and move to stand, but Isabel holds out her hand. “Curtius is already gone. He left this morning while you were sleeping. Eat.”
I look at the dishes she has prepared for me and cannot imagine ever having an appetite again. “Henri left just in time,” I realiz
e. “Another day and it might have been too late.”
“If God wills it, then you will join him in London.”
“But I’ve missed my chance.” I can hear in my own voice that I am growing hysterical. “He is in a different country and may never return!”
Isabel pours a cup of coffee and hands it to me. “Try not to think like that,” she suggests.
I look into her face, so steady and earnest. “Why can’t I be like you?”
“A widow with a son who will never know his father?”
My God, I am selfish. She has lost her husband, the father of her child, and she is waiting on me while I mourn the loss of a man I refused to follow. I put down the coffee and take her hands. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Isabel.”
“Sometimes I can hear his laughter,” she whispers, sitting on the edge of my bed. “In my sleep mostly. But also if Paschal is overjoyed. So that is my duty now. To keep Johann laughing through Paschal.”
I am humbled by her goodness, and I will do my duty as she has done hers. I have stayed in Paris for my family and the Salon. I must honor them both. Although my appetite is gone, I do my best with the salad. “I don’t hear any noise downstairs,” I worry.
“That’s because the Salon is closed. Every man in Paris has gone to the Palais to volunteer. Robespierre came this morning to ask if Curtius would help Danton recruit.”
“Danton?” The same man who called for the massacre of the Swiss Guards? “And he went?”
“What could he do?” she asks. “He has set up a Revolutionary Tribunal to find royalists and arrest them. Last night, they arrested eight hundred citizens. He told us they have taken all the priests who refused to swear an oath to the Constitution and locked them in the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There will be more arrests today. They are searching for anyone who ever served in the king’s household.”