Desiree

  I felt better then, but people were shouting at me for being sick: I had spoilt someone’s shoes. I kept my eyes shut so as not to see the bleeding head. Marie was ashamed of my behaviour, and took me out of the crowd; I heard people abusing us as we passed them. And ever since then I often can’t sleep for thinking of the dead staring eyes and the silent scream.

  When we got home I couldn’t stop crying. Papa put his arms round me and said: ‘The people of France suffered for hundreds of years. And two flames rose from that suffering: the flame of Justice, and the flame of Hatred. The flame of Hatred will burn down and be extinguished in streams of blood. But the other flame, the sacred flame of Justice, little daughter, can never again be completely extinguished.’

  ‘The Rights of Man can never be abrogated, can they, Papa?’

  ‘No, they can never be abrogated. But they can be temporarily suppressed, openly or secretly, and trodden under foot. But those who trample on them will incur the deepest blood-guilt in all history. And whenever and wherever in days to come men rob their brethren of their rights of Liberty and Equality, no one can say for them “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”, because, little daughter, after the Declaration of the Rights of Man they will know perfectly well what they are doing!’

  When Papa said that, his voice was quite changed. It sounded – yes, really, it sounded just as I should expect the voice of God to sound. And the more time has passed since that talk with Papa, the better I have understood what he meant.

  I feel very close to Papa to-night. I am afraid for Etienne, and a little afraid of the visit to the Maison Commune. But at night we are more easily frightened than in the daytime.

  If only I knew whether my life’s story will be happy or sad! I want ever so much to have some experience out of the ordinary. But first I must find a husband for Julie. And, above all, Etienne must be got out of prison.

  Good night, Papa! You see I have begun to write my story.

  Twenty-four hours later. (How many things have happened!)

  I am the disgrace of the family!

  On top of that, so much has happened that I don’t know how I can write it all down. First of all – Etienne has been released, and is sitting downstairs in the dining-room with Mama, Suzanne, and Julie, and he is eating away as if he’d been kept on bread and water for a month, instead of only three days.

  Secondly, I have met a young man with a very interesting face and the most unpronounceable name – Boonopat, or Bonapart, or something like that. Thirdly, downstairs they’re all furious, calling me a disgrace to the family, and they have packed me off to bed.

  Downstairs they are celebrating Etienne’s return, and though it was my idea to see Albitte, I am being endlessly scolded, and there’s no one with whom I can talk about the future and this Citizen Buonapar, impossible name, I’ll never remember it – there’s no one with whom I can talk about this new young man. But my dear good Papa must have foreseen how lonely you can be if you are misunderstood by everybody, and that is why he gave me this diary.

  To-day began with one to-do after another. Julie told me that Mama had decided that I was to wear my odious grey gown, and that of course I must wear a lace fichu tight round my neck. I fought against the fichu, but Julie shrieked: ‘Do – you – think we shall let you go in a low-necked dress like a – like a girl from the port, let you go to a government office without a fichu?’

  As soon as Julie had gone I hastily borrowed her little pot of rouge. For my fourteenth birthday I had a pot of my own, but I hate it, it’s such a childish pink. Julie’s ‘Cerise’ suits me much better. I dabbed it on carefully, and I thought how difficult it must have been for the great ladies in Versailles who used thirteen different shades one on top of another to get the right effect. I read about it in the newspaper, in an article on the Widow Capet, our Queen who was guillotined.

  ‘My rouge! How often must I tell you not to use my things without my permission!’ said Julie crossly as she came back into the bedroom. I quickly powdered my whole face; then I damped my forefinger and smoothed my eyebrows and eyelids – they look much nicer when they are a little shiny. Julie sat on the bed and watched me critically. I began to take the paper curlers out of my hair. But they got caught in my curls, I have such horrid stubborn natural curls that it’s a terrible business to coax them into smooth corkscrews hanging down to my shoulders.

  We heard Mama’s voice outside: ‘Isn’t that child ready yet, Julie? We must have something to eat now if Suzanne and Eugenie are to be at the Maison Commune by two o’cloock.’

  I tried to hurry, but that only made me clumsier than ever, and I simply could not get my hair right.

  ‘Julie, can’t you help me?’

  Honour to whom honour is due. Julie has the light touch of a fairy. She finished doing my hair in five minutes.

  ‘In one of the papers I saw a drawing of the young Marquise de Fontenay,’ I said. ‘She wears her hair in short curls, and brushes it down on to her forehead. Short hair would suit me too.’

  ‘She only does it to let everyone see that she was only rescued from the guillotine in the nick of time! But she won’t have cut off her hair till she left the prison. She must have had long hair, and her elaborate frisure, when Deputy Tallien first saw her in prison. But,’Julie added like an old maiden aunt, ‘I should advise you, Eugenie, not to read newspaper articles about the Fontenay.’

  ‘You needn’t be so condescending and superior, Julie, I’m no longer a child, and I know quite well why Tallien got a pardon for the beautiful Fontenay, and what his object was. And so—’

  ‘You are impossible, Eugenie! Who tells you all these things? Marie in the kitchen?’

  ‘Julie, where is that child?’ Mama called. She sounded annoyed.

  I pretended to be tidying my fichu and stuffed the four handkerchiefs into my frock. Two on the right and two on the left.

  ‘Take out those handkerchiefs at once! You can’t go out like that,’Julie said, but I pretended not to hear her, and impatiently pulled open one drawer after another looking for my Revolutionary cockade. Naturally I found it in the last drawer of all. I fastened it on to what seemed to me a most seductive handkerchief bosom. Then I ran downstairs with Julie to the dining-room.

  Mama and Suzanne had begun to eat. Suzanne had her cockade on. At the beginning of the Revolution everyone wore a cockade, but now they are worn only by Jacobins, or when people are going to see someone in a Government office, or a Deputy. Naturally, in troubled times, for example last year when the Girondists were being persecuted, and there were wholesale arrests, no one dared to go out without the blue-white-red rosette of the Republic. At first I loved those rosettes showing the national colours of France, but now I don’t like them any longer. I think it’s undignified to pin one’s convictions on to one’s frock or coat lapel.

  After dinner Mama got out the cut-glass decanter of port-wine. Yesterday Suzanne had a glass, but to-day Mama filled two glasses and gave Suzanne one and me one.

  ‘Drink it slowly,’ she told me, ‘port-wine is strengthening.’

  I took a big gulp; it tasted sticky and sweet, and all of a sudden it regularly warmed me up. It made me very cheerful, too. I smiled at Julie, and then I saw there were tears in her eyes. She actually put her arm round my shoulders and pressed her face against my cheek. ‘Eugenie,’ she whispered, ‘take care of yourself!’

  The port-wine was making me very lively. For fun I rubbed my nose against Julie’s cheek, and whispered: ‘Perhaps you’re afraid that Deputy Albitte might seduce me?’

  ‘Can’t you ever be serious?’ said Julie irritably. ‘It’s not just a game going to the Maison Commune, with Etienne under arrest. You know they—’ She stopped short.

  I took a last good gulp of port-wine. Then I looked straight at her. ‘I know, Julie, I know what you mean. Usually the near relatives of arrested men are arrested too. No doubt Suzanne and I are in danger. And you and Mama are in danger too, but as you are not
going to the Maison Commune you two won’t be on show. And so—’

  ‘I wish I could go with Suzanne.’ Her lips were trembling, but she controlled herself. ‘But if anything happens to you, Mama will need me!’

  ‘Nothing will happen to us,’ I said. ‘And if it did, I should know that you are looking after Mama, and that you will try to get me out. We two must always stick together, mustn’t we, Julie?’

  Suzanne did not speak on our way into the centre of the town. We walked very fast, and she did not look to right or left, even when we went past the fashion shops in the Rue Cannebière. When we reached the Town Hall square she suddenly took my arm. I tried not to see the guillotine. The square still smelt of fresh sawdust and dried blood. We met Citoyenne Renard, who for years had made Mama’s hats. She looked round timidly before nodding to us; she had evidently heard that a member of the Clary family had been arrested.

  A great crowd were loitering in the entrance to the Maison Commune. When we tried to push our way through, someone caught hold of Suzanne’s arm. Poor Suzanne shook with fear and grew very pale.

  ‘And what do you want, Citoyenne?

  ‘We wish to speak to Citizen Deputy Albitte,’ I said quickly in a loud voice.

  The man, I decided he was the porter at the Maison Commune, let go of Suzanne’s arm. ‘Second door on the right,’ he said. We pressed on through the dimly lit entrance, found the second door on the right, opened it, and were assailed by a confused roar of voices and a horridly stuffy atmosphere.

  At first we did not know what to do. So many people were sitting and standing in the narrow waiting-room that you could hardly move. At the far end of the room was another door, at which a young man stood on guard. He wore the costume of the Jacobin Club; he had a high collar, a huge black cocked hat with a cockade, and a silk coat with very fine lace cuffs; he had a walking stick under his arm. I thought he must be one of Albitte’s secretaries, so I caught hold of Suzanne’s hand and tried to push through to him. Suzanne’s hand was trembling and as cold as ice, but I could feel beads of perspiration on my forehead, and I was vexed with the handkerchiefs inside my dress, for they made me hotter than ever.

  ‘We want, please, to see Citizen Deputy Albitte,’ Suzanne murmured when we came up to the young man.

  ‘What?’ he shouted at her.

  ‘To see Citizen Deputy Albitte,’ Suzanne stammered.

  ‘Everyone in this room wants to see him. Have you sent in your name, Citoyenne?’

  Suzanne shook her head. ‘How do we do that?’ I asked.

  ‘Write out your name and business,’ he said. ‘People who can’t write get me to do it for them. That costs—’ he glanced appraisingly at our clothes.

  ‘We can write,’ Suzanne said.

  ‘Over there on the window-ledge the citoyenne will find paper and a quill,’ said the Jacobin youth. He might have been an archangel at the gates of Paradise.

  We pushed through to the window-ledge. Suzanne quickly filled up a form. Names? Citoyenne Suzanne Clary and Citoyenne Bernadine Eugenie Désirée Clary. Purpose of visit? We stared at each other in perplexity.

  ‘Write the truth,’ I said.

  ‘Then he won’t see us,’ Suzanne whispered.

  ‘He’ll make inquiries anyhow before he sees us,’ I urged. ‘Things are not exactly simple here.’

  ‘Simple, no, indeed!’ Suzanne moaned as she wrote: ‘Purpose of visit: concerns arrest of Citoyen Etienne Clary.’

  We then struggled back to our Jacobin archangel. He glanced casually at the paper, barked ‘Wait,’ and disappeared behind the door. He was gone, it seemed to me, for an eternity. At last he came back and said: ‘You may wait. The Citizen Deputy will receive you. Your name will be called out.’

  Soon afterwards the door was opened, someone gave the archangel instructions, and he shouted, ‘Citoyen Joseph Petit.’ I saw an old man with a little girl get up from the bench by the wall. I quickly pushed Suzanne towards the two empty places. ‘We had better sit down, it will be hours before it’s our turn.’

  Our situation had improved enormously. We leaned back against the wall, closed our eyes, and wriggled our toes in our shoes. Soon I began to look about, and I noticed our shoemaker, old Simon. I thought of his son, young Simon with the bow legs, and how gallantly those bow legs had marched in that company eighteen months ago.

  I shall never forget that march. Our country was being pressed on all sides by enemy armies. The other countries would not tolerate our proclamation of the Republic. It was being said that our armies would not be able to hold out much longer against those superior forces. But one morning I was awakened by singing under our windows. I jumped out of bed and ran on to the balcony, and I saw, marching past, the Volontaires of Marseilles. They were taking three cannon from the fortress with them, because they did not mean to appear before the Minister of War in Paris empty-handed.

  I knew many of the marchers. There were the apothecary’s two nephews, and, Heavens! shoemaker Simon’s bow-legged son, exerting himself to keep pace with the others! And there was Léon, the assistant from our own shop: he had not even asked permission, but had simply enrolled and gone off. And behind Léon I saw three dignified young men in dark brown clothes: Banker Levi’s sons; the Rights of Man had given them the same civil liberties as all other Frenchmen. Now they had put on their Sunday best to go to war for France. ‘Au revoir, Monsieur Levi,’ I shouted, and all three Levis looked up and waved.

  The Levis were followed by our butcher’s sons, and then came in serried ranks the workmen from the docks. I recognised them by their blue linen blouses and the clatter of their clogs. And they were all singing

  Allons, enfants de la patrie …,

  the new song, which became famous overnight, and I sang with them.

  Suddenly Julie was standing next to me; we picked flowers from the rose-trees growing round the balcony and threw them down.

  ‘Le jour de gloire est arrivé …’ came up to us in a roar, and the tears ran down our cheeks. And below, Franchon, the tailor, caught two of the roses and laughed up at us. Julie waved back at him with both her hands, and called excitedly: ‘Aux armes, citoyens, aux armes!’

  They still looked like ordinary citizens in their dark coats or blue linen blouses, their patent leather shoes or wooden clogs. In Paris only some of them were given uniforms, because there were not enough to go round. But with or without uniforms, they beat back the enemy and won the battles of Valmy and Wattignies – the Simons and Léons and Franchons and Levis. And now the song they sang as they marched to Paris is being played and sung all over France. It is called the Marseillaise, because it was carried through the land by the men of our city.

  When I was thinking of those scenes, the old shoemaker had pushed his way through to us. He shook hands with us eagerly but with embarrassment, and we felt that he wanted to express his sympathy. Then he turned hastily to the subject of leather soles, which can scarcely be procured, and he went on to talk of the tax relief for which he wanted to ask Albitte, and of his bow-legged son, from whom he has had no news. Then his name was called, and he took leave of us.

  We waited for hours. Sometimes I closed my eyes and leaned against Suzanne. Every time I opened them the rays of the sun came more aslant and a little redder through the window. Now there were fewer people in the room. Albitte seemed to be cutting short the interviews, for the archangel was calling out new names more often. But plenty of people who were here before us were still waiting.

  ‘I must find a husband for Julie,’ I said. ‘In the novels she reads the heroines fall in love when they are eighteen at the latest. Where did you meet Etienne, Suzanne?’

  ‘Don’t bother me now!’ Suzanne said. ‘I want to concentrate on what I must say in there.’ She glanced at the door.

  ‘If I ever have to receive people, I shall not keep them waiting. I’ll give them definite times to come, one after another, and receive them at once. This waiting is dreadful!’

  ‘What non
sense you talk, Eugenie. As if you would ever in your life – what did you call it? – be receiving people!’

  I fell silent, and grew sleepier still. Port-wine makes you gay at first, I reflected, then sad, and finally tired. But it is certainly not strengthening.

  ‘Don’t yawn, that’s rude,’ Suzanne was saying.

  ‘Oh, but we are living in a free Republic,’ I murmured sleepily, but I woke up with a start because another name had been called. Suzanne put her hand on mine. ‘It’s not our turn yet,’ she said. Her hand was still cold.

  At last I really fell fast asleep. I slept so soundly that I thought I was in bed at home. Suddenly I was disturbed by a light. I did not open my eyes; ‘Julie,’ I seemed to be saying, ‘let me sleep, I’m tired.’

  A voice said: ‘Wake up, Citoyenne.’ But I took no notice, until someone shook me by the shoulder.

  ‘Wake up, Citoyenne. You can’t go on sleeping here!’

  ‘Oh, leave me alone,’ I grumbled, but then I was suddenly wide awake. I was startled, and pushed the strange hand from my shoulder. I had no idea where I was. I was in some dark room, and a man with a lantern was bending over me. For heaven’s sake, where was I?

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, Citoyenne,’ the strange man said. His voice was soft and pleasant, but he spoke with a foreign accent which made me sure I was having a bad dream. I said I was not afraid, however; ‘but,’ I added, ‘where am I and who are you?’

  The strange man stopped shining the lantern in my face, and now that the light was closer to him I could see his features more clearly. He was a really handsome young man, with kind dark eyes, a very smooth face, and a very charming smile. He was wearing a dark suit and a cloak over it.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ the young man said politely, ‘but I’m going home, and I’m closing Deputy Albitte’s office.’

  Office? How had I got to an office? My head ached and my legs felt like lead.