Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (15 page)

“He did not think this was political, Beau-père,” I said. I hated calling him that. There was nothing
beautiful
about him.

“Marie-Ann,” Maman said again.

“Maman, no one has called me that since I was a child.”

“You are acting like a child if you can’t see the ways of the world.”

“I am twenty-two, and I am Annette.”

“Marie-Ann, what Bernard is saying is that Monsieur William may not be one of us.”

“He is an educated gentleman and we are going on a walking expedition to Les Tourelles tomorrow.”

“With whom?”

“With Angelique.”

I thought the silence would explode the windows. Angelique offered no more defenses for me. She had done nobly, but I had pushed it too far with the walking expedition. I just should have kept quiet.

The Dubourgs’ footman helped Maman, Angelique, and me out of the carriage. I was the last of the women to walk into the house, and when we were out of the footman’s hearing, Monsieur Vergez turned to me.

“Do you know that Monsieur William keeps a piece of rubble from the Bastille in his room?”

“You have been in his room?”

“His landlord, Monsieur du Vivier, told me. Now what sort of souvenir is that, I ask you?”

“Quite a fascinating one, for a tourist.”

“He is not just a tourist.”

“What is he then?” I asked.

“At first I thought he was just an ignorant foreigner, a harmless poet and scholar.”

“He is all those things.”

“He is a Blue sympathizer.”

“So are a lot of educated people.”

“He is the worst of types, one who uses the privilege of his education to betray his own class.”

“He does not believe in class distinctions in the first place.”

“He is a dangerous man, and I forbid you to see him.”

“What harm can he do?”

“He will fill you with treasonous ideas.”

“Against whom?”

“Against your own people.”

“This is not an argument against Monsieur William.”

“I know his type. He thinks a glorious new age has dawned, but he knows nothing. He thinks the high price of bread was a plot of the wealthy, to starve the poor. He does not know it was because of the winter. Ideals do not know about winters. The Loire itself froze.”

“Beau-père, this has nothing to do with Monsieur William.”

“He will fill you with false ideals.”

“I can take care of myself. And I do not care about politics.”

“Then what
do
you care about?”

“People.”

“You are a dangerous one.”

“Why?”

“Because you do not take sides.”

“I do not understand you men, with your all-important
sides
.”

“Angelique understands about sides.”

“She was agreeing with me.”

“And do not pull Angelique into any more of your wild schemes. She is a good girl.”

“And what am I?”

He shook his head and walked down the dim hall, lit only with sconces at this time of night. If one chose a side, one knew who was right and who was not. I slipped back out to the carriage entrance.

The cold air felt good on my face. The trees showed the stars through their bare branches and I could make out Orion. It felt good to walk outside. Monsieur Vergez’s was a small world. Out here, there were no sides.

I didn’t know if I would ever see Monsieur William again.

After Epiphany, traditionally, we made the return journey to Blois. This year, however, Monsieur Vergez had an important case and was the only one who insisted on returning right away.

Paul had business to do with wine merchants in Orléans, and Maman wanted to visit more with Madame Dubourg. So it was decided that, for the sake of space in the carriages, my stepfather would return first with Marguerite and the children, and Paul would join Maman, Angelique, and me later.

But Marguerite cornered me and confessed she dreaded spending so long in a carriage with our jolly stepfather; she knew he was not naturally disposed to the company of children, so could I ride with them? There was room now, with Paul bringing some of the family baggage later. I couldn’t easily say, even to Marguerite, “I’m happy to stay in Orléans longer so I can clandestinely meet Monsieur William,” especially since she added that the children wanted my company, so I bid adieu to the Englishman in my mind, thinking, There are a thousand reasons why he is not for me, and moreover, I do not want to disturb my simple life of self-sufficient happiness. But I also thought I owed him a parting note, telling him that I had found his company agreeable and wishing him well with his travels and with his poetry. I wrote that I expected to hear of him in the future, and sent the letter via the Dubourgs’ footman to the shops owned by Monsieur du Vivier on the rue Royale.

Early the next morning I said good-bye to my dear Etienne and, acting the role of the older sister, reminded him to be prudent in the company he kept in such a volatile and unpredictable place as Paris.

He answered in the manner of an invincible young man that he and a friend had witnessed the riots on the Champ-de-Mars in July, and nothing had happened to him. When I told him fifty people had been killed in that riot, and accompanied it with a savage look, he promised that he would cloister himself most righteously and study like a monk for the rest of the year, and we kissed good-bye, but not before I added that I treasured his watch and thought of him every time I checked it, which was often, even though I had nowhere to go.

As I stepped into the carriage, a messenger hastened up to me, inquiring if I were Mademoiselle Vallon and presenting me with a note (Monsieur William must have described me to him—I wondered what words he chose?). I held it folded tightly in my hand as Monsieur Vergez settled himself on the horsehair cushions opposite, glaring at the excited children. I had determined to open the letter only after we left the city, but my fingers found their way beneath the seal before we left the thronging rue Royale.

I leaned toward the window for better light as we rode up the busy street, and as I read, I wondered if we could at that moment be passing beneath the window of the room above the hatter’s and hosier’s shop, where Monsieur William, in the same moment, might lift his eyes from his mountain verses and, in a happy accident, glance out the window as our carriage drove by. And neither of us would ever know that that moment took place.

He had told me that sometimes he spent the entire morning on one or two lines, but it would be worth it if he got them right. He was always happy when I met him in the afternoon after he had a good morning of writing. He said walking with me by the river was his reward for that work.

Now I looked at the cramped handwriting; he must have written swiftly. He wrote that he would treasure our time by the Loire, with the noisy bargemen coming and going, and that especially he liked talking with me about Plato’s cave in the cave of the vicomte’s grand salon! He wrote, Where else would I find such agreeable conversation? He had decided to enclose the last translation he had read for me. It was fitting, he wrote, because it had a tone of departure.

...Adieu

To every charm, and chief to you,

Ye lovely maidens that in noontide shade

Rest near your little plots of wheaten glade;

To all that binds the soul in powerless trance;

Lip-dewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance.

I considered his line about the soul bound
in powerless trance
, a felicitous turn of phrase to receive, and one seemingly in great contrast with the courteous gentleman of our walks. What was the poet’s intensity that lay buried beneath polite convention? The ardor that only found its way into the written word?

Monsieur Vergez and Gérard fell asleep; I played whist with Marguerite and Marie (I played two of the four hands, and no one minded who won); then my sister rested and, while gray and brown and white landscape rolled by, I read to Marie about the month of May from the
Romance of the Rose
:

Hard is the heart that loveth not

In May when mirth calls from hillsides

And from each branch where birds sing clear,

In this season so delicious

When love wakes from slumber all things.

“Why do poets write so much about love?” Marie said.

“I don’t know; I suppose because it’s an emotion that excites them, like the feeling of spring; the fellow in this poem is now going to get his hounds and go out to the forest to greet the May.”

“Have you ever been in love, Aunt Annette?”

“Yes, long ago, when you were a little girl. But it wasn’t with the right person. That’s the tricky thing. On that depends all.”

“How can you tell who the right one is?”

I could leave this unanswered and tell her she ’d find out on her own, but why not try to answer a child’s sincere question? I thought.

Many adults don’t answer children’s questions simply because they’ve never considered the answers fully enough themselves.

“I think the key is happiness. One makes the other happy; one is made happy by the other. I think everything else is false. That doesn’t mean love is simple. That doesn’t mean it’s not without its obstacles and trials. It means that making the other happy is the most important thing for both. I myself thought I once knew this, but I was deceived. That is why I have never married, why I prefer the company of you and your brother. I still believe that it exists. Your parents know it, I believe. Poets write about it. Poets know things others don’t know, or rather, they, because of their unique vocation, are sensible of truths that others overlook. I would always believe the poets, even before I’d believe the philosophers.”

Her little face regarded me with great seriousness and a little perplexity. “Here’s another poem for you,” I said.

And I read aloud Monsieur William’s lines about the Italian maidens. “What’s the main emotion you sense in these words?”

“Sorrow. And joy. More joy than sorrow.”

“I think so too. It’s the joy of that
ringlet-tossing dance.
Poets help us see what’s important in life: perhaps it is the moment in spring when the world seems to be in love; perhaps it is the moment of departure from...loved ones; perhaps it is the moment of the dance.”

“Who’s that last poem by?”

“An Englishman. A friend of mine.”

“You know a poet? Did he write that for you?”

“Just someone I met at Orléans. And no, he wrote it about someone else. But he gave it to me.”

“I would like a poet to give lines to me sometime.”

“That may happen. And if it does, make sure you write them in your journal. Even if the poet goes, his lines will remain. Now, would you like to help me make up a traveling story? I’ll start:
There once was a hermit who lived in the snowy woods—
”

“You mean the woods outside Orléans where Papa says brigands live now, and no one can use that road?”

“No, this is a forest of the imagination. It is not near Orléans. It is far away, in the north of England, near a place called
Windermere
.”

Since chez Dubourg insisted on providing us with servants, Claudette had enjoyed a holiday at chez Vallon, which was now called chez Vergez, but as I couldn’t bring myself to call it that then, I shall not call it that now that I write about it. I looked forward to seeing Claudette again. There were things I wanted to talk to her about. I was surprised that it was not the solemn André, Monsieur Vergez’s footman, but Benoît, the count’s groom and the beau of Claudette, who opened the door of my childhood home. Monsieur Vergez hardly glanced at Benoît as he motioned for him to take his bags; he didn’t care who it was, as long as he was a servant. Benoît gave me a sheepish grin, for he knew I knew of his relations with my maidservant.

While the cat’s away..., I thought.

“I’m giving old André a holiday,” he said. “He needs one. The count is in Tours, visiting his wife and son.”

“Don’t his horses still need looking after?” I asked.

“I had my
assistant
”—he said the word very grandly—“help for a day or so. And the count said I should exercise his stallion, so I rode him here.” He picked up Vergez’s heavy bags. “The count is inviting your family to come to the Sunday-after-Epiphany dinner. He said he and your family had them together for many years. He said you don’t need to reply; if no one can come, he ’ll just eat more.”

“The roads were fine?” I asked him.

“You mean the mud?”

“They were safe?”

“Where is that blasted stable boy?” We heard Monsieur Vergez from upstairs.

“I’m a groom at a château, not a
stable boy,
” Benoît said back, to me only. “The roads are always safe for me.” He carried the bags up the stairs.

The invitation delighted me. Those were fine dinners, fine days.

Setting off in the family carriage in the morning, I’d open my window and smell the winter woods on the way to the château de Beauregard.

I’d hear an axe up an alley through the trees, see the smoke of a house.

We visited the count less and less now. Monsieur Vergez considered the roads risky with the occasional appearances of brigands, and the count wasn’t
his
friend anyway. Sunday was in three days’ time, still before Maman and Angelique were due home, and I thought I might just ride to the château myself.

I carried my valise up the stairs, and Claudette appeared in the hall, without her apron and with her hair down. “Mademoiselle is early returning. Did you have a fine time in Orléans?”

“Yes, and you in Blois?”

“It was very dull. Just the servants at chez Vergez, and they are not any fun. Until Benoît came.” She smiled at me.

We were in my room now, and Claudette was unpacking my things.

Benoît came in, built up the fire, and left.

“I saw that wink,” I said. “Benoît is not very subtle. Are you going to leave me and become the wife of the groom of the château de Beauregard?”

“Not I, Mademoiselle. I have a much better position here.” She pulled a bell rope, and Benoît appeared again at the door. “Have Cook prepare Mademoiselle a tisane and bring it up here.” She closed the door. “You see, I have it immensely easy.” She was helping me out of my traveling clothes and draping them on a chair. I pulled William’s letter out of a pocket.