Revolution (27 page)

49

A
lmost done. Almost there.

The portrait on my laptop screen fades. Malherbeau’s Concerto in A Minor continues to play. A line of text appears on the screen:

… and Malherbeau’s legacy—of its time, yet timeless—echoes down through the centuries, as much an inspiration to the Beatles as it was to Beethoven, to the White Stripes as it was to Stravinsky.

The text fades, the music stops. I save the file and close out of PowerPoint. Then I compose an e-mail to my father, attach the file, and hit
SEND
. I already e-mailed the outline. He has everything now. I’m done.

I shut off my laptop and carry my coffee cup to the kitchen. It’s Saturday night, almost eleven. I don’t know where he is. He said he’d be home late, but I didn’t think he meant this late. I was really hoping he’d read it tonight so I could get an answer from him before I went to bed. It’s good. I know it is. But I still need his say-so before I can get on that plane. I decide to wait up for him.

I go to my room, drag my suitcase out of the closet, and put most of my things into it. I find my passport and e-ticket and put them on my night table, ready for tomorrow. Then I lie down on my bed and open Alex’s diary. I plan to leave it on the table with a note for G when I go. I want to finish it first. I only have a few entries left.

21 May 1795

It rains tonight. I cannot go out. The water will ruin my rockets.

I sit at my table with pen and ink instead and a guttering candle stub. In my old room on top of the Palais-Royal. I do not like this room. There are still bloodstains on the floor from when Orléans beat me. It is dark here and cold but I dare not light a fire. I take chances enough just coming here.

The authorities took the Palais from Orléans two years ago, in ’93, the same year they killed him, and made it property of the state. They plundered it of its valuables but not my treasures. They knew not where to look for those. A few of Orléans’ old rooms are used for government business but most of the Palais is empty, its doors padlocked—though one can still get in if one knows how. There is a basement passage from the Foy to the Palais kitchens. Once spies traveled it. Intriguers. Informers. Now I use it to get to my room and the robber Benôit makes me pay him for the privilege.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

I bribed a guard at the Temple today. He told me that a doctor has been ordered to attend Louis-Charles. He can no longer stand. He will not speak or eat.

What are they, that they do this to a child—they who spoke of Liberty, Fraternity, Equality? What is this cesspit of a world that allows it?

I have my head in my hands, to stifle my sobs, when I hear it, the sound of footsteps in my room. I look up. It’s Orléans. He is standing by the fireplace, running his fingers along the mantel. His coat has begun to rot. Blood has stiffened the lace at his throat.

I wipe my eyes. Is it lonely being dead? I ask him.

Hardly.

Do you miss Paris? Is that it?

Miss it? It’s become so dreary I barely recognize it.

Then why do you return? Simply to plague me?

To urge you to leave. They close in on Fauvel. They will not arrest him. Not yet. They will use him to capture you.

I will not leave.

It is useless. You risk your life for nothing.

I risk my life for him. While he lives, there is hope. He may yet go free. Times change. Men’s hearts change.

Orléans’ laughter sounds like dead leaves on the wind.

Nothing changes except the names of the rogues in charge, he says. Tell me, sparrow, what are these pages? A last will and testament? A confession? Expiation for your many sins? What do you write in them?

An account, I tell him. A chronicle of the revolution.

Whatever for?

So that I might find an answer to all of this. It must be here. Somewhere in these pages, in all that has happened. There must be a reason for it. I shall find it out.

Another chronicle? How tedious, Orléans says. Every nobody in Paris writes a chronicle now, or worse yet, a memoir. They write, The revolution began because the king spent too much money. Or, The revolution began when the king locked the estates out of the assembly hall. But they are wrong. Do you know why it began, sparrow? No, I cannot imagine you do. You cared nothing for liberty, equality, or fraternity. You cared only for fame and wealth and would have sold your soul to get them. Would have? What am I saying? Did!

Pray, sir, leave me.

But he does not. Instead, he walks about the room, hands clasped behind his back.

If it is an answer you want, then an answer you will have, he says. I shall tell you about the revolution, sparrow. Listen closely—it had nothing to do with the king. Kings have little to do with revolutions. Revolutions are not in their best interests. It began with small things happening to small people. It began with Collot d’Herbois, the bad actor, getting booed off a stage. And Marat, the quack, getting laughed out of the Académie for his idiotic theories. It began with Fabre d’Églantine, the worst playwright in France, reading his bad reviews.

Most of all, it began with Maximilien Robespierre. Picture him at seventeen—a charity boy at Louis LeGrand, motherless and shabby amongst the sons of the rich. Well-spoken, full of ideas, he is chosen to give the school’s speech before the king and queen. It rains that day. He waits outside as etiquette demands. For an hour. Two. Four. Finally, the royals arrive. They cover their yawns as he speaks and leave the second he finishes. Cold and bedraggled, his shoes ruined, Maximilien goes back to his room and never forgets.

None of them does. They wait. For what, they do not know. But they can feel it coming. Splashed by carriage wheels, they feel it. Outside cafés looking in, they feel it. At night in their narrow beds, counting the day’s snubs and mocks, they feel it. And it thrills them.

I turn my back to Orléans but it does not silence him.

It is spring of 1789, he says. The country is bankrupt, and everywhere—on street corners and clubs, in cafés and salons—there are angry speeches, made by men with silk coats and soft hands—Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Hébert, Marat. None of these is Paris born, yet all come here. Every malcontent in France comes here, his heart packed with hurts and grudges, his head stuffed with visions of glory and revenge, and everything he has failed at in his life he lays at the feet of the king.

They are good with words, these men. They stir the people up. By summer, there are riots in the streets. The Bastille falls. The fishwives march on Versailles. And suddenly, there it is—the revolution. It promises us a new day, dawning fair. A golden age with liberty for all. And we believe those promises with all our hearts. For a little while. Before a thing called guillotine appears in the Place Louis XV. Before the tumbrels take thousands away.

Now it is after. After the revolution. After the Rights of Man. After the constitution. After the massacres. After the monarchy. After this faction and that one. After the wars. After the Terror.

We wear muslin now, not satin. We close our shoes with black ribbons instead of silver buckles and wear our hair unpowdered. We are all of us equal. The filthiest beggar is as good as a king and every whistling housepainter thinks himself Michelangelo.

But still the blade rises and falls. Still heads roll into the basket. Still an innocent suffers, locked away in a tower. Do you know why, sparrow? No? Then I shall tell you.

Because after all the shattered hopes, after all the blood and death, we woke as if from a nightmare only to find that the ugly still are not beautiful and the dull still do not sparkle. That this one sings better than that one. And he got the position I wanted. And her cow gives more milk. And they have a bigger house. And he married the girl I loved. And no writ, no bill, no law, nor declaration will ever change it.

He crosses his arms over his chest and says, There! That is my chronicle. What do you think of it?

The same as I think of you, sir—little.

Tosh! Where is the error in my account?

I picture the Tower, dark and cold. And the dying child walled up inside it. And suddenly grief is everywhere inside me. It’s as if I’ve fallen into a deep well, and sorrow, like black water, fills my mouth, my eyes, my ears. I cannot see or hear or taste anything but despair.

Speak up! Orléans barks. Where is the error?

In the beginning, I say. The part about my soul.

That is no error. That is the truth.

I raise my eyes, blind with tears, to his.

It is not, sir. It was my soul I thought to barter, yes, and gladly I’d have given it, for it is a small thing and of no value to me. But it was not my soul that was taken, no.

It was my heart.

23 May 1795

They were caught at Varennes and dragged back to Paris.

They made mistakes. How could it be otherwise? They, who had never so much as filled an inkpot, how were they to suddenly plot an escape? The queen got lost on her way to the carriage and delayed them. A wheel broke. A waiting escort was not where it was supposed to be.

They were only fifteen miles from Montmédy when they were caught. How can it be that one lost hour, a few miles, a broken wheel can topple a king, start a war, change a country forever?

A postmaster saw them at Ste-Menehould and recognized them. It was in all the broadsheets. He rode after them, overtook them at Varennes, and sounded the alarm. Soldiers were called out. The king was detained. Members of the Assembly rode to Varennes, demanding that he return to Paris. A force of six thousand—some soldiers, some citizens—saw to it that he did.

Thousands of people lined the road back to Paris to gaze upon their king. I stood among them, hoping for a glance of Louis-Charles, but did not get one. I thought the people would jeer at him as he went by, but when his carriage entered the city, all were quiet. The people stood in silence. None took off his hat. None bowed his head. All pretense was over. They knew their king wished to abandon them and their revolution and they got the idea they could abandon him, too.

In Paris, riots had broken out when it was found out that the king had escaped. People battered statues of him. They smashed signs hanging over inns and shops that showed his emblem. Their anger did not abate when he returned. There were calls for him to abdicate. Tens of thousands marched on the Assembly to demand a republic. Orléans told me to march with them, so I did, the tricolor pinned to my jacket.