Maître Tardieu had reached the end of his tether. Throwing diplomacy and caution aside, he said, “Sir. You are near bankrupt. There is no money left. I have warned you on many occasions, but you have refused to take my advice. Now I fear it is too late.”
“What! You sit at my table and have the impudence to talk to me so? How dare you!”
Maître Tardieu brought out a bundle of household accounts. “Mindless extravagance,” he said. “Thousands of candles squandered, over a hundred suits a year, half of which are never worn, not to speak of the expenditure on your garden.”
The marquis, red in the face, tried to interrupt again, but Maître Tardieu silenced him.
“There is more, and it is of even more consequence.”
He returned to the letter and read the last paragraph, in which the count inquired after Sido’s health and asked for reassurance that she was being well cared for.
At this the marquis looked most uncomfortable. The champagne, combined with his gold lace and silk embroidered suit, was making him hot, and the powder from his hair and the makeup on his face were beginning to run.
“The count ends his letter by saying that he is looking for a wife. He believes your daughter could well be suitable. If that is the case and you agree to the marriage, all your debts will be canceled. He says that an engagement at fourteen and a marriage at fifteen is what he has in mind.”
It had never occurred to the marquis that the count of all people would desire his daughter, and the idea of the man being even more closely linked to the ancient and noble family of the Villeduvals worried him. On the other hand, when he thought of his financial situation, the proposal had some merit.
“She will, of course, be married into an aristocratic family. That goes without saying,” he said.
One redeeming sentence, thought Maître Tardieu. Still, he was sure it had more to do with the marquis’s pride than his daughter’s well-being.
“And for how long do you intend to keep her imprisoned in her chamber?” asked the lawyer as his glass was filled, this time with fine claret.
“What? Do you expect me to dine with the child and have her run around under my feet? She is well cared for and out of sight.” The marquis dusted his thin, mean lips with a napkin. “I regret to say that she is most decidedly plain. Then there is her limp. She is, in my view, a broken vase, never to be made whole.”
Tardieu’s dislike of this man was growing with every remark he made. “I agree,” he said, not without a touch of irony, “that for Sido to marry the count is not ideal. His title is unfamiliar and his lineage does not, I am sure, stretch back as far as the grand and honorable name of Villeduval. But that aside, are you aware of the significance of such a marriage?”
“If you mean she will be off my hands, all well and good. Let some other soul suffer her. I have had more than enough.”
“Your father’s will—”
“What of it?” said the marquis with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The subject bores me.”
“I take it, then, that you have no objection to the fact that once your daughter is married she comes into the inheritance from her grandfather’s will, which of course her new husband will have at his disposal.”
Maître Tardieu could see that for the first time this evening he had rattled the man. Relishing the moment, he said, “Shall I read again what he says at the bottom of the letter?” He leaned forward into the light of the candles. “‘Your daughter is your greatest asset.’ Think about it, sir. She is twelve years old, so that gives you two years to find your way out of your debts and therefore be free to marry her to an aristocratic family worthy of the connection.”
The marquis looked thunderous. In all his previous dealings with Maître Tardieu, the lawyer had never spoken to him in such a manner.
“I still have my estates in Normandy,” he said loudly.
“No,” said the lawyer, “you have the right to take all the income from the land and the tenants until your daughter is married. On her wedding day they will become her property and that of her husband, Count Kalliovski.”
“Impossible! I will not allow it!” said the marquis. “How much do the estates bring in?”
“Not as much as they should. I have been reliably informed,” the lawyer continued, “that your tenants have taken flight without paying their rents. The crops have failed. Your barns have been ransacked by starving peasants. Instead of attending to these matters you have remained here and built a garden and a wall. In short, there is no money to pay off your debts, if that is what you were hoping.”
Finally the marquis understood. Of course Kalliovski would be paid back in full with this marriage. The thought was intolerable.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” he said, putting his hands over his ears. “Your sermons are putting me out of humor.”
Maître Tardieu had no intention of stopping. “There is something written at the very bottom of the letter, not in white ink but in red. Three words only. ‘Remember your wife.’”
Through the grime of his spectacles the lawyer hardly noticed the deathly pallor that had come over the marquis. He did, though, observe with interest his shaking hand.
“Write and tell him I will give his proposition some thought.”
“And what, pray, will you do if the situation in Paris worsens and there is a revolution?”
For a moment the marquis said nothing, just stared fixedly at the candle. “That is inconceivable,” he said at last. “The king will put down any such revolt.”
But for the first time he was experiencing the odd sensation of doubt. The letter that wretched little man had brought him had upset him more than he cared to admit. It wounded him to think the count should turn on him like this.
“The king has already lost his power,” the lawyer went on. “His army will not fight against its own people. The sovereignty of France now rests with the National Assembly.”
“Rubbish!” shouted the marquis.
There was a sudden din outside in the corridor. The marquis ordered Jacques, the butler, to go and investigate. He returned with the marquis’s valet, who could hardly contain his excitement.
“What is going on?” said the marquis, standing up. “Can the servants not be controlled?”
“Sir,” said Luc, “we have just received extraordinary news from Paris. The Bastille has fallen.”
“Fallen?” repeated the marquis. “What do you mean, fallen?”
“The citizens have stormed it. They fired cannons at the wall and brought it tumbling down.”
“The Bastille is no more!” said Jacques. “The governor and the provost have both been killed. Their heads are being carried through the city on pikes!” He was carried away by his enthusiasm.
“Vive la Nation!”
he cried.
The marquis collapsed on his chair.
The day the Bastille fell was the day Sido was released.
chapter fifteen
It was the Comte du Verrier who had brought the extraordinary news of the fall of the Bastille, on his way to Versailles. The poor man had taken fright and fled Paris, certain that they would all be killed in their beds if they stayed. Little did he know that three years later, as he cried like an infant, his head would be guillotined from his body.
The Comte du Verrier’s valet, Baptiste, found himself that warm July night in the kitchen of the marquis’s château in an unusual position of authority, for he alone there had borne witness to the making of history.
The marquis’s staff gathered around, dumbstruck, as he related what he had seen.
“Did you take part, then?” asked a young groom called Philippe.
“Not exactly,” said Baptiste. “I wish I could have done. For my sins, I was stuck with my master. I can tell you this, though— he was trembling when he looked out of the window and saw the crowds.”
“What was he doing in Paris when he should have been at court?” asked Luc.
“What are all men doing when they are where they shouldn’t be? Seeing their mistresses, that’s what. No doubt he had his breeches down about his stockinged ankles while the Bastille fell.” He laughed. “When he’s old and he is asked where he was on this great day, how will he account for himself, I wonder?”
“If he’s lucky enough to live that long,” muttered Jean Rollet, the chef.
“I heard cannon fire,” said Baptiste, not wanting to lose this moment in fame’s fickle flame. “I saw men and women, fearless citizens of Paris, take to the streets. I was told that they tore at the Bastille with their bare hands. They stopped the clocks and started them again to show that the world had begun afresh. You could see smoke for miles around and the sky went white with papers. I ran out and caught one, I did.” He brought a singed piece of paper out of his pocket and held it up for them all to see. “I’m going to keep this and show it to my children as proof that I was there.” He began to put it back in his pocket.
“Wait, wait!” said Luc, grabbing it from him. “Not so hasty. What does it say?” He looked uncertainly at the paper, disappointed that he was unable to read it.
His fiancée, Lucille, came forward.
“My mistress can read. Why don’t I show it to her?” she said, taking the paper and folding it up before putting it in her apron.
“Did they release hundreds of prisoners?” asked Jean.
“Seven.”
Everyone started talking at once. “Only seven!” “That’s all?” “That can’t be right.”
“The rumor on the streets was that the prison was emptied ahead of time,” said Baptiste. “They’d been tipped off about what might happen.”
“It doesn’t matter how many,” said Luc, getting to his feet. “What matters is what the Bastille stands for and the fact that the king’s army didn’t shoot at the crowd. This is the end of the old regime. Today, ladies and gentlemen, is the dawning of a new age.”
Jacques also got up from the table. “This demands champagne, for today we are all equal, we are all kings.”
The wine soon loosened everyone’s tongues and their pent-up grievances against their master.
“The truth is,” said Jacques, “that if the marquis had been half as much liked as his father—”
“Or his half brother,” interrupted Madame Gournay, the seamstress. “Now there was a nobleman who knew how to look after his servants and land.”
“Hear, hear!” They raised their glasses to the memory of Armand de Villeduval.
“I tell you this,” said Alain Grimod, the gamekeeper, “I always thought there was something not quite right about that business.”
“Now, now,” said Bernard. “No good will come of raking up the past.”
“As I was saying,” said Jacques, “if the marquis hadn’t been a tyrant and a bully, he might have won our loyalty.”
“What did he call us?” said one of the footmen. “‘Less important than the furniture and definitely less valuable.’”
“I’ll tell you this for nothing. I hate my master. He’s just a painted peacock,” said Jacques. “I say if the people can bring down such men as he, then long live the Revolution!”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Jean Rollet. “Here’s to the fall of the Bastille.”
“Well said!”
There was another loud cheer and Baptiste stood up. “Do you know what they called out on the streets? They were shouting for liberty, for all men to be equal!”
“Equality! Do you think in the future we might all be equal, men and women, servants and masters?” asked Luc.
“For all our sakes, let us hope so,” said Jean.
Upstairs, the moon shone brightly into another chamber, that of the marquis. Behind his walls with their gilded panels he could not hear the celebration below. He was not concerned one jot with the political turmoil in Paris. His thoughts were taken up by the count’s letter, which taxed him greatly.
He could not for the life of him work out what had overcome his friend, whose generosity up to that point had been faultless. Why should he so unreasonably demand his money back now? He wondered for a brief moment quite how much Sido stood to inherit. He remembered once being told the figure and had noted it only in that it could be called on at a later date. It must be a fair sum if it would cover all his debts.
On further reflection, he decided that such a proposal had a lot to recommend itself. After all, had not the queen herself been married at fourteen? And the Duchesse de Lamantes had been fifteen at the time of her wedding to that old libertine the duke. Tomorrow he would tell Maître Tardieu that he would agree to the marriage. It might not have been his first choice, but nevertheless it got rid of two unpleasant things that niggled at him—his debt and his daughter.
Lucille had come rushing into Sido’s chamber at midnight, through the secret paneled door, to rouse her mistress.
“Look, mademoiselle!” She held before her the key to the main door.
Sido, half awake, propped herself up on her elbow as Lucille lit a candle. “What are you doing?”
“Watch,” said Lucille, opening the door as if she herself were freeing a prisoner from the Bastille. “I’m sure you needn’t be confined to your chamber any longer. You’re at liberty! Isn’t that a wonderful word—liberty?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, the most exciting thing has happened! The Bastille has fallen!”
Sido was now sitting up, fully awake. For a moment she had no idea what Lucille was saying. It seemed unthinkable. The Bastille, that huge blackened fortress that sat like a rotten tooth in the mouth of Paris, gone! Impossible.
“Are you sure?”
Lucille came over to the bed and took her mistress’s hands.
“Oh yes, mademoiselle, certain. It’s the start of the Revolution. ” She was now talking so fast that the words fair skipped over themselves as she related all that she had been told.
“Here,” she said, gasping for breath, “see what Baptiste brought.” She handed Sido the piece of paper. “He said the sky went white with letters like these, thousands of them, there were. What does it say, mademoiselle?”