Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  Baronne Lomont was kneeling at the prie-dieu and the priest was in front of the altar. When Lili and Delphine entered, he helped the baroness to her feet. Her face in the dim candlelight was gray and swollen. “Maman?” Delphine whimpered. “Is there news?”

  “Your mother has taken to bed,” the baroness replied. “She is not feeling well, but she says she is certain it can be attributed to exhaustion.”

  “I’m on my way to see if I can get some information from the valet,” the priest said. “I was waiting for you to arrive because the baroness thought you might be comforted by the sacrament. Of course to receive it I would have to hear your confession and absolve your sins.”

  Lili stepped back, aghast. Confess my sins now? How can I even think of what they are, with Maman in a house with cholera?

  Delphine nodded her head. “I would like that,” she murmured. The priest nodded his head. “Of course this must be done privately, so come with me.” He turned to Lili. “And you, mademoiselle?”

  You are the last person in the world I would tell my secrets to, she thought with a shudder. Despite the promise of confidentiality, that simpering little priest would find a way to tell the baroness anything he thought she needed to know. “I’d rather just stay here and pray alone,” she replied. He arched his eyebrows and looked at the baroness, whose expression was hidden in the gloomy light of the chapel.

  “Very well,” he said, leading Delphine into the parlor.

  Lili sat on the bench and crossed herself. Though she tried to focus on God in the dark and airless chapel, a swirl of memories flooded her mind. Don’t cry into your napkin, ma chérie—It would make the baroness truly furious … Your thoughts are the most beautiful thing about you … What are you so afraid of, that the mere presence of a book inside your walls makes you do this to a young girl? … You are going to require an accomplice to have the life you want, and that will require a search worthy of the daughter of the woman who bore you … Meadowlark is your voice—don’t you want it to be heard?… I’m curious why you haven’t asked me how I knew what had happened to you at the abbey …

  “You were always watching over me,” Lili whispered, remembering what she had told Maman so many years ago as she rode away for the last time from the Abbaye de Panthémont. She pulled herself up and held her breath, praying with all her heart that Maman would be strong, that she would get well, and that life would resume just as it was.

  When I was young, I used to pray for this and that, but now I know the most important thing to wish for is that I will have the grace and good character to handle whatever comes … Lili trembled, hoping that she would not need to put Maman’s advice to use quite so soon.

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER a note arrived from the priest. “Madame de Bercy is afflicted with cholera,” he wrote, “but so far the symptoms do not appear particularly severe. I will send news again this evening.”

  In the middle of the afternoon, after picking at an austere dinner, Lili and Delphine went to their rooms to try to rest. As the long summer dusk dragged on, they were summoned by Baronne Lomont. “One of the servants died an hour ago,” she said, “and Madame de Bercy is gravely ill.”

  In the windowless chapel they sat with no idea of the passage of time. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,” they recited as rosary beads slipped through the baroness’s fingers. And then, just as they finished, they heard the sound of footsteps at the door. The valet’s face was grave as the baroness took the letter from the small silver tray he carried.

  Lili held a shaking Delphine up by the waist as Baronne Lomont read the letter silently. She refolded it before speaking. “She is unconscious and has been given last rites,” the baroness said, handing the letter to Delphine. “She will not last the night.”

  “She can’t die,” Delphine whispered. “There just isn’t a world without her.”

  WHEN THE TAILORS came to Hôtel Lomont to fit them for their mourning wardrobes, Lili and Delphine stared straight ahead, allowing the tailors to lift an arm or reposition a hip as if they were not inhabiting their bodies at all. Delphine’s marriage had been postponed, and since it was out of the question for unmarried women to live alone at Hôtel Bercy, she would be leaving for the Abbaye de Panthémont after the funeral. There she would live in private quarters until her wedding the following spring. Lili would stay with Baronne Lomont until she could be married.

  Robert de Barras was one of the first to pay a visit of condolence at Hôtel Lomont. His cheeks showed signs of color and his voice seemed oddly loud. He’s in his element around death, Lili thought, heaping onto him all the rage in her heart at the unfairness of his being alive while beautiful, vibrant Maman would never charm a guest in her salon again, or offer a scented handkerchief to wipe away Delphine’s and her tears, or pat their knees with a loving smile.

  The night of the funeral, Lili awoke to find Delphine crawling into bed next to her. They sobbed in each other’s arms until the first light ushered them into restless sleep.

  THE HEAT from the forge was so intense that Emilie stepped back, pulling her ten-year-old son with her. “Don’t get so close, mon cheri!”

  “But I want to watch with Papa!” Florent-Louis whined, pulling away and grabbing the hand of the Marquis du Châtelet. Voltaire stood next to him, shouting orders over the roar of the flames. With a sigh, Emilie came to stand with them, mopping her face delicately to avoid smearing her makeup. The beauty mark pasted on her cheek slid off into her handkerchief, and she scowled at it.

  “Can’t he see this is pointless?” she whispered to herself. “Can anyone really be that stubborn?” The Academy of Sciences had offered a prize for the best essay on the nature of fire, and as the August deadline loomed, Voltaire was in a frenzy, trying to prove that light and heat were forms of matter by weighing and calculating their mass. Iron and lead were incessantly heated and cooled in the foundry at Cirey. Perfectly measured quantities of wood were burned to see if they expanded before being reduced to ash. Emilie was tired of it all. “Pointless!” she muttered again.

  A few weeks earlier, she had stalked away from her husband, who, like everyone else, seemed to think that fire, smoke, and noise must equal science, and that Voltaire’s wildly waving arms and shouted demands were signs of a genius at work. “Why don’t you just burn down the forest and measure that?” she had said, and then, to her astonishment, Voltaire called that an inspired idea. While servants stood at the ready with buckets of water, he and the marquis had set a small forest fire to calculate how quickly the flames spread. And then, when Voltaire couldn’t interpret the results, they had done the experiment again with a new patch of trees.

  “It must work next time,” Voltaire said of each experiment as they discussed it over dinner. “It has to! I’m not just a writer, you know!”

  It was easier to go along. After all, Voltaire was the only truly interesting thing in her life, even when he was being a fool.

  “I’m not feeling well in this heat,” Emilie said, turning away from the forge. “I’m going back to the house to rest. You can tell me about it at dinner.”

  “Can I stay, Maman?” Florent-Louis said, jumping up and down. “Please?”

  Emilie smiled. “As long as you mind your father.”

  “This is really no place for a woman,” the marquis said, putting his arm around his son’s shoulder. “We’ll see you in a few hours.”

  “This is really no place for a scientist,” she muttered as she untied and mounted her horse. “Perhaps when results make no sense, you ought to examine your assumptions, Monsieur Voltaire. Don’t you think so, Hirondelle?” she said, rubbing the mare’s neck. Hirondelle shuddered, and Emilie laughed. With a light touch of her heels, she sent the horse in a fast trot down the path to the château.

  She was a better scientist than Voltaire was, but since she couldn’t hope to be taken seriously, she would have to satisfy herself with trying to get him to give up notions so foolish they
would embarrass him later. Like heat having mass. He’d burned everything he could get his hands on and gotten such conflicting results, he’d never be able to demonstrate anything persuasive to the Academy.

  But how can heat have no substance? Something was scorching her face back at the forge, and how can something be nothing? Emilie rode through the dappled light of the forest, oblivious to everything as she pondered the question.

  Reaching the forest edge, she winced at the sudden intensity of the light reflecting off the golden fields in front of her. Then, with a gasp, she put her hands to both sides of her head and her eyes widened. “It’s so obvious!”

  She dug in her heels to send Hirondelle into a gallop. Only two weeks remained before the Academy’s deadline, two weeks to get her own essay finished and into the mail coach bound for Paris.

  1766

  IN THE summer heat, among fears of an epidemic, Julie de Bercy was buried quickly and unceremoniously in a family plot outside the city. A few weeks later, when danger of wider contagion in the city had passed, a requiem mass was said for her soul at Notre-Dame, with music composed by François-André Danican Philidor.

  “Not a large crowd,” the Comte de Buffon pointed out to Lili as they filed out, “but quite an illustrious one.” Among the mourners were Denis Diderot and most of Julie’s regular guests at her salon, as well as Madames Lespinasse and Geoffrin, two of Julie’s rival sa-lonnières. Queen Marie Leszczynska offered condolences in a letter and sent two of her daughters to represent her. They arrived with the Duchesse de Praslin, who, much to Lili and Delphine’s relief, had come without Anne-Mathilde. The Comtesse d’Étoges attended with Ambroise, who supported Delphine as she went with trembling steps to receive the sacrament. Lili followed mechanically on the arm of Baronne Lomont.

  The mercier was there, and the dressmaker and milliner too, dabbing tears at the loss of someone who looked them in the eye and always paid her bills. They disappeared back to their shops after the mass, most with just a nod in Lili and Delphine’s direction. Private carriages took the family and close friends to the Jardin de Roi, where the Comte de Buffon had invited them to a somber dinner.

  Delphine went in the carriage of the Comte d’Étoges, leaving Lili to travel alone with Baronne Lomont. Thank God Monsieur Barras isn’t invited, Lili thought, shuddering at the thought of his mournful, cloying look when he talked about his dead wife. Clarisse this, Clarisse that, as if Maman scarcely matters even when she’s the one newly dead. Lili felt a sudden wave of exhaustion. Slumping into a corner of the carriage, she shut her eyes.

  “You should not sit in that manner when you are being observed by others,” the baroness said, “even if I am the only person to see you.”

  Lili opened her eyes but did not move. “Maman is dead, Baronne,” she said. “Surely I am permitted some show of grief?”

  “You will, of course, be forgiven almost anything right now, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be talked about. It’s at times like this that a lady’s character is most clearly observed.”

  Lili sat up and stared ahead, avoiding the baroness’s eyes. “You should not consider yourself excused from pleasant conversations simply because you are privately sorrowful,” she went on. “You should view yourself as the hostess at the Comte de Buffon’s dinner, if you wish talk of you to be favorable. And you most certainly need that in your circumstances …”

  Lili had stopped listening. Dead. Buried. Gone. She and Delphine had not been permitted to see the body out of fears of lingering contagion, and she still didn’t quite believe that Maman wasn’t simply away somewhere. There had been no time yet even to visit her grave. Perhaps Maman would be waiting outside the Jardin de Roi to run to them and tell them it had all been a mistake, that someone else was buried in her coffin, that she had just been visiting a friend and was sorry she had frightened them.

  The carriage slowed to a stop. “Are we clear then?” the baroness asked.

  She must have been lecturing me the whole time, Lili realized. “Oui, madame,” she said, knowing it was always best to agree with the baroness even when she had no idea what she had said.

  * * *

  “AND HERE’S WHERE I drew my sketches,” Delphine said to Ambroise as she showed him the greenhouse after dinner. A wilted tone in her voice and a hesitancy of step as she clung to Ambroise’s arm were the only signs that Delphine was suffering, and only those who knew Delphine’s natural gaiety would notice even that.

  Lili hung back behind them, wanting a moment to herself. How odd it is to be here, she thought, taking in the chirps and trills of the birds. Death had swallowed up Maman, but here in this world so full of life, not a creature knew she had existed.

  Tatou screamed, rattling the bars of his cage, and a flood of affection came over Lili for the little capuchin monkey, blessed with a life so innocent and simple. He doesn’t know I’m sad, she thought. He doesn’t understand why he’s still in his cage now that I’m here. She draped a cloth over her shoulder and opened the door. Tatou scrambled up her outstretched arm and took his seat on the cloth.

  “Do you miss Jean-Étienne as much as I do?” she asked, as tears swelled her throat. Tatou met her gaze and cocked his head. “Yes, you know who I mean, don’t you?” He gave a single soft cry. “But you still have the count,” she said, scratching behind the monkey’s tiny ear. “He’s rather like a papa to both of us, isn’t he?”

  She looked around at the only place that felt like home now. Hôtel Bercy was a tomb, every room waiting to ambush her with memories, and Hôtel Lomont was as arid and bleak as a desert. If I could just spend some time here, I think I might heal…

  Delphine’s loud cry startled Lili, and Lili rushed to her where she was standing beside the pink mantis cage. “It’s dead,” Delphine sobbed. “I wanted to show Ambroise, and it’s dead.”

  Stiff, and smaller in death, the mantis lay beneath its perch. Delphine buried her head in Ambroise’s coat. Her shoulders heaved and her voice came out in huge, gulping sobs. Lili stood watching alone, hands at her sides, as the monkey’s insistent shrieks rang in her ears.

  There’s nothing but death, Lili thought. Nothing would ever be good again, whole again, bright again. “Nothing,” she whispered. Nothing.

  1767

  “OF COURSE I must insist that he accede to my wishes.” Baronne Lomont placed the newly arrived letter back on the tray. “You may read it yourself if you like.”

  Lili’s hand trembled as she unfolded the stiff, cream-colored paper and laid eyes on the familiar, meticulous hand.

  I would be greatly indebted to you if you would permit Mademoiselle du Châtelet to visit me at the Jardin de Roi now that a suitable period of mourning has passed. Her assistance is most valuable to me. I trust that, on the occasion of the dinner after Madame de Bercy’s funeral, you had opportunity to observe that the Jardin de Roi is an appropriately salutary environment for a young woman, and I assure you she would always be directly in my care. If it is agreeable to her and to you to resume her work, I will be most gratified.

  My best regards to you and to

  Mesdemoiselles du Châtelet and Bercy,

  Georges-Louis Leclerc

  Comte de Buffon

  “You are quite correct in that.” Robert de Barras gave the baroness a somber nod of his head. “It is indeed most unseemly.”

  Lili bristled. What right has he to say anything about me? she thought. And not even to look at me while he does it.

  “Of course you understand, I assume, why the Comte de Buf-fon’s request must be refused, do you not?” the baroness asked Lili. “Six months is a suitable period of mourning for some things, as he says, but it serves no purpose at all for you to waste your time in that fashion.”

  “And if I may be so bold as to presume that you will soon honor me by accepting my proposal,” Barras said, finally looking at her. He brought life to his face with a haughty arch of his eyebrows. “I want to make most clear that your responsibilities at home would ma
ke such outside interests impossible to maintain.”

  Were you both born dead or did you smother yourselves willingly to have people approve of you? Lili battled to keep herself under control. It had been bad enough when she had come from Hôtel Bercy to visit, but in the dreary half a year she had lived with Baronne Lomont, she had never heard laughter, never heard anyone express a thought except to disparage someone else’s, never glimpsed joy in being alive.

  She took in a deep breath before responding. “I have given no consideration to your proposal,” she said, despising the quaver in her voice. “And I find it most unpleasant to be talked about in this fashion.”

  “My dear, it is my home, and I shall talk as I wish.” Baronne Lomont rang a bell and a servant appeared. “Please lay out some writing paper and make sure there is ink in my well,” she said, casting a glance in Lili’s direction. “I have several letters I must write this afternoon. And now, I would ask you both to excuse me. The tenor of this conversation is most distressing and I prefer to be alone.”

  Lili stood up. “I am sorry if you find my behavior disrespectful, Baronne,” she said, “and I am grateful for your generosity in taking me in, but I do not feel I am obligated to show my appreciation by marrying Monsieur de Barras.” She turned to him. “I do not feel we could live harmoniously, and I will not marry you, now or ever.” She made a quick, stiff curtsey, in the direction of first one and then the other, and stalked out.

  Be angry with me. I don’t care, Lili thought. I hate being so strident, but she forces me to be something I’m not.

  She leaned against a wall in an alcove off the hallway and felt the cool air calm her face. “Deformity,” she whispered, remembering what Rousseau had once said to her. It’s my right to resist being deformed to match what Baronne Lomont and that awful man want.