“For one thing, I never imagined that it would reach you so soon. I still do not know how it did. Perhaps I thought that you would accept her as you have had the patience to accept the others. It never occurred to me that you would leave me. I was so arrogant, so blind.” He sighed. “And I remained blind even after you left me. I was thunderstruck when I discovered your disappearance, but over the following days I convinced myself that you would accept to see me under the Duchess’s roof and listen to reason, meaning to me.”
He ran his hand over his eyes. “In time I realized that you did not show any signs of relenting. I came to understand that I had indeed lost you. Oh, Belle, it was as if the ground had opened beneath my feet. I know that Lauzun has been calling on you. Even the idea that he can see you, speak to you, touch your hand while I cannot is unbearable. I would like to kill him for that alone.” Villers paused. “I have even pictured you yielding to him to take your revenge.”
“I would never demean myself by becoming someone’s mistress only to spite you.”
Villers looked into my eyes. “Are you telling me that nothing ever happened between you and Lauzun?”
“Nothing. It is none of your concern anymore, but I know the pain of jealousy. I do not wish to inflict it needlessly on anyone, not even you.”
“Do you love him?”
“You have no right to ask.”
“I know, but please put an end to this part of my torment. Do you love him?”
I looked away. “No, I do not.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Thank you, Belle. You are the soul of kindness. You could have punished me by letting me believe the worst.” He paused. “Oh, Belle, you give me hope. More hope than I had allowed myself in weeks. Even if there is nothing left of the feelings you had for me, all may not be lost. I can become worthy of you. My conduct will change; it has changed already. I have not touched a woman since that horrible night when you left me. I already relinquished all rights to my little house, without any regret. I no longer have any other mistresses, nor will there be any in the future.”
“I do not trust you.”
“Whatever my faults, have I ever breached a promise to you? And I know what I want now. If I were so fortunate as to secure your forgiveness, I would not risk losing you again. Losing you is as close to hell as I can imagine. The only thing that still matters to me is to call on the Duchess every day. I talk of you with her, and I can feel your presence. I know that you are there, only a few rooms away, so close and yet unreachable. I kept one of your chemises, Belle. I could not bring myself to send it to you with the rest of your things. It still smells of you, of your fragrance. I sleep with it every night, or rather I go to bed with it because I can no longer sleep. It drives me insane because it reminds me so vividly of you. Yet it is better than not having any memento of you with me. Oh, Belle, I miss you so.”
“You have brought all of this misery upon yourself.”
His eyes were red. He was biting his upper lip, his chin quivering. “True. I deserve every part of this punishment, harsh as it is. I am not appealing to your sense of justice, I am begging for mercy. Come back to me, Belle, if only out of pity. I should be able to inspire at least that feeling.”
Now tears were rolling down his cheeks. I had never seen a man weep and was too embarrassed to say a word.
“I will do everything to regain your affections,” he continued in a halting voice. “You may put any conditions upon your return. I will agree to anything. I disgust you, I know. I will stay away from your bed. I will sleep on a couch, on the floor, in another room. Please come back.”
I opened my mouth, more in dismay than to speak.
“Oh, Belle, you are going to say no. Wait. Do not say anything.”
I kept silent.
“At least allow me to see you,” he continued. “Come and ride with me in Vaucelles, as you used to do. Or if you do not want to be alone with me, let me speak to you under the Duchess’s roof, in her presence. Please, Belle. Anything.”
He hid his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaken by muffled sobs. I found this sight unbearable. I had to put an end to the conversation.
“You may call on the Duchess tomorrow morning,” I said. “I will see you then. You must leave now.”
Suddenly, with a look of violent emotion on his face, he rose. I recoiled at the idea of the scene that would follow if I let him move closer. I raised my hand.
“No,” I said. “Leave now.”
He seemed to make an effort to regain his composure. Then, after one long look at me, he bowed and turned away. I watched him walk slowly towards the gate.
I hurried back to the cottage. Fortunately Villers’s visit had gone unnoticed by Aimée, who was still exploring the treasures of the attic. She had often asked in a worried tone whether he had died like her papa. I hastened our return to Paris. The cottage did not seem so appealing to me now.
I went to bed that night painfully uncertain of my feelings. The Duchess had told me that Villers was distraught over our separation, but the intensity of his sorrow had shocked me. Perhaps I still cared for him. Yet I regretted my promise. I did not wish to see him the next day.
I received him in the presence of the Duchess. A more awkward visit cannot be imagined. Neither he nor I had anything to say. After a few obligatory sentences, he was content to look at me. I could feel his gaze fixed upon me. I avoided his eye by staring out the window at the creeping vines, which had now turned bright red on the back wall of the garden. The poor Duchess had to bear unaided the burden of the conversation. After ten minutes of that torture, she seemed to have run out of topics, I could not think of any and Villers still gave no signs of leaving. I lost patience and put an end to everyone’s misery by rising.
“Your Grace will remember that we promised to call on Madame de Bastide,” I said.
“Oh yes, dear. My memory is not what it used to be. You must excuse us, Villers.”
He had to rise but still was not taking his leave.
“Would Your Grace…,” he said at last. His voice failed him. He cleared his throat. “Would Your Grace, with Madame de Peyre and her daughter, do me the honour of sharing my luncheon on Tuesday at Vaucelles?”
“Well, this is kind of you. Belle, do you remember whether we have any engagement on that day?”
I turned away and made no response. So was his invitation accepted.
Lauzun, either because he was not to be discouraged or because he valued my friendship as much as he said, would still visit me. He was no longer called by that name, though I continued to use it. His uncle the Marshal Duke de Biron had died and left him his title and fortune.
“In addition,” I told the Duchess, “he will be appointed Colonel of the French Guards in replacement of the late Marshal.”
“Unfortunately not. Everything seemed to make Lauzun, or the Duke de Biron, as we should call him now, the obvious choice: his kinship with the Marshal, his distinguished career during the American war, his popularity with the troops. This is not to be, however. I heard this morning that the Duke du Châtelet has already been appointed Colonel of the French Guards. I need not tell you, Belle, from what quarter that blow came. The Queen herself opposed Lauzun’s appointment. She must still be incensed over what she perceived as his desertion of her years ago. It is an affront of the first gravity to our friend, and a mistake too. What an idea to pick a brute like the Duke du Châtelet!”
Villers repeated the previous year’s courtship, only sadder and laden with memories of happy and unhappy times. During a visit to Vaucelles on a foggy December afternoon, he helped me into the saddle and adjusted my foot in the stirrup. He gently uncovered my ankle. He caressed it through the silk stocking and pressed his lips to it. Still holding it, he contemplated it for a long time. At last he raised his eyes to my face.
“Have mercy, Belle,” he said. “Please come back to me.”
My anger had long subsided. It had been replaced by pity and so
me return of the affection I had felt for him. I relented.
When I arrived at my lodgings after an absence of three months, I was startled to find the place full of fresh flowers in spite of the late season. The hot houses of Vaucelles must have been looted to achieve such a display. The paneling in the drawing room had been painted blue and white, in the manner of the English porcelains I liked. The dining parlour was freshly wallpapered in a trompe l’œil motif of windows overlooking Roman ruins and the Mediterranean Sea. I was reminded of the plans Villers and I had once made to travel to Italy to visit such sights. In my bedroom the drapes, upholstery and bed curtains were now of white silk embroidered with butterflies and flowers in various shades of bright pink. Villers had remembered that it was my favourite colour. A red leather case waited for me on the dressing table. I removed my glove and let my fingertips brush against it before I opened it. It contained seven strands of the most beautiful pearls.
Only whispered expressions of surprise passed my lips. I turned towards Villers. He was silent, gazing at me in a shy manner, as if unsure of my approval. That moved me more than any gift, more than all of his preparations for my return. I held out my hand to him. He dropped to his knees to kiss it.
Within a week of my return to Rue Saint-Dominique, Villers was restored to all of his former privileges, which he resumed with a frightening ardor. Perhaps he had not lied when he had said that he had shunned female company during my absence.
43
It was decided by the end of 1788 that the Estates General would be called in May of the following year. The price of bread, due to the meager harvest, had risen beyond the means of the poorest. The Parliament of Paris opened an investigation into the causes of the increase, without any result other than fueling the wildest rumours about the Queen’s schemes to starve the people.
Nonetheless the news of the upcoming election was greeted with a tide of enthusiasm and the three Orders, the Clergy, the Nobility and the Third Estate, talked of little else. All began drafting the famous cahiers de doléances, “booklets of complaints,” in which they set forth the unfairness of the current regime and the remedies they wished their representatives to implement.
All the talk was of the drafting of a Constitution for the Kingdom. The founding fathers of the young United States had written one the year before, but it was generally acknowledged that such a form of government was only suitable for smaller, less populated countries and could never be adapted to France, with her twenty-six million inhabitants.
Most reform-minded thinkers argued that the British model ought to be followed, with a King enjoying limited powers, and a dual Parliament. The higher chamber, similar to the House of Lords, could be assembled from a reunion of the Nobility and Clergy, and a House of Commons would be derived from the Third Estate. Villers and Lauzun often discussed the fact that, for the first time, French noblemen could aspire to hold public office not on the sole basis of royal favour, but thanks to the suffrage of their peers.
Villers proposed another journey to Normandy, to which I agreed. Our rides by the sea, under the light snows of January, sealed our reconciliation.
“I have been thinking, Belle, of becoming a candidate for the representation of the nobility of Normandy,” he said one day on the beach of Saint-Laurent. “But I will not decide on it without your approval.”
“It is an excellent idea, my dear. I will be happy to return here with you at the time of the election. Or, if you prefer not to be seen with me then, you may also come back by yourself. You would not want to be accused of immorality for flaunting your mistress before your constituents.”
“It is out of the question to leave you in Paris, Belle. I never want to be separated from you again. The nobility of Normandy will take me or leave me with whatever morality I can muster.”
His new life with me, happy as it seemed to make him, must have felt a bit dull. Nothing of a serious nature had occupied him since he had left the army years earlier. Now everyone sensed that great changes were in store for France. These times were heady, for Villers and other noblemen as well as for commoners. Politics was open to all. It would provide a fresh outlet to his energy and intelligence.
Villers remained full of attentions during the rest of our stay in Dampierre. On our last night there, our embrace was more tender than ever. We found comfort in each other’s arms. I fell asleep, content to feel him by my side.
I was awakened by a furious pull on my waist. My lips were forced open by other lips. I heard incoherent words, speaking of insatiable yearning, whispered in my ear by a hoarse voice. Heavy with sleep, I half opened my eyes. It was Villers’s voice, his hands, his lips. In the hearth the fire had crumbled into a heap of whistling embers, glowing red. It must have been the early hours of the morning. I moaned, still drowsy.
Suddenly I was wide awake. He was already upon me, inside me. He had not given me time to take our usual precautions.
I pushed him away. “What are you doing? Do you want me to become pregnant?”
He kissed me wildly. “Oh, I do,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “Belle, my Belle, I want a child by you. I want it more than anything.”
I stared at him. “I have no intention of being disgraced to satisfy a whim of yours.”
“I will not disgrace you, my love. I will marry you. I will have the banns published tomorrow. Please.” He pulled me close again. “I beg you, Belle. Let me take you like this.”
“I cannot. The loss of my little boy left me dreadful memories. I do not wish for another child.” I ran my hand on his face. “Please, my dear, be sensible.”
He turned his back on me. I reached for his shoulder. He shrugged me off.
The next morning, Villers seemed happy and tender again. I wondered whether it had all been a dream. Although he was affectionate with Aimée and, in his own way, fond of his son, he had never before expressed any wish for offspring. He must have been driven by a desire to attach me in an irrevocable manner.
Upon our return to Paris, his behaviour changed. Before our separation, he had not seemed bothered by the attentions I received from others, and had even found them flattering. Now whenever other men spoke to me or even looked at me, I saw his jaw tighten and his fists clench. In particular he could barely bring himself to be polite to Lauzun.
Villers insisted on the benefits of a more retired life for my health and that of Aimée. He wished me to spend most of my time in his company at Vaucelles, with the Duchess as our sole guest. He attempted to dissuade me from attending entertainments I had no intention to renounce. He even objected to my meeting Emilie, who, he said, was a bad influence. I had concealed from him that it was to her that I owed the disclosure of his last known infidelity. I knew that he would never have forgiven her.
Villers had once promised never to hit me, but his temper seemed unpredictable whenever I was in company. My suspicions may have been unfair to him, but I could not help being influenced by my past experience of marital corrections. Moreover, my escape to the Duchess’s, which had no adverse consequences for me, would have been a different matter had I been married. Villers, had he been my husband, could have me jailed as a runaway wife. I would have been separated forever from Aimée.
All those considerations led me to the conclusion that it would be more prudent to continue reaping the wages of sin rather than to become the new Countess de Villers. We are indeed strange creatures. What I had so dearly wished for a year earlier now seemed a step to be avoided.
44
Villers was well regarded by his peers in Normandy. He was elected a Representative of the Nobility to the Estates General in March of 1789. So were Orléans in Chartres, Lafayette in Auvergne and Lauzun in Quercy. All would be part of that famous assembly entrusted with the task of resolving the intractable budget crisis and restoring France to prosperity and happiness.
I taught Aimée, now three years old, to skate on the Seine, which had frozen solid during that terrible winter. My maids found unrul
y crowds, angered by the price of bread, massed in front of the bakeries. The populace cursed the Farmers General for increasing their enormous wealth by taxes on food at this time of famine. The wall built for their benefit now felt like a noose around the neck of the starving city. Wrapped in my furs, my stomach full, I could not help thinking of those who were cold and hungry. I asked Villers to forego my New Year’s Day present and use the money to relieve the suffering of the poor, both in Normandy and in Paris.
The concerns of the day in Versailles were the ceremonies for the opening of the Estates General, the design of uniforms for each of the three orders and the protocol to be followed. The Estates General had not convened since 1614, and such details had been lost in the fog of time. Passionate debates were held under the Queen’s direction. She insisted that proper attention be paid to distinctions of rank. Of particular import was the question whether the Representatives of the Third Estate should greet the arrival of the King on their knees. At the same time, the Duke d’Orléans spent 1,000 francs a day to feed the poor, which earned him the title of Protector of the People in Paris and caused him to be reviled as an opportunist and a rabble-rouser in Versailles.
I had intended to stay in Paris during the time of the meeting of the Estates General, which I did not anticipate to last more than a few months. Villers joined me one afternoon while I was reading Paul and Virginia, a new novel the Duchess had recommended. It recounted the adventures of a young noblewoman separated by her family from her suitor, a commoner. I had never told the Duchess, or anyone except Hélène, of my first love. Now I found this melancholy romance too close to my own story. I was not sorry to have my reading interrupted by Villers’s visit.
“Belle,” he said, “we have things to discuss. I will rent a house for you in Versailles for the duration of the Estates General.”
I put away my book. “Why do we need a house in Versailles? You will be less than an hour away from Paris on horseback. You could return here every night, my dear.”
Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel Page 28
