Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel

by Delors, Catherine

  I knew Hébert by reputation. He was a Deputy Procureur-Syndic for the Municipality and had been, according to Madame de Tourzel, put in charge of the royal family in the Temple. He was also a journalist, and his newspaper, Le Père Duchesne, “Father Duchesne,” was full of daily encouragements, couched in the most violent language, to the good people of Paris to slaughter aristocrats. I had tried once, out of curiosity, to read that publication but had stopped midway, discouraged by both the substance and that various obscenities were found in every sentence. The fact that he was presiding over the people’s court did not cheer me.

  I hesitated before asking: “What happens after the prisoners are sentenced to death?”

  “Depends. It’s up to us workmen to decide the manner of execution. We don’t use bullets because we can’t waste them; they’re needed for the war. Some prisoners are bludgeoned on the head first, so they don’t feel a thing. Some are dispatched by the sword. Others have their throats slit.”

  My stomach lurched.

  “Now, don’t turn pale like this,” continued Martial. “Since you’re so pretty, the comrades would make it quick and easy. Just be sure not to run or fight. You’d make them cross without saving yourself. There’s one thing you don’t need to worry about: nobody’s going to violate you. We’re not brutes. Anyone who’d take advantage of a woman would be put to death on the spot. The other workmen would take care of that. All the same, I’ll go with you if that’ll make you feel better.”

  “Yes, if I am sentenced to death, please be kind enough to stay with me until the end. It will be less fearful since I already know you a little.” I looked into his eyes. “I would take it as a great favour if you killed me yourself. I would prefer that to dying at the hands of strangers.”

  Martial shook his head. “I’d kill you if I had to, just like I killed the others, but I’d rather not. You see, I like you. I am clumsy when I don’t feel good about something. I’d make a mess of it. You’d suffer more than needed, and I’d never forgive myself. You’ll be better off in the hands of the others. If it comes to that, you can tell me which way you’d prefer to go. I’ll talk to the comrades and stay with you to make sure it’s done right, even though I won’t like to see you die.”

  I tried to think of the mode of execution I would like best but could not settle on any which tempted me. I wanted to ask Martial’s advice, based on his experience of the morning, but feared that I would begin crying if I said anything about it. All of my fortitude would be gone then. I put my hand on his. He patted it.

  “I shouldn’t have told you about all that,” he said. “Anyway, you’re worrying for nothing. Cheer up, little lady. I’ve a feeling you’re going to be acquitted.”

  “What happens to the bodies of those who have been executed?”

  “Why would you want to know?”

  “I suppose you take their money and jewellery.”

  “I shouldn’t be talking about that. I know it upsets you. Mind you, we’re not thieves. Anyone caught stealing would be killed right away by the others. Everything is kept until the night and then sent to the Municipality.”

  “Then I want you to have this.” I removed from my neck the gold locket with Aimée’s portrait and handed it to him.

  “You can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “We aren’t allowed to take anything from the prisoners, dead or alive. Besides, it’s far too valuable. It looks like gold and these must be diamonds around it.”

  “You would not take it from me. I am giving it to you. I want you to have it rather than it being thrown into a pile. You will have a memento of me when I am no more. Please.”

  “You don’t understand. I won’t accept anything from you, not when you’re in this situation. It wouldn’t be right. And don’t worry, I’ll remember you to my last day, no matter what.”

  I suddenly noticed Madame de Rochefort lying unconscious on the cobblestones of the courtyard. I ran to her, relieved to have something to distract me from the thought of my own death. A group of workmen gathered around her made way for me. I held my breath as I saw one of them, kneeling by her side, cut the bodice of her dress and the front laces of her corset with the point of his cutlass. I believed for a moment that he was going to violate her. Yet he only shook her by the shoulder. I realized that he had loosened her clothes to allow her to breathe more freely.

  I knelt next to him. “Please, Citizen,” I said, “you are very kind to help my friend, but she is extremely timid. Let me attend her instead.”

  I slapped her face. It took a long time to revive her, during which the man with the cutlass, now standing behind me and looking down at her, said to one of his comrades: “She’s really pretty. A pity she’s already married. She could’ve wed one of us to save herself.”

  The other workman replied, pointing his bayonet at my face:

  “True, but her friend here, with the red hair, is even better. And she’s a widow, although she can’t be more than twenty. I wouldn’t mind marrying her.”

  Still on my knees by the side of Madame de Rochefort, I raised my eyes to my admirer. He was no beauty and would not, under different circumstances, have tempted me in the least. Before I could say anything, a well-dressed man wearing a tricolour sash walked to us and said: “We are here to try these women, not to find them husbands. Leave this one alone, you two.”

  I never knew whether he was acting out of kindness, to protect me from unwanted attentions, or to prevent my escape. Regardless of his motives, his intervention put an end to any hope of the kind. The man with the bayonet gave me a resentful look and walked away.

  Once Madame de Rochefort was able to stand on her feet, I did my best to rearrange her torn clothes. I brought her to my bench. With her head resting on my shoulder, I resumed my conversation with Martial and the other workmen, trying to delay my appearance before the people’s court. Martial would leave from time to time to bring us back the latest news from the “courtroom.”

  I saw the Princess de Lamballe escorted to the clerk’s office. After about an hour, it was the turn of the palace chambermaids, one after the other. Madame de Tourzel followed.

  A few fortunate prisoners were freed after being claimed by delegates from their Sections and released to them without trial. I dared not ask Martial about the fate of the ladies from the Court. The fact that he did not volunteer any information about them did not seem a good omen. I regretted my suitor with the bayonet. Now I would have thrown myself into his arms without the least hesitation. I even wished Martial would propose, but he did not seem the sort of man to make an offer of marriage to a female under duress.

  Madame de Rochefort, when her turn came, clung to me with amazing strength and tenacity. Her whimpers turned into shrill cries. They tore at my ears and put me in mind of the shrieks of a pig being bled to death. I watched with horror her fingers being pried from my skirts one by one. I begged the guards to let her go without trial, but they would not listen to my entreaties any more than to hers. At last she seemed to realize that resistance was futile, went limp and was carried, sobbing, to the tribunal in the arms of one of the workmen.

  After her departure, I knelt against the bench, closed my eyes, traced the sign of the cross on my chest and recited the Prayer for the Dying:

  O Jesus, I worship thy last breath;

  Please receive mine

  When I leave this world.

  I offer thee

  My agony and all the miseries of my death.

  As thou art my Father and Saviour,

  I release my soul into thy hands.

  May the last moment of my life

  Honour that of thy death,

  And my heart’s last breath

  Be an act of thy pure love.

  Amen.

  I was the last one left in the courtyard from the group of ladies from the Court. At last, shortly after six o’clock, Martial walked back from the clerk’s office.

  “It’s your turn, little lady,” he said. “You’ll be ha
ppy to hear that your friend, the one who cried so much, was acquitted. She couldn’t even tell the judges her name. I’m taking you now because the tribunal just sentenced a thief to death. This gives you a better chance. They don’t like to acquit two people in a row. Now, don’t lose your head and say anything foolish before the judges. If you do, I’ll squeeze your arm to stop you.”

  I hardly needed to be reminded of the possibility that I might soon lose my head in more ways than one. Martial and another workman took me by the elbows to lead me to the clerk’s office. My knees were unsteady and I felt light-headed.

  I faced my judges in the room from where I had first entered the prison. I tried my best not to appear frightened, which could have been construed as an admission of guilt, and clenched my fists to hide the trembling of my hands. It is said that courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability not to show it. By that standard, I was brave that afternoon.

  I stood before nine men with tricolour sashes around their waists, seated at a long table. I recognized the one in the middle, from Martial’s description, as Hébert. I had imagined, from reading the Père Duchesne, a coarse, unkempt sans-culotte instead of the well-groomed man I was facing. He was indeed handsome, an opinion I do not mind stating since I cannot be accused of partiality towards him. That did not make him any less fearsome in my eyes. Another man, standing, seemed to act as the prosecutor. I later learned that his name was Luilier and that he too was an officer of the Municipality of Paris. The registers of the prison were open in front of them. The room was full of onlookers, male and female. Workmen, sabres drawn, guarded the door.

  “State your name, profession, age and address,” ordered Hébert. He spoke in a polite tone, addressing me formally.

  “Gabrielle de Peyre. I am widowed and have no occupation. I am twenty-three years old. I live Rue Saint-Dominique, number 132.”

  “Mind what you say, Madam, because the slightest lie will doom you.”

  “I have nothing to hide, Citizen President, and no intention of lying.”

  “That is what we are going to find out.” He was looking down at the prison register. “Do you know the reason for your arrest?”

  “I used to be a lady-in-waiting to the Countess de Provence.”

  The crowd jeered. Martial squeezed my arm.

  “Did you receive a stipend?”

  “Not this year. I resigned my place when the Countess de Provence emigrated.”

  “How much was your stipend?”

  “Six thousand francs per annum, but as I told you, Citizen President, I have not received anything since last year.”

  “Did you keep going to the Palace after resigning your place?”

  “No more than once a month.”

  “That is enough to participate in the conspiracies of the ci-devant Court. Where were you on the 10th of August?”

  “I was at the Palace, but only because my little girl had been taken there without my consent.”

  “A likely story. Do not expect any mercy unless you reveal the plots to kill the patriots. Name your accomplices.”

  “I do not know of any such conspiracies, Citizen President. I have never been involved in politics.”

  “You, a member of the Court, a servant of the so-called Countess de Provence, claim be innocent?”

  “True, Citizen President, I used to be an noblewoman, but I was arrested in my own lodgings. That proves that I was not trying to flee or hide after the 10th of August. I never had any correspondence with the enemy. I never left France, either before or since the Revolution. None of my family emigrated. Before my arrest, I was living quietly with my little girl without hurting anyone.”

  “Enough. You will have an opportunity to plead your cause later. Your turn, Citizen Prosecutor.”

  Luilier pointed his finger in my direction.

  “Look at this woman, Citizens Judges, and look carefully because you will see the face of evil. By her own admission, she is an aristocrat and a member of the ci-devant Court. This, in itself, brands her a royalist conspirator, a traitor, a spy, an enemy of the Nation. But this is not all. You heard her; she tells us herself that she is a friend of the ci-devant Countess de Provence. You know what that means. She is a woman of perverted morals, of unnatural, revolting habits, which decency forbids me to describe, but of which you are well apprized.”

  Luilier paused. I heard cries of “tribade” and “whore” from the public.

  “Raise your skirts, my pretty,” shouted a woman, “we’ll rub you the way you like.”

  “You’ll see how good the blade of a knife feels down there,” another chimed in. “That’ll be a change from your other toys, I bet.”

  “Hand her over,” said one of the workmen at the entrance. “We’ll strip her and punish her where she lapsed, just like the Lamballe woman. That’ll teach those bitches to despise men.”

  I was beginning to doubt Martial’s assurances regarding the treatment of female prisoners. I felt faint. He pressed my arm and whispered: “Don’t worry. I won’t let them do that to you.”

  “Citizen President,” I said, “what the Citizen Prosecutor says is not true.”

  “Silence,” said Hébert, “let him finish. Quiet in the audience.”

  “And if that were not enough,” resumed Luilier, “she also confessed to the heinous crime of receiving a stipend of 6,000 francs a year for no reason. She is a leech, a vampire, sucking the blood of the Nation while the patriots are starving. This alone merits a death sentence. Our brave workmen can be trusted to make the punishment fit the crime, or should I say, the crimes. Do not be fooled, Citizens, by her allurements, her youth, her false look of innocence. She is a menace, all the more dangerous because she appears harmless. We will not be safe until the likes of her have been put to death. That is the only way to prevent her and her friends from destroying the Nation from within. Do your duty and show no pity. Justice demands it.”

  Hébert nodded to me.

  “I am innocent of any crime and a good patriot,” I pleaded. “I love my country, no less than you do. The last thing I want is the victory of the Prussians or the émigrés. I was widowed at seventeen, Citizens Judges, and left penniless by my late husband. My family tried to force me to enter a convent. They wanted to separate me from my little girl. When I refused, they would not take me back. They have denied me assistance of any kind. I accepted the place of lady-in-waiting only for the sake of my daughter. The Citizen Prosecutor is mistaken. I have never shared the tastes of the Countess de Provence. If I am sentenced to die, my little girl, who has no one else in the world, will be orphaned and destitute. I cannot leave her. She is too young. She is only seven. She is innocent. Please have mercy on her, if not on me.”

  There was a murmur of sympathy in the audience. Some of the women in the audience, perhaps the same who had hurled insults at me earlier, yelled: “Let her go.”

  “Do you swear to uphold liberty and equality?” Hébert asked.

  “I do, Citizen President, with all my heart.”

  My fate was decided in minutes. The judges conferred between themselves and Hébert said:

  “Let Madame be released.”

  I could not bring myself to believe that my life was going to be spared until my two guards, who had not left my side during the entire proceedings, warmly congratulated me. They took me outside the front door of the prison.

  “I didn’t tell you before,” explained Martial, “but if Hébert had said instead Let Madame be transferred to L’ Abbaye, that would have meant a death sentence. That makes it easier for the comrades outside. Most prisoners do believe that they’re taken to another jail and don’t understand until the last moment what awaits them. That way we don’t have to chase them down the street. It’s better for everybody.”

  A few yards from the entrance of the prison lay the headless, nude body of a woman, white against the dirt of the street. Her stomach had been sliced open and bright-coloured entrails were spilling out. Her legs were spread apar
t, her intimate parts had been cut off and the raw flesh between her thighs was buzzing with flies.

  “It’s the Princess de Lamballe,” said Martial without any trace of emotion. “The comrades have taken her head to a hairdresser to make it all pretty again, and then we’ll go to the Temple and show the whole thing to her lover, the Capet woman. Don’t worry, I know you’re not anything like her.”

  I felt a sharp pain in my stomach as if I too had been disemboweled. I wondered whether the Princess had still been alive when she had been mutilated. I could not avert my eyes from her body or reconcile myself to the idea that it had belonged to the silly, blonde, blue-eyed person I had seen in the courtyard only a few hours earlier.

  I had not noticed at first anything but the poor remains, but my attention was drawn to cries nearby. Some ten yards away, corpses and body parts were piled high in the middle of the street. A man’s head had rolled down from that heap into the gutter. It bore a large gash on the side. The force of the blow must have torn the eye from its socket, whence it hung by a shred of flesh. The street was slick with blood and reeked of death, for the corpses had begun to smell in the hot afternoon. Flies were everywhere.

  All the cadavers were naked. Their clothes and possessions, pathetic as only inanimate objects can be, were neatly gathered against the wall of a neighbouring house. The body of a man was being stripped by two workmen at the foot of the pile.

  “I know it’s not a pretty sight, especially for a lady,” said Martial, “with them being naked and all. We should be receiving straw anytime to cover the bodies. We can’t leave them like this. They don’t look decent. Now that you’ve been acquitted, you’ll have to climb to the top of the pile and cry Long live the Nation. We’ll help you if you’re tired. After that, you’ll be free to go.”