Mistress of the Revolution: A Novel

by Delors, Catherine

  He tugged on my kerchief and touched the skin between my breasts. I shuddered. So it was true, he still loved me. I closed my eyes, dizzy with happiness, and stroked his hand.

  “When I left you in front of your Section,” he continued, “my resolution had begun to falter. It took all of my fortitude to part with you. That explains, if it does not excuse, the uncouth manner in which I went my own way. I reached the courthouse and went to work. I thought that I would erase you from my mind in the course of a day or two. I was wrong again. The more time passed, the more I thought of you.” He sighed. “I had to remind myself that any association with you can destroy my position, even put my life in danger. I have managed to keep my mind otherwise occupied in the courtroom, but I cannot go to my chambers without remembering your visit there or lie in my bed without thinking of yours. I decided to break the spell. I went to the Palais-Egalité this morning, Gabrielle. I closed my eyes to imagine that I was holding you, and not some poor trollop, in my arms. All I achieved was to miss you more. Forgive me.”

  He was looking up at me, holding my waist with both hands. “So here I am, my beloved,” he said, “three days after I asked you to seek me no more. I told you years ago that I wanted you forever. It is still true.”

  I reached for him and held him against my breast. “Pierre-André, never let me go again.”

  We spent the afternoon together. He was not yet thirty. I had turned twenty-three two months earlier. Life had separated us, tried us in different ways and taught us different lessons. He now held my fate in his hands. The world we knew had collapsed in successive waves of violence, to be replaced by a new one, governed by unpredictable rules that were unfolding before our eyes. Yet for a few blessed hours, we were once again the young man and the girl who had met by the river in Auvergne. I was his Gabrielle, his beloved, and he was everything to me.

  70

  Pierre-André needed to leave around seven that night to attend a meeting at the Common House. Before he left, I explained to him my dealings with Marcelin.

  “I will find you decent lodgings,” he said while dressing. “I cannot afford to keep you in luxury on a judge’s salary, which I do not supplement as some of my colleagues do, but you and your daughter will lack nothing.”

  When Pierre-André returned two days later, he proposed to give my landlord notice on my behalf. I readily accepted since I was not fond of Marcelin’s conversation.

  “Here is your money,” Pierre-André said when he came back fifteen minutes later, handing me one hundred and fifty francs in assignats. “I represented to Marcelin that the Municipality takes a dim view of those who prey on widows and orphans. He assured me that you had misunderstood him regarding the additional payment for lack of a passport. He was in fact on the verge of returning the hundred francs to you. He was very sorry to have given me the trouble to call on him, which I easily believe. He hoped that I would not report him to the Section for an innocent mistake. As a token of his good faith, he insisted on refunding every sol you ever paid him, even the rent for the time you spent here.”

  I hesitated. “I do not feel that it would be right to leave without paying him anything. And I am surprised. He seemed so fond of his money. Did you beat him?”

  “I only caught him by the collar while I expressed my opinion of him. It would have been unnecessary to push things any further. He was shaking in his trousers at the very sight of me. Do not feel sorry for him, Gabrielle. Those who take advantage of the helpless deserve no such concern.”

  Again I packed my things and Aimée’s. They now fit in one trunk and one bag, which Pierre-André carried downstairs himself. After making sure that no one was following us, he hailed a hackney on the Place Saint-Michel. We crossed the Pont-au-Change and arrived in the Island of the City. We passed Notre-Dame and turned into the warren of narrow streets north of the cathedral. The lodgings he had found, on a second floor in Rue de la Colombe, “Dove Street,” included a tiny kitchen, a water closet and a vestibule leading to two main rooms. One served as a dining parlour and had a couch on which Aimée could sleep, while the other was furnished as a bedroom. Over the last few weeks, I had almost forgotten the existence of such luxuries as drapes and carpets. I would not have felt happier if Pierre-André had offered me the Queen’s apartment in Versailles.

  “I am infinitely grateful to you,” I said, sitting on the bed and patting the plump red coverlet. “And look, there are fireplaces in both rooms!”

  “I am glad to be able to make you comfortable,” said Pierre-André. “This is nothing out of the ordinary, but who needs more these days? It will be better for you to do without a maid. The last thing you need is someone to spy on you. This district is very quiet and conveniently located midway between the courthouse and my own lodgings on the Island of the Fraternity. You will find that, between my functions as a judge, my mandate as a member of the Municipality and my attendance at the Jacobins, I am a busy man. Do not imagine things, my beloved, if I cannot spend as much time with you as I would like.” He stroked my cheek. “I would marry you tomorrow if I could. You know that it is impossible now: it would doom both of us. I will nonetheless regard you as my wife and expect you to keep faith with me.”

  He sat on the bed next to me. “If I discover otherwise, my love,” he continued in a quiet tone, “I will take you to the river and drown you in the muck of the banks.”

  I shuddered at the idea of his hand holding my face down in the cold, foul slime. I wondered whether he had spoken in earnest and looked into his eyes.

  “No, Gabrielle,” he added, “I would never do it.” He ran a finger on my cheek. “I was simply trying to tell you that I would be very unhappy if you strayed. My jealousy is in proportion to my affections. Until last year, I had a pretty little maid who also served me in another capacity. One afternoon when I came home early from court, I discovered the slut in my bed, if you please, with the butcher’s apprentice. You should have seen their faces. They must have thought I was going to disembowel them on the spot and started begging for mercy.” Pierre-André chuckled. “I was content to kick them both out of my lodgings without a shred of clothing on their backs. I threw their rags into the fire since I did not expect the turtledoves to come back. They must have had to hide until nightfall, and then hope not to meet a patrol. It was enough to assuage my lust for revenge. But that was Suzanne. I would take it differently from you.”

  “Did you hire another maid?”

  “One fell into my arms, as it were.”

  I frowned.

  “You need not worry about her,” he continued, smiling. “She is not to my taste, although otherwise she gives me full satisfaction.” He paused, looking grave again. “I might as well tell you that, since Suzanne’s hasty departure, I have had a few mistresses. I may have acted a bit wild on occasion. I have also resorted to prostitutes. I am not proud of it and will put an end to it.”

  “Thank you for telling me, but you do not owe me any explanation. I am grateful and honoured that you want me now.” I threw my arms around his neck. “And I will regard you as my husband.”

  He embraced me tightly.

  I felt safe at last, as much as those times allowed. A new law required that a bill posted on the outside of each building indicate the identity of all of its occupants. Thanks to my Civic Certificate, Number 7 Rue de la Colombe reported as one of its tenants a Gabrielle Labro, age twenty-three, widow, living with her daughter, Aimée Labro, age seven.

  71

  Paris took a new look to me. The city itself had not changed, but the fashions, especially for men, were simpler, more somber than I had ever seen them. People walked more briskly. I had become wary of every stranger. A man staring at me on the street was no longer deemed an admirer, but could be a mouchard, a police informer, or a zealous patriot detecting in me an aristocrat in disguise. Until then, I had mostly traveled in carriages, isolated from any unpleasantness. I was no longer shielded from the hardships shared by all pedestrians. I had to b
e mindful of the offal overflowing from the rain gutters where chamber pots were emptied. I had to jump out of the way of horsemen and carts to avoid being run over, for Paris, unlike London, had no raised sidewalks. I often met with the former carriages of my friends, bearing half-erased coats of arms and now degraded to the rank of hackneys. Most trying of all, I had to endure, like any other female without a male escort, the insults and lewd gestures of men in their cups. Now that I was on foot, on a level with the street vendors, the beggars, the prostitutes, I came face-to-face with their deformities, their filth, their miseries, great and small. I could not look without queasiness at the offerings of the carts of the regrattiers, who purchased from lackeys the half-eaten leftovers from the kitchens of the rich and resold them to the poor. Without Pierre-André, Aimée and I would have survived on that disgusting fare.

  My new familiarity with the streets also had some advantages. I came to realize how many of my countrymen lived in Paris. Almost all the water carriers were from Auvergne. Puech, who brought river water up to my lodgings, was from Murat, in the Département of Cantal, just twenty miles from Vic. He would stop to chat with me in the Roman language. He had never seen me before or heard of any person by the name of Gabrielle de Montserrat. Distances are not measured in terms of miles in the mountains. To him, I was simply Citizen Labro, a young woman from his country.

  Many boatmen also came from Auvergne, bringing coal on barges down the Seine River. Once in Paris, the boats were taken apart and sold for wood. Some of the boatmen returned to our country on foot to repeat the process, while others settled in Paris. Indeed, all of the wine and coal merchants were from Auvergne, as well as a great many tavern keepers. Pierre-André seemed to know most of our countrymen in Paris. He liked to speak the Roman language with them, and me too. I had never felt so close to Auvergne since moving to Paris.

  “Can you imagine, My Lady,” said Manon one day, “the city is overrun by those foreigners from the provinces. They can barely speak French. They sound like those tigers at the King’s Garden, the Garden of the Plants, they call it now.”

  “You forget that I am one of those foreigners. I was born and bred in Auvergne.”

  “That’s not the same thing! You are a Baroness, for God’s sake, and you speak so sweet, no one would ever know you come from that country.”

  I had kept Manon apprized of my move and new address, although not of the identity of my protector. Pierre-André had objected at first to my continuing this acquaintance.

  “But she is entirely devoted to me,” I said.

  “Why? Because she had for years the honour of emptying your chamber pot every morning?”

  I smiled. “Maybe. In any event, I am sure that she would never betray me.”

  “You and your stubbornness! You know that in your situation, you should trust no one.”

  “I trust you. And hopefully you trust me.”

  “Most of the time, yes, I am enough of an imbecile to do so. Indeed, my love, there is not one folly I have not committed for you.”

  “You are right to trust me, you know it. I owe you so much. Without you, I would be back in jail. I cannot bear to think of it after the September massacres.”

  “Those were terrible times, Gabrielle. I came close to being killed myself.” He was staring out the window.

  “You? How could you, a judge of the 17th of August Tribunal, be in danger?”

  “My function almost cost me my life. The mobs attacked the courthouse on the first day of the atrocities, while we were in session during the trial of Bachmann, the Major General of the Swiss. He was the most hated man in Paris. Public opinion blamed him, with good reason, for the death of the twelve hundred patriots who perished at the Palace on the 10th of August. The trial had lasted three days and two nights.”

  “You must have been exhausted.”

  “I was beginning to feel some fatigue. The jury had retired to deliberate and the courtroom was silent. Yet I could hear cries coming from the jail of La Conciergerie below. I beckoned to one of the gendarmes and ordered him to go see what was happening down there. All of a sudden, a howling crowd, armed with pikes, rifles and sabres, burst into the courtroom. The public ran for the doors, screaming. The defense attorneys, the clerks and even the gendarmes also took to their feet. Bachmann, pale as a sheet, fled in our direction and hid behind the bench. Only the three of us judges and the prosecutor, all unarmed of course, remained at our places.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “Yes. For a moment I pictured myself hacked to pieces. I can stand my ground when attacked one on one, or even by several men, but I am no match for a mob armed to the teeth.” He looked at me. “Yet, Gabrielle, I had to forget about my own safety. Yielding to that kind of violence would have made a mockery of the Nation’s justice. My colleagues must have shared my feelings, for we all rose to protect Bachmann. A fellow walked to us from the crowd and demanded that we surrender the accused. We refused. He told us that we would be massacred if we insisted on protecting a scoundrel who had already been tried and sentenced by the people. We ignored that jackass and addressed the mob over his head. We demanded respect for the law, for the Tribunal’s authority and for the verdict of the jury. The attackers listened to us. The crowd quieted and slowly withdrew. Bachmann thanked us profusely. There was no occasion for it, for the jurors reentered the courtroom and returned a guilty verdict. As you know, we sentenced him to death. He was guillotined later that day.”

  “Were you not tempted to spare his life after saving him from the mob?”

  “No. We had protected him because it was our duty, not out of personal sympathy. After his trial was over, we decided to suspend the Tribunal’s sessions until order was restored to the courthouse. I had been fully awakened and ran to the Common House to resume my functions at the Council General.” He shook his head. “There, I learned that the events at La Conciergerie were not an isolated incident. Some scoundrels, all friends of Hébert’s, on the Surveillance Committee of the Municipality had set up a provocation. They had dozens of unsworn priests transferred to L’Abbaye in regular carriages without sufficient armed protection. The convoy was surrounded by a mob. One of the priests hit a fellow in the crowd with his umbrella. They were massacred. The crowd then turned its attention to L’Abbaye itself and began to kill the other unsworn priests jailed there. From there, the slaughter spread to all the prisons of Paris, and all kinds of prisoners. By the time I arrived at the Common House, the situation was out of control. We dispatched envoys to stop the disaster, but they themselves narrowly escaped with their lives. The National Guards were on the brink of mutiny. If sent to the prisons, they would have joined the ranks of the killers. We remained in session all night, debating how to stop the atrocities and trying to organize the removal of the corpses, which could not be left to rot on the streets. Finally, we decided early in the morning to dispatch representatives to all the jails. The idea was to form people’s courts to try the prisoners. Thus some of them, at least the poor devils jailed for debt, could be saved.”

  “I thought that the authorities had remained idle.”

  “The Girondin government certainly did nothing except make a few speeches at the Assembly, but we at the Council General tried to stop, or at least limit the massacres.”

  “So that is how Hébert came to preside over my trial at La Force. I would never have thought of his presence as good news.”

  “I cannot blame you. He, with his filthy rag of a newspaper, had inflamed public opinion, and his friends at the Municipality further stoked the Parisians’ hatred of unsworn priests. Given the dismal news from the front, it was enough to trigger the slaughter. Yet he went to La Force with instructions from the Council General to spare as many prisoners as he could.”

  “Did you know that I was there?”

  He stroked my cheek. “I did, my love, but had no way to save you individually. Only your Section could have claimed you. Yet before Hébert left for La Force, I drove him into a
corner. I told him that, in his own interest, he had better not let any women be violated or killed. The scoundrel has always been mindful of me. He promised me in the most convincing terms that he would do all he could. When he returned that night, he reported to me that all the female prisoners had been released unharmed, except for the Lamballe woman. He assured me that he had acquitted her too. Apparently, like the imbecile she was, she had refused to pledge allegiance to the Nation and had been massacred by the workmen. I knew then that you had survived.”

  “Did it matter to you?”

  “I was still angry with you, of course, but not to the point of wanting you killed, especially in such a manner.”

  “So you were trying to save me then. I never imagined it.”

  “How could you?”

  He had given me his love, his help, his protection, and I had not even been aware of it. We held each other close that night.

  72

  Aimée and I avoided public entertainments. Monsieur Curtius’s Wax Salon was more popular than ever, but I never set foot there for fear of being recognized by him or his niece. The royal family, along with the lords and ladies of the court, had been replaced by Generals and Representatives of the people. Even these had to be renewed from time to time as some were disgraced or guillotined. I hoped that my bust had been discarded too.

  My main pastime, once I was done with Aimée’s lessons, was reading the newspaper. I found that I no longer enjoyed novels, perhaps because the fate of my friends and the turns of my own destiny held all of my attention now. The news reported in the Moniteur every day was far more interesting than the plot of any fictional story. Aimée and I went out only to buy food in the nearby shops, to attend Mass or Vespers at Notre-Dame and to take walks in public gardens. Neither of us, after witnessing the carnage of the 10th of August, had fond memories of the Tuileries. We therefore went to the Luxembourg, which reminded me of my days as a lady-in-waiting to Madame.