Celeste

by Roland Perry

  ‘She has a stubborn head!’ the doctor replied. ‘She does the exact opposite of what she’s told to do.’

  ‘How can she be made well?’ Lionel asked.

  ‘If she can be taken away from her busy life in Paris,’ the doctor said adamantly, ‘I’m sure she would recover.’

  Lionel and Martin continued to visit her each day. After four days Lionel told her to pack a suitcase.

  ‘I’m taking you to the country,’ he declared. ‘I shall hide you the best way I can. If you’re spotted, people will assume you came for Martin.’

  Céleste only really registered the fact that he was taking her with him. She was overjoyed as she filled a trunk. She didn’t care if he was only looking after her out of pity. Even the thought of going with him to a country retreat lifted her spirits. She felt also that this demonstrated a measure of compassion in Lionel, which she had rarely if ever experienced from a man. Generosity for favours was one thing. A real sense of caring for her wellbeing was another thing altogether. It was a most attractive trait to her and at that moment renewed her hope in the relationship. It also gave her something to work on.

  They took the train to Vierzon in the province of Berry. It was the nearest station to Lionel’s estate near the town Châteauroux, 100 kilometres away. Lionel’s coachman and valet drove them by private surrey. It was very cold, having snowed the night before, and Lionel closed the carriage windows. Locals peered in to see who was being driven in such luxury, but, Céleste later noted, ‘our breath soon formed a curtain against the curious’.

  The highway was terrible and the weather was freezing. Just outside a small village they hit a bump. The coachman was thrown from the carriage, which clattered over him. Lionel leaped out to control the horses, and just managed to stop them from heading off the road into a deep ditch. The carriage pulled up. The coachman had bruising on both legs and was unable to walk. Lionel unhitched the horses and hurried to find the local doctor, who came with a stretcher. The coachman was taken to the doctor’s surgery, where he would stay the night, and Lionel was forced to find another coachman in the town to continue the evening journey. As usual, Lionel had enough gold coins with him to keep everyone content—the injured coachman, the doctor and the new driver.

  This incident took two hours. Soon after continuing on their journey they left the highway and hurtled along an even worse road, with the new coachman keen to reach the destination in quick time. After an hour, Céleste could see trees forming an arcade above the road. The carriage stopped with a yell and a jolt. They had arrived at Lionel’s castle.

  ‘The moonlight had emerged from behind clouds to illuminate a beautiful 300-year-old chateau set in snow-covered grounds and featuring looming towers and rugged battlements,’ she recalled.

  A servant came out carrying a lantern and Lionel led Céleste inside. Martin disappeared into a wing of the vast building while she was taken through a grand hall and up a stone spiral staircase to a large room in the main tower. Another servant was lighting a fire in a nine-metre-high recess. The room had red brocade curtains and was adorned in carved wooden columns.

  Only a week earlier Céleste had been depressed about her life. Now she had been transported into a fantasy world for princes and princesses about which she had only read or dreamed. She couldn’t help expressing her surprise at the beauty of the castle, which had been maintained in a fifteenth-century style, with all the features that this entailed.

  Céleste marvelled at it all but her joy was short-lived when she heard terrible, shrill screams, as if someone was being murdered in the battlements. An amused Lionel reassured her that ritual killings had never been carried out in the ancestral home, as far as he knew. She was just hearing the owls that come out to play in the moonlight.

  Céleste, steeped in superstitions, like most people of the era, said, ‘I’m sorry about that. Owls bring bad luck!’

  The next day, Martin showed her the way downstairs and through several living rooms, including one for billiards, until they reached the dining room. Lionel joined them and after the meal Martin was assigned to show her around the estate.

  Céleste was astounded at the number of staff, with a seemingly endless stream of coachmen, stableboys, stablehands, farmhands, cooks, gardeners, valets, grooms, stewards and keepers, not to mention the horses and hounds. She was in awe of the cost of upkeep for such a mighty property.

  Céleste deduced that there was only one solution if Lionel were to keep the enormous estate: he had to marry a rich woman, who would absorb the losses from running his land. She realised, too, that he was not a good businessman and was easy prey for swindlers, dodgy deal-makers and money lenders, who kept giving him funds at exorbitant rates.

  ‘He was blindly rushing towards his ruin,’ Céleste concluded in her memoirs, and putting a sympathetic spin on his circumstances, said, ‘He was too generous at heart to keep track of his money. He was kind.’ But perhaps to protect herself she added, ‘He had moments of cruelty. He would say unkind things to me.’

  Her days at the castle were difficult. She had been thrust into Lionel’s private world and developed a sense of inferiority, not helped by his mood. A tall butler followed her every move during meals, which lasted two hours. It was not so bad when the butler stood behind her, but when he loomed in front, correcting her choice of utensils, she became too frightened to eat anything and preferred to go hungry. Her normal instinct would have been to tell the badgering butler to desist, but she felt humbled and less inclined to lash out. Lionel was short with her, too. She accompanied him when a farmer visited to discuss business.

  ‘Go to your room,’ he told her. ‘I don’t need to have everyone see you.’

  The ambiguity in this comment upset her. Did he mean he was ashamed of her? Or was he telling her to keep her nose out of his business dealings? Either way it was a put-down, which incensed her.

  The next day she received a letter from Marie saying her absence in Paris had created a rumour that she was dead. Marie suggested that her mistress return home. Céleste raised this with Lionel to test if he wanted her to stay. He was irritated.

  ‘Who the devil do you think will take care of you?’ he asked. ‘Your friends from Bal Mabille? I’d like to think you care very little for them.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if my friends are from Bal Mabille or elsewhere,’ she snapped. ‘They’re thinking about me and I’m grateful.’

  Lionel waved a dismissive hand at her.

  ‘You see?’ she said. ‘You brought me here and you regret it! Well, I shall leave tomorrow.’

  Lionel didn’t say anything, which was a signal that she should depart. The next day, he again did not try to keep her there.

  ‘I don’t regret bringing you here, Céleste,’ he said, ‘since you’re feeling better. I love you very much. But I must get married.’

  It was a simultaneous kiss and slap on the face. When she didn’t respond he added, ‘One of my relatives wrote to me on the subject. That’s why I’m letting you leave.’

  Although she had been forewarned of this, it still hurt.

  The next day he took her to Châteauroux and she bought a coach ticket to the train at Vierzon. When they kissed goodbye, she noticed his eyes were moist. This and his abrupt departure left her clinging to the thought that he still really cared for her.

  Céleste felt the contrast of her ‘happy love and gratified vanity’ on arrival in a splendid carriage to the cold, bitter disappointment on leaving in a rickety, crowded coach. Her happiness and pride were left behind at the ornamental gates of Lionel’s castle.

  ‘With a thud,’ she later wrote, ‘I have fallen back into the mediocre reality of my bohemian life.’

  CHAPTER 17

  Return to the Castle

  Céleste had not given up her quest for Lionel. He had responded to her efforts to make him jealous before and she planned to try again. She invited Prince Jean to take her to Le Havre, a port and seaside resort on the French coast. He,
too, overcame his humiliation at his previous dismissal and agreed. Céleste was craftily honest in telling Jean of her split with Lionel, but she made it clear as before that she was still in love with the count. Jean didn’t seem to care, as long as he could be with her.

  Leaving Paris gave her a useful excuse to write to Lionel.

  Mr dear Lionel,

  The reasons for our separation were so good [appropriate] that you saw I was resigned to it. However, one must not require of human nature what it cannot achieve! I think of you more than ever! Thanks to your good care, I have regained my health. I have reclaimed Jean’s friendship. I shall be here for a few days. If you were to have something to tell me, you could write to me. Keep me in your thoughts.

  Céleste.

  Céleste was a good gambler on life, and in this case she was betting on Lionel finding it impossible to forget her and difficult to find a replacement. Céleste had just turned twenty-three, yet her knowledge of men and their behaviour was that of a woman twice her age. At the back of her mind also lingered the cold and tactically efficient thought that Lionel would fall so far in life that he would land at her level, putting them on an equal footing.

  In February 1848, it seemed likely that King Louis-Philippe I, who was seventy-four, would be deposed and replaced by a provisional reformist government.

  Louis-Philippe’s reign—the July Monarchy—had been dominated by many former Napoleonic officials and by the wealthy elite, including Lionel and his father the marquis. The main cause of the unrest and demand for reform was that only one per cent of the population had the right to vote, and only those who owned land could decide who ruled and how.

  Reforms by the new government—the so-called Second Republic—meant that the largesse of bankers, money lenders and others dried up. This diminished Lionel’s attempts to court a wealthy woman. He was forced to stave off bankruptcy and an embarrassing state of insolvency by selling off what he could from the estate.

  Not surprisingly, the plain-looking young countess who was thrust in front of Lionel by his family was not impressed by this denuding of the estate’s superficial extravagances. She refused his rather desperate hand in marriage. Yet still, Lionel did not appear frantic. His only sign of anxiety was over Céleste’s letter indicating she was back in a relationship with Prince Jean. Lionel regarded him as foppish. But young Jean, unlike Lionel now, seemed to have endless resources with which to shower gifts on Céleste. This bothered Lionel, and he wanted to see if his relationship with her could be renewed. He was still in search of a marriageable benefactor, but the absence of his vibrant, wilful, independent, at times feisty lover made him yearn for her. As he told friends, her ‘Celestial pull’ always attracted him. This was in spite of his family, especially his overbearing and interfering eldest brother and his countess sister, who were horrified at his obsession with Céleste, whom they regarded as a common circus performer with a doubtful past.

  Céleste was frightened by the mood in the Paris streets in early 1848. She was no different from most women of the period, discouraged from an interest in politics, which was considered part of the man’s world. When walking with Frisette, she became concerned at people congregating in the streets as if ready to do mischief and worse.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Céleste said. ‘It reminds me of the trouble in Lyon when I was a child.’

  When the two women reached the boulevards, where crowds were bigger, there were whispers, then cries of, ‘Reform!’

  ‘What reform?’ Céleste asked a group of people milling on the sidewalk. They shrugged without answering, except for one young man who said, ‘Everything! There must be change! It’s progress!’

  ‘Don’t like this,’ Céleste whispered to Frisette. ‘I think there will be bloodletting . . .’

  In front of the Café de France on the Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle, they bumped into a group of about fifty young men. Some of them recognised the former Hippodrome performers and called their names, saying, ‘Hooray for reform and beautiful women!’

  The cry did not seem connected, yet delighted the two women, who had no interest at all in change. A crowd built and surged around them, like a tornado in search of an epicentre. Céleste became anxious and pushed Frisette towards a friend’s house nearby. She let them in and opened the window. The rush and jostle of people again reminded Céleste of Lyon. It continued until around 6 p.m., when many in the crowd headed home.

  ‘Everyone must dine,’ Céleste noted in an endearingly French observation, ‘even those who wage war.’

  Frisette suggested that they, too, have dinner. They parted at 10 p.m. Céleste heard an explosion when she reached Rue Le Peletier. A man warned her not to go to her home at Place de la Madeleine because the reformers had fired on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main culprit in the eyes of the rebels was Foreign Affairs Minister François Guizot. He had resigned in the days before (on 22 February) but now the mob wanted some measure of revenge beyond his departure. They attacked the ministry.

  Céleste took a different route and began to worry about Lionel. She knew that a revolution would not be kind to the nobility, which might be forced to go into hiding, leaving their possessions and their estates to the rampaging lawless. She wished that Lionel was with her so she could help him. As if to heighten the sense of danger, she noticed that a local pharmacy on Rue de Caumartin had been turned into a temporary first-aid post. Once she reached home, Céleste wrote a panicky letter to Lionel, mentioning everything she had witnessed and warning him not to come to Paris.

  She went to bed but could not sleep, even with a dose of digitalis. Marie was up and too nervous to retire. It seemed that the street was alive at 4 a.m. Then there was a knock at the door. The insistent banging seemed familiar. Céleste urged the concierge to open the door. It was Lionel. He had come from his estate the previous afternoon only to run into the Paris mayhem.

  ‘Why are you here now?’ Céleste asked. ‘It’s dangerous!’

  ‘I’m going to join the National Guard,’ he said. ‘Someone must protect the king and the government.’

  The two slept together until 7 a.m. when Lionel disappeared to join the first legion of the National Guard. He was immediately involved in the fighting as the reformers attempted to burn down the Guard’s post at Madeleine. He arrived back at Céleste’s place at 5 p.m. exhausted and aware that this fresh revolution was well underway.

  ‘There’s no hope for the king or the government,’ he declared. ‘You’re not safe here. You must return to the castle tomorrow.’

  Any resolve about resisting him evaporated, but this time Céleste felt their affinity was stronger and his attitude needier than before. On the trip back she was relieved when the train reached the halfway point.

  ‘So what are your marriage plans?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’ve been rejected,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Surely this isn’t the end of your family’s search for a match for you?’

  He smiled carelessly but did not answer. There was no sign of the more usual temper tantrums.

  ‘I couldn’t rise to his level,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘and he blamed me for having to come down to mine. And yet out of affection for him, I had changed.’

  She felt she was doing all she could to accommodate his world.

  Once at the chateau, Lionel was more open with her about his financial woes. They wandered a field close to the chateau, talking.

  ‘Only one room has not been diminished by the need to sell things off,’ he said despondently, ‘and as you can see, most of the place is in disrepair.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any farmers,’ Céleste observed.

  ‘They’re leaving because they can’t pay the rent. It’s all a terrible downward spiral. My creditors are becoming more demanding by the week. I’m borrowing 60,000 francs at a rate of twenty per cent. But the money is scarce because of the revolution.’ Lionel pointed to the northern farm sheds a kilometre away. ‘The most depressing thing is
the Belgian farmers. My father brought them here decades ago. Their families have been here for generations, but disease has forced them to leave.’

  ‘The Fever?’

  Lionel nodded. ‘Farm hands are falling ill. They can’t afford to buy enough food—nutrition—to fight it. They’re slowing up and being struck down. I’ve given money to some of them, but it’s not changing things.’ He paused and sighed. ‘It’s very sad that this means my best land lies vacant. Worse, I’m presiding over the demise of this wonderful estate after twelve generations. It’s all very depressing.’

  King Louis-Philippe I and his family fled to sanctuary in England at the invitation of Queen Victoria as the threat of voting reform (in the form of ‘The Chartists’) and even revolution reached the United Kingdom. The upheaval in France spread. Uprisings occurred in the provinces. Noblemen’s property, ever the symbol of inequality in Europe, became the target for attack. Chateaus in Berry were under siege, and some owners and their families were murdered. Lionel’s property remained unscathed. He was universally liked in the region, yet she begged him not to go out. He ignored her for there was still much supervising to do, even in this period of decline and inevitable ruin.

  One morning she became most nervous on seeing forty men approaching across the fields. She rushed inside to warn Lionel, who was in the study with Martin.

  ‘They’re waving guns and rifles!’ she cried. ‘Quick, we must hide in the basement.’

  Céleste scurried to the cellar, thinking Lionel would follow. She heard shots and shouts for several minutes. When the noise subsided, she cautiously ventured out to find Lionel calmly smoking a cigar.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He pointed to the garden where the men had congregated and were drinking wine that Lionel had given them. A peasant, clearly the leader of the pack, wandered over to the terrace in front of the chateau.

  ‘Stay calm,’ he told her, ‘everything will be alright. Listen to what I have to say to them.’