Germaine withdrew a lace handkerchief from her bodice and wiped the spittle away. Tossing the handkerchief out the window, she cried, “There is the handkerchief of the daughter of Jacques Necker, the finance minister whom you loved and revered. Covered with the spit of the people!… Animals,” she said, turning to her ladies-in-waiting, who shuddered in a corner of the coach. “We shall see who is master of this situation.”
But the mob of women had pulled the horses free of their yokes. Harnessing themselves to the carriage instead, they began to draw it through the streets, away from the city gates. The teeming mob had now grown to huge proportions. They pressed against the coach, moving it along slowly like a swarm of ants maneuvering a crumb of cake.
Germaine clung fiercely to the door, crying oaths and threats out the window with great savagery, but the screams of the mob drowned her voice. After what seemed an eternity, the carriage settled before the imposing facade of the large building surrounded by guards. When Germaine saw where she’d been taken, her stomach filled with ice. They had taken her to the Hotel de Ville. Headquarters of the Paris Commune.
The Paris Commune was more dangerous than the rabble surrounding her carriage, as Germaine knew. They were madmen. Even the other assembly members feared them. Delegates from the streets of Paris, they imprisoned, tried, and executed members of the nobility with a haste that belied the very concept of liberty. To them, Germaine de Staël represented just another noble throat to be hacked in two by the guillotine. And she knew it.
The doors of the coach were pried open, and Germaine was dragged by dirty hands into the street. Holding herself upright, she made her way through the throng with an icy stare. Behind her, her servants babbled with fear as the mob tore them from the coach and shoved them along with the broom and shovel handles. Germaine herself was half dragged up the sweeping steps of the Hotel de Ville. She gasped as a man suddenly leaped forward and shoved the sharp tip of a pike beneath her bosom, slashing her ambassadorial gown. One slip and she would be run clean through. She held her breath as a policeman stepped forward and shoved the pike aside with his sword. Grasping Germaine by the arm, he hurled her into the dark entryway of the Hotel de Ville.
11:00 AM
David reached the Assembly out of breath. The enormous room was filled to the rafters with men crying aloud. The secretary was standing at the central podium, screaming to make himself heard. As David worked his way across the floor to his seat, he could barely make out what the speaker was saying.
“On August twenty-third, the fortress of Longwy fell to enemy troops! The Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Prussian armies, issued a manifesto demanding that we release the king and restore all royal powers, or his troops would raze Paris to the ground!”
The noise on the floor was like a wave washing over the secretary and drowning out his words. Each time the wave subsided slightly, he tried to continue.
The National Assembly held its tenuous power over France only so long as it kept the king imprisoned. But the Brunswick Manifesto had demanded release of Louis XVI as a pretext for Prussian armies to invade France. Beleaguered by pressing debt and mass desertions within the French armies, the new government, so recently come to power, was in danger of toppling overnight. To make matters worse, each delegate suspected the others of treason, of collusion with the enemy that battled at the border. It was, thought David as he watched the secretary fighting to keep order, the womb from which anarchy is born.
“Citizens!” cried the secretary. “I bring you terrible news! The fortress of Verdun, this morning, fell to the Prussians! We must take arms against—”
The Assembly was seized with hysteria. Chaos broke out across the floor, and men scurried about like cornered rats. The fortress of Verdun was the last stronghold between the enemy armies and Paris! The Prussians could be at the city gates by suppertime.
David sat silently in his place, trying to hear. The words of the secretary were completely lost in the bedlam. David could see the man’s mouth flap open and shut soundlessly in the cacophony of voices.
The Assembly had become a seething mass of madmen. From the Mountain, the street rabble tossed papers and fruit down upon the moderates in the Pit. These Girondins in their lace cuffs, who’d once been considered liberals, looked up, their faces drained pale with fear. They were known to be Republican Royalists, who supported the three estates: the nobility, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie. Now that the Brunswick Manifesto had been issued, their lives were in the gravest danger even here on the Assembly floor. And they knew it.
Those who supported restoration of the king might well be dead men before the Prussians reached the gates of Paris.
Now Danton had taken the podium, as the speaker stepped to one side. Danton, the lion of the Assembly, with his large head and burly body, his broken nose and lip disfigured by the kick of a bull which he’d survived in childhood. He lifted his massive hands and called for order.
“Citizens! It is a satisfaction for the minister of a free state to announce to them that their country is saved! All are stirred, all are enthusiastic, all burn to enter the contest …”
In the galleries and aisles of the great Assembly hall, men stood in groups and one by one fell silent as they listened to the rousing words of the powerful leader. Danton called them forth, challenged them not to be weak, fomented them to rebel against the tide that swept toward Paris. He roused them to a fever pitch, demanding that they defend the frontiers of France, arm the entrenchments, guard the gates of the city itself with pikes and lances. The heat of his speech ignited a flame within the listeners. Soon there were cheers and cries from the Assembly hall, punctuating each word that fell from his lips.
“The cry we sound is not the alarm of danger, it commands the charge against the enemies of France!… We have to dare, to dare again, always to dare—and France is saved!”
The Assembly went mad. A riot ensued on the floor as men tossed papers into the air and cried aloud: “L’audace! L’audace! To dare, to dare!”
As pandemonium swept the floor, David’s eyes passed across the gallery and settled upon one man. A thin, pale man dressed impeccably in starched foulard, creaseless morning coat, and carefully powdered wig. A young man, with a cold face and emerald-green eyes that glittered like a snake’s.
David watched as the pale young man sat silently, unmoved by Danton’s words. And as he watched this man, David knew that there was only one thing that would save his country, torn by a hundred warring factions, bankrupted, and threatened by a dozen hostile powers outside her borders. What France needed was not the histrionics of a Danton or a Marat. France needed a leader. A man who found his strength in silence until his abilities were needed. A man upon whose pale thin lips the word “virtue” fell more sweetly than greed or glory. A man who would restore the natural, pastoral ideals of the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau, upon which the Revolution had been founded. The man who sat in the gallery was that leader. His name was Maximilien Robespierre.
1:00 PM
Germaine de Staël sat on a hard wooden bench within the offices of the Paris Commune. She had been sitting there for over two hours. Everywhere uneasy men stood about in groups, not speaking. A few men sat on the bench alongside her, and others had found seats upon the floor. Through the open doors beyond this improvised waiting room, Germaine could see figures moving about, stamping papers. From time to time someone would come outside and call a name. The man whose name was called would grow pale, others would clap him on the back with whispered entreaties of “Courage,” and the man would disappear through the doors.
She knew what was happening on the other side of the doors, of course. The members of the Paris Commune were holding summary trials. The “accused,” who was probably accused of nothing except his parentage, would be asked a few questions about his background and fealty to the king. If the fellow’s blood was a bit too blue, it would be spilled on the streets of Paris by dawn. Germaine did not deceive herself regarding her
own chances. She had only one hope, and she nurtured this thought as she awaited her fate: they would not guillotine a pregnant woman.
As Germaine waited, fingering the broad ribands of her ambassadorial dress, the man beside her suddenly collapsed, head in hands, and began to weep. The other men glanced nervously in his direction, but no one made a move to comfort him. They looked away uneasily, as they might have averted their eyes from a cripple or a beggar. Germaine sighed and stood up. She did not want to think of the weeping man on the bench. She wanted to find a way to save herself.
Just then she caught a glimpse of a young man, pressing his way through the crowded waiting room with a handful of papers. His curly brown hair was tied back in a ribbon, his lacy jabot rather wilted. He had a frazzled but passionate air of intensity. Germaine realized suddenly that she knew him.
“Camille!” she called out. “Camille Desmoulins!” The young man turned to her, and his eyes lighted with surprise.
Camille Desmoulins was the enfant célèbre of Paris. Three years earlier, while still a Jesuit student, he’d leaped onto a table at the Café Foy one hot July night and challenged his fellow citizens to storm the Bastille. He was now the hero of the Revolution.
“Madame de Staël!” said Camille, working his way through the crowd to take her hand. “What brings you here? Surely you’ve not engaged in some misdeed against the State?” He smiled broadly, his charming poetic face so out of place in this room darkened with fear and the very smell of death. Germaine attempted to return his smile.
“I’ve been captured by the ‘Women Citizens of Paris,’” she replied, trying to muster some of the diplomatic charm that had served her so well in the past. “It seems that an ambassador’s wife who attempts to pass the city gate is now considered an enemy of the people. Don’t you find it ironic, when we’ve fought so hard for liberty?”
Camille’s smile faded. He glanced down uncomfortably at the man seated on the bench behind Germaine, who was still weeping. Then he took Germaine by the arm to lead her aside.
“You mean you were trying to leave Paris without a pass and an escort? Dear God, madame. You’re fortunate you were not summarily shot!”
“Don’t be absurd!” she cried. “I have diplomatic immunity. If I were imprisoned, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Sweden! They must be mad to think they can hold me here.” But her momentary bravado waned when she heard Camille’s next words.
“Don’t you know what is happening just now? We are at war already, and under imminent attack.…” He lowered his voice as he realized the news was not yet common knowledge and would doubtless cause pandemonium. “Verdun has fallen,” he said.
Germaine stared at him for a moment. Suddenly the gravity of her situation became clear to her. “Impossible,” she whispered. Then, as he shook his head, she asked, “How close to Paris have … Where are they now?”
“Fewer than ten hours would be my guess, even with full artillery. Already the order is out to shoot anyone approaching the city gates. To attempt to leave now would incur a mandatory charge of treason.” He looked at her sternly.
“Camille,” she said rapidly, “do you know why I was so anxious to join my family in Switzerland? If I delay my departure much longer, I shan’t be able to travel at all. I am with child.”
He searched her eyes in disbelief, but Germaine’s boldness had returned. Taking his hand, she pressed it upon her stomach. Through the thick folds of fabric, he knew she was telling the truth. He smiled his sweet boyish smile again and turned rather pink.
“Madame, with luck I may be able to have you returned to the embassy tonight. Even God himself could not get you through the city gates before we’ve turned back the Prussians. Let me take the matter up with Danton.”
Germaine smiled in relief. Then, as Camille pressed her hand, she said, “When my child is born safely in Geneva, I shall name it after you.”
2:00 PM
Valentine and Mireille approached the gates of l’Abbaye Prison in the carriage they had hired after their escape from David’s studio. A crowd was gathering in the congested street, and several other carriages had been halted before the prison entrance.
The crowd was a ragged mob of sans-culottes, armed with rakes and hoes and swarming over the carriages near the prison gates, banging on the doors and windows with their fists and implements. The roar of their angry voices echoed down the narrow stone-walled street as prison guards perched atop the carriages tried to beat the crowd back.
The driver of Valentine and Mireille’s carriage leaned down from his perch and looked in the window at them.
“I cannot come any closer,” he told them. “Else we’ll be jammed into the allée and unable to move. Besides, I do not like the look of this crowd.”
Just then Valentine spotted a nun in the throng who was wearing the Benoit habit of the Abbaye-aux-Dames at Caen. She waved out the carriage window, and the older nun returned her gesture but was locked into the crowd that now was tightly packed into the narrow allée with its high stone walls.
“Valentine, no!” cried Mireille as her little fair-haired cousin threw open the door and leaped into the street.
“Monsieur, please,” Mireille begged the driver, stepping from the carriage and looking up at him with pleading eyes, “can you hold the carriage? My cousin will only be a moment.” She prayed that this was true, watching carefully for Valentine’s fleeing form, which was being swallowed up in the ever-thickening crowd as she worked her way toward Sister Claude.
“Mademoiselle,” said the driver, “I must turn the carriage by hand. We are in danger here. Those coaches they’ve stopped up ahead are carrying prisoners.”
“We have come to meet a friend,” Mireille explained. “We will bring her back here at once. Monsieur, I implore you to wait for us.”
“These prisoners,” said the driver, looking out over the crowd from his high seat, “they are all priests who’ve refused to take an oath of fealty to the State. I fear for them and for us as well. Get your cousin back while I turn the horse. And waste no time.”
With this, the old man jumped from his high seat and, grabbing the horse’s reins, began to pull him around to turn the carriage in the narrow alley. Mireille hastened into the crowd, her heart throbbing.
The crowd closed about her like a dark sea. She could no longer see Valentine in the press of bodies that swarmed into the alley. Shoving her way frantically through the mob, she felt hands pulling and tearing at her from every side. Panic began to rise in her throat as the vile smell of unwashed human flesh crushed ever closer.
Suddenly, through the forest of thrashing limbs and weapons, she caught a glimpse of Valentine, only a few feet from Sister Claude, her hand extended to reach the older nun. Then the crowd closed back again.
“Valentine!” Mireille screamed. But her voice was drowned out by thundering screams, and she was carried forward with the wave of bodies toward the half dozen closed carriages that were jammed against the prison gates—carriages that contained the priests.
Mireille struggled frantically to move in the direction of Valentine and Sister Claude, but it was like fighting a riptide. Each time she beat her way a few feet ahead, she was carried closer to the carriages against the prison walls, until at last she was hurled against the spokes of a carriage wheel and clung to it desperately, trying to stabilize herself. She was pulling herself up against the carriage wall when the carriage door was flung open, as if by an explosion. As the writhing sea of arms and legs rose about her, Mireille clung fiercely to the carriage wheel to keep from being thrust back into the mob.
Priests were dragged bodily from the carriage and into the streets. One young priest, his lips pale from fright, looked into Mireille’s eyes for a single instant as he was torn from the carriage; then he disappeared into the mob. An older priest followed him, leaping from the open door and beating at the mob with his cane. He screamed frantically for help from his guards, but they were now turned to brut
al beasts themselves. Siding with the mob, they dropped from the roof of the carriage and tore at the cassock of the poor priest, ripping it to shreds as he fell beneath the feet of his persecutors and was trampled against the cobblestones.
As Mireille clung to the carriage wheel, the terrified priests were dragged one by one from the carriages. They ran to each other like frightened mice, battered and stabbed at by iron pikes and rakes at every side. Almost gagging from fear, Mireille screamed Valentine’s name over and over as she watched the horror around her. And then, her fingernails bleeding as she held on savagely to the spokes of the carriage, she herself was dragged back into the crowd and flung against the nearby wall of the prison.
She fell against the stone wall and then to the cobbled pavement. Thrusting her hand out to break her fall, Mireille felt something warm and wet. She lifted her head as she lay sprawled upon the hard rocks and brushed her red hair back from her face. She was looking into the open eyes of Sister Claude, who lay crushed against the wall of l’Abbaye Prison. Blood ran down the aged woman’s face where her wimple had been torn away, revealing a huge gash in her forehead. The eyes looked vacantly into space. Mireille drew herself back and screamed with all her strength, but no sound came from her choked throat. For the warm, wet place where her hand rested was a gaping hole where Claude’s arm had been ripped from the socket.
Mireille shoved herself away from Claude, trembling in horror. She wiped her hand frantically against her dress to remove the blood. Valentine. Where was Valentine? Mireille got to her knees and tried to claw her way up the wall to her feet as the mob surged wildly about her like an angry, mindless beast. Just then she heard a moan and realized that Claude’s lips were parted. The nun was not dead!
Mireille leaned forward on her knees and grasped Claude by the shoulders as blood gushed from her gaping wound.
“Valentine!” she cried. “Where is Valentine? Please God, can you understand me? Tell me what has become of Valentine!”