Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [74]
The words send a little chill up my spine, but I shrug it off. It’s the drugs, that’s all. Too much Qwell. “But you only took one pill this morning,” the voice reminds me. “You dialed it back again.”
“Shut up,” I mutter. I gulp my coffee and start to read.
6 May 1795
The king and his family rode to Paris after Versailles fell. My family and I walked.
We were exhausted when finally we reached the city. After a long search, we found a room in the Marais. It was small and damp, but it did not matter to me as I was rarely in it. I was out on the streets morning and night, in all weather, trying to get inside the Tuileries. Because I had come to love Louis-Charles and hoped to see him. And because I loved advancement, too, and still hoped that the queen might procure it for me.
I played my guitar by the gates, by the Queen’s Walk, and along the tall iron fences that surrounded the gardens, always hoping for a glimpse of Louis-Charles, but I never got one for the guards chased me away. I tied notes to stones and tossed them over the wall. And once a puppet, but I later saw the cook’s child with it. I disguised myself as a laundress and tried to sneak in with the washerwomen on a Monday morning. Another time I hid myself in a butcher’s wagon. Both times I was found out and beaten.
The Tuileries Palace is in the middle of the city. Its grounds are small and confined. They are nothing like the open lawns and shady groves of Versailles. Often whilst walking round them I wondered, How would Louis-Charles run and play there? Who would sit with him under the night sky, counting the stars? Who would filch squibs and crackers from the firemasters and shoot them off for him? He was a strange child, prone to sadness. The queen had asked me to keep his poor heart merry. If I could not, who would?
I wanted to find a way in. I wanted to keep trying but I had to stop for I was needed to help with the puppets. We were poorer than ever and hungrier than ever for it was harder than ever to earn our daily bread. Paris had changed. It was not the same city we had left only six months earlier.
On the streets, none talked of frivolous topics. The papers were no longer filled with the doings of actresses and courtesans. No one marveled at a duke’s new calèche or the matched pair he’d bought to pull it. No one argued over who served the best calves’ brains—the Chartres or the Foy. Women put off their powdered wigs. They stuffed their silk gowns into their closets and wore dresses of muslin. Men wore suits of sober fustian.
It was the goings-on in the Assembly that now captivated the city. What had Danton said this morning? Whom had Marat called bugger? What had Madame Roland written in her column? What was being said at the Jacobins, the Cordeliers? Would the king accept the Rights of Man? And who was this lawyer from Arras, Robespierre?
There was a new spirit in the air, a spirit of hope, of change. There was a new energy in the city, a true excitement. People no longer addressed one another as sir or madam, but citizen. They talked openly of a constitution for France, of equality and freedom.
It is a time of miracles, my father said. Anything can happen.
Miracles? my uncle spat. It will be a miracle if we don’t starve to death. This revolution of yours is bad for business.
He was right. Wig makers suffered. Silk weavers, too. Jewelers, flower sellers, and confectioners failed. In the fancy shops, gilt tables and marble statues could be had for a song. And we, too, struggled ever harder. The people of Paris, newly high-minded, no longer laughed at farting puppets, so we had to give new plays—my father’s plays. They were earnest affairs about the tyrant Caesar or the excesses of mad King George, and they were so dull, I usually fell asleep during the first act, or sneaked off to auditions. I cared nothing for citizens and constitutions. I cared only for playing. If I could not