Fires of Delight (27 page)

The night was windless and very hot. Selena had been given a room on the third floor, obviously long unused and recommended mainly by the fact that bed and bedclothes had not been stolen by former servants. The room overlooked the front of the house, the street, the Seine, and that part of the city that lay beyond the river. After lying in bed for a time, trying to sleep and trying not to perspire, Selena gave it up. Tossing her sweat-soaked chemise onto a chair, she stepped to the window. She was naked, shadowed by towering elms, looking out toward the city and lusting for the faintest breath of cool air.

Which did not come.

There are nights, too, when sleep will never come, and this was one. Selena herself contributed to her own unease. She was worrying about Jean. What if, instead of seizing Chamorro, the monster captured Jean? It would be death for sure, and Jean Beaumain would be as lost to her, as gone from this world, as Royce Campbell was!

Then Jean would die without knowing that he’d fathered a son. But the child was dead, so maybe it was better that he not know.

Nothing was ever clear.

Not even the Paris that Selena looked out upon, lying there hot and silent and dark along the river, beneath the sky. Selena, whose instincts had been made keen by struggle and triumph, anguish and defeat and flight, sensed not peace in the city, but rather a wary, waiting stillness, a chilling, resolute unrest like that of a panther on the branch of a tree, who lulls his prey to carelessness by the appearance of sleep.

The citizens of Paris were that panther.

Outside the city, only twelve miles distant, stood the palace of Versailles. And in it slept a well-meaning, slightly overweight, graceless heir to the fading glory of the Bourbon dynasty, Louis XVI.

He was the panther’s prey.

Oh, he knew it—he had been so advised—but what did it matter? The panther could be killed or de-fanged or put in a cage and tamed. The panther might even die or go away, who could tell?

Louis XVI
knew
he was the panther’s prey, but he did not
believe
it.

Greater than the difference between the sick and the well, much greater than that between the rich and the poor, more final than any gulf except that which divides the living from the dead is the chasm between knowledge and belief into which King Louis had already fallen.

Although he did not yet know that either.

But Selena sensed it, knew it, believed
it, felt
it out there in the uneasy, sweltering city. Far away she heard the watchmen calling, “All’s well, all’s well.” They meant, “No fire! No thieves! No storm!” Poor watchmen, they were already, without knowing it, relics of a vanished age like Charlotte and Colette. They did not know what it was that they must guard against, nor hear the snarl, the drooling smack of chops, nor see the red eyes of the revolutionary beast that stalked them in the hungry night.

Selena, who’d been leaning upon the window sill, engaged in troubled reverie, fighting the heat, jerked suddenly upright as the realization came to her.

Pierre Sorbante was the prowling beast.

And somehow, because of Erasmus Ward’s cross, she was a part of him.

The law offices of Vergil Longchamps possessed a fading splendor alongside a comfortable workaday clutter of papers and books. The building he occupied was old now, adjacent to a gritty, beleaguered marketplace and a district of working class apartments, but its wrought-iron balustrades, its marble floors, its rococo facade: these bespoke past grandeur. Longchamps’ own chamber, fittingly, revealed an occupant who clung, not always successfully, to lingering habits of order in the face of mounting harassment.

“What a great honor, madame!” exclaimed the lawyer gallantly, as he greeted Martha Marguerite at his door. Then, catching sight of Selena, “Ah! How charming, mademoiselle, to make
your
acquaintance!”

Selena appreciated his manners; it was his appearance that, at first, put her off a little.
This
was the man to whom the LaRouche affairs had been entrusted? Perhaps that was why they had proceeded so badly.

Longchamps bade the two women be seated, then settled uneasily into a straight-backed chair behind his jumble of a desk. “Bad back,” he said apologetically. “Thus the chair. Old age. Bad bones. Bad dreams.

“Bad times,” he added gloomily.

Vergil Longchamps, Selena guessed, was over sixty years of age, and in a day and time when most people were lucky to live to be forty, his waning but still obvious vitality was admirable. He ought to have added “bad teeth” to his list of woes, however, because intermittent black gaps marked the places where incisors and molars had once been. Missing teeth gave the lower part of his face a sunken, wasted look; his presence in a court of law,
while perhaps intellectually formidable, would not have been physically striking.

Longchamps impressed her, though, by coming straight to the point and mincing no words.

“Martha, my friend,” he said, sympathetically but frankly, “I’m afraid that all I can report to you is bad news. With the exception of your house, you’re broke.”

“But—” replied Martha Marguerite.

Longchamps lifted his hand. “Hear me out. The situation regarding your family affairs is as tenuous as the state of the country, and they are intertwined in cause and effect. I shall let others regale you with the gossip and scandals of the court.”

Martha seemed disappointed and Selena had to admit that her appetite for licentious news was not entirely dormant either.

“Suffice it to say,” the lawyer continued, “that France is broke as well. The country is like a machine running out of control. His majesty does not take charge of anything. Two finance ministers, Turgot and Necker, have failed to set things aright, primarily because the king cannot muster the nerve to act upon their recommendations.”

“But what has this to do with our being…insolvent?” Martha wondered. “Father was rich—”

“That he was. But in your absence—my condolences, by the way, on the death of your husband, Hugo…Haiti, what a place to die—your uncle Pierre made several mistakes. He overruled my counsel, I am sorry to say. First of all, in order to pay his gambling debts, he sold the block of apartments by which your estate received its main monies. Secondly, hoping to earn enough to keep things going, he raised the levy against your peasants in Côte d’Or. And he got himself killed in the bargain.”

“But why don’t the provincial authorities press charges then?” asked Martha.

“Because they don’t know what is going to happen. They do not know who may be in power tomorrow, or next week. France is at a standstill because of turmoil in the Estates General.”

Martha knew nothing of this, nor did Selena. Longchamps explained. “For centuries,” he said, “the three estates, clergy and nobles and peasants, have voted as classes, each estate having one vote. Since the interests of the nobles and the clergy were similar if not identical—they wished to protect their privileges—the
Third Estate was always outvoted two to one. But of late, the leaders of the Third Estate, Mirabeau and Sorbante, have been demanding a vote by head, that is, one vote for each man present in the Estates General. If this comes to pass, as I believe it will very soon, the numbers of the Third Estate mean that the balance of power in France will swing immediately in favor of the lower classes. In addition to that, there are nobles and some clergy who are disgusted with unfairness and corruption and who are siding openly with the Third Estate.”

“But the king—?” said Martha.

Vergil Longchamps shook his head, took a little silver box full of snuff from a desk drawer, placed a pinch in his left nostril, and inhaled with noisy satisfaction. “His majesty is a fool. If he were to decide right now to accommodate the reformers, he might be able to save the monarchy, but he believes it is his holy duty to resist change. He is doomed. Everyone out there in the street knows that today a mob will attempt to storm the Bastille, symbol of Bourbon tyranny. If it falls, and I suspect it may, the king will have compromise forced upon him. Whereas, had he compromised earlier, he could have retained at least a measure of authority. No, Madame LaRouche, his situation is more than desperate.”

Selena, with her antipathy toward hereditary monarchs, particularly if they were blind, bullheaded and ineffectual, was not at all unhappy to hear this news.

“Surely we must have
some
funds in various accounts,” Martha said hopefully.

“No,” said the lawyer. “Your sisters, Charlotte and Colette, lived exceedingly well during your absence. You will forgive me for saying this, madame, but they were never trained in even the rudiments of financial responsibility. Nor, I am sorry to say, was the king. Do you know, even now, how he spends his time? He plays at making locks in a workshop at Versailles. And he hunts. Oh, yes, he hunts! He shoots tame deer from a palace window. That, ladies, is the current state of our leadership, and it is no match for a man like Sorbante, who is not afraid to go out among the people, to stir them up, to strike at the paper tiger that is our government. Even the queen, that Austrian interloper, Marie Antoinette, arouses the fury of the people. She is, first of all, a foreigner, and there have been the various scandals…”

Longchamps let his voice trail off. He did not intend to get into such matters.

“So what is Martha to do?” Selena asked, quite worried for her friend.

The lawyer shrugged and took a pinch of snuff into his right nostril, inhaling greedily.

“She must wait,” he said. “It is too late for me to offer any other advice. If Louis XVI finds the wisdom to join the tide of reform, all may yet be well. Order may yet be restored, both in Paris and in the provinces. When land is redistributed, the peasants in Côte d’Or are surely going to be given some of it, but there may be enough left over for the family LaRouche to live a comfortable life.”

Martha Marguerite sagged in her chair. The reality of Longchamps’ words had not really sunk in yet, not all the way, but she had grasped enough to know that things were very bad.

“What if the monarchy is actually overthrown?” asked Selena.

Longchamps paused for a moment. “Our previous king,” he said, “Louis XV, is reported to have said:
‘Après moi, le déluge.’
After me, the deluge. You see, he knew. He knew that a great flood was coming. Feudal times and manners are gone. The millions of starving workers and peasants will no longer be satisfied to believe the clergy’s promises of a reward in heaven. They want something
now!
Nor will a Third Estate, able to read and to understand the message of human freedom and independence, be content to follow the orders of a corrupt, lazy, often depraved nobility.”

“To which Estate do you belong?” asked Selena.

“My father was a carpenter, when he could find work. I rose on my own. If you wish to know, my sympathies are with the Third Estate, although I fear they will be misled. Dangerous times are imminent. When power is the prize, men stop at nothing. Power is far more deadly than money or love.”

Martha Marguerite was on her feet, livid and shaking. “You?” she cried. “You, whom I believed to be my friend, favor the rabble? No wonder your words here have made no sense. You are wrong, you are a fool—”

“Please, Martha!” Selena said.

With a loose gesture of his hand, Longchamps told her to save her words. They would be of no use. His message had been too
stark, too certain, too indisputably true. Martha Marguerite could not accept it because to do so would be to admit that the world she had loved, of which she’d dreamed during her exile, was no more.

And that meant her place in the world was gone.

It was as hard a blow as any other, and a lot more savage than most.

“Now I see why our affairs are in such horrendous disarray!” Martha stormed, heading for the door. “Come, Selena. There is a stench here. Sir,” she said to the lawyer, “I shall sue you at first opportunity. And you need not expect me to pay any fees you may think I owe you!”

Longchamps held out his hands, palms upward, glancing at Selena as if to say:
You see how it is; there is nothing I can do
.

Selena thanked the man with a nod, and left with her friend.

Hugo and Sebastian were waiting at curbside. They had acquired a glossy new horse and polished the carriage thoroughly, quite delighted, apparently, to be working regularly for real money. They wanted to make a good impression.

“Take us to Moline, couturier, Rue de la Cardinal Le Moine,” ordered Martha.

“Hah!” she said to Selena, as the carriage moved away. “What rubbish that awful man spoke. He is a doomsayer, that is all. Everything will turn out splendidly, and I am going to proceed upon that belief. Why, I have jewelry. I have my furs…”

This was, indeed, true. Martha had insisted on wearing her fur piece today, in spite of the heat, and against Selena’s advice, sported large gold bracelets on each wrist and several glittering rings on various fingers. Selena herself was dressed in a simple dark-gray dress with decorative but inexpensive brass buttons down the front. Even so, she kept a wary eye on the many people swarming in the streets today, men and women and even children who gazed with hostile, sullen avarice at Martha Marguerite’s finery.

The panther was awake and prowling the streets.

On the drive toward the couturiers, where Madame LaRouche intended to refurbish her wardrobe, Selena saw first a column of armed horsemen cantering in the opposite direction.

“National Guard,” commented Sebastian. “Not half so bad as the Royal Guard or, God forbid, the constabulary.”

The column was led by a handsome man riding a white horse. Selena looked, looked again, and gave a start of recognition. He was General Lafayette, who had aided Washington in America and whom she had met once, briefly, in Gilbertus Penrod’s New York home.

His presence here brought back all the memories of America and a realization of the time that had passed. America was truly free! And the French people, many of whom had fought in the New World, could not but have returned here bearing the seeds of independence and revolutionary fervor. Because after all, if the British monarch, George III, had been bested by men desiring freedom, why could not the same fate overtake Louis XVI?