Read Online Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution by James Tipton - Free Book Online
Authors: James Tipton
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thoughts. I mounted La Rouge and rode swiftly, the snow and moonlight-bright sparks shed from her hooves.
Luxury
It was the third Christmas without Papa, and each one passing did not make it easier. Part of me did not want to make the traditional journey to the Dubourgs in Orléans, where we always had fine parties and dances. Part of me didn’t even care that Etienne would be there; that Angelique was already there, and the family would be together again. Part of me just wanted to stay with my two quiet friends: La Rouge and the river.
It was still considered bad manners to talk about the Revolution in social gatherings where one was supposed to be happy, and many of my parents’ friends kept up the pretense that the Revolution had never happened.
The first Christmas after Papa was killed and the Revolution began, no one discussed how, in October of that year, the royal family had been rousted at pike’s point from their palace in Versailles by a mob led by market women who had walked all the way from Paris. Marie-Antoinette only missed being hacked to pieces in her bedchamber by escaping through a secret passageway designed for the King’s assignations with her when they were trying to produce an heir. Now, in the storming of the palace she ran to meet the King and her two children, huddling with their nurse in his chamber. Once they had arrived, the mob shunted them into a carriage, and they left their home and began a long, slow, ignominious ride to Paris. The crowd marched on all sides of the carriage, shouted insults to the King and Queen, and proudly carried, bobbing on pikes that they regularly dipped beside the windows, the bloody heads of the royal family’s personal Swiss Guards. The family was then immured in the Tuileries, an unused, rat-infested palace along the Seine, where the people of Paris and the new National Assembly could keep a close watch on them. That seemed worth discussing, but no one mentioned it that year at chez Dubourg. No one could do anything about it anyway.
This present Christmas saw the royal family truly imprisoned in the Tuileries. They had tried to escape in June, but had bungled it and were caught close to the border near a town called Varennes. The National Guard escorted them back to Paris in shame, disgrace, and utter mistrust. If the King had any credibility left, it was gone after the flight to Varennes. It would be improper to discuss this final blow to the sham authority of the King, though, among the people in silks and velvets at chez Dubourg. Nevertheless, my family, in private, had gone over the what-ifs of the aborted escape many times.
Paul held out hope that things could settle down now. He thought we could have a constitutional monarchy, like Great Britain with their king and parliament. He said that would be the most stable government, for struggles were already rife within the National Assembly that ruled France, power shifting almost monthly between different men, like a ball they kicked to or stole from each other.
Anyone who still believed in having a king of any sort was called a royalist. But there were different types of royalists: those like Paul, who wanted a peaceful transformation; those, like the Varaches, who, threatened by the instability, simply emigrated; and those who secretly accepted no change and quietly waited for the King’s restoration to power, to be brought about by his brothers and their émigré armies forming abroad. Chez Dubourg was a royalist household, perhaps of the third category.
The greatest change for me, though, on our way to Orléans, was that Monsieur Vergez, a poor substitute, was sitting in Papa’s place in the old family carriage in which Vergez had installed new velveteen curtains. He said he wanted to keep out the glares of the commoners.
As a lawyer, though, he supported all the new laws that supported them.
Vergez became garrulous about business matters regarding Grégoire, the new constitutional bishop of
Luxury
It was the third Christmas without Papa, and each one passing did not make it easier. Part of me did not want to make the traditional journey to the Dubourgs in Orléans, where we always had fine parties and dances. Part of me didn’t even care that Etienne would be there; that Angelique was already there, and the family would be together again. Part of me just wanted to stay with my two quiet friends: La Rouge and the river.
It was still considered bad manners to talk about the Revolution in social gatherings where one was supposed to be happy, and many of my parents’ friends kept up the pretense that the Revolution had never happened.
The first Christmas after Papa was killed and the Revolution began, no one discussed how, in October of that year, the royal family had been rousted at pike’s point from their palace in Versailles by a mob led by market women who had walked all the way from Paris. Marie-Antoinette only missed being hacked to pieces in her bedchamber by escaping through a secret passageway designed for the King’s assignations with her when they were trying to produce an heir. Now, in the storming of the palace she ran to meet the King and her two children, huddling with their nurse in his chamber. Once they had arrived, the mob shunted them into a carriage, and they left their home and began a long, slow, ignominious ride to Paris. The crowd marched on all sides of the carriage, shouted insults to the King and Queen, and proudly carried, bobbing on pikes that they regularly dipped beside the windows, the bloody heads of the royal family’s personal Swiss Guards. The family was then immured in the Tuileries, an unused, rat-infested palace along the Seine, where the people of Paris and the new National Assembly could keep a close watch on them. That seemed worth discussing, but no one mentioned it that year at chez Dubourg. No one could do anything about it anyway.
This present Christmas saw the royal family truly imprisoned in the Tuileries. They had tried to escape in June, but had bungled it and were caught close to the border near a town called Varennes. The National Guard escorted them back to Paris in shame, disgrace, and utter mistrust. If the King had any credibility left, it was gone after the flight to Varennes. It would be improper to discuss this final blow to the sham authority of the King, though, among the people in silks and velvets at chez Dubourg. Nevertheless, my family, in private, had gone over the what-ifs of the aborted escape many times.
Paul held out hope that things could settle down now. He thought we could have a constitutional monarchy, like Great Britain with their king and parliament. He said that would be the most stable government, for struggles were already rife within the National Assembly that ruled France, power shifting almost monthly between different men, like a ball they kicked to or stole from each other.
Anyone who still believed in having a king of any sort was called a royalist. But there were different types of royalists: those like Paul, who wanted a peaceful transformation; those, like the Varaches, who, threatened by the instability, simply emigrated; and those who secretly accepted no change and quietly waited for the King’s restoration to power, to be brought about by his brothers and their émigré armies forming abroad. Chez Dubourg was a royalist household, perhaps of the third category.
The greatest change for me, though, on our way to Orléans, was that Monsieur Vergez, a poor substitute, was sitting in Papa’s place in the old family carriage in which Vergez had installed new velveteen curtains. He said he wanted to keep out the glares of the commoners.
As a lawyer, though, he supported all the new laws that supported them.
Vergez became garrulous about business matters regarding Grégoire, the new constitutional bishop of
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