conditions of the city, the uprisings that he was a part of stopping on a daily basis. To me he wrote his innermost thoughts, his philosophies and his desires. He spoke of family, and of how much he wished to raise a son in a world that would know peace. I daydreamed of being the mother to that imaginary little boy, and held the letter to my beating heart as I stared out to the south, where he was risking his life day in and day out.
Have you lived long enough to have experienced the insanely quick passage of time? Like, years of your life go by, and you are stuck in such a routine that one day you wake up and realize that it’s three years later and you don’t know where the time went? Well, that’s kind of what happened to us. I mean, horrible things happened. In May of 1790, the aristocracy was abolished in the new legislature that was forcing its way into our lives. Our tenants tried to revolt against us, and my father made them a deal to keep things peaceful, though we lost much of our fortune providing them with the land they declared as their own. Our massive house was costing us to keep up, and we discovered that many aristo families were cutting down or even losing their homes. Many had even fled the country to England, a nation that we had always despised.
The next year passed by, the riots getting more and more violent. The revolution was recruiting en masse, and I found myself looking out my front window just waiting for them to come for me…again. My dreams were wrought with violence, the bloody corpses of Giselle and that poor girl in the hallway tugging at my mind while I slept. I would wake up sweaty and afraid. When I woke from a nightmare, I pulled out one of Bastien’s letters and read his words of love over and over again, allowing them to caress my mind back into calm.
By the end of 1792, a man named Robespierre began calling for the head of the king after many, many attempts to maintain the peace. It was around that time, in December, when Jeanette and her father showed up at our door, shivering. Although we had had our differences at court, I graciously ushered them in and called for hot tea…a delicacy at that point. Jeannette and her father eyed the servants with mistrust.
“I hope you can trust these bastards,” her father said, and I grimaced at his foul language. He was beyond caring. “Our servants were the ones who ratted us out to the damn revolutionaries. We’re lucky we got out with our lives.”
“And your mother?” I asked Jeannette quietly. She stared at the ground, refusing to respond, her silence confirming the worst. My father came in then and saved me from the conversation, offering them our home for as long as they needed. They both hesitated, clearly seeing us as an unfortunate last resort despite their dire circumstances. Finding no alternative, Jeannette’s father reluctantly accepted the offer. It was a strange addition to our household, and Jeannette sat in hostile silence in my reading room as Jacqueline and I went about our usual business of reading, sewing or otherwise occupying our time. We continued to get letters from Bastien, though they become more infrequent, much to our chagrin. It was the first subject Jeannette deigned to comment on.
“So you’re really going to debase yourself by marrying a soldier?” she asked one day, interrupting a conversation Jacqueline and I were having. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
“You, who have no home and exist on the whim of my father’s mercy, have an objection to my marriage to a soldier? Or haven’t you heard that the classes no longer exist?”
“They will always exist,” she hissed, her anger boiling over. I was sure she had repressed plenty of it, as I watched her seethe through every conversation in the house. Jeannette was not one to keep silent about anything, and I was amazed it had taken this long. Still, that was all she blurted before storming out of the room, and Jacqueline and I
Have you lived long enough to have experienced the insanely quick passage of time? Like, years of your life go by, and you are stuck in such a routine that one day you wake up and realize that it’s three years later and you don’t know where the time went? Well, that’s kind of what happened to us. I mean, horrible things happened. In May of 1790, the aristocracy was abolished in the new legislature that was forcing its way into our lives. Our tenants tried to revolt against us, and my father made them a deal to keep things peaceful, though we lost much of our fortune providing them with the land they declared as their own. Our massive house was costing us to keep up, and we discovered that many aristo families were cutting down or even losing their homes. Many had even fled the country to England, a nation that we had always despised.
The next year passed by, the riots getting more and more violent. The revolution was recruiting en masse, and I found myself looking out my front window just waiting for them to come for me…again. My dreams were wrought with violence, the bloody corpses of Giselle and that poor girl in the hallway tugging at my mind while I slept. I would wake up sweaty and afraid. When I woke from a nightmare, I pulled out one of Bastien’s letters and read his words of love over and over again, allowing them to caress my mind back into calm.
By the end of 1792, a man named Robespierre began calling for the head of the king after many, many attempts to maintain the peace. It was around that time, in December, when Jeanette and her father showed up at our door, shivering. Although we had had our differences at court, I graciously ushered them in and called for hot tea…a delicacy at that point. Jeannette and her father eyed the servants with mistrust.
“I hope you can trust these bastards,” her father said, and I grimaced at his foul language. He was beyond caring. “Our servants were the ones who ratted us out to the damn revolutionaries. We’re lucky we got out with our lives.”
“And your mother?” I asked Jeannette quietly. She stared at the ground, refusing to respond, her silence confirming the worst. My father came in then and saved me from the conversation, offering them our home for as long as they needed. They both hesitated, clearly seeing us as an unfortunate last resort despite their dire circumstances. Finding no alternative, Jeannette’s father reluctantly accepted the offer. It was a strange addition to our household, and Jeannette sat in hostile silence in my reading room as Jacqueline and I went about our usual business of reading, sewing or otherwise occupying our time. We continued to get letters from Bastien, though they become more infrequent, much to our chagrin. It was the first subject Jeannette deigned to comment on.
“So you’re really going to debase yourself by marrying a soldier?” she asked one day, interrupting a conversation Jacqueline and I were having. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
“You, who have no home and exist on the whim of my father’s mercy, have an objection to my marriage to a soldier? Or haven’t you heard that the classes no longer exist?”
“They will always exist,” she hissed, her anger boiling over. I was sure she had repressed plenty of it, as I watched her seethe through every conversation in the house. Jeannette was not one to keep silent about anything, and I was amazed it had taken this long. Still, that was all she blurted before storming out of the room, and Jacqueline and I
Similar Books
