City of Darkness, City of Light Page 3

  In Louis-le-Grand he was a little mouse allowed in the house of the wealthy and proud. They pushed him out of the way on the stairs. They spoke to him as if to a servant. They never called him by name. He knew all of the aristocratic boys by name and reputation; he considered most of them stupid. The bright boys were those like him, boys of little money, threadbare clothes—although few were as badly dressed as himself—and sharp fresh talent. Boys with brains like Camille Desmoulins, here too on scholarship, like Jérôme Pétion. When they sat up in the dormitory they did not talk about imaginary conquests but about ideas, about France, about equality and justice and how a man should act. They argued about Brutus and Caesar and Augustus, as if they were acquaintances. Ancient Rome felt closer to them than the towns they had left. Camille was two years younger than himself, but their intelligence and mutual interest in Roman history and the Enlightenment philosophers brought them together. Camille got on so badly with his father he told Max he envied him, having none.

  Camille had quick hands; sometimes he could pilfer a piece of bread, once an apple that they cut up between them. A Father had been overly interested in Max a couple of years before. Now he transferred his interest to Camille. Camille did not freeze and flee like Max. He had long private conversations with the Father. Sometimes the Father gave him sweets which he brought back and shared with his two friends. “What do you have to do for this?” Max asked suspiciously.

  Camille shrugged. “It’s child’s play.” He giggled. “He doesn’t hurt me.”

  Camille’s readiness to insult those who thought they were his betters got him in constant trouble. If he had not stuttered, his insults would have been worse. Max tried to protect him, but several times the rich boys beat him or had their lackeys do so.

  Max must make contact with his benefactor, the Bishop. He had to rise from a name on a list into a worthy recipient of further attention. That acknowledgment could turn penury into respectability for a young man trying to make his way in Arras, where he was regarded as a demi-bastard from a defunct family. Here his unrelenting work and fierce intelligence brought him to the attention of the Fathers. But what of Arras? That town was not set up like a school with prizes to win and honors to snatch by merit.

  He would never get past the Bishop’s outer ring of servants dressed as he was. He was seventeen and had no clothes but the toque on his head and the shabby robe he wore at school, under it small clothes long past mending. He wrote, he rewrote, he polished a note to the Bursar. “Sir, I have been told that the Bishop of Arras is in Paris, and I would like to see him. However, I have no suit of clothes or other articles without which I cannot appear in public. I would be most grateful if you would take the trouble to explain my situation to his grace and if you would help me obtain what I must have to present myself to him. I remain, sir, respectfully, your very humble and obedient servant, Maximilien Robespierre the Elder.”

  The polite forms came easily to him. Camille made fun of the formality of bourgeois and noble life. He wrote parodies of the prayers and lives of the saints. His favorite was Saint Sowbelly, who mortified himself by eating bad food, spoiled vegetables, rotten meat, who went about from school to school eating the dinners of students. Camille wrote scurrilous verse about their teachers. Max had better things to do with his brain. It was the fact that he was the very humble servant of all of them that he minded, not the saying of it. More humble entreaties, more obsequious begging, and finally he was given an outfit from the charity funds. He set out walking from the Latin Quarter to the Marais, where the Bishop’s family, the Rohans, had a mansion.

  His presentation lasted five minutes. The Bishop was reading a letter on his desk throughout. A handsome man, a vain man. No more a believer than Max himself, although Max did not discard God. He was pious in his own quiet logical relentless way. He was sure that there had to be justice, and therefore there had to be a judge. This was no deity to whom one could address requests to find lost dogs or to cure one’s pleurisy. God was a high austere judge who watched, did not interfere, but saw all that mattered. Remembering how uncomfortable he had felt when one of the Fathers had taken a too-fervent interest in him made Max satisfied by the tepid interest of the Bishop. At least he had put a face on his name. He was permitted to keep the suit of green silk.

  Two letters came. His aunt wrote him that Henriette had died at the charity school. With the slowness of the mail, they could not postpone the funeral till he came. She had been dead for eight days, and he had not known. He wondered he could not feel his sister being ripped from him, that he had not known in his own flesh the moment of her death. It was his fault. He could not take her from the dreadful school. Like his mother, she was suddenly dead.

  The letter from Charlotte begged him to come and save her. She blamed the nuns for not paying attention to Henriette’s coughing, not taking her fever seriously. She urged him to free her from the school. He could not help her. He was still a schoolboy himself, shut up in Louis-le-Grand trying to please the Fathers. There should be something he could do, something. He was failing his family. He began to work on getting his brother into Louis-le-Grand. He had now only one sister, one brother to protect. All he could do for Charlotte was to counsel patience and promise solemnly that when his studies were finished, he would return to Arras and she would live with him.

  He won another prize in an essay contest, and this time he was chosen to represent the school in a great honor. The newly crowned King Louis XVI and his young Queen Marie-Antoinette of Austria were going to stop by the school on their royal progression through Paris after their coronation at Reims. He, Maximilien de Robespierre, was the choice of the school Fathers to make a speech in Latin before their majesties. He was thrilled. He had a high thin voice but it carried well and he never had trouble making himself heard. He worked and worked on his delivery; the Headmaster wrote the speech.

  The King was young and said to be faithful to his wife, unlike all previous kings within memory back to Saint Louis. He was said to want to do well for France and for the people. People talked of nothing else. Louis XV had destroyed the confidence of his subjects, running up huge debts and losing a war to England. He kept mistresses who ruled France, first Mme du Pompadour and then du Barry, who spent millions. He passed his time at a house called the Deer Park, where he had young girls brought for his pleasure. The new King was said to have plain tastes. The common people hoped this meant an end to the flagrant consumption and luxury for luxury’s sake. This King would bring reform, would change the unjust system of taxation that exempted the rich and crushed the poor. It would be a new era. Max practiced his speech until Camille began to make fun of him. Finally he shut himself in the privy to say it again and again.

  He thought of the privy on the great day, when he knelt in the muddy street in the pouring rain to recite his speech. He had been waiting outside the gates of the college for more than an hour before the carriage finally appeared, the mud flying out and the horses almost running him down before he could scramble clear. They were late.

  By now his clothes were sodden and filthy. The mud of the Paris streets was notorious. It was composed of dirt, offal, human waste, horse droppings, garbage, soot. It was scraped off regularly and composted outside the city to be used as fertilizer. But there was always half a foot of it, rendered into stinking paste in the downpour. His black robe was foul.

  The King and Queen did not step down from their carriage. He could not see them. He heard the Queen laugh once. Before he had finished the fifth sentence of the sonorous and obsequious Latin praises written by the Headmaster, there was a terse order from within. The coachman shot to attention, the footmen began trotting down the street. With a sharp lurch the great coach took off, splashing mud into Max’s open mouth and into his eyes. The King and Queen had decamped.

  THREE

  Manon

  (1765–1766)

  MANON’S parents put her into a convent to be educated right after the incident with the apprenti
ce. Manon had grown up on Ile de la Cité, in the center of the Seine in the center of Paris. There the Philipons lodged in a handsome house, brick like its matching neighbors and the third from the busy and always crowded bridge, the oldest in Paris, the Pont Neuf. Just along the Quai de l’Horloge was a busy prison, the Conciergerie, and law courts, the Palais de Justice. It was an important place to live, Manon thought. Their flat faced the fashionable neighborhood on the right bank called the Marais. In the workshop attached to their rooms, her father and his apprentices made fine snuffboxes for gentlemen, watch and jewelry cases. Her father was a master engraver who had as much work as he could handle. But he speculated. Since Manon could remember, her mother had sighed and commented wearily upon his belief that he was a financial genius and would shortly become rich. In spite of the workroom and studio being in the house, M. Philipon had little to do with Manon. He approved of her intelligence, her precocity, but he did not involve himself. He reluctantly paid for music lessons, for a tutor, for books. Manon saw more of the apprentices, who were little older than she. Sometimes they sang together or played cards. Always they ate at the same long table, the Philipons and the apprentices.

  At first when the apprentice, Jérôme, called her over to him as she was going through the workshop—empty but for him that afternoon—she was curious. What was this thing he was urging her so insistently to see?

  “Pretty Manon, come here,” he coaxed. “I have something for you.”

  She had always liked him, for he made her laugh. He was fiddling with his pants, opening them. Then she saw what he was making a fuss about, the same thing dogs had, only bigger and he kept poking at her and telling her to touch it. “I don’t want to! It’s disgusting!” She ran out.

  A week later, he called her over again. She did not know why she went, except she had always liked him and no harm had come to her last time. This time he grabbed hold of her, thrust her down on the windowsill and stuck his hand under her skirt. That hurt and she began to cry out until he let go of her. This time she went to her mother. It was a terrible thing, apparently. Her mother turned white and then red and made her repeat again and again exactly what had happened. Manon was terrified now instead of only upset.

  “Never tell anyone. Never! He must go at once.”

  “But what does it mean?” she asked stubbornly. “What did he want?”

  “Shhhh!” Her mother slapped her cheek. “Put it out of your mind. Forget! You’re intact, thank the Virgin who watches over virgins. You must always be careful never to be alone with young men. They can be dangerous.”

  It was a serious thing for an apprentice to be turned out of his place, and that made her feel guilty. She did not forget. It made her wary and cautious. A young man might suddenly do violent and revolting things, might try to hurt her. She had begun to be devout right after that, but it did not last long in the convent, where life was softer than she had expected.

  Afterward, she went to live with her grandmother, to learn manners. Her grandmother had been governess to the children of a great lady. Grandmère lived on the next island in the Seine, the He de Nôtre Dame, a quiet pious neighborhood unlike her native He de la Cité. Sometimes Manon missed the bustle of home. Grandmère was to polish her for finding a husband.

  It was certainly quiet with Grandmère, who was more affectionate than her own mother and often kissed her. Manon was sure that she was the center of her mother’s universe right next to the Blessed Virgin, but her mother showed it more by watching out for Manon’s interests than by fussing over her or embracing her. Manon adored her mother, although she never seemed entirely to please her. It was far easier to please her grandmother, who was delighted to have an intelligent and accomplished young lady to dress up and show off. When Grandmère’s cronies came by, she was asked to recite Corneille or Racine or some pious or pastoral poetry for them. She also read to Grandmère, who embroidered. Grandmère’s neighbor had a pianoforte, on which Manon would play, sometimes fine compositions by Rameau or Gluck, sometimes simple airs they could sing. Manon played the guitar and the viola, as well as the pianoforte, but did not take music seriously. Her teacher had introduced her to a renowned virtuoso, who had been the teacher of Marie-Antoinette in Vienna. He begged her mother to let him give lessons to Manon who he said had the makings of a true performer. Her mother declined indignantly; she did not think women should have professions. Manon liked the picture of herself playing for the pleasure of Grandmère’s friends, the perfect granddaughter; then she wondered if she was growing vain. She wrote to Sophie Carnet every other day, her fantasies, her doubts, her wishes, her dreams, her self-analysis. They had become best friends in the convent and remained so.

  Saturday she insisted, as she did every week, in going off to the country to see her old wet nurse, Mme Petrie. She had spent the first two years of her life with Mme Petrie and still called her Maman, as well as her own mother. “You’ve always been stubborn,” Grandmère said. “When your father or mother would spank you when you were little, you would bite their thighs and you would never, never apologize.” Grandmère thought the old connection ludicrous. Children were sent off to wet nurses, but nobody went on treating them as family. Monsieur Philipon was a master craftsman; Grandmère had been a governess. Why should her granddaughter run off regularly to see an old peasant who farmed babies? Manon refused to be shamed. Mme Petrie had been her first maman; Manon loved that cottage with its rabbits and chickens and ducks. That was one place she did not have to show off her accomplishments to be loved. Mme Petrie, who had only sons, called Manon her true daughter.

  Sunday after mass, where Manon went willingly with Grandmère and read Plutarch behind her missal, Grandmère announced, “This afternoon, we are making a proper call upon a great lady. You should be impressed she’s willing to receive us. I taught the children of Mme du Boismorel for eighteen years, every one of them. She’s been very generous with me and she has consented to our visit today, to have you presented to her. I’m thrilled for you, Manon. This could be a great entrée for you.”

  Grandmère made her wear the fashionable corps-de-robe, an imitation of court gowns excruciatingly tight at the waist with a stiff bodice in which it was hard to breathe and a long wide skirt with paniers sticking out. It tended to sweep the street and pick up refuse. Grandmère frizzed Manon’s hair with a curling iron, every lock, and stuck on a hat dripping feathers and ribbons. Her dress was lavender silk with a pattern of lilies; the underskirt was pale green. Grandmère wore an immense gown of pink, green and white, saved for important occasions. It took them three hours to get ready to meet the great lady. Manon had been hearing about Mme du Boismorel for her entire life. A gracious aristocrat of fine breeding, exquisite manners, superb taste: the pinnacle of everything a woman could be.

  They walked, trying to keep their trains out of the mud, across the bridge to the Marais where the Boismorels owned a town house. The Boismorels had recently arrived from their country estate for the fall season. It was October, lindens and horse chestnuts beginning to turn. The sun strained through a gauzy haze and the Seine looked languid. Men were fishing and women were drawing up water. A barge laden with logs drifted under the bridge. Church bells sounded on the hour from every side, hundreds of bells from the hundreds of churches.

  The town house was large and elegant. They were passed from servant to servant, then kept standing in a blue and ivory anteroom papered with columns and nymphs. Manon worried about Grandmère, who did not like to stand so long. She was looking pale by the time they were finally shown into a sitting room where a fat dumpy woman whose complexion was golden with powder and spotted bright red with rouge was cooing to her lapdog. The dog yapped at them.

  “Little darling, precious honeybee, Mama’s right here.” Then her tone changed. It was icy, bored. “Mademoiselle. After so many years.”

  Manon froze as Grandmère dropped on her arthritic knees into a full groveling curtsey. “Madame. It is such a great pleasure to see you again
. I wanted to present my granddaughter, Manon Philipon.”

  “Come forward, child.” Madame turned to Grandmère. “Mademoiselle, you may sit there.” Madame pointed at a low stool, something a young child might sit on. Manon approached, but she was shocked and longed to say something nasty. “Mademoiselle” was used for women of low status, poor women, servants, wet nurses, no matter what their age or whether or not they had ever married. It was a slap. Manon had never heard her mother call anyone Mademoiselle, except the maid when she was furious. It was too rude. It kept the woman addressed a child, as did the low stool. Manon stood, but she was sturdy and fifteen years old. Grandmère was an old woman with arthritis, who sat with difficulty on the uncomfortable three-legged stool.

  “Manon has been reading since she was four,” Grandmère was gushing. “She reads Latin as well. She knows more than I do about history. The nuns thought her the brightest child they had taught in a decade. I don’t know where she gets her brains—”