City of Darkness, City of Light Page 6

  At fourteen, he visited home in June for the funeral of a great-aunt. He was glad to be away from the fiendish discipline of the Oratorians—studying or praying from five in the morning till eight at night, with an emphasis on science, history and modern languages. The serving girl, Denise, was a couple of years older, almost as tall as Georges, with light brown hair and a lean, muscular body. “Do you want to?” Denise asked in the barn. The cattle were lying under a tree. She tended them.

  “Of course,” he said. “Just show me how.” And she had, up in the hayloft. Every afternoon they met in the loft. Sex smelled like hay to him.

  It was disappointing to leave her and go off to the Fathers again. He won an occasional prize, but mostly he was a middling student, not brilliant, not failing, just bumping along. He learned what excited him while he waited to be turned loose on the world. The next time he came home, Denise was gone. She had been sent off to be a maid in Reims. Families like Denise’s could survive only by exporting their children to the cities to make a pittance necessary to their families and vital to their own futures, if they were ever to marry. Denise’s younger brother was keeping the cattle. The family strips of land could not support them. Even the father had to hire himself out in planting and harvest seasons, and the mother made rope for a merchant. They had to work on the roads for free, to give a good part of what they managed to grow to the absent lord in Versailles, and a tenth to the Church. They had to pay the salt tax and other taxes levied only on the poor. So Denise had been shipped off where he could not get his hands on her.

  In Troyes, studying with the Fathers but living in rooms his sixteenth year, he had other women. He was in love with a second cousin for a month or two, but sighing was not his metier. By the time he graduated, of his four adventures, he most fondly remembered Denise.

  As Georges turned twenty in his native town of Arcis, a sense of stagnation irritated him. He loved his mother dearly, he was fond of his sisters and his mild ineffectual stepfather. But he could not see an opening. Sometimes the whole society felt stuck like a carriage in the mud. But some advanced. Those born to it. He had gone to school with them. The son of a local petty lord had bought a regiment; the Bishop’s bastard was sent to Paris: a place in the higher court had been paid for, where he could practice law lucratively instead of going along settling the problems of peasants and shopkeepers and scrabbling for little cases like Georges’ stepfather. The children of nobles, even the illegitimate children of clergy, rose like those new balloons, effortlessly, full of hot gas, while he stood with his feet in the dirt, gazing upward. Arcis and the surrounding area were thick with his kinfolk, but no one could give him a real position.

  Times were poor. If he was going to make his way, he had to leave. He would make his fortune, come back and set up his family in high style. He would own a big fine house in parkland and beyond that a working farm, vineyards, fields of grain. But that was for when he was thirty, middle-aged. Now he was young and he wanted success so passionately it felt like hunger in his belly, gnawing at him. He had chosen the law, but he was blocked. He read of the Enlightenment, he read of change and progress and new manufactures, but here nothing changed. The philosophers wrote of merit, of free competition of men and ideas, but those were the stuff of schoolboy fantasies. Paris was where a man must go to make his fortune. The mail coach went to Paris once a week. Arcis was where he wanted to end his life, but first he had to live it.

  The coach dumped him on the edge of Paris, in a slum festering under a black cloud of pestilent smoke. As he hiked through the narrow streets carrying his two portmanteaux, he choked from the stench of shit and rotten garbage. He was suffocated and deafened at once. In the perpetual twilight of the open sewers between dark houses sealing out the sky, every half block some poor soul was singing at the top of his lungs, bawdy songs, ballads of adventure and crime, topical songs, religious songs: all seeking sous from passersby and selling song sheets, scraping away on violins or banging on drums. Women carrying racks of old clothes pushed through the crowds. Swarms of beggars, crippled, blind, maimed, clutched at him. A man slammed into him. He watched his purse. Two men glared; he glared back. He elbowed his way along. Toughs looking into his scarred face saw someone who would readily fight. They let him pass.

  He began using up his meager money at the Black Horse Inn, where people from Champagne stayed. But Georges had not been in Paris long when he got a job as a clerk with a solicitor named Vinot. He wasn’t paid but got bed and board. He worked hard during the week. Sundays he would have liked to spend in cafes, but that was costly. He had already learned to like coffee. Mornings, women would stand on the street selling café au lait to workers hurrying past. That was cheap; cafes were not. Instead he went strolling in the Rue Melée near the Porte Saint Martin, one of the city gates. High and low prostitutes walked there, as did noble ladies and bourgeois families. Thieves and pickpockets frequented the crowd that thickened around knots of entertainment, acrobats, dancers, puppets, clowns, street theater, carts selling food and used clothing and the meager property of the dead. He liked the bustle, the liveliness. Most of the week he was stuck in a little cabinet copying documents and might as well have been six feet underground.

  One afternoon as he was coming back from an errand, he saw a fresh-faced woman with curly light brown hair saying goodbye to a friend in the street. He had seen her before in the neighborhood. When her friend left, he spoke to her, smiling. “The voice of home. You’re from Champagne too.”

  “Oh, where are you from?” They chatted, discovering they had acquaintances in common from his years in Troyes, where she had grown up and married. The next time he met Françoise, they took a stroll together and he bought her a lemonade. Françoise lived next door in the Rue de la Tis-sanderie. A year before, her much older husband had died, leaving her a comfortable widow. She promptly shocked her family by picking up and leaving for Paris, where she felt she could enjoy herself without censure. A widow was about the only woman in France who might have a little freedom.

  It was an easy and accepted liaison, someone with whom he could share memories of Troyes, with whom he could explore the Paris that challenged and mesmerized him. He picked up an occasional job for ready cash, as he met other needy young men and well-established lawyers in the archaic maze of the court system. He began to organize a law degree. Back in Reims, they gave them out if you paid and showed up a couple of times a year, without requiring such superfluous activities as attending classes, passing exams or writing theses. He signed up. He had to travel to Reims from time to time, but that and the payment were all that was required to deliver him a graduate in law degree by 1784. Now he could take such cases as he could find.

  He had a mistress, even if she contributed to his upkeep more than he to hers. He had his degree. He had learned how to dress as a Parisian lawyer, although he cared little about clothes. He learned to go to the theater sometimes and to talk as if he went oftener. He read the journals of the day in the cafes, the few that got through censorship, and played dominoes. He made friends with Camille Desmoulins who was employed in the office of another lawyer. Camille was a younger man with a stutter and literary ambitions who had gone to a very good school in Paris, Louis-le-Grand, but was even poorer than Georges. They were part of the motley horde of young men trying to make it in the law, without connections, without background, without family money. As much as Georges wanted to make money, Camille wanted to be famous. He was bright, verbally deft when he did not stutter, with a sly and salacious wit.

  “I b-b-burn for a name that sh-shines! Who wants to die like a mouse and rot and b-b-be forgotten, Georges? If everyone would know me, I would d-d-die happy!” He had lank long hair. Sometimes he was comely in a young, almost defenseless way; other times, he was gawky and storklike. He was always hungry. “We have a ch-choice of hack writing, writing pamphlets, writing p-p-pornography. Or starving nicely, sweetly.”

  “We’re all desperate for a chance to climb out of
the mud.”

  Georges had a natural gift for oratory, for persuasion in court and in private, and huge energy. He needed little sleep. He could walk at a brisk pace for miles through the Paris streets, over the rough pavement and through the gullies of muck, and arrive fresh and ready. Although he loved good drink and good food, he could get by on bread and café au lait, later a bit of cheese or sausage and cheap wine, like a peasant. He could only practice in the common courts, until he could buy his way into a better court. For that thousands of livres were needed. He could not finance the purchase of a legal office. Then he had a sad conversation with Françoise.

  “Darling Georges, I have met a M. Huet de Paisy who is taken with me.”

  “Who wouldn’t be, Françoise? I’m taken with you myself.” He kissed her shoulder. They were in her bed, the hangings drawn making twilight.

  “Ah, but dear sweet Georges, he is taken to the extent of wishing to set me up in style. He has money, houses, armies of servants, a carriage.”

  Georges felt it would be unfair to object, for he was fond of her but did not love her. They continued to have coffee from time to time or a glass of wine together, for the sake of their friendship, their nostalgia. Georges liked to hold on to his friends. They might be useful someday, and he was a warm and affectionate man. But now he had no mistress and little comfort.

  He missed walking through the streets of Arcis and everybody knowing him. Above all he needed some way to scrabble up from the mob of indigent lawyers of whom he was merely one among hundreds, up to the level of making real money and a good reputation, one that would strike solidly like a gold louis rapped on a counter to display its soundness. He could take his knocks, but he was still a bottom dweller in the dark heavy seas of the law.

  SEVEN

  Manon

  (1779–1780)

  MANON was twenty-five, late for a daughter of an artisan to marry. Peasants married late. They had to amass a dowry before they could afford to marry. The richer people were, the younger they married. Often girls of the nobility were married before they had begun to menstruate. But no one was about to arrange a marriage for her. All those who might have taken an interest were dead, her mother, her grandmother, her wet nurse. Her mother’s death had driven her into a crevice of despair, where she crouched for months. She was left with her father, who only cared that she keep house frugally behind the engraver’s shop, so he had money enough for his demanding mistress and his speculations. She had to bring in an accountant to go over his books, because he was sinking. The news was desperate. He had lost her mother’s dowry, supposed to be inviolate. Occasionally they had a senseless shouting match about the cost of getting the door fixed or feeding the apprentices. Usually he did not sleep in the brick house on the Quai de l’Horloge. When they must waste an evening together, they played endless games of piquet.

  She was tidying his chest of drawers when she found bottles of sassafras powder, tincture of mercury. She called her elderly maid Mignonne and read her the bottles. “What does this say to you?”

  Mignonne crossed herself. “The pox.”

  Her father had syphilis. She tried not to despise him worse than she did. The only being who understood what she was going through was Mignonne, who said, “I’m scared we’ll both end up in the street. He’ll bankrupt the business. You could be forced into service yourself. I’m too old to find another job.” Manon should have rebuked her for speaking familiarly, but she did not. Mignonne was right.

  Life rushed by in the street outside. Manon engaged in long friendships and flirtations, usually with older intellectual men, but nothing came of it. She had to be married for love, because she had no money, no property. Her father was capable of marrying again at any time, even of wedding his newest greedy mistress. She had only her intellect, her will, her virtue. She was regarded as pretty, but she was not seductive. She approached everything with a blunt frontal assault. Ever since her adventure with the apprentice, young men frightened her. She toyed with the offer of a marriage blanc from an elderly admirer, but in the end, he had doddered off in trepidation before even that much commitment.

  She had sunk into a flirtation through the mail with a man twenty years her senior, a government bureaucrat, honest, austere, something of an intellectual—never married. There had been meetings, fervent exchanges, deep discussions, books lent, notes passed, once a furtive goodbye kiss. Yet Jean Roland de la Platière did not propose marriage. He did nothing improper, he did not touch her again, except a brushing of the hands. Obviously he was terrified to tell his widowed mother that he was considering marrying a dowryless fiancée. His large family lived in Beaujolais. His four brothers were priests. He was to carry on the family, but there seemed no urgency in him. She wanted everything honest, open, two intelligent souls communicating their thoughts and feelings. Instead by his hesitations and cowardice, she was driven to playing him like a fish she must land to survive. Often she grew too depressed to continue. Let him suffocate in his scruples and doubts!

  Jean needed her. He was not popular with his superiors, this inspector of the textile industry in Amiens (where broadcloth, linen, wool were manufactured), because he was too honest and too serious. He believed in science, the newest machines and the best techniques. He wore himself out. He needed a wife to assist him. She could learn about the industries under his jurisdiction. It was a rational marriage, one that would open to her a share of a useful and virtuous life. But he did not ask her. She admired his reasoning, his conversation, his serious demeanor, his accomplishments, his very dryness. She felt safe and stimulated at once. But the courtship idled: a visit when she felt their souls mingle; a quarrel, a misunderstanding; a rapprochement. In wide lazy circles they floated. It was four years since he had first shown interest in her. If she did not marry, there was simply no place for her.

  Mignonne brought her a letter. “It’s from M. de la Platière.” She stood waiting while Manon skimmed the letter. After all, there was nothing between them to keep from Mignonne—only from her father, who would try to scuttle any possible marriage. She dropped the letter on her desk. “Nothing. He has a cold. He’s tired. He’s reading Diderot.”

  She had to get out of the flat. She had slept poorly the night before, for a gang of beggars had beaten another beggar to death, for encroaching on their territory on the quai. What could she do? Within her room and her mind, she was Joan of Arc, every heroine she had ever read about; yet here she was picking through produce and mending sheets, alone, untouched, wasted. What a chasm between the fire in her brain and the laundry of her life. She began a letter to Sophie Carnet, her friend from the convent. To Sophie she confessed she had lost her faith, despised religion, detested intolerance. But she could not sit still. She would go and visit the painter Greuze, who was married and respectable. Jean was not pleased by her friendship with Greuze. The last time she had seen Jean, he said, “Greuze specializes in sentimental, slyly erotic paintings supposed to be moral and edifying.” She found Jean’s judgement wanting in sensibility, but she was pleased he showed a flash of jealousy. She thought the paintings uplifting, for they did not depict naked goddesses or court ladies but ordinary people, always a story implied or a moral. His most famous painting was of his wife, when she was much younger: the broken pitcher—a study of youthful indiscretion and regret. Her pitcher was fortunately intact. She crossed the Pont Neuf and turned toward the Louvre where Greuze lived, just along the Seine. She carried a scented handkerchief, since they had no carriage and she must walk through the filthy streets.

  The royalty of France had deserted the old palace for Versailles the century before. Now it was full of painters, sculptors, artisans who had gradually taken it over. It was a squalid but lively scene, fun to visit. Depressed and desperate as she was, she knew how to be gay in public—and it was not an act, because when she was with even somewhat interesting people, she did not think of herself. She loved to talk about ideas, to forget her sad female situation. The Louvre was subdivi
ded into tiny apartments, odd-shaped flats. Families had started gardens on the roof and in the courtyard. Babies squalled, kids chased each other around the halls, little girls rolled hoops and boys played ball, pulled each other on straw sleds. Models padded around in dressing gowns. In the courtyards, women cooked on open fires. She stayed as long as she dared, before returning to her tiny room in the flat.

  When Jean came to see her that Sunday, again she wavered. He was tall and skinny and yellowish in complexion, from the jaundice that sometimes afflicted him. His hair was thinning and his manner, stiff. But he was husband material, hand cut for her. One month he was dropping hints about marriage and the next he disappeared back into his work at Amiens. She heard he was seeing someone more suitable. This Sunday, their conversation was interesting, about America, but he said nothing of a personal nature.

  Then Mignonne began to cough violently, all night, began to cough blood. Manon called a physician. The man was annoyed to be called to treat a maid. “She’s dying. There’s nothing to be done. I would like my fee now.”

  Manon sat beside Mignonne’s narrow pallet, holding her withered grey hand. “The doctor says you just need rest and you’ll regain your strength. Let us pray to the Virgin.” Pious lies. Finally Mignonne sank into unconsciousness. Death came almost imperceptibly. Manon wept as much as she had for her mother. Now she was utterly alone with her hopeless and uncaring father. She was going to end up a servant like Mignonne in some nasty family.