Gilbert smiled with as much modesty as he could muster. A French declaration of rights had been his desire from the start—from the first moment he hung the American Declaration of Independence in a double-paned frame, determined to fill the empty half with its match.
My husband had already fought tyranny with a sword; it would be to his greater glory if he could fight with ink. Every night now, Gilbert was working over a writing table—scratching out words, putting them back, adopting suggestions, debating clauses. Some believed it impious folly to declare all of mankind deserving of equal and fair treatment of the laws, entitled to free expression and exercise of religion. Yet I believed it was the wish of a loving God for his children. It is certainly what I wished for mine.
I was warned by friends in the queen’s circle that my husband was a marked man. Yet I could see no reason the royals would wish to punish Lafayette for spelling out the rights of every citizen, unless the king’s agreement to a constitutional monarchy was insincere. Was the king himself—a king for whom I had much affection—dishonorable? And if he were so dishonorable as to lie to his entire nation, would he stoop to arrest my husband . . . or kill him?
Lafayette did not seem frightened. “This is not my first warning,” he told me. “Philippe sent an emissary to tell me the king intends to strike out at us both. He proposes that I join forces with him.”
The suggestion startled me. “You and Philippe, join forces?”
Gilbert snorted at the absurd idea. “Truthfully, I believe that since he inherited his father’s title as the duc d’Orléans, Philippe has been scheming to take the throne for himself . . . and I will never help him do it.”
What a knave Philippe was. I knew he now styled himself a champion of the people, and had curried favor by opening up his Palais-Royale to the public. As a prince of the blood and a cousin to the king, he had some distant claim to the throne, but did he dare make a play for it? Or did he simply intend to embroil my husband in treason?
“You must not fear, my dear heart. If I am taken up by the king’s guards, Jefferson will claim me as an American citizen.” Lafayette said this mostly in jest, but it was all very serious now. Jefferson had been courageous to pen the American Declaration of Independence in defiance of his English king. That king had been across the ocean. Our king’s palace gate was no more than a hundred steps from where my husband slept at Versailles. Our defiance was more dangerous in every way, but who else had the stature and moral standing to take the risk?
Gilbert said, “To give France a declaration of rights, Adrienne, will be the greatest day of my life, even if I am dragged to the dungeon for it.”
Which is why I would not dissuade him. He feared for the children and me to see him shackled by the king’s soldiers and hauled away to the Bastille, so we were trundled off to Paris, where I was left to read in the gazettes how my husband rose to read his Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
They said he was resolute and cool, but that his words set the chamber aflame. Royalists said this was a dangerous document. An insult. That it was too American. That above all, this declaration must not be circulated, lest it incite the public. But it was already far too late.
The French Revolution was begun . . .
TWENTY-EIGHT
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
May 1942
Open resistance at the preventorium began with boys throwing shit at the baron’s convertible. With the welcome sun of springtime, I was outside with a class of girls when our acting president screeched into the drive, then slammed noisily out of his vehicle, red-faced and shouting as messy brown slop dripped from the hood.
I sent some of the girls for buckets of water to rinse it clean while Anna and the baroness came out to see what the matter was. And now the baron’s voice booms with fury. “It happened not far from the boys’ dormitory. A group of the older ones threw manure! They didn’t even have the decency to run.”
Serves you right, I think, and not just because the boys have been more rebellious than ever, stealing bicycles and riding into town, where they’re forbidden to go.
The baroness has complained about this, but the disappointment on her face now isn’t for the boys; it’s for the baron. “Leave it alone, Amaury. You made your choice.”
The coolness between the baroness and her husband started with Madame Simon’s departure, but it has since become an icy chill, and it’s left to Anna to calm her father’s temper. “It’s all right, Papa. You’re too busy to be running errands in Paulhaguet anyway. I’ll go!”