Memories of that terrible day flooded back, and Lafayette reached for my hand as if to reassure himself that I was alive and well. “How can you think people who behaved that way are my friends?”
Pauline clenched her teeth. “Just tell me I wasn’t wrong to confide my plans. Say you will not arrest me for trying to leave the country.”
Gilbert threw himself back into the carriage seat, indignant. “I am no longer commander of the guard, and if liberty means anything, it must mean the freedom to go where you please.”
“Liberty,” Pauline sneered, and kicked his boot. “How can you still speak of liberty, Gilbert? Admit it. The common people you have spent half your fortune to champion are animals, less capable of ruling themselves than a flock of sheep, and more dangerous than a pack of wolves. They need a king to inspire terror, noble boots on their necks to keep them working, and hunger to keep them too weak to devour civilization.”
“Pauline!” I cried. “May God forgive you.”
She was unchastened. “The king is going to be restored; his brothers will see to it with the backing of Austria.”
“That would be utter calamity,” Gilbert warned. “A war with Austria and a civil war besides will destroy everything we have suffered for in France.”
“The king has accepted the constitution,” I argued. “Why can’t you?”
“The king is a hostage,” she snapped.
“Let me tell you something,” Gilbert replied, lifting a finger to make his point. “The king is not the only man who has had to make choices with a gun pointed at his head. He has had his guns pointed at all our heads since the day he was crowned. If he is a hostage, then so were we all. We all decide for ourselves how best to spend our honor. And he has chosen his course.”
Still, Pauline was firm in her decision to leave France.
“When do you go?” I asked.
“By Christmas.” Pauline twisted her kerchief. “We should all go. When King Louis is a true monarch again, you may beg his pardon, Gilbert, and if you fight on his side—”
“If the king stands with liberty, I fight for the king,” Gilbert said. “If he betrays it, I fight against him.”
Pauline put her face in her hands. “At least take my sister to America, where you may yet survive.”
I realized it was neither fear nor fancy that drove my sister to say these things. The royalists in exile really were planning to invade . . . and the thought filled me with indignant anger. Were our choices in France truly between corrupt aristocrats on one side and fanatic mobs on the other? I could never count myself amongst either faction.
Pauline pressed kisses to our hands. “In spite of our disagreements, I love you both and your children. I need you to know this in case . . .” She trailed off, but my mind supplied the rest. In case we end up on opposite sides of a war. In case we never see each other again.
It was only my faith that our farewell was not forever that allowed me to part with my younger sister. I stared after her coach long after it rolled away, my emotions such a jumble that the next sight I remember was the twin white towers of Chavaniac, shining like a welcoming beacon.
Aunt Charlotte hobbled out, overjoyed to have us, insisting we were all too thin. Inside, she had the servants pile plates for us of cheese and stored preserves. But like the feudal matriarch she was, even Aunt Charlotte argued, “I do not approve these changes in France. Promise me, Gilbert, that you are still loyal to the king.”
My husband kissed his aunt’s gnarled hand. “I am precisely as loyal to the king as he is to the constitution.”
The next morning, watching my children take turns riding a donkey in the yard while sheep grazed in the field beyond, it eased me to hear Anastasie and Virginie laughing together. I hoped my daughters would never find themselves on opposite sides of a political divide, but had faith that they would love each other, just as I still loved my sisters—each and every one.
In the next few days, I slipped into a near-drunken happiness to finally, after nearly fifteen years of public life, have my family to myself again. To concern myself with making a new home for them here in the mountains. It was true that we had spent nearly half of everything we had in the cause of charity and two revolutions—yet there was enough for me to contemplate fabrics for freshening up the old chateau, which was in need of renovation.
Gilbert had been gifted with a stone from the Bastille and thought to have it carved into a liberty cap to be a capstone over our door. Red toile for Gilbert’s room, I decided. I had seen a print with American farmers and Indians that I knew would please him. For my own chambers, colorful tapestries with peacocks; nothing extravagant. I would insist upon a game table for my children to amuse themselves with in my chambers; I never wished to be far from them now.