I explain this to Travert, who is wry. “You’re becoming a better criminal.”
“I have to stay one step ahead of your ilk,” I say, riffling through the desk, scattering old sketches of Adrienne Lafayette, looking for anything that will work as blotting paper. “Can you hand me that newspaper on the kindling pile?”
He reaches for it, then stops at the photograph of the girl in pigtails. “Him again . . . the man you said might be your father.”
I turn over the photograph of Furlaud I’ve been using to forge a stamp. This is a clean-shaven man in a suit, whereas the French officer has a thin mustache, but with my artist’s eye, I knew they were the same man. “So you see it too . . .”
“I’m good with faces,” Travert says. “Lineups. Wanted posters. That’s the same man in both photographs.”
I nod. “The baroness has been avoiding me ever since I asked about him and what I think was his love affair with Madame Beatrice.”
“I’m not surprised,” Travert replies. “The women here are devoted to Madame Beatrice. They’d want to protect her reputation. Back in their day, a love affair was still a scandal.”
“Maybe if I could find him, I could ask.”
“I’ll do some digging,” he says, meeting my eyes. “But right now, you need rest, Marthe.”
I can’t rest. I can’t think about Furlaud either. “Right now, I need to work.”
Because it’s one thing to hear of the terrible things Nazis do; another to have held a kid’s cracked skull in my hands. That’s what they’re willing to do to their own children. If we don’t stop them, they’re going to desolate the whole earth . . .
FORTY-EIGHT
ADRIENNE
Le Puy
September 1792
I curtsied before the officials of the Revolutionary government in Le Puy as if before royalty. These were not the rabid Jacobins of Paris. I might still be spared if I could convince these men not to send me there. “Gentlemen, it is with great respect for representatives of the people that I entrust myself to you. You may feel bound by orders from Paris, but I consider myself your prisoner and will be honored to take orders from you.”
My remarks seemed to sober them to their responsibility, and the mayor, who in previous years had been my frequent guest at Chavaniac, thought of a way to protect me. “Instead of sending you to Paris, we have decided to send your husband’s letters ahead of you to be inspected for treason.”
It would buy me a few more days, but it was plain the gentlemen believed the letters would condemn my husband—and me. Knowing our enemies weren’t above forgery, I took a gamble. “I should like to read them to you before they are sent.”
Pitying looks betrayed that the councilmen thought me the greatest fool. “Madame,” said the mayor, “that is not necessary. We would not wish to cause you further humiliation.”
“Nothing my husband has written brings me anything but pride for his elevated sentiments.”
A hush fell over the assemblage as I read Gilbert’s words: “You know my heart would have been republican if my fidelity to my oaths and to the national will had not rendered me a defender of the constitutional rights of the king.”
Gilbert had written this knowing it would be seen by his enemies. Thus, I added to it the inflections of my voice, and a crowd gathered just outside the doorway of the municipal building as I explained my husband’s conduct. When I finished, the room erupted with sympathy. Now was the time to make my plea. “You know what I face in Paris, where massacres are the rule, and I trust you will protect me. No one has charged me with a crime; thus I beg you to let me remain under house arrest at Chavaniac. I give my word not to leave without your consent.”
It would be easier for these gentlemen to pack me off to Paris. They would take a risk to harbor la femme Lafayette. I was again reminded that divorce was now legal, and that I should perhaps avail myself of it, but when they saw I would not bend—that I would not abandon my husband or his name—the mayor announced, “We will submit your request to remain under house arrest to Minister Roland.”
Roland. Not a rabid man. I began to hope when several National Guardsmen loyal to my husband volunteered themselves to watch over us until we had Roland’s reply. I did not sleep, but called for pen and paper, racking my poor brain to remember everyone who might have sway over Roland.
I decided upon Brissot, with whom we had helped found the Society of the Friends of the Blacks. We had, after all, many times discussed over dinner at my home the abuses of the ancien régime, which denied prisoners impartial hearings. A reformer like Brissot must see the injustice in my situation.