Two weeks of imprisonment passed, during which I learned that the Americans had not yet secured my husband’s release and may not have tried. Lafayette and I were both still prisoners. Then, finally, good news. Roland agreed to place me under house arrest. “Yet, madame,” the mayor cautioned, “Brissot showed a letter to Minister Roland, who now rebukes you for the high aristocratic manner with which you still write.”
I reeled to know my confidential correspondence had been betrayed, but a rebuke was preferable to a prison cell.
* * *
—
Chavaniac was changed since my arrest, but not destroyed. Beyond slashed portraits and shards of pottery, the brigands had taken things I hadn’t thought to hide. Gone were paintings of the American Revolution, artwork dedicated to the storming of the Bastille. All things that should have proved our patriotism. At least Lafayette’s swords were still buried . . .
The villagers welcomed us back in joyous thanksgiving, delivering unto me Virginie, whom they had sheltered these long weeks. My youngest sobbed as I stroked her hair. And that night, under cover of darkness, Georges’s tutor slipped into the chateau to reassure me of my son’s safety.
Praise God for this castle, these people, and the wooded mountains that kept all my secrets!
How sweet it would be to embrace my boy again, but I pleaded with Georges’s tutor, “Take him to England, I beg you. Go to the American ambassador there.”
After all, I knew three of the American ministers in Europe, having entertained them for years at my table. Mr. Pinckney in London, Mr. Short in the Netherlands, and Mr. Morris in Paris. Between the three of them, they could see my entire family to safety.
To hasten matters, I wrote President Washington.
In my abyss of grief, you are my only hope. I ask an American envoy to claim Lafayette and emancipate him from his captivity. It would be sweeter if his wife and children could be comprised in this happy mission, but if this would delay its success, we defer the happiness of a reunion, and, when he shall be near you, we will bear the separation with more courage.
While I was writing letters, Aunt Charlotte took inventory. “They emptied the larder, but left the copper cooking pots.”
Anastasie fretted, “With winter coming, we may regret more the loss of the larder than the pots.”
Anastasie is no longer a child, I thought. Our ordeal had forced her to maturity, and though I regretted this, she might well need that maturity in days to come. Mr. Morris wrote that I should be of good courage, for sooner or later the present clouds will be dissipated. All human things are liable to change.
This did not console me. According to the new French government, everything my husband owned was forfeit—even, to my horror, the faraway plantations and all the persons that remained on them. The beautiful promise of that experiment—our attempt to end slavery—was now a nightmare. The full legal emancipation of the people on those plantations had not yet been achieved. Frantically, I wrote pleas to the Revolutionary government not to sell these people. Certainly the ideals which the Jacobins professed should have induced them to set them free. Unfortunately, the Jacobins were too depraved to act upon the sentiments they professed . . .
I had taken upon myself the fate of sixty-three souls, and I had failed them. The weight of this was too heavy to bear. “How can they do this?” I asked the solicitor I had summoned to Chavaniac. “How can they seize these people, who have been working for a wage, and auction them like cattle? The only reason we purchased plantations was to free them. These people were promised liberty. Isn’t that one of the principles of this Revolution?”
“These days the only principle is property, madame,” the solicitor said.
“Then I must buy them back at once and set them free. Sell anything. Sell everything!”
“You have nothing to sell, madame. Your husband is deemed an émigré.”
“Lafayette only left France under duress. They have no right to his property, and even if they did—”
“Madame! You are fortunate to have this roof over your head. Lucky too that your enemies are too busy murdering others to come for you. You risk doing great mischief. There are those in the government who resented your agitation against the slave trade in the first place, and if you persist, they may revenge themselves not only upon you, but upon these enslaved persons. Do not doom them with any more well-meaning gestures.”
Shock and despair warred in my breast. I had never before faced such helplessness. The fear that I could help no one—not even myself. I had never before faced impoverishment, much less powerlessness and isolation.