On a bitingly cold winter’s day, my daughters and I went to collect firewood. We came upon two filthy peasants in the woods—a man and a youth, both of them covered in nettles.
“Maman?” cried the boy.
Georges. Oh, again I was reminded how intimately joy could twine with dismay.
“I tried to get him out of the country,” his tutor explained. “It was too dangerous. Mon Dieu, they’ve even put the king on trial!”
As I clutched my child, my heart ached at this news. I believed King Louis was guilty of having plotted against the constitution, yet it was the Jacobin coup that had destroyed it. By what right did they judge him?
“I thought better to bring your son home for a Christmas visit,” the tutor explained.
Christmas. Only a year before, we had been celebrating our son’s birthday, a ham had been roasting in the oven, and my husband had been whispering tender words against my ear. There was no ham to feast upon now, no husband to embrace, and our son was in terrible danger. It was safe neither to keep him here at Chavaniac nor to send him away. I could count on only the secret passages if he needed to make another narrow escape.
In the meantime, I filled my days by reading to my children from their father’s books in the library. The grand salon required too many logs to heat, so we took our meals bundled against the cold in my chambers. Food was scarce, but on Christmas Day, a dairy farmer gave us a large wheel of sharp-veined cheese. A shepherd offered a parcel of tripe that we boiled into a spicy stew. A farmer delivered a sack of green lentils, which we simmered with bits of pork sausage. We were grateful for every bite.
As the winter deepened, howling winds carried terrifying whispers.
Lafayette is dead, eaten by rats in a dungeon.
Lafayette has gone mad, scratching out his eyes.
Lafayette is starved in his prison cell.
I prayed for my husband. I prayed too for the king. According to the gazettes, thirty-three charges were put against him. More moderate men like Roland and Brissot might not want the king dead, but would commit murder to save themselves from the radicals. Robespierre was the first to vote for the king’s death. Philippe too voted for his own kinsman’s execution. And on a cold and rainy morning in January, the king was driven in a green coach through Paris for the last time. Mounting the scaffold to the guillotine, he cried, My people, I die innocent! I forgive my enemies and pray my blood will make you happy.
Then the blade fell.
Reading this, I wanted to beat my fists against the stone walls of Chavaniac. Somehow, in my heart, I had expected my husband to escape his prison, mount his white horse, and put a stop to the killing. It seemed that without him, there was no brave hero left anywhere in the world. Even the man my husband had called his adoptive father had turned a blind eye.
I confess, I wrote more pointedly to George Washington, your abandonment of M. de Lafayette and your silence during the last six months is inexplicable to me. If there is any hope I am to see his face again, it still rests upon your goodness and that of the country he helped to found.
Meanwhile, my sister was active on our behalf in Paris—Louise went to Mr. Morris again and again until he was finally prodded to send money. Yet I worried for her to bind herself so closely to our cause. Through a trusted courier, I begged Louise to either join her husband in America or join me at Chavaniac. In the rugged isolation of winter, I’d been at least a little forgotten by my husband’s enemies. My relations would be more easily forgotten here in the mountains too.
It would be safer for my family here than in Paris. Alas, Louise refused. Grand-mère cannot travel, and needs my care. Besides, I am more useful to you in Paris.
I feared for my loved ones remaining in the center of the bloodletting. I was praying for their safety in the village church when horsemen arrived. “Madame,” said the curé in dismay. “Escape out the back way—”
There was no time.
Swaggering thugs threw open the carved wooden doors and lay hold of the curé. “You are under arrest.”
“On what charge?” I demanded.
“This papist parasite is a traitor to France, madame.” He had done nothing but minister to the good people of Chavaniac. Nevertheless, the toughs menaced him with a sword. “You know the penalty for clergy who refused to take the oath.”
“The oath was to put the laws of France above the laws of God, was it not?” I asked, driven to fury by violence in a church. “Gentlemen, I beg to know how the curé can be seized for refusing an oath to the earthly laws your masters have violated, rejected, and invalidated.”