“You countenance insurrection?”
He laughed, only a little sheepish. “I cannot help myself. I’m an Auvergnat; from the home of the ancient king who rebelled against Caesar.”
How like him to dredge that up from his Latin books. “I have never heard of a rebel king.”
“Vercingetorix was an elected king.”
It did not, of course, work that way in France now. Our king seemed pious and good-hearted, but relatively disinterested in the matters of state for which he was supposedly born. At times it seemed as if he left these to the queen, thereby frustrating old advisors who found themselves pushed to the sidelines in favor of boys who could dance and flirt. Pretending to entertain the idea of rebellion, I asked, “If you went to fight in America, would you take me and our daughter with you?”
Gilbert sat up and grinned. “Why not?”
I was beginning to think he liked his family motto a little too much. “。 . . because my father would never allow it, and our daughter is too little and frail to make such a journey.”
Gilbert sighed, then fell back against the pillows in defeat. “Very well, since your father believes I am useless for anything else, I shall not yet go to America, but stay longer in your bed.”
Despite bitter words, his grin remained playful. He tempted me with a kiss. Yet the carved clock ticktocked on the mantel. “We would scandalize my lady’s maid, who is due to help me dress.”
Gilbert folded me into his long arms. “Strangely, my dear heart, this does not trouble me . . .”
Alas, before I could melt against him, we were disturbed by the wails of our little Henriette from the nursery. I rose to find her red-faced in her bassinet as her nurse tried to comfort her, all to no avail. Grand-mère always advised, Just let her cry. Don’t ruin her moral character by teaching her to wail for attention!
It worried me to think I might ruin my baby’s moral character before she was out of swaddling—but my urgent instinct was to ease whatever troubled her. If only I knew what it was! We tried feeding her, changing her, carrying her to and fro—until at last Gilbert surprised me by holding his arms out. “Let me try.”
When Gilbert hoisted his daughter into his lap, she quieted, which astonished me, because my sisters and I would’ve shrieked with terror if the duc d’Ayen had ever reached for us when we were babes. Noblemen of my father’s generation didn’t involve themselves in the care of children, and I suspected that if my father witnessed this, he would have taken it for another sign of Gilbert’s weakness. Yet I saw in my husband a man who could not make himself deaf to suffering. There was, in that, a strength my father did not understand. A strength I took pride in.
Gilbert carried our daughter to his chambers so he could read to her from a pamphlet—a reprinted translation of the document with which the Americans had declared themselves independent.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.
It was the first time I ever heard these words. They sounded to me so pure and simple, intoned with an earnest voice that reached my soul. To some, these words would seem heresy. From my husband’s precious mouth, they burned like holy fire, and I too felt illuminated by those flames. These portentous words seemed to reveal the true purpose of faith I’d been seeking. Were we not all sinners, noble and peasant alike? Jesus died to redeem us, each and every one. As children of God, was it not our duty to love and defend one another as brother and sister, no matter the circumstance of birth?
Americans wanted to sweep away all the rules of society and start again. In the new society they would build, perhaps it would not matter so much that Henriette had been born a girl. Maybe she would be valued.
“I want to fight for these ideas,” Gilbert said. “I have no desire to leave you, Adrienne, yet America is a chance to make my name and do good at the same time. Not often do such opportunities present themselves.”
I understood. I half wanted to go to America myself.
Still, I was taken by surprise when, in October, at our lavishly appointed supper table, Lafayette draped his arms over the shoulders of my brother-in-law, the vicomte de Noailles, on one side and their friend the comte de Ségur on the other and announced, “The three of us are going to America to fight!”