Authors: Susanne Dunlap
The Academie (2 page)
Now when I look at my mother, she stares right back at me. She positively glows with triumph. I raise one eyebrow just a little, our private signal that I am pleased. And I follow it by looking down, to show her that I’m not entirely happy, either. The end may not always justify the means, and I expect her to make it up to me somehow.
We all sit down again. Caroline takes the place of honor next to Madame Campan. Hortense sits in the least comfortable chair, farthest away, as if she wants nothing more than to blend into the background. But that would be impossible for such a beauty.
“We have four levels here, which correspond to those at the Collège Irlandais, our neighbor, where young men study. The youngest are the Green class, which you can see from their caps and ribbons. Above them are the Pinks, then the Blues, and finally the Pearls—my crowning achievement.”
“Which class will Eliza join?” Mama asks. I see that both Hortense and Caroline are wearing white caps and ribbons, and so must be among the Pearls.
Please!
I think. I want to be with them.
“We shall see,” Madame Campan says. “It depends upon her abilities. We do not base our classes solely upon age. There are ten-year-olds who wear the blue ribbons, and twelve-year-olds who are still in pink.”
I am fourteen, fifteen next year. I wonder how old Hortense is.
“Eliza has had an excellent education in Virginia. She is well versed in history and mathematics, as well as Latin.”
“Perhaps she may assist me with the English classes,” Madame says. “Then she may be in one level for some subjects, in another for others.”
“Which subjects do you place the most importance upon?” I wish Mama would stop speaking and leave!
“Conversation. Most others require only the faculty of memory. Conversation requires wit.”
How grand! I may yet avoid boring arithmetic and composition, and perhaps learn things much more to my liking.
The men are coming for us. I cling to Maman’s hand. Eugène stands behind her, trying to be protective. I am crying
.
“Hush
, ma petite
!” Maman murmurs. “They will find us!”
I know there is danger, but I cannot stop the tears. I hear the heavy footsteps and the clanking of swords against leather. They have entered Maman’s bedroom. We press ourselves into the back of the secret cupboard behind the wardrobe. I start to shake. My teeth knock against each other so that I think anyone will be able to hear them. I try to control the trembling of my jaw, but it only becomes worse. I hear the men outside in the room yanking out drawers and emptying their contents. Some jewelry clatters to the floor
.
They aren’t finding anything. Perhaps they will leave
.
“
Eh, Marcel!
Ici une jolie petite fille!”
They must have found the miniature of me that Maman keeps on her dressing table. The next thing I hear is the sound of smashing and raucous laughter. I gasp
.
“Sshht!” One of the men stops the others from talking
.
The footsteps approach fast. The wardrobe door opens. It is only a moment before they find the latch that reveals our hiding place. A man with almost no teeth and a wicked scowl raises his knife high above his head. Maman faints. Someone stays the man’s hand
.
All at once dirty arms reach in to grab for us. I feel the imprint of their rough fingers—
“Mademoiselle Hortense! Mademoiselle!”
It takes me several moments to realize I have been dreaming—again. The shaking is only Geneviève, the maid who looks after me and the other girls in the school who have not brought their own servants with them. She is gentle and kind. Hers are not ruffians’ hands, but slender fingers, roughened with hard work. And those other hands, and the capture, never happened in quite that way. It is my own imagination that toys with me.
“You have had another
cauchemar
,” she says, sitting on the edge of my bed and stroking the hair out of my face. I look down and see that my covers are completely disheveled.
“I’m so sorry. Is it late?”
“No, but you asked me to wake you early so you could join the American girl.”
The American girl? All at once I remember. I leap out
of bed, barely letting Geneviève help me into my dress. At least it’s easier now that we don’t wear corsets and panniers! I choose something simple from the wardrobe. Though my family name means nothing now, I don’t want Eliza to be in awe of me. I’m no one, really. I was even apprenticed to a seamstress when I was only nine years old.
My father left us before I was born. I never even knew him, though I wrote to him in prison at Maman’s instruction. I felt sorry for him. Maman told me he had worked so hard for the revolution and then was called a traitor. I remember the day he mounted the guillotine. Our governess, who took care of us when Maman went to prison soon after Papa, would not let us go and watch. I don’t think I would have wanted to, although I saw others beheaded. The vision of those brutal executions haunts me. So many familiar faces. They are not the same, though, when they are dead. They are like specters, or wax figures made horrible to frighten children.
I shake off the memories and in a matter of minutes I am downstairs. But as I approach the breakfast room I hear voices—Caroline’s voice.
I am too late to warn Eliza not to believe everything she says.
“You mustn’t be fooled by her manner. She can be very—”
I know what Caroline will say next, so I quickly open the door to prevent her and walk in. Only the two of them are there. I hear footsteps above and know that soon the others will join us at breakfast—silly girls in the younger
classes, some from noble families, others whose fathers are in the Directoire and who have ambitions to marry well.
“Hortense,
ma chérie
!” Caroline rises from her place and kisses the air next to my cheek one after the other. I make no pretense of doing the same. I see she has placed herself at the head of the table. Madame Campan does not breakfast with us, instead having her tea and brioche in her room and joining us in time to conduct the first lesson of the day.
“Good morning, Mademoiselle Eliza,” I say, taking my place next to her. The maid pours out tea for me. Caroline sits down again and bumps the table so that my tea sloshes into the saucer. No matter. She has quite taken my appetite away.
“I was just giving Eliza some hints about how to manage here,” Caroline says.
“You mean, about the cold bathing every day, and the lessons where we must carry our books upon our heads?” I smile. She has been talking about nothing of the kind. I wonder if she knows that I am aware of what she has been trying to do to me ever since my mother married her brother.
She must be. Caroline is not so clever as to hide her distaste for me.
“Ah yes,” says Caroline. “Madame Campan has some rather antiquated ideas about education, I’m afraid, but she is intelligent, and there is a good library here. All the political writings of the ancients, and Shakespeare—translated, of course.”
I want to laugh aloud to hear Caroline speak of the library, which she has entered but once. “I hear she has a well-thumbed copy of Machiavelli,” I say, knowing that Caroline can have no idea what I speak of. She could barely read when she arrived two years ago. I’m astonished at how glibly she pretends to be educated.
Whether she understands my jab or not I do not know, because she deftly changes the subject and studies Eliza, looking her up and down as if she were a new toy. “Dear Eliza, I see we shall have to do something about your hair.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Eliza asks. She looks cross. Perhaps Caroline has not yet influenced her enough to make her hang on Caroline’s every word and believe all she says.
“It is so beautiful! I did not mean to criticize. Only with such hair, I know my own maid could work magic with it. But perhaps she should not. You would quite take away all my beaux.”
Now Eliza’s cheeks glow pink. She
is
young. Perhaps too young to be thinking of men and love just yet, and perhaps Caroline has embarrassed her. I know Caroline is disingenuous. She has only one interest. It is General Murat, whom she longs to marry, but whom her brother will not permit to see her.
“I would be honored if she would try,” Eliza says.
Oh, dear. The process has begun. No one is immune. Caroline even worked her cunning upon Madame Campan
in some way, although I feel that at heart Madame does not like her. She accepts her because we must all be Republicans now. But she would prefer to have her fashionable school filled with girls like me, who have titles and lineage, even if it extends to Martinique on my mother’s side. That is why she gives such preference to the Auguier sisters, Marthe and Jeanne.
I am thankful that our little dance is interrupted by the younger classes in their green, pink, and blue caps. I don’t know them all, but the Blues—Marie, Constance, Émilie, Marguerite, and Catherine—are promising girls who will take their places in society and be a credit to the school.
“Bonjour! Bonjour!”
they call out, full of the energy of children, although they are between eleven and fourteen years old already and could marry in another few years. Caroline reaches into her reticule and pulls out sweets for them—absolutely forbidden before evening tea. Yet if I told Madame Campan, I would only become the enemy. I smile at Eliza, but her eyes are drawn hungrily to the sweets. I shake my head just a little. She turns her attention to the brioche on her plate.
Chatter fills the air and I sit quietly, sipping my tea. Before long the school bell tinkles in the distance.
“There is our signal,” Caroline says, standing and crooking her arm with the clear expectation that Eliza will take it, and so she does.
“That’s the school bell?” Eliza asks. “Where I went to school in Virginia the schoolmistress rang a great loud bell that could be heard clear across my father’s fields.”
“Did you go to school with Negro children?” asks Constance, always the one to say something awkward.
Eliza draws herself up. “Certainly not! Our Negroes are slaves and do not go to school.”
I shudder, recalling the slaves I saw in Martinique when Maman and I went there long ago. I must find a way to tell Eliza that slavery is not spoken of in Europe now.
“I’m fascinated by the Africans. My brother has been in Egypt,” Caroline says.
My brother has, too. He was badly wounded, at Napoléon’s side. Caroline knows it was a wicked thing to remind me of. But I do not even look at her, just lead the way to the schoolroom for our lessons.
There is no heat in my attic room, and the blanket that covers me is threadbare. I hear a mouse scratching in the corner, but even he does not stay, finding a hole that might lead him below, where the rooms are warmer. Although I am in the heart of Paris, one would never know it. The lights have almost all been extinguished and the sounds of revelry have died away. I could be anywhere in the world, it is so quiet and dark. It must be very early in the morning.
Somewhere in Paris, girls like me are in school. Or perhaps they are not exactly like me. Those whose fathers were aristocrats and who have any money or friends after the
Terreur
might perhaps be in convents. Perhaps others, the daughters of members of the Directoire or merchants who have become wealthy through other people’s misfortune, are at
private schools run by elderly ladies who are trying to put bread upon their tables.
I am in a school of my own, where I have been learning the skills I need to make my way in the world. I’ve been here almost as long as I can remember. It’s the school of life, interpreted for the entertainment of those who can spare the price of a ticket. Others know it as the Comédie Française.
We came here—my mother and I—after my papa threw us out of his house. I was very small, but aware enough to understand his stinging words. I slept in a small attic room, hardly bigger than a closet. The door was not stout and I could hear everything that went on below. I knew those times when my papa came to her and they laughed and drank wine and tumbled into bed.
I also knew when other men were there. Maman was very beautiful, and still is. But her beauty has made her cruel.
And so on that night when Papa found her with the director of the theater in her bed, I was not surprised by what he did.
“You and your half-breed spawn can go to the devil!” my papa said, his voice trembling with rage.
A moment later he yanked open the door to my sleeping cubby and dragged me to my feet. I saw his face go from blind fury to a kind of dawning awareness as I peered up into his eyes. While my mother and her maid threw all her
gowns and jewels into baskets and trunks behind him, he knelt down in front of me and took hold of my shoulders.
“If only you did not have so much of your mother in you, I would keep you, raise you as a lady, so you could make a good match.” I could see behind his eyes to the molten emotions that coursed through him, although I didn’t understand what they were.
“I have not been naughty, Papa,” I whispered.
He enfolded me in a fierce embrace, broken when my mother took hold of his collar from behind and made him stand. She slapped him, hard. “You are lucky that I choose not to run you through with a dagger!” she hissed, as if he were the one who had been unfaithful.
Since then I have learned a great deal about jealousy.
The theater director could do no less than take us in after that time, but he would not avow us openly. Instead, he made Maman his new
étoile
, the exotic star to attract crowds who wanted to ogle and gloat over her misfortune. And it turned out that Maman has talent. She enters into the characters she plays. Sometimes, when she adopts the personality of a noble heroine, she even makes me like her.