The Mapmaker's Wife (43 page)

Details about the years that Jean and Isabel spent together in Saint Amand are sparse. They managed their properties and lived quietly, out of the public eye, even though their story had become so well known. Isabel bore physical scars from her ordeal, her face badly pocked, and that led some in Saint Amand to wonder whether her emotional wounds could ever heal. Isabel rarely spoke about her sufferings in the jungle—she was enigmatic in that regard—and the diary that she kept in Saint Amand, which might have revealed her feelings, was later lost. But there were many aspects of her life in Saint Amand that surely brought her much comfort. Her father, who was ever so dear to her, lived with them until his death in 1780, at age seventy-six. Four priests attended the burial, evidence of the high esteem in which he—and the Godins—were held. Then too there was the solace that she drew from Jean’s enduring love, which he publicly professed when he made out his will in 1776:

I owe to Madame Isabelle Godin, my wife, much regard, both thanks to the happy union that has always existed between us,
and because of the suffering she endured in her travels to find me in Cayenne. I give her full title to one quarter of all my goods, with no exception of anything, according to what custom allows me, and am sorry that I cannot give her more.

There was one other joy that enlivened the Godin home on Rue Hotel-Dieu in their final years. At some point—the date is unknown—Isabel’s nephew Juan Antonio came from Riobamba to live with them.
^*
He was Martín’s younger brother, and Jean and Isabel raised him as their own. He quickly adapted to his new country, changing the spelling of his name to Jean-Antoine Grandmaison, and on February 21, 1792, he married a local woman, Magdeleine Picot. They moved into a house on Rue Cheval Blanc, and in the years ahead, they often told their son Gilbert Felix about his famous great-aunt, Isabel Godin.

Jean was too ill to attend the wedding of Jean-Antoine and Magdeleine, and he died nine days later, on the first of March, at eleven in the evening, with Isabel by his side. He was seventy-nine years old. He was buried in a local cemetery, and once he was gone, Isabel’s health quickly began to decline. Her whole life had been entwined with his. She had been eight years old when the French arrived in Quito, and she had married Jean when she was only thirteen. Although they had lived apart for twenty-one years, she had spent much of that time imagining their reunion; he had never been far from her thoughts. The world they had known together for the last nineteen years in Saint Amand was ending too, the monarchy tumbling before revolutionary mobs in Paris. Yet her last months were peaceful. Jean-Antoine visited her often, she was not alone, and—as Jean-Antoine would later relate—from time to time she would take out an ebony box and prop it open on her lap, softly running her fingers over the cotton dress and sandals stored inside.

Isabel died on September 27, 1792, at age sixty-five, and was buried in the same parish cemetery as Jean. Jean-Antoine and his wife Magdeleine had their first child two months later, and the descendants of one of their sons, Gilbert, can still be found living today in the Berry region of France. Isabel’s sandals were handed down as an heirloom, and not long ago, a distant relative of Isabel’s, Marc Lemaire, recalled that as a child he would visit his great-aunt Emma and she would show them off, the sandals “completely flattened and made of some kind of raffia, grey and dusty.” Isabel and Jean’s house in Saint Amand still stands as well, and in the town library there is a copy of the famous letter Jean wrote to La Condamine, telling of his wife’s wanderings in the Bobonaza wilderness.

*
Jean was mistaken here. Including the Indian pilot, the correct number of deaths was seven.

*
In addition to his usual melancholy, Jussieu began to suffer headaches and dizziness in Potosí, which may have been due to poisoning from the mercury used in the processing of silver from the mines in this notoriously unhealthy town.

*
There is no record of how he traveled from Riobamba to France. The most common route at the time would have been overland to Cartagena and from there to Spain.

Characters

Members of the Expedition

Members of the French Academy of Sciences

Charles-Marie de La Condamine

Louis Godin

Pierre Bouguer

Assistants

Isabel Gramesón’s Family

Other Members of Isabel’s Traveling Party

Others

A
LSEDO Y
H
ERRERA
, D
IONESIO DE
. President of the Quito Audiencia in 1736 when the French expedition arrived

A
RAUJO Y
R
ÍO
, J
OSEPH DE
. Replaced Alsedo y Herrera as president of the Quito Audiencia on December 28, 1736

A
RMENDÁRIZ
, J
OSÉ DE
(M
ARQUÉS DE
C
ASTELFUERTE
) Viceroy of Peru, 1724–1736

B
ERNOULLI
, J
OHANN
. Belgian mathematician who devised mathematical equations supporting the idea that Cartesian vortices would cause the earth to be elongated at the poles

B
UFFON
, G
EORGES
L
OUIS
L
ECLERC DE
. Naturalist and keeper of the Jardin du Roi in Paris; member of the French Academy of Sciences

C
ASSINI
, J
ACQUES
. Son of Jean Cassini; director of the Paris Observatory of the French Academy of Sciences from 1700 to 1740; directed the measurement of a meridian in France that supported the conclusion that the earth was elongated at the poles

C
ASSINI
, J
EAN
-D
OMINIQUE
(
BORN
G
IAN
D
OMENICO
C
ASSINI
). Astronomer who directed the Paris Observatory from 1669 until 1700, when his son Jacques took over this position

C
HOISEUL
, É
TIENNE
-F
RANÇOIS
(D
UC DE
C
HOISEUL
). French minister of foreign affairs, 1758–1761 and 1766–1770; French minister of the marine, 1761–1766

C
HOISEUL
-P
RASLIN
, C
ÉSAR
-G
ABRIEL
(D
UC DE
C
HOISEUL
-P
RASLIN
) French minister of foreign affairs, 1761–1766; French minister of the marine, 1766-1770. Jean Godin wrote a letter to him in 1770 in which he described Isabel’s ordeal in the Bobonaza wilderness.

C
LAIRAUT
, A
LEXIS
-C
LAUDE
. Mathematician in the French Academy of Sciences who was a Newtonian; member of expedition to Lapland

D
ESCARTES
, R
ENÉ
. Seventeenth-century French philosopher and mathematician. In
Principles of Philosophy
(1644), he set forth a theory that planets were held in their orbits by a swirling vortex of particles, a cosmology that came to be known as Cartesian physics.

D
’H
EROUVILLE
. A friend of the Duc de Choiseul to whom Jean wrote for help in 1764 and who helped bring a Portuguese galliot to Cayenne

D
IGUJA
, J
OSEPH
. President of the Audiencia of Quito, 1767–1778; directed an investigation into Isabel Godin’s voyage

D
’O
REASAVAL
, T
RISTAN
. Jean’s friend who went in his stead with the Portuguese galliot to pick up Isabel

D
’O
RVILLIERS
, G
ILBERT
G
UILLOUET
. Governor of French Guiana in 1750, when Jean Godin arrived in the colony

F
IEDMONT
, G
OVERNOR
. Replaced d’Orvilliers as governor of
French Guiana and was in that position during Jean Godin’s last decade in the colony

L
OUIS
XIV. King of France, 1643–1715. The French Academy of Sciences was established during his reign.

L
OUIS
XV. King of France, 1715–1774

M
ALDONADO
, P
EDRO
. Native of Riobamba and governor of the Esmeraldas province when the La Condamine expedition arrived in 1736; traveled down the Amazon with La Condamine in 1743

M
AUPERTUIS
, P
IERRE
-L
OUIS
M
OREAU DE
. Mathematician who led the revolt by the Newtonians against the Cartesians in the French Academy of Sciences; led the expedition to Lapland

M
AUREPAS
, J
EAN
-F
RÉDÉRIC
P
HÉLYPEAUX DE
. French minister of the marine, 1723–1749, who oversaw the La Condamine expedition for Louis XV

M
ENDOZA
, J
OSÉ DE
(M
ARQUÉS DE
V
ILLAGARCÍA
). Viceroy of Peru, 1736–1745

N
EWTON
, S
IR
I
SAAC
. English mathematician who published a theory of gravity in 1682 that contradicted Cartesian physics. According to his theory, the earth would be flattened at the poles, rather than elongated, as the Cartesians believed it was.

P
HILIP
V. King of Spain, 1700–1746

P
ICARD
, J
EAN
. French astronomer who measured a degree of arc in France in the late 1660s

R
EBELLO
, C
APTAIN
. Captain of the Portuguese galliot sent by the Portuguese king to French Guiana in 1765 with orders to help Jean Godin bring his wife from Riobamba

R
ICHER
, J
EAN
. French astronomer who discovered in 1672 that a pendulum clock beat more slowly in French Guiana than in Paris, which suggested that gravitational forces were not the same at all points on the globe

R
OMERO
, N
ICOLÁS
. Superior of the Maynas district who tended to Isabel in Lagunas

R
OUILLÉ
, A
NTOINE
-L
OUIS
(COMTE DE JOUY). France’s minister of the marine in 1750, when Jean arrived in French Guiana; minister of foreign affairs, 1754–1757