Aunt Margot was not pleased with Uncle Charles’ political conversion, although she did approve of his defending France’s borders. While she had always detested the Jacobins, whom she called “those regicidal charlatans,” she was obstinately disdainful of the non-Latin world, and of England and Austria in particular. To her way of thinking, Marie Antoinette, of whom she held a very poor opinion, was to blame for the blood-drenched anarchy that had befallen France. She never would become accustomed to being called citoyenne, nor to the new names for the calendar months that the National Convention had adopted. Had she lived long enough, it’s possible that she would have come to tolerate—though certainly not to support—Napoleon’s government after his reconciliation with the Church and the victory at Austerlitz.
As Aunt Margot told it, no serious disagreements ever arose between her and her husband. With all hope lost for a parliamentary monarchy, which Curchet considered the only viable solution for France, he disengaged from politics and dedicated himself to protecting his lands from local threats, which ranged from outright confiscation to the reduction of his property lines. The fortunate fact that he had never defended the monarchists, his generous donations of grain “for the people’s bread,” as well as his flexible attitude and the tricolor cockade he wore everyday in his hat, were sufficient to hold the community counsel members’ radicalism in check. Around the time of Robespierre and Saint-Just’s executions, his health began to decline. The southern climate never had agreed with him, and, as Aunt Margot told it, “the poor man never stopped coughing.” It was then that my Aunt received a devastating letter from her sister Louise: my parents had died, burned to death in the fire that had consumed our house in Lausanne, and her husband was opposed to me—a nearly silent girl, with an ugly burn on my left foot—living with them any longer. Aunt Margot, infuriated by Brunet’s insensitivity and by Aunt Louise’s weakness, arranged to travel to Lausanne immediately. Thinking that perhaps his lungs would benefit from some time in a cooler climate, she assented to Curchet’s wish to accompany her on the trip.
Many times I heard Aunt Margot recount the details of that calamitous journey across France, full of mired coach-wheels, broken axles, and bolting horses. Worse still, she and Curchet, suspected of being aristocrats on the run, had very nearly been thrown in jail on two separate occasions. Unfortunately, the privations of the journey would prove fatal for Curchet. Upon their arrival in Lausanne, the dear man began coughing up blood, and died in the hospital a few days later, Aunt Margot holding fast to his hand. After the funeral, my aunt returned with me to Foix. According to her, it was there that I learned to laugh and began to show interest in the world again. She never spoke to Louise again, nor did she respond to her letters. Seven years later, upon receiving word that her sister had died of a heart attack, I heard her sobbing softly behind her closed bedroom door.
Dejected and hollow-eyed, dressed in mourning and seated in the dining room of the guesthouse in front of a bowl of porridge, I reread, for the tenth time, the wax-sealed card that an orderly had delivered to the innkeeper, on which Robert had written, in a clear hand, the letters tall and straight like little soldiers at attention: “I have been informed of Madame Curchet’s death. I must leave shortly and greatly regret that I will not be able to express my condolences in person.”
Once again I asked myself what I was doing there, waiting passively while Uncle Charles decided my fate, while he weighed whether I was to return to Foix with Pierre and Françoise or else be allowed to follow him to the front, as did many daughters, wives and even lovers of high-ranking officials. Why did I not put on my black hat, follow my own heart’s desire, and march straight down the three blocks that separated me from Robert’s barracks, speak his name to the guard at the gate, wait until I saw him coming toward me, and say: “I came to thank you for your note, Monsieur Renaud,” or better: “This is my address. I would very much like to hear from you again”? But what address was I to give him, when I didn’t even know where I was going to be?
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Uncle Charles. “Henriette, my dear child. I have reached a decision,” he said, sitting down next to me. “It pains me not to be able to grant your request, but it would be foolish for me to allow you to stay with me. As was your Aunt’s wish, I am your guardian now, and I must see to your safety and financial well-being, although the latter doesn’t much concern me. Your dowry is in a bank in Toulouse, and Monsieur Lebrun, the executor of your Aunt’s estate, will see to the administration of the Foix lands, which will be yours when the time comes. What truly concerns me is the thought of your coming with me to the war. Life in the rearguard is not easy. We’re in a different place every day. Everything is provisional. One rarely finds decent lodging. You are not accustomed to suffering hardship and, further, one must always think of the worst. Suppose something were to happen to me.”
I begged, I cried, I pleaded, I said everything I could think of to convince him not to send me back to Foix. And it wasn’t only because of Robert, because I longed to see him, to touch him again. In truth, I was then at a passive age, an age of daydreams and elaborate fantasies in which my body was more inclined to imagination than to action. I did it for my own sake as well. It terrified me to think of myself all alone in that enormous empty house, hearing Aunt Margot’s unforgettable laugh echoing through the rooms, her beautiful contralto voice calling me down to breakfast. I feared I might look out the window and see her sturdy figure dismounting from her horse with surprising agility, or raising a bow and letting fly an arrow that would find its precise mark in the red center of the target, or that I might behold her coming out of the river some oppressive summer afternoon, her shirt glued to her skin, her powerful thighs advancing with each step, her voluminous belly, the wide rosettes of her breasts, her prematurely gray hair dripping about her face like a garland.
“Oh, Uncle Charles, I could never, never ever, live there all alone!” I implored him, this time on my knees, taking his hand and bathing it in tears. “Don’t you understand that you are the only family I have left? That you are that only person in the whole world who cares about me? I would die of loneliness and grief. I’m begging you, Uncle. You’ll see, I won’t be any trouble to you. I promise!”
What good-hearted man could refuse such arguments?
After laying a wreath of flowers on Aunt Margot’s grave, we left Boulogne immediately. The marching orders received by the bulk of the army coincided with a sudden summer thunderstorm that frayed my nerves and put Uncle Charles in a foul mood. The city’s streets seethed with soldiers and horses, and our carriage, laden with trunks and bundles of clothing, seemed to irritate everyone, infuriating the musicians in a military band on one corner, and blocking the passage of some transport wagons carrying provisions across a bridge. I couldn’t understand the angry impatience of those men who shook their fists and glared at us with fire in their eyes each time our carriage interrupted their forward progress.
“They are fed-up with waiting. Fed-up with everything,” grumbled Uncle Charles. “It’s been two years since we received the order to invade England, and we still haven’t crossed the canal. And now the Emperor has changed his plans. If he hadn’t, you’d be on your way to Foix right now, even if you’d cried your eyes dry. I would never have taken you to England. The truth is that neither you nor your Aunt should ever have left Foix,” he muttered, looking at the empty seat where Aunt Margot had always sat. “It’s true that I needed money, but she could have sent it to me through her lawyer. And as for my promotion, she barely had the chance to celebrate it.” I realized that Uncle Charles wasn’t really talking to me, but rather, to himself. “It was that stupid engraving that made her want to come. I’m sure of it. The first thing she asked me when we arrived was if they had finished constructing the tunnel.” (My Uncle was referring to a popular illustration showing the Grand Armée invading England by sea, by air, in a flotilla of hot-air balloons, and by land, through a tunnel that ran underneath the canal.) “She didn’t want to miss that absurd spectacle, dreamed up by some infernal artist just to dupe romantics like her. And then that shameless way she was eating, and of course you see what happened.