Enchantée(77)

“Not for the better, I’ll hazard.” Aurélie smirked. “Please? I just wish to stay here.”

“Tomorrow,” Lazare said. “Today the National Assembly has been locked out of its meeting place, perhaps by the king himself, and they’re convening at an old tennis court in the village.” His easy grace was gone; he burned with eagerness. “Baroness, you’ll come, won’t you?”

If things were truly changing in France, she wanted to see it happening. She held out her hand to Aurélie. “Come, mon amie. We’ll be safe, won’t we, dressed like this?” she asked the boys.

“No one will touch either of you,” Lazare said. “But come—time is running out!”

Once Aurélie was persuaded, they left the palace, hurrying through the gold-tipped gates and into the town of Versailles. Soon they found themselves behind an enormous crowd chanting “Vive l’Assemblée!” as it passed down the rue du Vieux Versailles to an indoor tennis court where the National Assembly, the people’s representatives, were holding a meeting.

“History is being made, Baroness,” Lazare said into her ear as they came to a stop outside the weathered building. “Can you not feel it?”

She could. The crowd of people radiated purpose and hope. And Lazare, she was beginning to suspect, was not wholly on the side of the aristocrats.

Slipping through the mass of cheering people, Camille, Lazare, Chandon, Aurélie, and Foudriard found a spot by the windows overlooking the scene. The huge room, with its coffered ceiling painted blue and adorned with gold fleur-de-lis, was crowded with men. The roar of their conversation filled every corner.

Aurélie tapped an older man on the shoulder. “What’s happening, monsieur?”

The man gave their clothes a hard look before answering. “The assembly was locked out of their meeting rooms by the king and his sycophants.” Another severe look. “Undaunted, one of them—I heard it was Dr. Guillotin—led the rest here. They have been discussing their demands and how best to have them met. The king is reluctant. Someone proposed the National Assembly withdraw to Paris.”

Lazare took in the crush below. “What have they demanded of the king?”

“That there be no taxation without representation,” said the man proudly. “To get rid of those damned lettres de cachet that, with a scribble of the king’s signature, can throw a man into prison—without trial or appeal. And of course, freedom of the press.”

A thrill ran through Camille. If Papa could have stood here beside her, how righteously happy he would have been! He’d abhorred those restrictions. When a writer—a printer!—can be imprisoned for libel, he’d said, pacing the room in frustration, for upsetting the peace, criticizing the church, or besmirching someone’s honor, what else is left? There will always be something that offends someone. Bah! One day I will print what I like.

He had, but the cost had been great.

All Papa’s clients had considered him a great printer, but in the end it had become too dangerous to associate with him. Imagine if they were accused of also being against the monarchy? Or for a constitution, like the Americans? His clients had dropped him like a fruit that they’d bitten into only to discover it was rotten. After that, he never printed one of his own pamphlets again, because—Camille realized now—he was afraid. All sorts of inflammatory pamphlets and posters were printed and circulated in Paris, but each printer did so knowing he might find himself manacled in a dank prison. Papa had been afraid not for himself, but for his family.

If these demands for freedom of the press had come only five years earlier, Papa might still be alive. Still printing.

But change was coming. All the people in this room, all of them wanting the same thing—they were part of an enormous wave that could alter the world. She could feel it racing through her, rushing to sweep away injustice.

“And will they get these concessions?” Lazare asked.

“Doubtful. The king will do what he can, as long as he can, to hold onto his power. Et bien! We must persevere.”

“Who’s that speaking now?” Aurélie asked. “He’s terribly handsome,” she added as Camille tried to shush her.

The young man called out: “Even if the king makes things difficult for us, we must not return to Paris. We must stay together. Let him not part us from one another! We must not disperse until the new constitution is drawn up. We owe it to the people of France!”

To cheers and applause, another man, tall and thin, was helped up onto a table made of a door recently ripped from its hinges.

“That’s the astronomer and president of the assembly, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who’s been in charge of the debates,” the older man said. “They’ve given him hell these past weeks, shouting and arguing and getting nothing done.”

As Bailly stood up straight, the representatives fell silent. Outside, thunder rumbled.

Slowly, Bailly held out his right arm in a salute. In his left, he held a piece of paper from which he read a formal oath. Before he had even finished reading, the arms of the men in the room rose, one after another, all of them pledging not to disband the assembly, to keep working for the rights of the people.

With a mounting sense of excitement, she knew she too would be part of this wave. She had to be. Not just because Papa surely would have, but because she wanted to be part of this—this surge. She needed to do something that mattered.