Where the Light Falls(46)
In spite of this, the truth was that André’s mind was elsewhere than war or revolution. He cared little for the political assemblies in the taverns or the rallies that sprung up in the squares. His thoughts were heavy with the persistent and secret desire to reunite with the young woman he had met on that strange winter evening, half a year earlier.
When not on duty or busy keeping Remy out of trouble, André had taken to spending his time tramping around the Right Bank, his eyes studying every female figure that passed. As he walked the quays near La Place, André could not help but hear the fiendish roars of the crowds gathered there. He had never seen such bloodlust on any field of battle. But Sophie would not be anywhere near the guillotine and the public beheadings, André reasoned. He sought her in the markets near the Châtelet, among the florists’ booths near what had once been the great cathedral of Notre Dame, among the vendors whose carts lined the banks of the Seine.
Maximilien Robespierre had consolidated power in the government, purging the Convention and killing every deputy or ally who could have posed even a shadow of a threat. “The Incorruptible” now reigned supreme, chairing a dictatorial body called the Committee of Public Safety. He called for a fixed price on bread and universal male suffrage—and more noble heads. Always, he said, there lurked the insidious threat of enemies of the Revolution: the Austrians abroad who planned to quash the Revolution from the outside, and the counterrevolutionaries who hoped to destroy it from the inside. And always, this fear fueled the frantic, insatiable need to feed the guillotine.
André was determined that, no matter what occurred within the government and the city, he and Remy would hold tight to their military uniforms. It seemed that their good service in the army was their one thin line of defense, keeping them from the executioner Sanson’s exalted podium. And so, as the summer wore on and André heard the rumors from LaSalle that his division would be sent under Kellermann to fight the Habsburgs in the Alps, he began to lose hope of ever again seeing Sophie de Vincennes.
Then, on an afternoon in late August while returning to his boardinghouse, André’s gaze happened upon a familiar face—a sight that caused his heart to heave in his rib cage. At first, he didn’t quite trust his own eyes, recalling how many times before they had deceived him. But there, in the broad daylight, she sat.
Sophie was on the terrace of a crowded restaurant in the Marais quarter, dining with the same man who had accompanied her to the fete at the Panthéon months earlier. “Franck” was the name she had given. André fought to suppress a rush of emotion—a combination of jealousy and frustration. So she was involved with this man, in spite of what she had said that night.
And yet, beholding her, he could not stay unhappy for long. She was dressed more casually than she had been for the Jacobin ball. In the heat of late summer, she wore a lightweight dress of white linen, its borders trimmed in lace. Her blond hair, reflecting the golden streaks of midday sunlight, was pulled back in a loose bun. Again, she wore a bored, restless expression, that look that she had shed only after talking to him, André thought, indulging in a momentary surge of hope.
“You, come here.” André waved forward a shaggy-haired youth, his breeches cut short above scabby knees and bare feet. “Would you like to earn a sou?”
The boy’s reluctance quickly vanished, and his eyes widened as they fixed on the shiny coin. “Why yes, citizen, I’d love some money.”
“Good, then you’ll deliver a note to that mademoiselle seated over there. Do you see her? The one in white?”
“That pretty one right there?” The kid pointed a dirty finger, which André shooed down.
“Don’t point, little lad,” he gently scolded. Picking up a piece of paper from the street, one of the ever-present political pamphlets, André scrawled out a quick note, which he folded and handed to the boy. “Deliver this to her, but don’t say anything. Just deliver it and then come back to me, you hear? I’ll be standing right around this corner with your sou.”
The boy nodded, taking the note in his grimy fingers and scampering across the street on his errand. André removed himself from sight, stepping behind a wine vendor’s stall. He had scribbled onto the paper in hopes that she had not yet forgotten him, “If you’d like to continue the conversation we started on the steps of the Panthéon, then offer your regrets to Monsieur and come meet me for a drink at Le Pont Blanc.”
—
André stood at the front of the café, attempting a posture of casual disinterest that belied the nerves he felt. He was on the verge of ordering himself a cup of wine when he realized, with a pang of apprehension, that perhaps Sophie had no intention of coming. The clock across the room told him he had waited for more than a quarter of an hour. Surely, if she remembered who he was or cared to see him again, she would have arrived by now.