Where the Light Falls(59)
“Perhaps we might—” Merignac interjected for the first time, but Lazare cut him off, raising a finger in the direction of the chastened secretary.
“No, Merignac. I am enjoying this.” And then, turning his eyes back on Jean-Luc, Lazare smiled. “Rarely do any of these men challenge me so openly. I am so glad that you will.”
Jean-Luc found this odd. Was this not a Committee appointed by the National Convention, their very purpose to debate politics and arrive at compromises that would best suit the new nation? Lazare seized on Jean-Luc’s momentary distraction and said: “I already told you that I was from the south, Citizen St. Clair.” Lazare leaned back in his chair, placing the used apple core on the table before him.
Jean-Luc nodded. “You did.”
“Toulon, as I said. My mother was a maid. A foolish young girl who had the twin misfortunes of being both pretty and powerless. Then add to that the unfortunate fact that she attracted the attention of her employer, a viscount.”
Jean-Luc creased his brow, finding it curious that he should hear such a frank confession from a man such as Guillaume Lazare.
“Perhaps you have heard, Citizen St. Clair, that I am a bastard?” Lazare’s watery eyes were unblinking as he stared across the table at Jean-Luc.
“I…I believe I might have…but I don’t see why that should—”
“Don’t redden so, citizen. I feel no shame in giving the confession, and as such, you should feel no shame in hearing it. It was not my poor mother’s fault that she was seduced at the age of fifteen and made to give birth to a nobleman’s bastard child. Just as it was not my fault that my father, the esteemed viscount, sent me away—first to a hired nursemaid and then to a parish school, refusing to ever once see me. Refusing to allow me to ever see my poor mother, whom, I am sure, he continued to use as a broodmare when his own frail wife would not welcome him into her bed. Who knows how many bastard sisters and brothers I have populating the south of France?”
The flame in front of them sputtered and then expired, the last inch of pale candle dripping onto the table in a pool of molten wax. Jean-Luc was grateful for the brief period of darkness, as it allowed him to lower his eyes and absorb the heavy news he’d just heard.
Merignac summoned the footman, who appeared as if from out of the shadows, to replenish the spent candle and refill the company’s wineglasses.
Lazare, taking a full cup of wine and raising the drink to his lips, still held Jean-Luc in his gaze. “What do you make of my brief account?”
Jean-Luc sighed, weighing his next words. “I am sorry for your mother’s misfortune. And yours.”
Lazare nodded, still expectant, wanting more.
“And I do believe that the nobility committed crimes against the people.” Jean-Luc paused, remembering the account of the Marquis de Montnoir in the case of the Widow Poitier. “But I think that the nobility, just like the common population, comprised a wide and varied body. There are evil men among their number just as there are good men among them. And doubtless everything in between. And so—”
“Wrong!” Lazare landed his palm firmly on the oak table between them, his voice rising above a hushed tone for the first time that evening. Jean-Luc couldn’t help but start slightly, and he kept quiet, allowing the older man to continue.
“The nobles of this country have been inbred for centuries, and now all virtue and humanity have been drained from their ranks.” Lazare paused a moment, blinking, regaining his composure, bridling the volume of his voice. But his eyes still burned with the intensity behind his words. “Any man, Citizen St. Clair, who is born into a castle full of servants from the time he is a babe…who is told that he will never once have to put in an honest day of work in his entire life…who is made to believe that any skirt that passes before his powdered nose may be lifted at his request…Why, any man in an environment such as this would lose his ability to care for his common brother. The very institution of a hereditary nobility predisposes, no, guarantees, that a nation’s leadership will sink into profligacy, abuse, and licentiousness.”
“But look at Lafayette, himself a marquis,” Jean-Luc said. “He eschewed the wealth of his noble birth and sped to America to fight for their rebellion, nearly paying with his life in the process. Why, we owe our esteemed Declaration of the Rights of Man to himself and Monsieur Jefferson, drawing much of it from the Virginian’s own pen.”
Lazare’s voice was tight as a bowstring as he retorted: “A vain, self-serving dandy who showed his true treachery when he attempted to save the lives of Louis and Antoinette. If he had remained in France, we would have sent Lafayette to the guillotine as well. He was right to flee, like the rat he is.”