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montagnarde1793Title: Five Things That Never Happened to Éléonore Duplay: Part II
Author: Estella
Rating: G, or PG, or something like that
Pairing: Maximilien Robespierre/Éléonore Duplay
Arriving to seek asylum in the house of a family he had met but once, Babeuf was not surprised to see suspicion written on the face—thinner and more gaunt than he remembered—of Éléonore Duplay, the eldest daughter, who sat in the courtyard of her father’s house in the rue Honoré. Her father was in prison again now, by his fault, Babeuf thought remorsefully, though he himself had managed to evade arrest.
Babeuf was surprised, however, to see the child Éléonore held in her lap. Of indiscriminate sex, the child could have been no more than two or three years old, and Babeuf was further taken aback to find that, his—her?—mop of black curls aside, the little being was Robespierre in miniature, with wide, pale green eyes and his almost translucent skin. So astonished was he, in fact, that, having quite forgotten the words he had laboriously gone over in his mind for this meeting, he blurted, “Is the child…?”—Maximilien’s, he meant to say.
Éléonore clearly understood the question, but, perhaps viewing its answer as self-evident, merely replied, “This is my daughter, Maximilienne. Is there anything I can do for you, Citizen Babeuf?” she continued firmly.
He hesitated; that she remembered him might have not be beneficial to his cause. She might also remember that her father and younger brother were back in prison because of his Conspiracy of Equals. And if her memory went far enough back, she might even recall what he had written against Robespierre before he had been undeceived about his character, which, he had to admit, had been a rather recent occurrence.
She did indeed have a good memory for all these facts, but when he explained to her that he was on the run from the Directoire and seeking shelter, she reluctantly agreed to proffer it, explaining that whatever her personal feelings, she must consider it her duty to hide any enemy of those she termed “Maximilien’s assassins.” However, she made him agree that he would impose on her hospitality no more than a few days, for she herself could not afford to be taken back to prison, if only for Maximilienne’s sake.
When they had settled in the salon with cups of black coffee, Éléonore with Maximilienne on her lap once more, his hostess expressed her astonishment that Babeuf had not heard of Maximilienne’s birth.
“It was in all the journals: ‘Cornélie Copeau, the Tyrant’s mistress spawns accursed progeny while in prison for the safety of the Republic,’ and the like.” Her tone could almost have been described as flippant, but he could see that it had deeply upset her. She scowled. “I think they held me in prison longer because of it. But,” she said, smiling bitterly, “I have no regrets.”
Indeed she didn’t: this child was all she had left now that Maximilien was gone and the Republic corrupted beyond recognition. But Maximilienne resembled her father so much that just looking at her could bring tears to Éléonore’s eyes and she would hold the child tightly until the little girl squirmed to get free; innocent and pure, she did not understand grief and refused to be constrained by it.
Éléonore spoke no more of her daughter or her time in prison to Babeuf in the few days he stayed in the house. They put him up in the room normally occupied by her younger brother. If Élisabeth or Victoire had any complaints about the arrangement, they didn’t voice them. Still, even though Éléonore refrained from discussing her daughter, she could not help her whole short history from running continually through her mind.
She had sensed fairly early that she was pregnant, but, partly through fear of being mistaken or wishing for a miscarriage, it was Thermidor before she told Maxime. By then she was both certain enough and frightened enough that she knew further delay was impossible.
At this point she was, she guessed, about three months along. It was 8 Thermidor and still sunny, when Maximilien stopped home on his way to the Jacobins, but this was scarcely enough to prevent his being melancholy and spending these few minutes of repose in his room with the windows shuttered, in anxious contemplation.
Meanwhile, Éléonore, worried for him, and more abstractly for the Republic, was at least free from the nausea that had been her constant companion for several weeks past, only ceasing to plague her in sleep. If this last had been her only care, she would have felt almost normal.
Now she interrupted Maximilien’s despairing thoughts. Wearily, but gently, he asked her what was troubling her, for it was very unusual for her to disturb him at such times. Much as she would have liked to at that moment, Éléonore could see no way of evading the matter at hand, and there was likewise no way to break such news gently.
“Maxime, I—we—are going to have a child,” she stated, her outer calm belying the turmoil of her thoughts.
Color rose to his pale cheeks. “You’re pregnant?” His gaze dropped, lingering on her stomach, though it was too early for her to be showing.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?” He looked pained.
“I should have told you earlier. I wanted to, but I thought, or rather wished I might be wrong,” she said, starting to tremble. “Now I see there can be no more waiting.”
“My poor Cornélie, it is too late.” Concisely, he explained the situation to her. It was now more than ever abundantly clear that all was nearly certainly lost.
“I understand,” she said when he had finished.
He apologized, saying that he regretted he had not even had the time to marry her. “And now,” he repeated, “it is too late.”
“Then I will be your widow, though I could not be your wife. I shall try to be worthy and never renounce you.”
“How could you fail to be worthy?” Tenderly, he kissed the palm of her hand, and she brought it to rest on his cheek.
“And I swear to you, Maximilien, I will let nothing and no one stop me from raising our child to know the truth, to be virtuous, and to love the Republic.”
He nodded his assent, kissed her sadly, and hurried off to pronounce his last speech at the Jacobins.
Éléonore could still remember each horrifying detail of the next few days: how she had bid Maximilien adieu forever the following morning, the hours of waiting, dreading the whole day and through the night and then watching her parents and brother dragged away, her sister fall in a dead faint on the ground, the carts passing by, bearing Maxime and his friends to their deaths.
There was no time even to weep; she had to care for her infant nephew as she tried to revive his mother, and when she heard an insistent knocking at the door, she barely had the time to grab what papers she could from Maxime’s room and stuff them beneath a loose floorboard before she and Élisabeth too were placed under arrest.
Afterwards, she would wonder why she had not miscarried in those days, as stricken as she had been.
In the crowded and squalid prison, where her fellow prisoners were as likely to mock and despise her as to sympathize with her, she tried to keep her pregnancy a secret for as long as possible, even from her sister. But inevitably she was found out, and immediately the news was made public. The hypocritical Thermidorians loudly proclaimed, tongue-in-cheek, that it came as a shock to their “morals.” Only one fact about the matter gave her a grim satisfaction: that no one came to her, as to Élisabeth, offering her marriage to a Thermidorian deputy in exchange for her freedom and the recognition of her child. No one wanted “the tyrant’s bastard.”
Éléonore was still in prison when the baby was born the following Pluviôse. The prison cell had no insulation, but at the very least the freezing air numbed her somewhat to the pain. Her labor was not drawn out; it had started in the early afternoon and by evening she had had the baby, perfectly healthy, whom she immediately named Maximilienne-Françoise, after the child’s father, of course, and after Éléonore’s mother, who had been found dead in her cell on 11 Thermidor.
It was only a few months more before her sister and then her father and brother were released, but despite their petitioning, she was kept in confinement for another year. Now and then they would come to question her, but she always phrased her answers in a way calculated to frustrate whatever official was charged with the interrogation, and these sessions became less frequent as time wore on.
When they finally did release her it was unexpected and seemingly at random, though, of course, she did not question it. But since there had been no warning, there was no one to meet her, and she had to walk home through the streets of
Thus now, more than a year later—they were in Year V—she wondered how Babeuf could have been ignorant of the whole sorry history. Though he asked to hear no more of it after that first hour’s interview, she wished he had required no explanation at all, however brief and incomplete, for it brought all the memories vividly back.
But she could not in the end blame him for that. When word reached her of his arrest several weeks after leaving the shelter of her house, it pained her. Despite this, she brought petitions asserting that her father and brother had nothing to do with Babeuf to the trial, and they were thereby acquitted.
Éléonore did not allow herself to show her distress at the news of Babeuf’s execution, but merely held her infant daughter more closely, until the little one squirmed to free herself, babbling merrily. Maximilienne was a cheerful child.
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(no subject)
Date: Friday, 28 September 2007 19:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Monday, 1 October 2007 12:54 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Tuesday, 2 October 2007 02:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Tuesday, 2 October 2007 04:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Tuesday, 2 October 2007 22:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 3 October 2007 05:51 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: Thursday, 4 October 2007 03:54 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Thursday, 4 October 2007 18:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Thursday, 4 October 2007 23:52 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Friday, 28 September 2007 22:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Monday, 1 October 2007 12:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Friday, 28 September 2007 22:30 (UTC)Oh, this masochistic robespierriste cult. ♥(no subject)
Date: Monday, 1 October 2007 12:53 (UTC)That must be why I did it. XD(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 3 October 2007 04:15 (UTC)Masterful use of irony at the end. Your pullback from the main narrative is in keeping with the best literary technique. I would only recommend that you vary your sentence structure with a few interjections, fragments, and shorter sentences. I remain quite favorably impressed ;)
Jehanne
(no subject)
Date: Wednesday, 3 October 2007 05:52 (UTC)Всем привет
Date: Saturday, 20 June 2009 00:36 (UTC)Всем привет
Date: Monday, 22 June 2009 13:33 (UTC)