Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey

Author:Juliet Grey [Grey, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, French Revolution
ISBN: 9780345523907
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

“Come—help me finish the lettering. Two artists can work faster than one.” Armand beckons Louison to leave the window, where she has been intrigued by the tumult below.

“Where did you get the brushes and pigments?” she asks her lover. She picks her way through the tiny overcrowded room they share in the rue de l’Ancienne Comédie above Le Procope, a café renowned for its famous clientele. The delicious aromas emanating from the kitchen tauntingly wend their way up the narrow air shafts, reminding the couple how empty their bellies are and how much money they would have to scrape together to afford a single bowl of soup from a cauldron bubbling only twenty feet below.

“The master gave them to me.”

“Monsieur David gave his own tools to an apprentice?” Louison picks up Armand’s other shirt from the floor. “It will get even dirtier if you don’t hang it on the hook,” she scolds.

“David is one of us!” Armand exclaims. He holds up the partially lettered sign for Louison to read.

“ ‘TREMBLE, TYRANTS, THE PEOPLE ARE ARMED! À BAS …’ À bas quoi?” she asks, trembling herself. “Down with what?”

“À bas le veto!” replies Armand, holding the wooden handle of a narrow paintbrush between his teeth. “You will come with me, won’t you?”

Outside the small dormer window, stars are just becoming visible in the blue velvet sky. “Where?” asks Louison.

“To visit your friend,” he answers with a hint of mockery, pushing an errant lock of dark hair off his brow with his forearm. At her look of incomprehension, Armand cheerfully expounds. “The king. Several thousand of us are going to pay him a call at the Tuileries.” He brandishes the sign, missing only the word “veto” now. “Be a good girl and paint the final word.” He reaches affectionately for Louison’s thigh and brings her toppling to the floor beside him, her fall broken by a heap of dirty clothes and tattered rags spattered with paint and soaked with turpentine.

Louison crouches over the placard and dips the brush into the dollop of red paint that Armand had mixed on his wooden palette. As she begins to carefully draw each letter, her lover comes up behind her, slipping his arms about her waist and brushing aside her curls to nuzzle the nape of her neck. “Ouf!” Startled, she loses her balance, smearing the crossbar of the t in “veto,” as the brush drags a jagged streak of carmine across the board. It looks like blood.

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