It had once been said that the three engines of rebellion which set late-eighteenth-century France ablaze were the cafés, the newspapers, and the salons. Had Louis XV banned those three institutions in his day, there might never have been an Enlightenment — nor, in its wake, a Revolution.
The salon had first appeared in fourteenth-century Italy, but it was the French who perfected it. In France it became the meeting ground of intellect and elegance, where philosophers and courtiers, poets and aristocrats mingled in spirited debate. By the sixteenth century salons had spread throughout the kingdom; when romanticism and the Enlightenment began to fuse, Parisian salons set the tone for all of Europe.
Here, the hosting of a salon became for many noblewomen and wealthy widows a vocation, even a destiny. In the years before the Revolution, Madame de Condorcet and Madame Roland reigned over their gatherings; later would come Madame de Staël, Necker's brilliant daughter, and the dazzling Madame Tallien.
As for André, the two salons he had previously attended had been of quite different sorts — the first little more than an amorous rendezvous, the second a meeting of mathematicians arguing over abstractions.
Because of his fierce dispute with the Fermiers-généraux (Tax-farming), André had no wish to see the Finance Minister Necker nor his wife, and avoided her circle as well as that of Madame de Condorcet. Neither lady ever pressed an invitation. But a recent chance encounter had brought him to Madame Roland's first salon in Paris.
At afternoon, his carriage halted before the Rolands' townhouse. At the door, a footman bowed, offered him a glass of wine, and informed him that the salon had begun twenty minutes earlier.
André sipped without haste. "Who has arrived?" he asked quietly, slipping a silver coin into the man's pocket. The servant bent closer and whispered the list: the Marquis de Condorcet, the journalist Brissot, Deputies Buzot and Pétion, and the Englishman Thomas Paine. Robespierre, he added, had sent word that he would not attend.
"A perfect quorum of future Brissotins — and one British rebel to complete the circus," André murmured, shaking his head. He drained his glass, returned it to the footman, and stepped into the salon. Parisian gatherings had no strict schedule; one need never apologize for arriving late.
The salon was sparsely furnished — a few chairs, a sofa, a small table adorned by a single vase of flowers. Wine and pastries waited on a wheeled cart; guests served themselves.
Madame Roland sat at ease upon the sofa, dressed in a white cotton gown that shimmered faintly in the lamplight, her hair wrapped in a silver scarf. To her left sat her husband, silent and austere as a philosopher; to her right, the true philosopher Condorcet, member of the Academy.
Around them gathered the guests: André's acquaintances Brissot, the thin, dark, meticulous journalist of Puritan bearing who would one day lead the Girondins; and Pétion, tall, handsome, a deputy of the Constituent Assembly and one of Robespierre's closest friends — perhaps soon to be Mayor of Paris. André greeted them all courteously, then withdrew to a bench near the little garden doors.
All eyes were fixed upon Thomas Paine, the celebrated pamphleteer and "citizen of the world," whose white-streaked hair and height gave him an almost prophetic aspect. Yet Paine spoke no French; at his side stood the young lawyer-deputy Buzot, translating line by line.
"Therefore," Paine declaimed, "I hold that the fruits of the French Revolution must be carried forth — to Rotterdam, to Berlin, to Vienna, to Saint Petersburg, to Madrid and Lisbon! Had the patriots of the Low Countries received France's aid last September, the tricolour would now fly over Brussels and Liège, and the cry of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity would resound across Europe—"
At that, André knew he had come to the wrong place. He had little patience for the self-anointed citizen of the world. In André's judgment, Paine was a man of slogans, not substance — a rationalist with no grasp of politics, whose lofty idealism concealed a child's ignorance of power. The Americans had tired of him, the British had expelled him, and even the French — those apostles of fraternity — had nearly sent him to the guillotine.
The Southern Netherlands, Paine's latest fantasy of liberation, were Austrian territory. France might toy with stirring rebellion there, but open war with the Holy Roman Empire was madness. The so-called Belgian "revolutionaries" were mostly Dutch exiles — the remnants of the Patriot Party crushed by Prussia in 1787. Fifteen hundred refugee families had fled south; Louis XVI, in one of his softhearted follies, had even granted them stipends. Now these same dreamers were urging France to bleed for their cause.
André rose without a word. He needed air — and an excuse to leave.
The Marquis de Condorcet watched him go, hesitating whether to follow and speak of the Fermiers-généraux and the mathematicians' "four-colour problem." But before he could move, Madame Roland laid a hand on his sleeve, whispered a few mischievous words to her husband, and glided toward the garden herself.
The inner garden was small — scarcely a hundred paces across. A few evergreens, several pots of wilted flowers, and one exuberant cluster of wild roses filled the corners with colour. Their red, violet, and blue blossoms, glowing against the summer dusk, brought the weary prosecutor a brief moment of calm.
"You admire the wild roses too?" came a soft voice beside him. He did not need to turn; it was the hostess herself. Her slender fingers brushed a petal, and the scent of lavender surrounded him.
He nodded. The perfume was so strong he rubbed his nose instinctively.
Madame Roland smiled. "I thought you preferred marguerites," she said slyly.
André's smile stiffened. The affair between the prosecutor and Madame Vinault was no secret in Parisian circles; gossip even claimed he intended to marry the judge's wealthy widow when the ailing man finally died.
"Rumour ends with the wise, Madame," he replied, bowing slightly — yet his eyes, traitorous, lingered on the curve of her bodice.
The lady's cheeks flushed crimson. She fidgeted with the folds of her gown until André, emboldened, reached as if to touch her arm. She stepped back quickly, breaking into a silvery laugh.
"Little enchantress," André cursed inwardly, retreating a pace himself to restore decorum.
The moment passed. Her tone became businesslike. "The Marquis de Condorcet hopes to arrange a meeting between you and Monsieur Lavoisier, to settle the matter of the Fermiers-généraux."
André's smile hardened. "Three months ago I made my position plain. Every tax-farmer, after surrendering his illicit profits, may negotiate a plea bargain before the Special Fiscal Court and escape criminal charges. If Monsieur Lavoisier accepts, I am at his disposal. But instead of compliance, I see frantic transfers of assets abroad. It was I, in the name of the Palais de Justice, who petitioned the Assembly to freeze their passports. Tell them, Madame, that the next step will not stop at passports."
The threat in his voice was unmistakable. That was, after all, the true purpose of his visit. Whether Lavoisier listened or not mattered little — André's plans were already set.
Madame Roland was about to reply when someone called her name from the salon — Buzot, naturally. The young deputy was visibly anxious, jealous perhaps, unwilling to let the famed Parisian prosecutor enjoy the hostess's company unchallenged.
When they returned indoors, the debate had reached its climax.
"We are unanimous," Buzot was declaring eagerly. "The committee shall urge the Assembly's Foreign Affairs Council to protest to the Court of Vienna, and to send troops in support of the people of the Low Countries!"
No one objected. Such resolutions were made by the dozen each day and forgotten by nightfall.
"I have no objection," said Madame Roland, smiling with feigned innocence, "but perhaps Monsieur Franck would like to share his view?"
"Yes," Buzot added, his tone edged with sarcasm. "Our eminent prosecutor has been very quiet." His dislike of André was personal as much as political — envy of his influence, his fame, and perhaps of the women who admired him.
André looked around the circle of dreamers — poets masquerading as statesmen. He waited until the silence became heavy. Then, in a calm deliberate voice, he said:
"War, ladies and gentlemen, is not fought with rhetoric. Who will pay for it? Who will feed the soldiers? Or do you plan to send them north with empty stomachs and wooden pikes to liberate Belgium in the name of reason?"
He let the words fall like stones. The so-called "war of liberation" was, he knew, a mirage. In another timeline, the blue-coated legions of France would indeed march across Europe proclaiming fraternity — and plundering everything they touched.
Paine started forward, lips parting to protest, but André raised his voice over him.
"And spare me the example of your thirteen American states! Europe has no king so foolish as to spend one billion livres feeding another man's war while his own people starve. We tried that folly once — and it bought us this revolution."
He spoke with the chill conviction of one who had lived through the consequences. Louis XVI's sentimental crusade for American liberty had emptied the treasury, provoked new taxes, and forced the convocation of the Estates-General. Ten thousand sailors had died, half the noble officer corps had perished, and the "grateful" Americans had repaid France with ingratitude and debt. Without French gold and fleets, Washington's farmers would never have defeated the British.
For that reason André and Deputy Prieur had recently pressed the Finance Committee to demand repayment from the new American envoy, Gouverneur Morris, following Franklin's funeral. A schedule of payments had been drafted — politely but firmly.
He now turned back to Buzot. "Look closely at the map, Monsieur. If we invade the Austrian Netherlands, we will enrage the only monarchy still neutral toward us. Do not forget — Britain remains the sole friendly power France possesses."
A murmur ran through the room. The prosecutor's words were heresy to many of the guests.
Buzot muttered "Coward." Brissot frowned but said nothing; though he knew André's courage firsthand from the Babeuf trial, he would not risk alienating the Anglophobes who filled the room.
The truth was that anti-British sentiment ran like wine through French veins. From the Hundred Years' War onward, the island nation had been the convenient enemy. Even now, France had emptied her coffers aiding the American rebels chiefly to wound her old rival's pride.
André saw no point continuing. He offered polite apologies to the hosts and took his leave.
Outside, in the humid Paris evening, a boy was running toward him — Meldar, breathless, his face pale.
"Bad news, Monsieur — something's happened!" he gasped, thrusting a folded note into André's hand.
It bore two hurried signatures: Hoche and Augereau.