Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution by Michelle Moran Page B

and the clothes. They want the right to sell off whichever dresses the queen has already worn. The larger, the lacier, the more elaborate, the better. But instead, I say evenly, “I hope you did not give the Duc your assurance.”
    “No.”
    “And what was his reaction?”
    Curtius takes up his pipe from a nearby table and searches for a candle. Suddenly, I realize how dark it is, despite the open windows. “Where are the candles?” we ask in unison.
    “There are no more,” my mother says. “I am saving the ones we have for the exhibit.”
    “What do you mean?” I protest. “We have the money.”
    My mother smiles primly. “And all the money in the world can’t buy them if they’re not available.”
    I think of the thouands of candles in Versailles and the greedy courtiers with the rights to sell them. “What about the black market?”
    “I sent Yachin looking yesterday, and I will send him again tomorrow.”
    Yachin lives just south in the Rue Sainte-Avoye, a fifteen-minute walk. He comes to us at sunrise and leaves at sunset. I wonder how his family is faring. I must remember to ask. I know that he has sisters still too young to work and that his father makes a meager wage as a printer.
    “You should see the shops,” my mother continues. “Yachin stood in line for three hours. I expect we’ll be buying corn on the black market soon as well.”
    Curtius turns up his palms, as if there’s nothing to be done. “The people’s deputies will make their complaints heard next month at Versailles.”
    “So the votes have already been counted? Did Camille—”
    But my mother shakes her head. “No. He didn’t win.”
    “So there will be no marriage after all.” Poor Lucile. I think of her pretty face and trusting brown eyes. Had she given herself to a trade, there would not be this heartbreak. Money and ambition never disappoint. “And Robespierre?”
    “Won easily,” Curtius says.
    I am not surprised. He is the kind of deputy who will represent the Third Estate well. “We should be very careful with our expenditures from this day forward,” I say. “If Parisians can’t afford candles, they certainly won’t be able to afford wax exhibitions.”
    “I don’t know,” Curtius replies. “They are still paying to see the bust of Rousseau, who inspired so many of the Third Estate’s deputies. Perhaps we should make a tableau in honor of the first meeting of the Estates-General. Or perhaps a library scene, with the busts of Rousseau and Franklin on the shelves.”
    Edmund wouldn’t like this. “And whose library would it be?” I ask.
    “How about the Duc d’Orléans?” he offers.
    “The people love him,” my mother remarks.
    “They also love peep shows and dancing monkeys! You don’t see us featuring those.”
    “Then the Marquis de Lafayette,” my uncle says firmly. The hero of the American Revolution, the man who helped France embarrass the British and sever their ties to their American colonies. It was Lafayette who suggested the meeting of the Estates-General. “He was elected as a deputy of the Second Estate.”
    “Is there a painting of Lafayette in the Académie Royale?” If so I can make a sketch, and from that a clay model, and eventually a mold.
    “Even better. I shall invite him to Tuesday’s salon. He is a friend of the Duc.”
    “And he would do this,” I question, “even after you refused him help?”
    “I did not refuse it. I told him that the needs of the Salon must come first.”
    I hold my tongue. If the Duc can persuade Lafayette to come, we can ask the marquis to a sitting. I imagine the tableau: The Library of Lafayette .
    My mother asks, “And what of the Cavern of Great Thieves? Two men came yesterday hoping to see the Marquis de Sade.”
    “There is only so much that Marie can do.”
    My mother gives a little shrug. The kind that tells us we can do as we wish, but it will be to our detriment. “And there was another one the day before that.”
    My uncle