Pam Rosenthal by The Bookseller's Daughter

randy, young beast, strutting through mirrored corridors like a turkey cock, prowling the huge chateau like a fox in a gilded henhouse. His affairs had been exciting, diverting—even more diverting when they’d been cold, selfish, and a bit cruel. But there’d always been a sameness to them. As though he’d been trying to fill some deeper need… But he wouldn’t speak of that . Not right now. Wouldn’t even take the time to wonder about it. Another time perhaps.
    Right now, he had something else to tell her. Something he was purely and simply proud of.
    “Well, you see,” he added casually (wondering immediately if his tone had been too casual), “Lafayette and the rest of us were considered glamorous heroes when we returned from America, and so it was easy…”
    Her face lit up.
    “So you did fight in America after all.”
    Of course. He should have thought to tell her sooner. He’d almost forgotten how devoted she and her family had been to the American cause. She already knew the names of the battles: Brandywine, Valley Forge, Barren Hill; he held her spellbound for a pleasant few nights, describing what it had been like to fight in them.
    Which led them to a discussion of the philosophies and thrilling new ideas at the heart of the American revolt. For she was familiar—at least as familiar as he was—with the words that had lit the sparks of the conflict. Her father’s shop had specialized, she told him, in the writings of the great revolutionary thinkers, Messrs. Jefferson and Franklin in particular. And pamphlets, too—piles and piles of brilliant, incendiary pamphlets—even those of the Englishman Tom Paine.
    “Papa used to say that if the Americans could accomplish all that—and they’d started out as mere Englishmen after all—just think what the people of France could do if they set their minds to it. Just imagine how simple, to unseat those useless, petty aristo… Ah, but I beg your pardon, M-Monsieur—uh…Joseph. Of course I didn’t mean you .”
    He’d laughed gallantly and waved away her apologies. “No, of course you didn’t mean me .”
    But the moment stayed with him, keeping him tossing and turning for hours after Baptiste had taken her back to her garret room. It was as he’d suspected all along. She didn’t respect him. She thought him spoiled, selfish, petty…
     
     
    Petty. What a vile word, Marie-Laure thought, to describe someone so intelligent, so delightful—and so heroic (fighting in America, no less) as well. She spent all the next day regretting what she’d said and wishing she’d thought before speaking. But she’d become so involved in the discussion that the words had simply slipped out, as though she were back at home, voicing an opinion at the family dinner table. “Petty” was Papa’s word for an aristocracy that lived selfishly and thoughtlessly off the industry of the rest of the nation. Papa, Gilles, the Rigauds—everybody at home had used such words, and much worse ones too.
    And their ways of talking had been mild and measured, cultured and polite, compared to the pungent antiaristocratic invective employed every day in the dessert kitchen.
    “They’re devils,” Arsène insisted flatly. “Every one of them.”
    “Though in truth I wouldn’t mind working for the devil if he were a fair and generous employer,” Bertrande had replied.
    “Which they manifestly are not ,”Nicolas had added, “but still, they do have the dignity of their position.”
    “ Ah oui? ”Bertrande had laughed. “Well, it’s not the most dignified part of them that we see when we empty their chamber pots.”
    Bertrand’s bon mot had of course led to a series of jokes about which part—or which parts —ofthe aristocracy Marie-Laure was likely to see during her nightly visits, always accompanied by uproarious laughter. As usual, she simply blushed and kept her counsel, though in truth she was becoming a bit tired of it all.
    Still—she thought of the Gorgon’s