Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe by Sandra Gulland Read Free Book Online Page A

you to withdraw him from this institution.”
    Eugène thrust out his chin. “I don’t care! I hate school,” he said, putting away the scrapbook he was working on.
    “You’re only fourteen, Eugène. You have to go to school.” I made a place for myself on his narrow bed. “You will never get to be an officer if you don’t get an education.”
    “What about General Hoche? He’s General-in-Chief and he never went to school.”
    Hoche? It startled me to hear my son speak Lazare’s name. Startled me and weakened me. Eugène had only been twelve when his father had died. Throughout that terrible first year he’d been sullen, moody, angry. It had been angels, surely, who had sent us Lazare Hoche, a man with a heart so generous that he could heal even the most shattered soul—my own, Eugène’s. He’d taken Eugène into his care, into the army as his aide and apprentice, cared for him like a son. But General Lazare Hoche has a wife and a child of his own—and Eugène now has a father.
    April 13.
    I’ve been all this morning looking through a book Madame Campan has loaned me, A Treatise on All the Diseases Incident to Women. It was written by a physician to King Louis XV. Madame Campan told me Queen Marie Antoinette herself consulted it. There is a great deal in it on all manner of complaints. For example, on the subject of the flowers (the morbid flux, the author calls it):
    The menstruous Purgation is a Flux of Blood issuing monthly from the Uterus. Galen, in his Book of Bleeding, attributes the Origin of the Menses to a Plethora. Does not, says he, Nature herself cause an Evacuation in all Women, by throwing forth every Month the superfluous Blood? I imagine that the Female Sex, inasmuch as they heap up a great quantity of Humours by living continually at Home, and not being used to hard Labour or exposed to the Sun, should receive a Discharge of this Fulness, as a Remedy given by Nature.
    1. The first Fact of this morbid Flux is that it has a stated Time wherein it appears, and this ordinarily from the Age of thirteen to sixteen Years.
    2. It is known by Experience that the Menses generally cease betwixt forty-five and fifty Years of Age.
    So, it is indeed possible that Hortense, having turned thirteen, might soon begin her periodical sickness. The author cautions against exposing girls of this age to spicy foods or to music in an immoral key. If only I knew which musical keys were immoral!
    April 15.
    A persistent pain in my side and a feverish feeling. And still no sign of the flowers.
    April 17.
    The pendulum clock had just struck two when I heard a horse cantering down the laneway. I went to the front steps. It was Eugène, dismounting a grey gelding covered in lather. He threw the reins around the stone lion statue and bounded up the steps two at a time. “You’re riding alone?” I asked, embracing him. The road between Paris and Saint-Germain was isolated, known to be dangerous. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” His eyes were red-rimmed. Why? “Has something happened?”
    “Maman, it’s about General Hoche,” he said, catching his breath. He pulled a torn sheet out of his vest pocket, a page from Les Nouvelles. The newsprint shook in his hand. I squinted to make out the small type: General Lazare Hoche has been killed in the Vendée.
    “Eugène, it can’t be true.” Barras would have notified me immediately. But my son was not convinced. “If you like, I’ll go to the palace,” I assured him. “Director Barras will know for sure.”
    It was cold in the Luxembourg Palace in spite of the enormous fires burning, the carpets, the hangings, the drapes of crimson damask. And strangely quiet but for the rhythmic swish of the porters’ brooms, cleaning up after the daily mêlée of petitioners. I followed the footman through the cavernous reception rooms, my thoughts on that scrap of newsprint folded into the palm of my glove.
    Four workmen regilding the wainscotting in the Grande Galérie