Part I

The Philosopher

Freedom is the first need of the human heart.

—Sophie de Grouchy, in her Letters on Sympathy

Paris, Spring 1786

Sympathy is our most natural and moral sense. And its origin is pain. From our first wail of infancy, we’re creatures who suffer. Perhaps women most of all. From cradle to grave, we gather bruises, scrapes, and cuts. And all of us—from peasant to queen—stumble and fall.

What’s more, every injury hurts infinitely. First, when the bone breaks. Then in every remembrance of it, such that when we see another person in pain, we feel the echo in our own body.

That’s why, blinded by tears, I shuddered with every crack of the hammer over the scene of torture playing out before me in the majestic place de Grève, where a doomed prisoner screamed for mercy as the executioner shattered his bones.

I didn’t know the condemned criminal strapped to the cartwheel. I didn’t know his family. I didn’t even know if he was guilty. I had no relation to him whatsoever except the most important one—that we were both human beings. But when the executioner raised the steel rod to break the victim’s forearm, I quite nearly prayed for him to miss his mark and kill the man. Let the blow end his suffering. Let the victim’s senses go quickly, like mine were beginning to as I grasped my uncle’s gloved hand to fight off a swoon.

But I didn’t pray, because this suffering to which I bore witness was in the name of the king’s justice, supposedly ordained by a god I didn’t believe existed.

Any god who ordained this would be a devil. And I didn’t believe in devils, either, unless they be men.

“I shouldn’t have brought you, Sophie,” Uncle Charles whispered as, in anticipation of death, black crows gathered on the rooftop of the nearby Hôtel de Ville. “Come away now.”

His voice was a rasp of emotion with an uncomfortable awareness of the peasantry, for whom this horrific spectacle was meant to be both entertainment . . . and a warning. Those peasants bold enough to peek up from beneath dirtied caps to look at me and my uncle seemed to say, You don’t belong here. And perhaps we didn’t. Though I wore only a plain somber gray Brunswick gown unadorned by ribbon or lace, and my uncle was dressed in black, the people knew aristocrats on sight.

They also knew that even minor aristocracy, like my family, would never be made to suffer the torment of being broken upon the wheel, shrieking and begging for a swift death. We had the money and connections to avoid such a fate. The common people knew it and I knew it too.

So I didn’t obey my uncle, but smeared away my tears, forcing myself to watch as the screaming wretch’s bones were shattered, brittle ends breaking through skin, spattering crimson blood on the cobbles. His screams were indescribable, but they seared my soul, and I reminded myself that I was here because of my uncle’s important work—our work, he often flattered me to say . . .

Uncle Charles was a magistrate, not a street vendor hawking his wares. But he knew we might be the only chance to end suffering like this, and for that reason he addressed the crowd. “I represent three peasants of Chaumont who’ve been sentenced to die this same way,” he told the knot of people standing nearest. “I authored a defense of them.” I held one of his pamphlets now, crumpled in the tightness of my grip as my uncle raised his voice. “Perhaps you’ve read it . . .”

His words made no impression upon a burly bricklayer who had climbed atop a crate for a better view and cheered every hammer blow. But we’d captured the attention of a fishwife in brown homespun and a young fruit seller in dirtied skirts, basket in hand and tears in her eyes. Neither were likely to have the education that would allow them to read my uncle’s pamphlet, but they’d heard about the three peasants of Chaumont. Oh yes, they’d heard. And word passed.

“It’s Charles Dupaty,” someone whispered. “He’s here.”

My uncle had gained renown (or perhaps infamy) by taking on the case, and more heads turned our way when he shouted, “Three innocent men! Forgotten by our barbaric system of criminal justice, left to rot in prison for thirty months, then condemned without evidence or credible witnesses!”

A priest in the crowd hissed at us, “For shame.”

I did feel shame for using the occasion of one man’s death to draw attention to the plight of three others. The dying man deserved, perhaps, the witness of every person for his suffering. But we couldn’t save him. We could only, if we were lucky, deprive the executioner of his audience and make the end quicker for the dying man.

“If the three peasants of Chaumont were rich men,” Uncle Charles continued, undaunted, “they’d never have been forgotten in jail. Rich men would’ve been able to appeal . . .”

My part, now, was to say what my uncle couldn’t. Ordinarily, it outraged me that the things women said were easily dismissed, but now I wished to take advantage of it. I was just twenty-two. I’d be thought a termagant for speaking about legal matters in public, but not a criminal. So with at least fifty pairs of eyes trained upon us, I found my voice. “But rather than reform a merciless system that celebrates suffering, the Paris Parlement resorts to judicial murder.”

Several men turned with hostile glares. “Good thing you’re a beauty,” one snarled. If I were not a noblewoman on a magistrate’s arm, he would’ve beaten me into silence.

As I swallowed my fear, murmurs in the crowd grew louder, nearly drowning out the screams of the shattered man. Sensing the change, the executioner ended the prisoner’s suffering with the coup de grâce—a blow to the torso that ruptured every organ.

Then all was silent.

The dead body was left upon the wheel, like carrion to be pecked by crows. Some words were chanted about how the criminal’s suffering purged us all of sin. Someone else said a prayer, acknowledging our submission to the king. Then the soldiers commanded us to go . . . but some people sullenly took copies of our pamphlet as they went.

Long after our carriage rolled away, the dead man’s screams still echoed in my ears, and I retched out the window, my sour vomit spattering the cobbled streets of Paris.

“Poor Grouchette,” Uncle Charles said, using my childhood nickname as I fought another wave of nausea. “However brave you are, you’re still a gently bred young lady. Now I fear you may never sleep again.”

“Should I?” I asked with a sob as the horses clopped along. “Should any of us sleep while things like this take place? It seems as if the whole world has closed their eyes to injustice.”

And I wanted to shake the world awake.

But first, I’d have to get hold of myself. Uncle Charles valued rationality not emotion. I feared that if I couldn’t stem my tears, he might trust me less in the great legal matter he’d undertaken at risk to his career and our family reputation. A fear that was confirmed when he pressed into my palm a silver flask of brandy with which to rinse my mouth and said, “I think it’s time you bow to the wishes of your parents.”

“Not that again, not now,” I pleaded, taking a gulp to cleanse my tongue.

I’d just seen a man die. It was obscene to speak of my future when the executed man had none.

My parents wanted me to marry—a fate I dreaded. In helping my uncle with his practice of the law, I’d learned the myriad ways in which husbands abused their power. And even if I were ignorant of that, there remained the regrettable reality that my heart already belonged to a young man I could never marry.

A good and brave soldier who risked his life, fortune, and freedom in the cause of liberty. But because my love was a shameful secret, I only said, “You know I’ve no wish to take a husband, Uncle. I’m much happier to devote myself to our causes like a nun to Christ.”

My uncle managed a small smile, perhaps remembering the family row when I renounced my faith. My kindhearted mother had sobbed against her rosary beads. My father, the Marquis de Grouchy, barked, “I’ll have no godless girl under my roof!”

Only Uncle Charles took my part in the matter.

Sophie is special, he’d argued. She consumes Rousseau and Voltaire like breathing air. She’s conversant in every subject. Let her leave off the prayer beads, the embroidery, and other feminine occupations. Sophie is a scholar with a man’s mind.

Of course, I didn’t feel as if I were a man in body or mind. And I believed other young ladies would be scholars if only such qualities were prized and encouraged in us. Nevertheless, I didn’t protest against my uncle’s defense, because he’d persuaded my parents to allow me to study with him. If she were a man, I’d take her for a legal apprentice. She’ll be a great help to me . . .

I liked to think I had been a great help to Uncle Charles during the past year while we fought to save the lives of three condemned peasants. I’d fetched books, researched precedents, taken notes, suggested arguments, and carried his writings to the printer. I’d even suggested that he sell his pamphlet, the funds for which might be used for the benefit of the prisoners. I truly believed we’d save them.

But now in the carriage beside me Uncle Charles said, very gravely, “It’s not going to end well, Sophie. My clients will likely die upon the wheel, just as that man did today, and it’ll likely be the last case I ever take.”

“You can’t mean it,” I said. “Every day we’re overwhelmed by pleas to help other unfortunates condemned by the king’s so-called justice.”

Even if we didn’t save our three prisoners, we might still make a difference. Not just through charity but by opening the public’s eyes. That’s what my uncle had said at the start, but now he took the wig from his head and rubbed at his thinning gray hair. “I have reason to believe the judges of the Paris Parlement will retaliate against me.”

That hardly seemed fair since my uncle’s pamphlet hadn’t accused any judge of corruption. He’d merely pointed out the unfairness in the system of the ancien régime. “They’ll see reason,” I argued. “They’re learned men. They can learn to see the humanity of peasants and a kinder way of justice.”

“My darling niece, were your passion alone to count upon the scales of justice, France would be a better nation. But I can no longer shield you from the expectations of society. I’ve brought the king’s disapproval down on the family name. It will be up to you to redeem it with a brilliant marriage.”

I didn’t see how my marriage—brilliant or otherwise—would do anything for the Grouchy name, considering that I’d have to give it up. The family hopes more properly rested upon my brother, the heir to my father’s title. But the lines of worry on my beloved uncle’s face made me wish to give comfort. “I don’t believe you have brought down the king’s disapproval upon us, Uncle Charles. I don’t believe the king knows half the crimes committed in his name while he gorges himself on dainties at Versailles without any concern whatsoever for the people over whom he rules.”

“Be fair-minded,” Uncle Charles chided, as he always did when my passions got ahead of me. I did not like to be strident, but I had, as Maman often told me, an unladylike temper. “King Louis is still relatively young, and those who know him say he’s well intentioned. He can learn, if he’s well advised. But I’m not enough connected at court to have the king’s ear.”

Neither was my father.

If we wanted to save the lives of the three peasants and save my uncle’s career—not to mention preserve me from an unwelcome marriage—we’d need the support of someone very wealthy and sympathetic to our cause. Someone with the bravery of a lion. Someone both respected by the king and beloved by ordinary people. And of course, at that time, there was only one such man in France.

The Marquis de Lafayette.

The very man with whom I fancied myself so helplessly in love.

“IT’S DISGRACEFUL ENOUGH that you skipped Mass,” Maman said, catching me in the parlor with my charcoal and sketchbook, my mending unfinished, the doors of our Paris apartments thrown open to the courtyard where my little cousins ran wild without supervision. “Must you also set such an unladylike example?”

I wasn’t sorry for not wasting time in prayer. But I did feel guilty for having abandoned my mending, because we couldn’t afford as many servants as we used to and holes in hosiery wouldn’t mend themselves. Besides, spinster daughters should at least be counted upon for watching the younger children when their governess was away. “I’m sorry, Maman. It’s just that I keep thinking, if only I can capture his pain in a portrait . . .”

In the weeks since the execution, I’d sketched a hundred men being broken on a hundred wheels and had never been able to expunge the sadness from my heart. Perhaps I never would. Perhaps it was important for my own humanity that I didn’t. And if I could elicit sympathy from even one important person with my art, shouldn’t I try?

Maman sighed. “I’ll never forgive your uncle for taking you to an execution. If he keeps agitating for these prisoners, he’ll land himself in the Bastille and drag you with him.”

I shuddered at the mention of the Bastille, the ancient fortress in Paris, with its eight stone towers. No longer needed as a battlement, it had become a jail. At first for suspected traitors, then religious dissidents. More recently for publishers, playwrights, and pornographers. It was a prison controlled by the king’s whim. A royal guard might take you unawares, strike your shoulder with a ceremonial white wand, and then you disappeared.

The king’s defenders said conditions in the Bastille were much improved, its few occupants ensconced in sumptuous suites enjoying decadent meals. I found that difficult to believe after having read firsthand accounts of prisoners who’d been forgotten in oubliettes, chained up with rotting skeletons. Voltaire called it a palace of revenge. The idea of being imprisoned there made me afraid. Yet not as afraid as seeing three more men tortured to death without having done something to stop it. “I believe we can win powerful people to our side, Maman. Uncle Charles has secured an invitation to dinner from the Marquis de Lafayette next week and I—”

“Sophie, this obsession with your uncle’s work cannot go on. I, too, once fancied myself an intellectual. Then I became a wife and mother, taking on the duties one must.”

“Must one?” I asked, hotly. Men devoted themselves to science, the study of the law, and the pursuit of justice. Because I was female, this and everything else that mattered to me was to be abandoned?

My mother sighed again. “We all have duties. Your father served the king as a page and his country as a soldier, and now serves his family by managing our estate even as it falls into disrepair. In addition to all these responsibilities, he keeps food in your belly and clothes on your back and—”

“Of course,” I said, painfully reminded of my dependence. My books, my comfort, and all my intellectual pursuits came at the expense of someone else’s labor. As a daughter, I was a burden. Another mouth to feed. That was the reality, and I didn’t wish to give my parents pain. “At least I’ve not cost Papa a dowry.”

My mother stroked my arm, softly. “But neither have you secured relations that might help us rise in status. Worse, you have rejected so many suitors you begin to make enemies.”

It didn’t seem fair that the same men who enjoyed my company in the social whirl of Paris should think me a coquette merely because I did not wish to marry. But the reality was that most noblewomen my age were long since wed. The queen had been only fourteen at the time of her nuptials. Lafayette’s wife too. And if I didn’t become a wife, I’d remain a daughter all my life. Or at least until my brother inherited my father’s title, in which case I’d be at his mercy, perhaps acting as governess if I wouldn’t take the veil.

Still, none of that seemed important. “Maman, you taught me we owe a duty to our fellow man. I took that lesson to heart. Please don’t prevent me from helping Uncle Charles with this case and, after it’s done, I promise to submit myself to your wishes.”

My mother sighed a third time.

It wasn’t permission, precisely, but neither was it a refusal. And later that week, Maman contented herself to be vexed merely because I wouldn’t permit the friseur to style my hair under a towering powdered pouf.

Such atrocious creations—festooned with everything from feathers to fat stuffed songbirds—were thankfully going out of fashion. And I hoped that would not be the only thing to change in France. “It’s only one of Lafayette’s American dinners, Maman. We wouldn’t wish to make any of the Americans feel underdressed. Remember, Monsieur Franklin used to walk about Paris in a beaver hat . . .”

She sniffed. “Nevertheless, it’s important to make a favorable impression.”

At her urging I donned my best robe à l’anglaise—its bold red satin stripes recalled the flag of the new American nation across the sea—and rouged my lips, pleased by the result in the mirror. The truth was, I did wish to make a favorable impression. Not only for my family’s sake, but for the Marquis de Lafayette, whose help we needed. And for whom I harbored every secret, fevered emotion a young lady could feel for a married man . . .

We’d met five years before at a celebratory ball in honor of Lafayette’s return from America, where he’d fought heroically in their cause. I was just eighteen then, and Lafayette himself was a major general of twenty-four, and also the toast of France, fawned over and feted by even the royals. But when we were introduced, I’d had the temerity to ask Lafayette how it was Americans could declare all men are created equal and still keep slaves.

Maman had been appalled at my cheek, but the dashing major general lingered at my side to explain the dreadful compromises Americans had made to unify, and the ongoing work to abolish the slave trade. Lafayette had lingered with me while impatient men in satin suits cleared their throats, and jealous noblewomen flapped their fans.

He made me feel as if it were not impertinent at all for a young woman to take an interest in humanity.

I’d loved him each day since, despite my attempts to reason the feeling away like a philosopher. I agreed with Adam Smith’s contention in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that love was ridiculous. Certainly, it’d been the ruin of many women. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Each time I came into Lafayette’s presence, I found myself as tongue-tied and giddy as a girl half my age.

Knowing this, I belatedly wondered if I should let Uncle Charles go without me—better to stay home than to make a fool of myself in front of Lafayette, or perhaps even his wife. For though Lafayette’s wife did not seem to mind his alleged dalliances—what self-respecting French wife would stoop to notice a mistress?—I didn’t wish to be one of the many bejeweled women who flung themselves at the man.

However, the importance of the dinner to the cause of our prisoners renewed my determination to simply compose myself. That I loved Lafayette ought to be of no consequence—there could never be more to it, for I was no coquette.

So why, then, did my heart kick up its pace that night upon entering his town house on the rue de Bourbon?

IN THE ENTRYWAY, a portrait of George Washington—the rebel general under whom Lafayette served in America—was given the place of honor amongst the glittering mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and upholstered neoclassical chairs—none of which were threadbare like ours. Unlike my father, of falling fortunes, Lafayette was one of the wealthiest men in France, and we meant to recruit that wealth and influence to our cause.

The dinner guests were a mixed company. Men and women. American and French. The tall, distinguished new American minister Thomas Jefferson was present, along with his ginger-haired daughter, Patsy, who looked to be about fourteen. Also present was a ward of the Lafayettes’—a colorfully dressed young Iroquois who hailed from the North American forests. But even in such varied company, I spotted someone quite unexpected: Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe.

She wasn’t precisely a courtesan, but rather a kept woman—a so-called dame entretenue. Once, she’d been the mistress of the Vicomte de Pons, more recently the mistress of the Prince de Conti, and it was suspected she took more lovers besides. Of noble blood, the beauty hosted her own salon, welcoming gamblers at her card tables. She was rarely shunned in society, but Americans could be shocked by French norms when it came to marital fidelity. So it surprised me to find Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe here, wearing pink from head to toe—frothy rose bows, pale peony petticoat, and a pink gemstone bracelet on her wrist that dazzled as she offered her hand to my uncle for a kiss.

Then she inclined her head of golden ringlets to me. “Mademoiselle de Grouchy, where have you been hiding yourself? I haven’t seen you since the Opera last year where you charmed every young man in my box, then broke their hearts.” I started to tell her that I’d been crusading on behalf of condemned peasants, but she interrupted. “Allow me to present my daughter, Émilie.”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe pulled from behind her skirts a delicate swan of a girl, already powdered and pinned, her youthful beauty on such display that there could be no question her mother meant either to sell her virtue to the highest bidder or find a wealthy husband before the temptation should arise. “Just thirteen years old, but too pretty to keep under wraps . . .”

Émilie looked younger than thirteen; perhaps not even twelve. Uncle Charles tried, in vain, to hide a frown at Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe’s transparent ambitions. Meanwhile, little Émilie greeted us with great poise, showing that her mother had taught her well. “Magistrate. Mademoiselle de Grouchy . . .”

Émilie’s adorable curtsy so charmed me that I replied, “Oh, but you must call me Grouchette, like my friends do.”

The girl’s nose nearly twitched in amusement.

Behind us, a man’s voice intoned, “May I also call you Grouchette, mademoiselle, or have we become strangers again after all this time?”

I turned to see our host, the Marquis de Lafayette. And despite my determination to betray nothing, my breath caught at the sight of him. Tall, with auburn hair tied back, he wore a sword at his hip we all knew was more than ornament. He had, at his own expense and in defiance of the king, wielded that sword to help liberate the American colonies so they might govern themselves. Now twenty-eight, the young officer was at the peak of his physical grace, with long, lean, muscular limbs and an easy confidence.

Lafayette took my hand and raised it to his lips.

Which was my complete undoing.

For the moment his warm lips brushed my skin, I was struck with a bolt of base desire. Perhaps he realized it, because his eyes danced with mirth. “Mademoiselle, I’m delighted to see you. I’ve missed our conversations.”

I smiled, thinking of a quick, witty reply. The kind I usually engaged in so easily in social situations. But staring into those gray-blue eyes, I quite forgot what I was going to say. A flush swept over me, and my fingers trembled in Lafayette’s hand. Trembled! Worse, when I saw Lafayette’s wife, I snatched my hand back, as involuntary a motion as if it’d been burned upon a stove.

Startled, Lafayette’s brow furrowed. “Have I offended?”

Oh, how great a fool must I make of myself?

“No,” I said, swallowing a groan. “Of course you haven’t. It’s merely that I-I . . .”

Lafayette leaned closer, expectant. For a moment, it seemed as if every guest listened for my excuse. Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smirked knowingly at my predicament, and I felt young, exposed, and at a complete loss.

Just when I thought I might melt of humiliation, I was rescued by a sweet-faced little savior. “Grouchette is too polite to say that I trod upon the back of her dress and nearly knocked her off balance,” Émilie offered, and I cast a grateful look at the young girl for her merciful lie. She beamed in return. “I’m new to satin heels and clumsy in them.”

Laughing, Lafayette offered his arm to Émilie. “Well then, my dear girl, kick them off and make yourself comfortable in my home!”

Lafayette ushered us into the dining room where democratic informality reigned, the seating was unassigned, and we were meant to serve ourselves from a stack of plates. This was, Lafayette said, how meals were served in America and not, as someone jested, on tree trunks eaten with bare hands.

I must have been staring too admiringly, still, because Émilie’s mother whispered in my ear. “I’m afraid Lafayette is a lost cause for you, my dear. To him, you can be nothing more than a charming child.”

I wanted to lie and say, with a flutter of my lace fan, that it made no difference what Lafayette thought of me, or whether he did at all. That was the game to be played in the parlor and it was a game I usually played quite well. But that night I felt too disgusted with myself to dissemble. “We’re nearly the same age . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smiled. “It’s not the years but the experience, mademoiselle. You may be—at least until my Émilie fully blooms—the prettiest girl in Paris, but everyone knows you’re still an innocent.”

I’m not an innocent, I thought, mildly aggrieved. Not after having watched a man die. I was awakened to the rot in our society and not innocent at all. But what Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe meant was that I was a virgin.

That, as a woman, what remained untouched between my thighs was called virtue and comprised the whole of my worth and maturity. To a lady like Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, who traded in sexual favors, I must’ve seemed very innocent indeed.

“No Frenchman is above taking a mistress,” she continued. “Not even Lafayette. But he would never take an unmarried aristocratic girl to his bed. He may speak like a wild American revolutionary, but his heart is filled with old-fashioned chivalry.”

This was nothing I didn’t already know, and a familiar ache bloomed in my breast. Both at the impossibility of being with the man I wanted and irritation with my infatuation. As if she understood my dilemma well, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe patted my hand. “If you’re looking for a man to transgress the rules of society, you’d do better with royalty . . .” She tilted her head and laughed. “Or the Condor.”

I tilted my head too. “The Condor?”

“It’s a new world bird,” she explained, indicating with a discreet gesture a dour middle-aged nobleman with a beak of a nose. “It’s also my pet name for the Marquis de Condorcet . . .”

I knew Condorcet only slightly. He was a prodigy, they said, in philosophy, science, economics, and mathematics. But, to the horror of fellow aristocrats, he’d taken on the habits of the working class, accepting positions as permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences and inspector general at the Mint. Condorcet rather dressed like a member of the lower classes too. No embroidered waistcoat or lace—just a simple cravat, carelessly tied, and a shabby dark blue coat that had not been brushed of its lint, as if he didn’t keep a valet. “He doesn’t look like a libertine . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe laughed. “Libertines rarely do. Never gamble with the man; you’ll lose your petticoats.”

I glanced again at Condorcet—a man who looked to be even older than my uncle. As he bumbled at the edges of the table, seemingly unable to find a seat he liked, I wondered if she was making sport with me. “Yet he has a reputation as a cold man of science.”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smiled knowingly “Oh, those of us who know him best say he’s a volcano covered in snow.”

I might’ve asked what she meant, but I had no interest in Condorcet and didn’t wish to engage in malicious gossip. So I politely excused myself in favor of helping Uncle Charles slip mention of his case into polite discussion, which Lafayette conducted in English for his American guests.

Thankfully, I spoke English well. But the talk at the table was all of a mercantile nature. France had paid a high price to help liberate the American colonies but both Lafayette and Jefferson confidently predicted that free trade with the new nation would compensate. Meanwhile, the women shared ugly gossip about our queen, whispering about Marie Antoinette’s lovers, diamond necklaces, and foreign ways. Other than myself, the only lady not to indulge in this gossip was Lafayette’s wife, a shy woman who gave the impression that she’d have preferred to be in confessional with her rosary beads.

After dinner, Lafayette invited the assembly to his grand cabinet and adjoining library to admire his copy of the American Declaration of Independence in a double-paned frame, only half of which was filled with the famous document. Pointing to the empty half, Lafayette said, “I am honored to display this declaration, which spells out the rights of man. But I leave this side of the frame empty . . . do you know why?”

No one hazarded a guess. The urbane Mr. Jefferson, who had been the primary author of this document, merely smiled enigmatically. But earlier in the evening, I’d heard the freckled Virginian say that he hoped the ideals of the American Revolution might spread liberty to the whole earth. My heart filled with hope that might be true, so I dared to guess, “Are you waiting for a French version to match it?”

Lafayette broke into a sunny smile. “Oui, oui, Mademoiselle de Grouchy. We must have reform in this country. Until then, we’re all left, like this frame, half empty and wanting . . .”

I told myself it was his words about reform that stirred me, and not the playfulness he put behind the word wanting. Alas, for me, it was no game. I positively burned with wanting and worried everyone could see it.

Fortunately, Lafayette turned everyone’s attention to my uncle. “Dupaty, I’ve read your pamphlet, you know. I purchased it for a handful of coins, so the proceeds may go to the good cause. And I’ve guessed you might wish for me to write in support of your prisoners.”

We’d only hoped Lafayette might bring our cause to the attention of the royals. That he might write in support of it left me breathless. Perhaps our luck was about to change. “Your words carry great weight with the public,” said Uncle Charles, eagerly.

With altogether too much adoration in my voice, I added, “My dear Marquis, you may save these men’s lives if you write in support of them.”

“Mademoiselle, I would attempt it if only for the reward of your dimpled smile,” Lafayette replied, taking a gulp from his wineglass. “But you’d be sorry for the result. Give me a battle to win with a sword, and I’ll fight. Give me a battle that must be won with a pen . . . and I flop like a fish in mud.” I deflated with disappointment until he gestured with his glass. “My esteemed friend Condorcet, though, has great powers of argumentation. I hope you won’t think me presumptuous to have asked him to take up his quill in support of your case . . .”

The beak-nosed Marquis de Condorcet, who’d said not a single word to anyone through dinner, made a sound somewhat like a grunt.

I couldn’t tell if that meant he’d agreed to help us or not. Or whether or not we should wish him to.

Uncle Charles said we needed the support of a man in the political sphere—not the academic one. But if Lafayette thought Condorcet might be of assistance, then I wished to encourage it. I flashed my most winning smile. “If the Marquis de Condorcet were to acknowledge the merits of our cause, and write in support of the condemned prisoners, he, too, would have my deepest gratitude.”

“I wouldn’t do it for your gratitude,” Condorcet said so sharply his words might have cut. “I’d only take up my pen in this matter to demonstrate the need for a jury-based system of justice.”

I startled at his curtness.

And Uncle Charles—who was not so liberal a magistrate as to be entirely easy with the idea that legal decisions should be left up to a jury of uneducated, ordinary persons—looked like he’d bitten a lemon. I could see he was thinking it might actually be worse to be defended by an eccentric like Condorcet than to be left twisting at the mercy of the Paris Parlement. But with the lives of the prisoners in the balance, it was worth the risk.

“Trial by jury I’ve seen in America,” Lafayette was saying. “It better reflects public opinion, but there are those who argue a jury is not wiser or more merciful than a judge . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe chuckled.

But Condorcet said, “I can prove otherwise, sir. Mathematically.”

“Mathematically?” I asked, with a chuckle of my own.

Condorcet’s frosty expression told me he was not making a jest. “Yes, mademoiselle. Mathematically. I’ve published an essay on the application of analysis to the probability of majority decisions. A jury theorem, if you will . . .”

Then, with clipped gestures, Condorcet explained what he called the social arithmetic by which he could prove that the more reasonably informed people vote on a decision, the more likely they are to reach the correct answer.

It was not, of course, the most stimulating discourse for a dinner party. Or so I gathered from the glazed expression of his listeners. When Condorcet took paper from Lafayette’s mahogany secrétaire to scratch out equations, people fled the room. But I remained, watching over his shoulder, impressed by his statistical defense for democratic decisions.

“I’m sorry for laughing,” I said when he was finished. “I’d no idea mathematics could be applied this way.”

Condorcet straightened, stiffly, and tugged his waistcoat. “You’re not the first to laugh at me, and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

I hadn’t laughed at him, and his prickliness bordered on rude. I would’ve taken offense but for the fact that he’d explained his work to me rather than assuming, as most men of his stature might, that I couldn’t understand. That emboldened me to ask, “Is there not an exception to your formulation? What if the jurors are all uneducated, or unenlightened and ill-informed?”

He lifted an appreciative brow at my question. “In that case, the math would lead to the opposite conclusion, where the ideal jury is one.”

“Like a judge,” I said, enjoying our intellectual discussion in spite of his curtness.

“Or a king,” he replied. “But we’re not savages in France. Only give a free secular education to all the people and we can govern ourselves.”

Reflexively, I glanced over my shoulder, wary that anyone should overhear talk that sounded seditious if not treasonous. Fortunately, everyone had bolted for the wine trays and no one was paying us the slightest attention. Feeling as if we now shared some manner of confidence, I asked, almost in a whisper, “You favor a free education for all people?”

Condorcet nodded. “From serfs to noblemen.”

“And women?”

He glanced up in surprise. Perhaps he’d not considered the possibility before. Few men would have. “Why not? You’d seem to be an excellent example of how education may benefit the female sex.”

I tilted my head again, unsure of whether or not I’d just been complimented. What a very strange man, I thought as our conversation concluded, never realizing the degree to which Condorcet might change the world, and my life in particular.

MY FATHER DECLARED that it was time for our family to leave Paris and return to our estate at Villette for the summer. This would—not coincidentally, I thought—prevent my continued involvement in my uncle’s case. So I was thrilled when, before my parents could whisk me away, we received an invitation to call upon Condorcet at the Hôtel des Monnaies, the palace on the Left Bank where he oversaw coin makers and clerks.

Uncle Charles and I arrived precisely at the appointed hour and the liveried servants showed us up the impressive double staircase to Condorcet’s office. At his desk, which was cluttered with papers and books, Condorcet came directly to the point. “If I’m to take a public position on this case, I’ll need to know everything about your condemned peasants.”

I noticed that Condorcet neither questioned my presence as my uncle’s secretary nor seemed vexed by it. So I told myself not to be vexed by the fact that he didn’t offer refreshments or even a seat. Had the man been raised in a barn?

My uncle and I took seats anyway, and while he reviewed the legal matters, I supplied the information that one of the condemned men had a young son—a youth of perhaps nine years of age—now living on the streets. “He’ll be made an orphan if his father is executed,” I said. “Then who could it surprise if the poor boy should turn to crime?”

Condorcet didn’t look up from whatever he was writing. “A boy with an education wouldn’t need to turn to crime. Education is our liberation.”

Be that as it may, the boy was too poor to afford an education, so I directed the conversation back to a pattern of recent judicial abuses, which included blameless persons being tortured in front of their children. After this discussion, my uncle rose to fetch some documents he’d left in a satchel with the steward, and I found myself momentarily alone with Condorcet. “Surely you wish to help remedy these crimes against the innocent,” I said.

“It isn’t the innocence of the condemned that make them crimes,” Condorcet replied. “I saw a man burned alive for vandalizing a crucifix. He was assuredly guilty. But it is cruel to subject another person to torture and death. You cannot undo such a punishment if the judgment was in error. More importantly, death is an immoral punishment, unworthy of us.”

Condorcet wasn’t the first to make this argument, of course. Several reformist lawyers of the time believed the death penalty should be abolished—prominent amongst them, a young associate of my uncle’s named Maximilien Robespierre.

But at the time, Condorcet was a far more prominent man. “Have you decided to help us, then?” I asked, hopefully.

Condorcet rubbed his chin. “There’s an argument to be made that with the nation’s finances in shambles, my time is better spent persuading the royals to rein in expenses and reform our tax system, which burdens the poor for the benefit of the rich.”

Maman would’ve scolded me for arguing with a man of his stature, but I never could stifle my natural predilection for debate. “That is an important matter, but less urgent than the impending torture and death of three men.”

Condorcet leaned back in his chair. “If I’m asked to weigh the fate of three individuals versus twenty-eight million French subjects . . .”

“That’s a cold calculation, sir,” I argued. “Moreover, I believe it’s a miscalculation. Because our case only requires persuading the courts to show clemency and reason. Whereas in the case of the twenty-eight million French subjects, you must persuade the nobles and the clergy to voluntarily surrender their ancient privileges. It seems to me that the likelihood—”

“The likelihood is that, if I take up your case, I may actually accomplish something for a change?”

I pressed my lips together. “I beg your pardon if I’ve given offense. My mother says that I have an unfortunate habit of frankness.”

I thought I saw him smile, ever so slightly. “Something we have in common.”

This emboldened me to say, “Then perhaps you won’t mind my frankness in confessing that all this talking has made me quite thirsty.”

Condorcet stared. Blinked. Then remembered his manners. “I am terribly absentminded. I should’ve called for tea . . .”

Grinning, I said, “I imagine you can still do so.” And because there’d always been in my breast a desire to provoke, I added, “Maybe even some sweets. Perhaps puits d’amour . . .”

Condorcet’s cheeks colored at the erotic name of the little treats—slang for a woman’s genitalia. And I decided Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe must have been making sport of me to imply that he was a libertine. He was red as a schoolboy as he mumbled, “There must be some sort of, um, pastry in the kitchen . . .”

Clearly the man had been born in a barn. After calling for a servant, he looked so pained, I decided to rescue him. I noticed a version of Adam Smith’s work open on the table. “You’re reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I am an adherent.”

He looked vaguely surprised. “I was under the impression all the ladies in France were adherents of Rousseau.”

“Only the foolish ones. Rousseau seems to believe a woman’s only purpose is to torture men or cater to them.”

“And you believe?”

I didn’t know how safe it might be to confide my beliefs, so I only said, “I believe this is a bad translation of Smith’s work.”

He stared with disconcerting directness. “Can you recommend a better one?”

“Mine,” I said, recklessly. I’d started translating Smith’s work into French—an endeavor I believed might one day be a real achievement. But now I was embarrassed. “It isn’t finished. Mostly, I have notes with my own critique.”

“I’d like to read your notes.”

I flushed, torn between being flattered by his interest and fearful of his mockery. “You don’t find it strange that a lady should occupy herself in such a way?”

He shook his head. “I know what it is, mademoiselle, to desire a different vocation than expected. I myself was nearly forced to be a soldier like my father.”

I couldn’t imagine Condorcet as a soldier. The man of science didn’t look as if he’d harm an insect. “Well, you seem to have found a more suitable calling, sir . . .”

“You can too.”

My cheeks grew hotter, as I feared he might be mocking me after all. My uncle indulged my scholarship, but Condorcet seemed to be encouraging it. It made me curious to see just how far he would continue to do so. “Maman says it’s heresy to defy the divine order in which God has ordained women occupy themselves with domestic concerns.”

“I believe neither in God nor a divine order,” Condorcet replied, leaning to me with what might almost be a smile. “Only a natural order. Thus, if men have natural rights simply because they’re capable of reason and morality, then I suppose women should have exactly the same rights.”

My breath caught. It’s what I believed. But hearing it said aloud was a shocking sensation. Electric. Even Uncle Charles would never have gone so far. Which meant that Condorcet was, quite possibly, the most radical man I’d ever met.

It was for that reason I agreed to send him my notes before I left Paris for the summer. And that is how our correspondence began . . .

* * *

Château Villette, Summer 1786

My Dear C, my letter began, You said you’d like to read my additions to Smith’s work, so I’ve taken the liberty of sending them . . .

Having been spirited away to our estate in Villette where we awaited my uncle’s visit, writing letters was a pleasant enough diversion from the boredom of country life. And when Condorcet’s surprising reply arrived, it was not only with praise for my intellectual efforts, but also an enclosure of a pamphlet of his own.

One that lit a fire inside me like a spark to tinder.

“Can you believe the boldness?” I cried.

Having run from the house onto the wide drive in front of our manor to greet my uncle as he stepped out of the carriage, I read aloud one of my favorite lines from Condorcet’s pamphlet on behalf of our three prisoners.

The people groan to be obliged to ask once more, not for a system of laws worthy of an enlightened people, but just for basic human rights . . .

Condorcet championed a right for all accused to have the assistance of legal counsel and an ability to confront accusers. He called for an end to interrogations by torture. And he made an utter mockery out of any trial, such as the one in which our three prisoners were condemned, where the prejudices of witnesses were not questioned and unreliable testimony was given undeserved weight.

No one was spared from the heat of his fiery words—not the Paris Parlement, not the king, and not even those who simply wished to look the other way. Condorcet’s pamphlet was stirring and brave and the news from Paris was that it had resulted in at least a temporary reprieve for the prisoners whilst the court reconsidered their case. Victory!

So why did my uncle look so weary? “The Paris Parlement might spare the prisoners,” he said. “But they’ve vented their rage upon me.”

My uncle’s work was to be publicly burned. He was also stripped of his magistracy. After dedicating his entire life to the law, my uncle was discarded in disgrace. “To save men’s lives, I’d do it again,” Uncle Charles said bravely. But he took the retaliation hard.

We all did. Even Maman, who confined her remarks to this single utterance: “Let’s count ourselves fortunate it hasn’t come to worse.”

“I object to the idea we should think ourselves fortunate not to be imprisoned for seeking justice,” I said.

I wasn’t the only one, as I learned when Condorcet called upon us late that summer. He came without an entourage, having made the day’s travel from Paris driving his own little chariot, and because he wasn’t expected, I was the only adult member of the family at home to receive him.

“You came alone?” I asked, after explaining that my mother was delivering bread made from potato flour to the poor and that my father, brother, and uncle were hunting. “You’re lucky you weren’t set upon by highwaymen. We’d have sent a servant to escort you if you’d sent word ahead.”

“I was uncertain I’d be received if I sent word ahead,” Condorcet admitted as we sat together outside in view of our fountain with its statue of an ancient sea god amidst the spray. With my nephews playing nearby under the supervision of their governess, it was the only place I might entertain a gentleman without suspicion or censure. He’d caught me out wearing only a white muslin gown with blue satin ribbon, and I smoothed the dress over my knees as we settled together upon a marble bench.

“I’ve come to convey my apologies to your uncle,” he explained. “As I’ve been the cause of his ruin.”

“My family doesn’t blame you.” After all, Condorcet had only done what we asked. And he’d done it brilliantly. I looked at this shabby absentminded man and wondered how he could write prose that made my heart thump. Condorcet’s pamphlet had been, perhaps, impolitic. But he’d been right.

“Nevertheless . . .” Condorcet took from his coat a letter on very fine paper, and when he handed it to me, my silly heart thumped again in recognition of Lafayette’s seal. “An invitation from my young friend for your family to join him at Versailles. It will be quite impossible, of course, to obtain a direct personal audience with the king. Still, there may be powerful people at court who will intervene on your uncle’s behalf.”

I broke the wax seal and, inside the invitation, found an enclosure. Pressed between the folded page of a brief note, a trio of blue forget-me-nots.

My compliments to the unforgettable Mademoiselle de Grouchy.

It annoys me now to remember how, like a schoolgirl in the convent again, I traced the lines of my name where Lafayette had written it, smiling like an idiot. The soldier-hero was, once again, trying to help. But what did he mean by sending me dried flowers? It could be a mere token of friendship and respect. In spite of all good sense, I still wanted it to be more . . .

“Thank you for delivering this invitation,” I said. “There’s cause for optimism, then, is there not? After all, Maman feared we’d all be thrown into the Bastille with the Marquis de Sade, and yet, we’re still free.”

“As free as one can be in France,” Condorcet remarked, “where anyone can be jailed on a mere lettre de cachet.”

“But in the Marquis de Sade’s case, they say he’s a deviant lunatic. The list of rapes and crimes he’s alleged to have committed is long . . .”

“Perhaps he’s guilty and must be jailed, but how can we know without a trial? He might’ve been released but for the suspicion he’s committed sodomy with his manservant.”

I gulped in surprise at Condorcet’s frank use of the word sodomy. “You think that’s an unjust reason to imprison a man?”

“I don’t believe in crimes without victims. Whether suicide or consensual sodomy, it is no one else’s affair. But rape is a violation of the right every woman has to do with her own body as she pleases.”

I’d never known anyone to defend sodomites before. Nor to claim a woman’s body was her own, though I’d always had an innate sense that I belonged to myself. Still, again, there was something exhilarating in hearing him say it, and I gave him a radiant smile.

To which he bit his lip and looked away.

A servant came with tea, and Condorcet eyed an easel upon which my latest sketch of the executed man remained unfinished. “That’s very vivid. Is it yours?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But despite all my attempts, it doesn’t capture the human suffering . . .”

“Because torture consists of more than what we can see. There are smells and sounds and—”

“Pain,” I said, swallowing, feeling it anew beneath my breastbone. “Just to witness it.”

He nodded. “I feel that when I hear about the slave markets too.”

“I’d like to end torture and slavery,” I said, realizing how grandiose such a statement sounded. Perhaps I should bring an end to smallpox while I was at it, or give men wings and women the right to become jurists. “I might as well wish for the moon, I know—”

“Why not reach for the moon, however out of reach it seems? Torture and slavery have no place in a civilized world.”

I felt the familiar pleasure of intellectual camaraderie—the delight of my opinions being echoed. Of an impulse, I touched his arm. “I think, sir, we shall be good friends.”

“Because we agree?”

“Surely that helps.”

Condorcet blew upon his cup. “I suspect true respect is formed when you find something upon which you disagree and yet remain on good terms.”

“Unfortunately, I agree with that too. So how will we test the theory?”

“We’ll have to find something upon which to disagree.”

We made a game of it, discussing, rapid-fire, social and religious subjects, searching for something upon which our opinions differed, and finding nothing. Finally, he asked, “And how do your thoughts run on the matter of marriage?”

I set down my teacup, hoping to vex him. “I believe marriage ought to be abolished.”

“Abolished?” Condorcet cleared his throat in apparent shock.

I nearly laughed at having turned the tables. “The church holds marriage is a sacred covenant between a man, a woman, and a god who doesn’t exist, for the purpose of children being brought forth advantageously. And yet the church permits—nay, encourages—fathers to sell their daughters into marriage whilst they are still children, delivering them unto the tyranny of their husbands in an arrangement that can never be undone.”

“Regrettably true,” Condorcet said.

Since he didn’t look ruffled enough, I continued. “Fidelity is openly laughed at—and why shouldn’t it be? Husbands and wives, betrothed before adolescence, scarcely compatible, should naturally prefer the beds of others.”

Condorcet cleared his throat again.

Perhaps he was succumbing to an illness, so I poured him more tea as I continued, “It’s bad enough a woman has no legal standing; before marriage, she’s controlled by her father. After marriage, by her husband. Which is why I prefer to remain unmarried. If I must choose between a father or a husband to rule me, it seems wiser to remain with the devil I know.”

Not that Papa was a devil, of course. I regretted phrasing it that way. But passion was carrying me away. “So, in summary, my thoughts on the matter of marriage is that it is, at worst, church-sanctioned despotism and, at best, an empty, meaningless farce.”

I punctuated my argument by taking up my teacup for a long, satisfying gulp. Meanwhile, Condorcet’s eyes were inscrutable. “I see.”

Was that all he was going to say? “Sir, I’m not too fragile to endure an attack on my arguments, if you should wish to make one.”

“I do not,” he said, his finger tapping against the edge of his seat. “It’s only that . . .” He trailed off, wry. “It’s only that when I asked how your thoughts ran on the matter of marriage, I didn’t mean as an institution . . . but rather, with regard to how you might consider the prospect of marrying me.”

I laughed, delighted by what I took for a jest.

Then he winced, and my laugh strangled in my throat. He pinched at the bridge of his nose, and I covered my lips with my fingertips, wishing I could call back the laughter.

How had I misunderstood the direction of our conversation? Condorcet hadn’t behaved like a suitor. He’d not flattered or fawned or even sent me dried forget-me-nots. I couldn’t imagine what would possess him to think . . .

. . . to think what? That I found him interesting? That I enjoyed his company? I did. Perhaps for a cool-tempered scientist, that was enough to justify marriage. It was better justification than most could claim. But I mumbled into my teacup, “We scarcely know each other . . .”

“That’s true,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, even as a scientist, I cannot explain the mechanics of love.”

At the word love, I quite nearly choked on my tea. “Please forgive me. I did not realize—”

“I worried it could scarcely be more obvious that I’ve been struck by the arrows of Eros.”

He flushed, which somehow made me flush too.

Had I been expecting a declaration of love, I’d have known how to gently reject his suit as I’d gently rejected many others. But taken entirely off guard, I retreated to flippancy. “How strange that a rational philosopher who has no faith in a Christian god should believe in Eros . . .”

He returned his gaze to his cup. “Well, I have evidence of Eros by way of the pain in my heart.”

I felt his pained embarrassment. It was a very familiar feeling, as I experienced it every time I thought about Lafayette. Love really is ridiculous, I thought. Humiliating, distracting, nonsensical, and undignified. And it could apparently manifest, like a disease, out of thin air. Like a sneeze, it simply must be excused.

I was trying to think of a tender way to excuse Condorcet when he hurried forth to add, “I know you don’t share my feelings. Which is why I’ve been trying to talk myself out of them. Fortunately, your argument against marriage is so persuasive that no fair-minded man could possibly take personally the rejection of his suit.”

It was gallantly done and I had no wish to bruise his feelings. “I wouldn’t have argued so vehemently if I wasn’t trying to make you disagree with me.”

He nodded. “Alas, there’s no point you made without merit. I’ve reached the age of forty-two without having taken a bride because marriage, as the church would define it, is immoral. But between mature, consenting individuals, I believe marriage can be a useful social arrangement . . .”

“For a man, perhaps.”

“For a woman too. A married woman, for example, is freer to mingle unchaperoned,” he said, gesturing lightly at the governess, watching us like a hawk. “A married woman is capable of hosting literary salons without censure. And the right husband might leave you free to enjoy intellectual pursuits. In short, given the right sort of husband, marriage could secure your liberty.”

It was a notion I’d never entertained because I had never met a man who might allow a wife complete freedom. Because it was an appealing notion, I humored him. “And you’d be the right sort of husband?”

He met my eyes. “I’d attempt to be. If I should fall short, I’d attempt it anew. I’m not a very wealthy man, but I’m industrious. You aren’t likely to find yourself impoverished. I’d neither require nor accept a dowry. Nor would I demand to know your whereabouts or circumscribe your social sphere. And I’d not trouble you for children. The world has enough.”

I tilted my head. “And on the other side of the equation?”

“The other side?”

“What would you expect in exchange for these benefits . . . other than . . .” I hesitated, trying to think of a delicate way to phrase it. Fortunately, the most appealing thing about Condorcet was that one could be perfectly frank with him. “Other than the conjugal benefits of the marital bed that I assume you’d demand.”

His complexion went, almost in an instant, to ash. “Only a monster would demand that.”

His proposal was becoming a greater curiosity all the time. “What benefit, then, would you receive? I hope you won’t say that you wish only for my happiness, because I’m uneasy to be the object of unselfish charity.”

“I’m not unselfish.” He looked chagrined. Excruciatingly so. “I seek to explore the possibility that you may, in time, grow to care for me, if not precisely the same way I care for you, then in some approximation thereof. I think it quite a high probability actually, as I’ve done some calculations.”

I didn’t think he could startle me a third time in one conversation, and yet, he did. Retrieving from within his coat a tattered scrap of paper upon which he’d scribbled indecipherable equations, he began to ramble. “Assuming esteem and trust to be the necessary ingredients of affection, and further assuming that trust and esteem may increase with both proximity and time . . .”

The man who had applied mathematics to juries and democratic decision making had now turned his statistician’s mind to the problem of love.

And in spite of myself, I was inexplicably charmed.

So charmed I regretted I could not give him serious consideration. Remembering the dried forget-me-nots, I said, “My dear sir, I’m afraid your formula fails to account for the possibility of a prior claim on the lady’s heart . . .”

“To the contrary,” he said, pointing at his equation. “I’ve made allowances for the Lafayette variable here . . .”

“Oh,” I breathed with instant and intense dismay. “You knew . . .”

Did everyone? How painfully obvious had I been?

At my distress, Condorcet’s expression fell. “Oh, no. I knew nothing until this moment. I merely thought to give my variable a clever name and since so many women in France admire him . . .”

“I am just one more,” I murmured, wishing the ground would swallow me up. A man of Condorcet’s age and stature must have seen gaggles of infatuated girls in his time, and there was no explanation I could give that distinguished myself from them.

“My dear lady, the fact that so many others share your tenderness for Lafayette is merely a testament to your good judgment. As I’ve said, the more reasonable jurors added to a pool, the more likely they are to reach a correct result . . .”

It was a kind thing to say. And because he was kind, I would not mock his mathematical formulations. “You don’t think that love for one man is likely to foreclose all possibility of loving another?”

“I’m willing to test the proposition.”

“You’re a gambler,” I accused.

He folded his arms, but he didn’t deny it. “I have flaws, of course. But unless there is some immutable quality about me that repels you, I believe there’s a possibility—nay, a probability—that marriage would contribute to our mutual happiness.”

I stared at him then. Really looked at him, as if for the first time, seeking his soul in his face. As I would later write, one can hardly doubt that beauty, or at least something interesting in the person’s appearance, is necessary for love. Exceptions to this are fairly rare among males. If there are more exceptions among women, that is because we’ve been taught from the cradle to be wary of first impressions and to value more important qualities.

I noted again his bent beak of a nose.

The Condor, indeed.

There was the shadow of a beard, which he ought to have shaved. His upper lip was too thin and his hairline receding. He slouched, his nails were ragged, and his aging face wasn’t handsome. But neither was it disagreeable. He was not ill-made. Beneath his white stockings, I could see his calves were strong. Moreover, I confess, there was something arresting about his dark eyes.

Unfortunately, I felt not the slightest stirring of amorous attraction, but I could find no immutable quality that repulsed me.

And I supposed that was something.

“But what if marriage did not add to our mutual happiness? Then we’d be unhappily bound together unless divorce becomes legal in this country.”

“If it does not, we’d be precisely as free to take lovers as any other married couple in France and without censure. As I said, I won’t demand to know your whereabouts or circumscribe your social sphere. Moreover, I’ve always had a premonition of an early death, and given that I’m twice your age, I’ll likely make you a young widow, whereupon you’ll have the means to live independently or marry again, more to your liking.”

It guts me to remember how dispassionately he said this. But even then I flinched at the thought of his untimely demise. Meanwhile, he concluded, like the scientist he was, “Given your worries, I’d like to test the proposition that equality in marriage can flourish.”

“You don’t propose a marriage, sir, so much as a social experiment.”

“Isn’t every marriage a social experiment?”

I remained dubious. “Even the most amiable spouses sometimes come to an impasse. Then the husband is the final arbiter . . . and thus the ruler.”

“It’s true someone must have the final say. But it needn’t be the same person. Look to the ancient Romans, who had a solution between co-rulers. They simply took turns.”

He had an answer for everything. On the whole, it was the most unique offer of marriage I’d received. Certainly the most agreeable. Which is why I regretted so very much having to dismiss it. But before I could, he asked, “Would you at least consent to think about it for a little while? Perhaps on your long carriage ride to Versailles . . .”

And I nodded because that was, I thought, too reasonable a request to refuse.

* * *

Versailles, August 1786

Versailles had been the seat of French power since the time of the Sun King, and though my father—who had once been a courtier—told me what to expect, I positively gaped to see gardens unfurl like a green leafy brocade on earth-colored satin, each shrub clipped by an army of gardeners into fantastical shapes.

I told myself not to be overawed by the splendor. In the American Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote all men are created equal. But I couldn’t help feeling humbled by such grandeur and staggered by the magnificence of the palace as it rose grandly from its verdant park, surrounded by spraying fountains that crowned the whole with a glittering mist.

We lodged at the Hôtel de Noailles, a stately residence belonging to Lafayette’s powerful noble family by marriage, a short walk to the palace gate. “You must attend every function here at court as my guest,” Lafayette explained, in receiving us. “That includes the king’s lever when he awakens, and his coucher when he retires, to say nothing of the royal dinners . . . If we’re to win allies in the reinstatement of your uncle’s magistracy, you must be noticed.”

And yet, I’d never felt more invisible.

For Lafayette’s manner was strangely changed—polite and chivalrous in every instance, but utterly void of flirtation. He made no reference to the flowers he’d sent and made certain we were never alone together. Not even for a moment.

“There are a thousand petty rules here at Versailles,” he warned. “Fortunately, my wife’s kinswoman, the late queen’s lady of honor, and so-called Madame Etiquette, can advise you.”

I wondered, at first, if that was the cause of the distance he’d put between us. In Paris he was free to do as he liked. Here in Versailles at the Hôtel de Noailles, he was surrounded by his wife’s powerful family and their strict expectations of propriety. But I began to think my mother had something to do with Lafayette’s changed manner when she mentioned to him, for the third time, that I had received a marriage offer from the Marquis de Condorcet.

I regretted telling her—for she and my father now pestered me night and day to marry the man. And the pressure of their wishes made it nearly impossible to make up my mind. “Are you trying to make it impossible for me to refuse Condorcet’s offer without humiliating him in front of his friends?” I asked Maman when we were alone, our trunks unpacked. “Or are you trying to embarrass me in front of Lafayette?”

“I’m trying to save you from him,” Maman replied. “Or at least from rumors that you’re his lover. Which will ruin you, Sophie. A woman without virtue is worthless.”

I wilted, horrified. “I had no notion of these rumors . . .”

“Neither did Lafayette,” Maman said. “But he’s assured me that he’ll be mindful of your reputation.”

How outraged I was by all this. By the rumors—who had started them? By my mother’s meddling—why could she not leave matters alone? I was even outraged by Lafayette, who apparently meekly submitted to my mother’s warnings to stay away from me without any explanation or consideration of my feelings on the matter.

He may speak like one of those wild American revolutionaries, but his heart is filled with old-fashioned chivalry.

Perhaps Lafayette did think of me as a child. Perhaps he always would. And I simply couldn’t allow myself to care. Enough, I commanded myself. I must center my attention upon things that mattered, like restoring my uncle’s magistracy.

So in the days that followed, I dedicated myself to learning court etiquette—which, in my case, felt like the rules of war. Rituals of who must remain standing and who was permitted to sit upon which sort of chair, depending upon rank. Important courtiers kept one fingernail long because no one must knock upon the king’s door, but only scratch it. That was to say nothing of the rules about napkins and who had the right to offer the queen a drink . . .

I learned to wear the mask of a courtier as we were introduced to noblemen, courtesans, and ministers at the dazzling palace, where a thousand tall windows cast light over a hundred sumptuous rooms. My own image, a girl in ivory brocade with lace, was reflected back to me again and again in the Hall of Mirrors. And I seemed entirely suited to this arena of sunlit parquet floors, glittering crystal chandeliers, and priceless murals painted on the ornate arched ceiling. But I didn’t belong here. For I couldn’t ignore that there was a stink to the grandeur. The musk of sweat arose from the crowd and I covered my nose with a kerchief to stifle the whiff of urine, as some visitors had apparently relieved themselves in the potted plants.

A man wearing a luxurious red coat embroidered with black and metallic threads noticed my gesture and said, in passing, “You smell the king’s condescension to democracy, mademoiselle.”

I’d only ever before seen the royal family in procession, from afar, so I would only later learn that this was the king’s youngest brother, the Comte d’Artois. I would see him again, that evening, in the presence of Swiss Guards, amongst elaborate tapestries, while I waited with the crowd in the galleries to watch the king and queen eat their dinner—first a creamy soup, then a sizzling pheasant on a bed of tender greens, followed by beautifully frosted pastries and peaches—all served in dishes of crystal, silver, and gold.

Though King Louis was magnificently dressed, I was surprised to find that he was portly and otherwise dull. At his side, the powdered queen may have been a wax figure, so formal was every motion as she picked at an extravagant meal, the rich scent of it carrying to us where we stood watching them eat—our mouths watering.

What was the point of this? I couldn’t entertain the idea that the royals enjoyed this performative farce. Certainly, I’d imagined the role of king and queen to be more magisterial, whereas, in reality, they seemed puppets on a stage.

Cut your strings, I thought. Look up and see us.

But they never did.

Which did not mean that I went entirely unnoticed. The Comte d’Artois, with eyelids heavy and lustful, stared at me until Lafayette whispered, “I regret you should come to his attention. Artois will be of no help to your uncle or your reputation.”

It was a warning I kept in mind the next day on a stroll through the gardens when I found my way barred. The Comte’s sudden appearance amongst the rosebushes startled me, especially as he was without the usual knot of attendants who surrounded the royals. “Mademoiselle de Grouchy, I’ve been asking after you.”

Not knowing what else to do, I lowered into a respectful curtsy. “Your Royal Highness, I am—”

“Beautiful,” said the king’s youngest brother, hemming me in. “An unmarried beauty at that . . .” He didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, Artois gestured to the showy red roses. “Exquisite, aren’t they? And yet, I am sorry it is late summer, with so many flowers in full bloom, because I have always preferred the bud.”

Another flower metaphor. First Lafayette’s forget-me-nots. Now this.

“How interesting,” I said, trying to slip my gaze past his broad shoulders to see who might be watching. And I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried that nearly every eye in the garden was directed our way.

Our growing audience didn’t stop the king’s brother from reaching out to snap a rosebud from its bush, trailing its soft petals along my jaw. “Oh, yes. Being the first to pluck an untouched bud and watch it bloom in the privacy of my chambers has always given me the greatest pleasure.”

I bit my lip to stave off a roll of my eyes and the tart observation that once men start using flower metaphors, the word pluck was never far behind. But because it was the king’s brother, I couldn’t use my sharp tongue to cut him to ribbons. And my stomach knotted because if the king’s brother set his sights on a woman to make a mistress or a whore, he’d have his way.

Was there any way to refuse his attentions without giving offense to a man with the power to ruin me and my family if he pleased? Perhaps Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe would’ve known how to manage him, but I merely pretended not to understand, hoping he’d be too ashamed to make a bolder move.

Alas, he was not ashamed. In fact, he moved closer—a motion I arrested by turning so the hoops beneath my voluminous skirts kept him at bay.

Pretend to be stupid, I thought. Or he’ll realize your contempt!

“If plants give you such pleasure, you must be very fond of your gardener,” I tittered, as I imagined beating him off with my little handbag.

Fortunately, I did not have to. Because at that very moment, a lovely young woman with deep blue eyes rushed over to us to interrupt and embrace him. “Artois! What do you think of my new shoes?” She raised the hem of her petticoats only slightly to reveal ornate silk heels with blue bows and seed pearls—entirely incongruent with her modest gown.

“My dear sister,” the comte replied, with a smile halfway between impatience and delight. “They are exquisite.”

I curtsied again, this time more deeply as he presented me to his sister, Madame Élisabeth, a princess of France almost my very same age. She had a reputation for kindness and extreme piety and her brother seemed as surprised to see her as I was. “What has lured you from your hermitage at Montreuil, Élisabeth? Surely not a desire to show off your shoes.”

“I wished to cheer the king by showing him the new type of apple I’ve bred in my conservatory,” she answered, indicating her lone attendant, who carried a basket of fruit instead of the jeweled fans so ubiquitous amongst the ladies at court. “I would be happy to tell you about my studies in botany, too, dear brother, but I believe it’s about to rain and that you are missed at the card tables . . .”

Whether it was dread of a scientific discussion, the lure of the card tables, or fear of rain ruining his perfect coiffure, the Comte d’Artois made haste to leave our presence.

And Madame Élisabeth laughed heartily, watching him flee. “Mademoiselle de Grouchy,” she said with a warm smile. “Why don’t you walk with me?” When I fell into procession, she added, “You must be flattered by my brother’s attention. But be careful. I love my brothers, all three. But that does not make me blind to the fact that the Comte d’Artois is as pleasure-seeking as a man can be.”

His pleasure, I thought. That’s what he sought. Not mine or any woman’s, I’d wager. Yet I feared Madame Élisabeth would believe I called his royal attention to myself—perhaps I’d given some signal of which I was not aware. To pardon myself I said, “I fear I’m new to court, madame, and ill-suited for it.”

She laughed again. “We are kindred spirits, then. I am far more at home at my little farm of Montreuil, where I can serve God and the good people of the village. I would never come to Versailles did my brother the king not desire it.”

It was a comment, perhaps, only to put me at ease. Still, it struck me that she, too, even at her exalted rank, was expected to be a servant of men and their pleasures, not her own.

As if fearing she’d given the wrong impression, she added, “But you mustn’t think ill of Versailles or believe all the wickedness that is said about this place or my family . . .”

I wanted to say that I’d never heard criticism of the royal family, but I’d been a critic myself and heard ugly gossip besides, so did not wish to insult her with a lie.

She nodded, appreciatively, at my silence. “So, mademoiselle, you know I have a passion for farming—what are your interests? Every woman should have some.”

It was safe to say that I sketched and painted. If I were braver, I might confide that I read and translated philosophy books. But remembering our purpose here, I willed myself to say, “I’ve a passion for justice, madame.”

“God’s justice is a worthy cause.” She did not tease—her voice and expression were serious. “How do you pursue it?”

“I assist my uncle, Charles Dupaty. He defended three wrongfully condemned men—peasants of Chaumont. He was stripped of his magistracy for his pains. We’ve come to Versailles in the hopes someone here might care about these injustices.”

“Everyone ought to have a care for those wrongly condemned. Crime must be punished, of course, both by man and, eventually, by God. But we must judge more carefully than God for we do not have His perfect understanding. I hope that if, as you say, your uncle and the men he defended have been judged wrongly, they may find relief. I assure you that if they do not find it in this world, they will be weighed more truly in the next.”

I was not at all comforted by her hope or her assurance of justice in another world, but seized upon what she’d said like a lawyer. “Yes, we must judge more carefully. Since we cannot know, with perfect understanding, whether any man deserves death, should such a punishment not be abolished?”

She stopped walking. “I have never thought on the question.”

I knew that I was being imprudent; impudent, even. But I couldn’t count on such an opportunity to come again. So I took from the pocket in my skirts my uncle’s pamphlet—the one that was condemned to be torn and burned. “Perhaps this might be worthy of your consideration, madame?”

She took it and tucked it into the basket of fruit. Then she offered me an apple. “In exchange for the pamphlet. I will read it. My friends will tell you”—she cast a glance at her companion—“that I buy even more books than shoes.”

I wanted to shout with joyous triumph that I’d put the pamphlet into her royal hand. And I believed her when she said she’d read it. After a week of roaming Versailles trying to catch the attention of a notable man, it was a notable woman who deigned to take an interest. “Thank you, Madame Élisabeth.”

“I must warn you,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’ve not much influence here. I am not a creature of the court—in truth, I would have taken the veil if my brother would have permitted it. It was my fondest desire. But obedience to the king is a duty and sacrifice that God commands.”

I didn’t tell her that I believed only superstition and tradition gave her such a duty, or demanded such a sacrifice. I didn’t wish to be unkind. Especially since I felt that she, too, was trapped by the rules of society in France. Just as I was. Just like the king and queen seemed trapped upon their stage, spooning soup into their mouths like puppets.

And all of us were still freer than the falsely imprisoned, the impoverished peasants, and the enslaved in our distant colonies.

These thoughts troubled me long after Madame Élisabeth took her leave. And I started out on foot for the Hôtel de Noailles, hoping to reach it before the cloudy sky opened up.

I didn’t get far before it poured rain.

Taking up my skirts, I splashed down the rue du Vieux Versailles past an alley cat and an abandoned wagon until I was forced to duck into the doorway of the nearest building for shelter—the royal tennis courts, as it so happened.

I did not expect to find anyone else inside, but as the drum of rain beat against the roof, a lone slouching figure stamped water from his buckled shoes and when he turned, I saw it was Condorcet.

“We’d no idea you were here in Versailles,” I said when he offered me a seat on the bench beneath the indoor awning. “Why didn’t you send word?”

He frowned, water dripping from his neck cloth as he fiddled with an umbrella the wind had all but destroyed. “I’m only here for an evening to discuss finances with the new minister. Besides, I wanted to give you time to consider your decision. I couldn’t imagine you wished to be subjected to my painful anxiety while you made your choice as to whether or not you might agree to wed.”

He was anxious and it pained me to see it.

“Also,” he began, seemingly unable to meet my eyes, “I’ve been trying to find the courage to confess something I’ve done. Something quite unforgivable.”

That sounded serious. He looked so mournful that I tried to comfort him by saying, “Surely you haven’t killed someone.”

“No. But I’ve forfeited your esteem. You see, when I last spoke to the Marquis de Lafayette, your name became the subject of our discussion. In a complimentary way, of course . . .”

None of this sounded terribly unforgivable. “And?”

“I told him I’d proposed marriage.”

“I’m afraid that’s no secret, thanks to my mother . . .”

“Yes, but I also told him that I am in love with you.”

Ah. Another reason for Lafayette to keep his distance. Not just because of my mother’s warning, but also in deference to his friend Condorcet. Who had all but lifted his leg on my metaphorical skirts like a territorial dog. Men, really! What was wrong with them?

“You staked a claim to me,” I accused.

Condorcet rubbed at the back of his neck. “It wasn’t my intent, but it was the result, and for that I’m humbly sorry. My behavior wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of equality of the sexes I promised you.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said, vexed and feeling hemmed in on every side that afternoon. Condorcet pinched the bridge of his nose in genuine regret, and my anger began to dissipate. “But you might be the only man in France who would realize that. You’re certainly the only one who would confess it, so I forgive you . . .”

“You do?” he asked, as if he didn’t dare to hope.

I nodded. “That doesn’t make it right,” I said, trying to wring the rain from my skirts, hoping that I’d not irretrievably ruined my best gown. Maman said that in a masquerade, I might wear it with an ivory mask and look like an angel. But I was exhausted by court masks and when I looked up at Condorcet, I felt anything but an angel. “It’s grotesque the way you men pass us from the father who guards our chastity as a family asset, to the lover who threatens its value, to the husband who expects to claim it for his prize.”

Undone by my parents and rumors about my virtue and my brief encounter with the royals and by rain—stripped of my powder and cosmetics and every artifice and illusion—I knew only one thing. That I didn’t want to be plucked like an unripened bud.

I wanted to blossom on my own.

Condorcet made me an unorthodox offer. Now I intended to make one in return, if I could find the courage. I remembered what Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe had said about him.

If you are looking for a man to transgress the rules of society . . .

Well, I would find out.

I began, “You’ve said that a woman’s body is her own . . .” Condorcet’s eyes narrowed as he tried to follow the direction of my thoughts, but he didn’t interrupt. “What I do with my chastity, I wish to do without anyone else’s sanction. Without promises, obligations, or entanglements of any kind. And if you consent to it, I would like you to help me be rid of it.” I swallowed hard. “Here and now.”

At my words, Condorcet went purple and a vein pulsed at his temple. Fearing what he might say, my heart thumped painfully beneath my rib cage. I knew the words he might be thinking. Slattern. Wanton. Whore. Those words were weapons. Even if Condorcet was too mannerly to utter them, he might erupt in anger, accusing me of impugning his honor with an immoral request. At best, he might tell me that though I had a right to ruin myself, he wouldn’t be the instrument of my ruin.

That’s what Lafayette would’ve said.

What Condorcet said was, “Mademoiselle, to be taken here in haste will likely be painful for you and without any compensatory pleasure.”

I could see the lust in his eyes and knew that he wanted me. But he didn’t press it upon me in the way of the Comte d’Artois. Nor did he deny me my wish, though I sensed it was not his own. He wanted me, but not here, not like this. Nevertheless, he simply stood there, exposed. Doing his best to leave me with an informed and genuine choice. One of the only choices I’d have the opportunity to make.

That was a potent elixir.

So I said, “It can only be done in haste, because if we’re caught, my father might kill you.”

“Might?” Condorcet replied, sarcastically.

My father would certainly kill him. If not my father, my brother or uncle would attempt it. But Condorcet was either a fool in love, or braver than anyone guessed, because he situated his umbrella in a hopeless attempt to bar the doors. Then he came closer, saying, “Well, then . . .”

My mouth went instantly dry. I couldn’t have made this request without expecting he might agree. And yet, as I lifted my sodden petticoats out of his way, I felt aquiver. Hot and cold, all at once. He paused at the sight of my thighs where crimson garters held up my sodden stockings. For a moment, it seemed as if those garters reminded him of the bonds of social propriety that held everything together, and I thought he’d come to his senses and talk us both out of it. Instead, he unfastened the scarlet ribbons, letting each fall to the floor.

I didn’t know where to put my hands. And to my surprise, once he’d undone his breeches, he didn’t seem to know where to put his hands either.

“You’ve done this before?” I asked, suddenly frightened.

“Yes. But never like this . . .”

Still, his hands were steady. So I said, “Hurry.”

He eased me down onto the bench, then our eyes locked and he pressed his damp forehead to mine. Our lips seemed to inch together but did not meet in a kiss because I pulled him closer to get on with it. As our bodies came together in awkward congress, I buried my face in the wet fabric of his coat to stifle a cry at the invasion.

It went swiftly after that, in the way of nature. And in the crucial moment he spent himself outside me so we wouldn’t make a child.

Then it was over. I’d been relieved of my virginity as gently and surgically as such a thing could be done. But as I caught my breath beneath him, it was Condorcet who trembled. I’d taken something from him. I hadn’t known, until that moment, that the sexual act could render a man so vulnerable. And of an instinct I could not then name, I stroked his cheek.

“I will agree to marry you,” I said. “If you still wish it.”

“I do,” he answered, holding me tighter.

“But I wonder, how, in the end, can we be equals in a marriage when the law gives a husband authority over me?”

“I wouldn’t exercise that authority,” he whispered into my hair.

“But I’d always know that you could.”

“I suppose then, my dear lady, there must be an element of faith even in a godless marriage.”

* * *

Château Villette, December 1786

My family was overjoyed, insisting we marry by Catholic rite in the little chapel at Villette. Condorcet told me, “I shall not mind. The religious ceremony will be nothing but farce and mummery but will prevent anyone from interfering in our affairs.”

That made good sense. Unfortunately, when it came time to take our vows, it was worse than farce and mummery because of all the men in the world that Condorcet might’ve asked to stand as witness to our nuptials, he chose Lafayette.

I knew my groom meant well by this. A gesture of good faith, to demonstrate that he would never again try to warn a man away from me. But how indignant it made me to see Lafayette in the chapel, dressed in winter finery, beaming benevolently as if he were releasing me from a love affair we’d never consummated.

All while I said my vows to another man.

“I, Marie-Louise Sophie de Grouchy, take thee, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet . . .”

I paid little attention to the promises we made beneath pine boughs and holly berries. I believed they meant nothing. Our first kiss was a peck; I’m ashamed to say I scarcely remember it. More ashamed that I remember vividly how Lafayette kissed my cheeks. “Congratulations to the rosy bride, Marquise de Condorcet!”

Yet there was some grace in that the first kisses I received from Lafayette were given while he called me by another man’s name and title. It was a reminder that while I had no choice whatsoever in the ridiculous humiliations of love, I’d had a choice in marriage. And I knew I had made the right choice.

Especially that night when, alone in our bridal chamber—for I would not allow servants to undress us—Condorcet frowned. “I fear I misstepped in inviting Lafayette to the wedding and made you unhappy.”

“No, of course not, I—”

“Let us always be honest.”

Swallowing, I tried. “It’s a pang that will pass. In fact, I think it has already passed.” Something eased in me. “Please forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Condorcet said, removing his coat and throwing it over the end of the divan, making as if ready to sleep there. This seemed faintly silly as we’d already shared physical congress, but he didn’t presume it was his right. Even on this night.

“Sophie—may I call you Sophie?” When I nodded, he continued, “And I would like it if you called me Nicolas.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Sophie, it will only work between us if you have freedom to love what you admire. If that is Lafayette, then go to him. I won’t stop you. You’re not bound. And regardless of whether you wish to go to him tonight, if you regret this marriage, you may press for an annulment. I won’t contest it.”

He said this with the utmost sincerity, and a truth stole over me that lightened my spirit even more. I had married an extraordinary man. “Even I am not so irreverent a creature as to attempt adultery on my wedding night, and I’ve no regret, other than causing you unease.”

He smiled. “To the contrary, madame, you’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been.”

I slanted him an amused glance. “I fear you’ve a low threshold for happiness.”

“Perhaps. But now we’re done with rituals, the worst outcome can only be that we live separately and give each other no trouble for the rest of our days.”

I blinked. “I assumed you wished for me to live with you.”

“I do,” he replied. “Very much so. But what do you wish?”

Was he suggesting I might continue here in Villette with my family? Or live at his ancestral estate? Or even take a separate residence in Paris? The options—options I never expected—were dizzying. And his willingness to give me options warmed my heart and lodged a little lump of gratitude in my throat. “I see no reason to complicate things. I should like to live with you in Paris.”

“Thus making me even happier,” Condorcet replied, snuffing out the candle so we were plunged into darkness.

Me in my bed, he upon the divan.

I was so tired that I ought to have faded to sleep. But instead, I asked across the dark divide, “How did you come to be different from other men?”

“I’m no different,” he said.

He was wrong. Men might be born with the same natural rights, but not the same natural endowments. Or the same personalities. “I feel as if you somehow know just what a woman might need to hear to make her happy.”

He laughed. “I assure you, madame, you are the first person to ever accuse me of that.” Then he laughed again.

He had a wonderful laugh. Rich and sonorous. I realized I’d never heard it before. And I hoped the fact I desired to hear it more frequently meant we’d get on well together.

* * *

Paris, January 1787

On the day we arrived at Condorcet’s residence, I admired a portrait in the hall, my fingers itching to reproduce it in a sketch. “Who is this darling little girl? A relation of yours?”

Unexpectedly, the question made my new husband cringe. “In a way.”

His reaction made my stomach knot. Was this a bastard daughter? Given our arrangement, it wasn’t my right to know, but my voice was sharp. “In what way?”

He glanced at me warily. “My mother was a good woman. A loving mother . . . but she kept me in dresses almost until the age of eight. Years after other boys were breeched and began to attend school. That portrait is not a girl. It’s me. You can, perhaps, easily imagine the cruel laughter and mockery of other boys that I endured.”

Sensing a lingering pain, I took the liberty of reaching for his hand. “We should be rid of this portrait if it humiliates you.”

“No, it educates me,” he said, squeezing my fingers. “That’s a good thing. The experience taught me the indignities to which girls are subjected. It taught me to sympathize.”

Sympathy.

We had that between us, at least.

And that was the start of everything good in this world.

I soon found it easy to be married to Condorcet, who left me to be entirely my own mistress. No one scolded me if I stayed abed all day or read legal books into the wee hours trying to find something useful for my uncle’s case. No one told me which wig I must wear to social outings. Nor did anyone stop me from strolling the nearby Pont Neuf where I chatted pleasantly with a tart-tongued fruit seller named Louise who was convinced that nobles were hoarding all the grain and driving up the price of bread.

I had no mending to tend to, no children to look after, and no duties whatsoever. Which I found unexpectedly intolerable.

Freedom, I liked. Purposelessness, I couldn’t bear.

So while we awaited the appeal of my uncle’s case, I helped Condorcet translate pamphlets that interested him from English into French. That’s how I learned that my new husband’s work ranged from science to mathematics to economics to politics, philosophy, and the law. Such an astonishing intellect might have shut himself up amongst the safety of his books.

But I greatly admired the way Condorcet committed himself to public service. He was hard at work designing new schools, roads, hospitals, and canals—inventing a new kind of hydrodynamic science in the process. Such industry made it even more surprising how little he imposed upon his household staff, the latter of whom took advantage of his bachelor habits.

“It should go without saying,” he said, one morning in passing by my door, “that you have my support if you might like to bring about some changes here.”

“I would, actually,” I replied. “Starting with breakfast.”

“Breakfast?”

By unspoken agreement, we didn’t share the intimacy of a husband and wife, but I enjoyed his company and wished to take better care of him if he would not take better care of himself. “I should like for us to take breakfast together, if you don’t find that prospect disagreeable.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “It’s only that I never formed the habit . . . and neither has my cook . . .”

His cook, like all his servants, was woefully underemployed and if I was to host a salon—which I was keen to do—I’d have to find a way of changing that. Breakfast seemed like a good start. “A hearty omelet invigorates me and gives me hope for the new day. Perhaps it will have the same effect upon you.”

“Perhaps it will,” he said.

So began our morning ritual.

The cook’s first attempt, with too little butter and a sprinkling of bitter herbs, was unpleasant, though Condorcet ate without complaint as we discussed the news: that an Assembly of Notables was to meet to address the country’s debt.

Lafayette had been chosen as one of the notables. My new husband was less notable. And since we didn’t have to go to Versailles, we talked instead of plans to create a new public school for adults across from the Palais-Royal. “I’ll teach mathematics,” he said. “Perhaps you might consider educating persons in literacy, philosophy, and what you know of the law.”

I quite nearly dropped my napkin. “You’d want me to teach?”

“Only if you wish. You’re among the most learned women I know, which is, of course, one of your most appealing qualities.” His flattering confidence was only slightly less breathtaking than his vision for the school itself. “And we’ll invite anyone who would like to learn.”

“Even Louise, the saucy fruit seller on the Pont Neuf? Her skirts are filthy but her eyes are bright.”

“Why not? She sounds as if she’d get on well with my new valet . . .”

“You’ve taken a valet?” This surprised me because I’d never met a nobleman less concerned with proper dress.

Condorcet nodded. “He’s being fitted for livery as we speak—if any can be made for a boy his size.”

“A boy?” I asked, even more confused.

Condorcet sat back with the utmost satisfaction. “The son of one of our three prisoners. I sent for him, with enough money to keep the family from starvation whilst the case works its way through appeals. He says to call him Pierre Simare . . .”

Tears pricked at my eyes, this gesture touching me deeply. “You rescued that boy, Nicolas. And if his father is pardoned, it will be your doing.”

“Your uncle is his true savior. And you.”

The way Condorcet looked at me in that moment made me wish I’d done more to be worthy of his esteem, because he was certainly worthy of mine. “Did you do this only to please me?”

“No,” he said. “But everything I do now carries with it that hope. For the chance of a day, or even an hour, that you might return my feelings in passionate harmony, I’d give years of my life.”

And here I’d thought him a scientist and not a poet . . .

He was so good and decent—I could see already many admirable traits in him that justified an answering in my heart beyond friendship. So why wouldn’t it come? Perhaps because love was ridiculous, it wasn’t possible with Condorcet. But I remembered a feverish moment in the tennis courts when I felt an intimacy with him. Now I wished to feel it again. “As we’re on the subject of education, sir, I’d like to take instruction from you . . .”

His eyes brightened. “I’d be happy to teach you hydrodynamics . . .”

“I’m more curious about biology.” When he showed no comprehension, I decided I must be more frank. “I want to learn the science of physical satisfaction and wonder if you’d consider visiting my chambers this evening for a less hurried lesson than we enjoyed in the tennis courts.”

Condorcet put down his fork. Picked his fork up again. Put his fork down. Then, at last, he lifted his gaze, crimson spreading up his neck as if he were a virgin maid. He started to say something. Then changed his mind. For a moment I thought he might actually refuse. Had I misunderstood his intentions for our arrangement?

Finally, a slow grin worked itself onto his face. “Why wait for this evening?”

Such unexpected waggishness made me laugh. But I didn’t like to be outdone in boldness, so when my laughter subsided, I asked, “For that matter, why bother with my chambers?”

That made him laugh. And as I’ve said, I loved to hear him laugh.

More than an hour later, we lay panting upon the Turkey carpet, one of the dishes broken, egg on the floor—neither of us could remember how that happened—and I felt as if I knew a great deal more about what satisfied appetites of the flesh. Condorcet had made an experiment of my body, and nearly everything he did with hot hands and fevered breath delighted me.

A volcano covered in snow, indeed . . .

But in the end, he again pulled away so as not to make a child, and that did not delight me. Still, the whole experience was pleasurable enough that I wished to repeat it. I hoped he would too. So I was gratified that though he groaned—the floor did nothing good for his aging back—he said, “I’m beginning to see the value in breakfast.”

THE STUDENTS AT our new school near the Palais-Royal called me Vénus Lycéenne. Or so Louise told me when I invited her to leave off her fruit-selling for an hour each day so that I might teach her to read.

Despite my marriage, or perhaps because of it, I’d received in Paris several offers from would-be paramours for illicit trysts. “Might as well let a man seduce you if you fancy him,” Louise said as we sipped cups of chocolate at La Maison du Chocolat Léon in Saint-Germain—a special treat for her that I wished to give so as to bolster her confidence. “Because I hear things in the market, and everyone is already saying that you’ve made your husband a cuckold with his friend Lafayette.”

“That’s malicious gossip,” I said, wondering for the thousandth time what I’d done to give rise to it and if such gossip was merely something women must endure. Still, I worried that Condorcet might overhear such whispers, and that—whatever our agreement—they might give him embarrassment.

I was resentful, too, that everyone seemed to have an opinion about our marriage, including my new student. “Seems an odd match, if you don’t mind my saying so. You’re young and vibrant, and the marquis is a terse old fellow.”

Most common fruit sellers wouldn’t dare to express something like that about their supposed social betters, but I’d encouraged Louise to speak her mind. Unfortunately, now I felt outraged on Condorcet’s behalf. It was true he was no good in public; with strangers he fidgeted and his fuse was short. But in a small circle of friends, he could weave a tapestry of predictions for the future that beguiled his listeners—rhapsodizing about how, through science and reason and harnessing the sun, the world could be made a utopia.

“He’s different in private,” I protested. “Extraordinarily charming, actually.”

“If you say so.” Louise raised a dubious brow as the chocolatier, Mademoiselle Léon, refilled our cups. “But if that nose of his ever makes you cringe, I s’pose you can console yourself with his money.”

“There’s nothing about Condorcet that makes me cringe,” I said, a little heatedly. “And I didn’t marry him for money. I married him for equality.”

At that, Mademoiselle Léon gave a little snort, nearly spilling her pot of chocolate. Meanwhile, Louise shrugged, smoothing her skirts, which, for once, and in honor of this outing, were clean, even if stained and in need of mending. “I’m just a fruit seller. But seems to me, you’re only as equal as he lets you be. Like the king, he could shut you up in a dungeon or a nunnery or abandon you to a brothel if he pleased.”

“He’d never do such a thing,” I replied. Really, where did she get these ideas?

Louise, who had lived a hard life fending for herself on the streets of Paris, broke into a toothy grin, as if she thought me a simpleton.

I might’ve forgotten this exchange, if, the next morning, our little valet hadn’t said to me, “When I get big, I’ll steal a kiss from you, madame. The Marquis de Condorcet is a kindly grandfather, but too old and ugly to make you happy for long.”

“When you get big, Pierre,” I said, ruffling the little wretch’s hair. “I hope you’ll know better than to steal anything. Even kisses.”

I liked Pierre—and I liked having the boy in our home, since we were unlikely to ever have children. A happenstance I should’ve considered more carefully from the outset. Still, Condorcet wasn’t old enough to be my grandfather. He could be addlebrained, losing pens and ink and mislaying his tobacco. But I counted that as a product of his brain at work with more important matters, not age.

Besides, he was in no way ugly, inside or out.

So I abandoned my sketches of men dying on wheels in favor of painting my husband’s portrait, determined to capture those moments when he smiled wryly from the side, his mouth caught between scholarly severity and good-natured amusement. Or the even rarer moments when he laughed. For I wished for the world to see him as I was beginning to see him, with very kindly eyes indeed.

* * *

Versailles, August 1788

At long last, our three peasants of Chaumont were declared innocent and set free.

What’s more, the vengeful verdict against my uncle had been reversed too. I didn’t know if Madame Élisabeth had anything to do with it, but I flattered myself to think so. Certainly, Condorcet deserved much of the credit.

Victory was sweet and ought to have satisfied us, some said.

But before we could celebrate, we’d learned of another young man who was to be broken upon the wheel in Versailles, where no one believed him guilty of the crime for which he’d been accused. I hadn’t wanted my uncle to make this trip; he was feeling in poor health. I myself did not wish to witness another execution ever again. But we both believed that our presence there might somehow help matters, and Condorcet understood that it was something I felt I must do.

“It’s not even sunrise yet,” I murmured to my uncle when the prisoner’s cart rattled into the square. Yet if the executioner had hoped to be done with this deed before an angry crowd could gather, he was mistaken. For a multitude of men, ranging from burly blacksmiths to satin-clad courtiers waited near the scaffold.

One glance at their faces, and I knew that our work had changed minds—and that this time the people would not meekly submit. Instead of quieting during the prayers, they began shouting for the prisoner, encouraged when the soldiers fell back and the executioner looked wary.

I felt infected by the righteous enthusiasm of the crowd, adding my voice to theirs.

At least until, all at once, the people stormed the scaffold. It all happened so quickly, I had not even the time or the presence of mind to cry out against it. My uncle feared a violent clash, but somehow, that didn’t happen . . .

Instead, while the rest of us moved to block the soldiers, the burly men in the crowd freed the prisoner and carried him off. I felt nearly faint with exhilaration at what we were doing—what we’d done!

When the executioner tried to run, fearing for his own life, he was promised safe passage. How humbled I was by this power of the people to do good together.

Not a drop of blood was spilled, but we broke the scaffold, broke the wheel, broke every cruel vestige of torture to pieces and set it on fire. We then held hands and formed a circle around the beautiful bonfire that must have awakened the king with its glow. For the word soon came from the palace that the prisoner was pardoned and that never again would any human being be broken upon the wheel in France.

We were all awake now!

On our way back to Paris that afternoon, we gave way to a royal carriage. And when the royal carriage’s window passed mine, I recognized Madame Élisabeth. To my surprise, I think she recognized me, too. She smiled, making a sign of blessing upon me as if she knew what I’d done to end torture on the wheel, what I’d been a part of, and approved. And though I did not believe in divine blessings, somehow my heart lightened to think we were all now, royals and common people alike, working together for a better world.

That evening, Thomas Jefferson raised a glass in my honor. “Let us drink to the Marquise de Condorcet, the loveliest and most influential salonnière in Paris . . .”

Though I felt that day I had been more than that, I couldn’t help but be flattered by a toast from the elegant and urbane American minister who opined so often in my parlor on the glories of liberty—and how we ought to emulate the model of his country.

My salon was political rather than literary or musical, with frank but polite discussion that I encouraged with a carefully cultivated guest list. Other salonnières, like Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, centered their entertainments around men. But mine included distinguished women, too, like my friend, the playwright and advocate for women’s rights, Olympe de Gouges. Also, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a mixed-race fencing champion, maestro of the opera, and music instructor to the queen.

That night was a celebration that included even the three prisoners we’d set free.

Our only sadness was that we’d lose Pierre from our home, just as we’d begun to love him like our own child. “Your papa may be changed from his ordeal in prison,” Uncle Charles warned the boy. “So you must be kind to him, and be the solace of his days. As Sophie has been mine.”

Beaming, I kissed the top of my uncle’s beloved head. How many more persons would now go free because of our work? Reform, at long last, was happening. I couldn’t help but burst out, “It’s a glorious time to be alive!”

“So it is,” my uncle said, kissing my hand. “Now go, Grouchette. Go instigate matters as you do best . . .”

What I did best was organize under the guise of entertainment. I invited people to partake of wine and dainty delicacies with a purpose. Now that our prisoners were free and my uncle’s reputation restored, I was free to take on new causes. We’d abolished the wheel; now I meant to abolish slavery too. Which is why I’d invited Jefferson and sought out his daughter, Patsy, who had been educated at a convent school and spoke French perfectly.

I tried to impress her with my English. “We have hopes that your father will join the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.”

Given Jefferson’s enlightened reputation, I was surprised to see her wince. My husband had joined the abolitionist society founded by Jacques Brissot, a prominent reformer and critic of the queen. But of course, it was argued that because we didn’t own slaves, we couldn’t possibly understand the pragmatic concerns of ending the institution of slavery. Jefferson, on the other hand, was a slaveholder in his home state of Virginia. Might not his authority as a revolutionary and his skill with a pen lend greater authority?

“I think”—the young Mademoiselle Jefferson fiddled with her fan—“my father must be careful that his private opinions aren’t mistaken for American opinion. Still, Mr. Short has joined your society, and he’s my father’s representative in sentiment as well as mine . . .”

With that, she stole an altogether revealing glance at her father’s handsome young secretary, William Short. She was plainly smitten, and I envied her the uncomplicated nature of her affections, for nothing about my own were uncomplicated now.

For a year, Condorcet and I had enjoyed an amicable arrangement of increasing physical and intellectual intimacy. My breath didn’t catch when Condorcet entered a room, but I felt the lack of his presence when he left. The brush of his kiss on my hand didn’t send me into a swoon, but I liked the lingering scent of him on my pillows. And sometimes, on nights like this one, seeing my quiet husband, the social scientist, standing beside Lafayette, the dashing war hero, I couldn’t help but compare.

Lafayette was still handsome and charming, but I could no longer even imagine tracing my name upon a paper simply because he’d written it. Perhaps the crippling emotion I’d felt for him wasn’t love, but merely the fly-wisp imaginings that we shared an intimacy, when we did not.

After all, I’d known of Lafayette’s glories, but he’d never confessed his insecurities. I knew Lafayette’s principles, but never watched him struggle to prove an idea, scratching out formulas. Everyone knew of his battlefield bravery, but I’d never heard him share detailed dreams for the future. Condorcet did that, and I was sometimes struck by the absurd thought that I’d married the more courageous man.

Not that anyone else would’ve thought so.

“Will the king call the Estates General?” a guest demanded of Lafayette, hanging on his every word. “What did he say when you were brave enough to propose it?”

“Nothing else will fix our finances,” someone else added. “When the Assembly of Notables couldn’t provide relief, you were right to ask for a representation of the whole nation.”

The Estates General, composed of the nobility of the First Estate, the clergy of the Second, and the common people of the Third—hadn’t been called together in nearly two hundred years. Yet we all hoped the king, at Lafayette’s suggestion, would revive the old tradition.

France was, after all, the richest and most enlightened nation in Europe. There was no need for our government to be bankrupt or corrupt and unrepresentative. We could, together, remake our country into a glorious beacon of freedom throughout the world, just as our American friends like Mr. Jefferson encouraged us to do.

Yet my husband was unusually apprehensive. “What principles should govern such an election?”

It’d been so long since the Estates General had last been summoned that no one had the faintest idea. “Can it not simply be left to common sense?” I asked, with a bit of mischief since I’d started to translate a pamphlet by Thomas Paine with that title.

Jefferson chuckled at my wit.

Meanwhile, Condorcet rubbed at his chin. “But Americans had experience governing themselves. Time to form the common sense of which my lovely wife speaks. Tyranny is any violation of the rights of mankind. It can emanate from a king or from a majority vote. What guide does the average Frenchman have in respecting the rights of his fellow human beings? Especially when slavery continues in French colonies and he does not protest it.”

My husband glanced rather too pointedly at the slave-holding Jefferson, who only sipped at his wine, for the American minister was a man who knew the value of silence. Keenly aware of the presence of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, himself born of a French father and an enslaved mother in Guadeloupe, Lafayette was not so silent. “This is why we must have a declaration of the rights of man to serve as a guide.”

“What about the rights of women?” Olympe de Gouge asked.

“Man is a universal term,” my husband replied.

“Oh, is it?” Olympe smirked, looking to me as if disappointed I wasn’t offering my support. She was an opponent of marriage, calling it “the tomb of trust and love.” Which is why she believed I held my tongue in wifely deference. In truth, I held my tongue because I didn’t know which one of them was correct, and somehow the respect my husband always gave my opinions made me more considered.

PERHAPS I SHOULD’VE been more considered that glorious summer when the king did, in fact, summon the Estates General to convene the next May.

“Everything is going to change now, Nicolas,” I said, grasping his hands. “That beautiful future you’re always talking about—it’s in our grasp!”

“Maybe it is,” he said, and together, we threw ourselves into the excitement. I hosted salons night after night, until I was weary. My purpose was to nudge important persons to form a consensus about the Declaration of Rights we so badly needed and to sway the deputies to abolish slavery in the French colonies. I couldn’t vote in the upcoming elections, but at least I could do this.

Meanwhile, Condorcet created a scientific method by which to determine the winner of an election that most represented the will of the people. And he worked so feverishly that I discovered his strange habit of falling asleep under his desk so as not to waste the steps it might take to come to and from his bed.

He was adamant that slaveholders should be banned from standing for election altogether, but Lafayette pointed out such a stance would’ve prevented Jefferson from drafting the American Declaration of Independence. “Compromises must be made,” Lafayette said, and perhaps he was right.

But at breakfast one day, I asked my husband, “Why don’t you stand for election?”

Poking at his omelet, and distracted by the fact that he’d mislaid his wig somewhere now that little Pierre wasn’t here to find it for him, Nicolas seemed flummoxed. “Me?”

“You’re eminently qualified,” I replied. “More than qualified. And if you worry about your discomfort in crowds, well, you’ve been perfectly amiable in our salon for months now. I heard you laugh the other night, surrounded by strangers. Twice. Everyone has noticed the change in you.”

“That’s your doing,” he replied. “As you truly are the most gracious and lovely salonnière in Paris . . .”

I smiled at his compliment, which I liked even better coming from him than from Jefferson. “And you are the most enlightened man in France. The country needs you, Nicolas.”

“I’m no orator,” he replied. “My voice doesn’t carry.”

“Yet your words resound like thunder,” I said, remembering the way I felt the first time I read his pamphlet.

There are those now who say it was all my doing. That if Condorcet hadn’t married me, he would’ve sailed above the political whirlwind. That the national treasure of his giant intellect would have remained untouched by the revolutionary convulsions of my heart and our age. His politics are attributed to me, as if he had no will of his own, but in matters of intellect and philosophy, they say he was always my master.

Of course, the people who say that never understood the man or our marriage.

And I was only beginning to.

“SOPHIE,” CONDORCET SAID, knocking lightly upon my door. “Please answer or I must assume you’re in need of a physician . . .”

Prostrate with grief, I’d been unable to rise from my bed in the three days since my uncle’s funeral. I was worrying my husband, which now added shame to my grief. “Come in,” I said, wiping tears from my cheeks. “I merely feel wretched, and for that there is no tonic. I cannot even bring myself to comb my hair . . .”

Condorcet furrowed his brow. “I’ll comb it for you, if you like.”

I could imagine no other man offering to do the job of a lady’s maid. And though I appreciated it, I did not wish to affect the air of an invalid, even if I felt like one. “I know death is natural. I keep telling myself that Uncle Charles lived to see that his work wasn’t in vain. That he died content.” So why couldn’t I be? “I told him it was a wonderful time to be alive. I believe that. So why do I feel now as if I can hardly bear life?”

“Perhaps because you’ve shut yourself up alone,” Nicolas said, drawing my hands into his own. “Doesn’t your favorite philosopher say that the sympathy of others comforts?”

“Adam Smith says that,” I said softly. “But my favorite philosopher is Nicolas de Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet . . .”

He smiled and kissed the top of my head. “Well, Condorcet believes the proverb that grief is halved when shared. Your uncle is gone, but our lives will always include him, Sophie, because he’s shaped all you are. All that you accomplish will be his legacy.”

Condorcet’s words consoled me, and he stroked my back to soothe the pain away. I welcomed his touch, realizing that he’d become so infinitely dear to me. And so I wrapped my arms around my husband’s neck and kissed him with a much more fervent emotion.

We’d kissed before, in experiment and fondness. This was different, and he knew it. “What does this mean?”

“It means I should have told you before now that I return your love,” I said, drawing him down upon my tearstained pillow. This was love; not some frivolous emotion, but, like him, a necessary part of my existence. And it was in no way ridiculous. It was salvation itself. “I love you, Nicolas.”

I expected to see the self-satisfied smile of a scientist whose experiment had come to successful conclusion. Instead, he whispered in the hollow by my ear, “You can break me, Sophie.”

“I won’t,” I promised. For his fears, and his joys, were all my own, in perfect sympathy.

“But I’ll always know that you could.”

I twined my fingers with his. “I suppose then, in the words of a philosopher who is even more wise than famous, there must be an element of faith even in a godless marriage . . .”

It was lovemaking that night. We remained entangled during the crucial moment, for I couldn’t bear to let him go and he didn’t pull away. After, I enjoyed stroking his hair, his face, and even that beloved beak of a nose.

Yet he was rueful. “I should’ve been more careful just then.”

“You needn’t be. I think I’d like to make a child together.” I’d felt the desire to be a mother for some time—even before little Pierre left our household. I thought the desire would pass. But now, at the age of nearly twenty-five, the yearnings of nature were too strong to ignore.

I believed my words would please my husband, a nobleman in need of an heir. But Condorcet’s dark eyes narrowed in consternation. “I don’t think it wise.”

I could make no sense of this. He’d been wonderful with Pierre. Nearly all my husband’s thoughts were consumed with how to feed, educate, and liberate the children of France. “Why shouldn’t you want children of your own?”

He brought my palm to his lips for a kiss. “Do I want a child? Of course. If I close my eyes, I delight to imagine a precious little girl in my arms, calling me Papa. But I’m forty-five years old, Sophie, and your dearly departed uncle was three years younger than I am now. Do not forget that my father died when I was an infant, leaving me at the world’s mercies. I would not wish to do the same to another child.” I didn’t wish to imagine Condorcet’s death—couldn’t bear to imagine it, actually. Especially when he said, “I couldn’t leave you, a young mother, to fend alone with a child in this world.”

“But we’re making a better world,” I argued, emotion lodging in my throat. “Don’t you say the evils of the world are the product of ignorance, and that through education, we will eradicate them?”

He nodded. “I believe that better world will come, but not soon enough for our child.” He said this soberly and I realized that in the matter of our childlessness, we’d finally stumbled upon a matter of disagreement.

One we couldn’t solve. That’s how I knew it was truly love, I suppose. Because I disagreed with him but respected him just as much.

Perhaps our legacy could be our work together. Because from that day forward, we wrote together against slavery and tyranny, and in favor of women, education, and human rights—speeches, pamphlets, letters, and more. His words seeping into mine, my words seeping into his as we scratched out ideas at the breakfast table in our bedclothes, feeding each other bits of omelet.

I told myself that my happiness did not depend upon a child. There were so many other things I wanted to accomplish. Portraits to paint. Treatises to translate. Philosophies to formulate—including my own theories on moral sentiment.

It could be enough.

Even if it wasn’t.

THAT WINTER WAS so frigid that wine casks burst open. There wasn’t enough firewood to keep anyone warm. Rivers froze solid, which meant mills couldn’t grind grain into flour. That meant no bread, and all Paris seemed to be rioting. In desperation, French businessmen loaned the nation millions to import food for the king’s hungry subjects, and Ambassador Jefferson arranged shipments from America to stave off starvation. But would help arrive in time?

Meanwhile, we were buried in snow while howling winds destroyed orchards and hailstorms killed everything that the winds did not. Then all at once came a thaw and the flood washed away whatever grain was left in the silos.

During this catastrophe, Nicolas never said to me, You see how many children are going hungry? How could you wish to expose a little one to this?

But I knew he was thinking it.

What he did say was that the price controls implemented by Jacques Necker—who had been recalled from exile to advise the king on financial matters again—were bad policy.

“It’s hard to support free trade when bread is already more than fourteen sous a loaf,” I argued. That was almost all of an average worker’s daily wage, a thing I learned from Louise on the morning I braved the frigid weather for a moment’s sunshine on the Pont Neuf. I bought two desiccated pears from her, and she recited a pamphlet that I was teaching her to read, which said,

What is the Third Estate? Everything.

What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing.

What does it desire to be? To become something . . .

When I told Nicolas this, it brightened his mood. He’d lost his election to the Estates General as a deputy—the nobles thought he was too radical, and the people thought him too much an aristocrat. But that didn’t stop him from advising Lafayette, who had been chosen by the nobles of his home district.

“After the opening ceremonies, all three estates should become one national assembly,” Condorcet argued. “As soon as this comes to pass, we can draw up a new constitution and change a whole nation.”

“I argue this every day,” Lafayette said, with a sigh. “You know that my heart is with the people. But my constituents—”

“Are wrong,” I interrupted, willing to give up every dubious honor nobility had ever conferred upon me. “Your constituents are nobles who wish to hold on to their privileges and those days are over. They must be over if we’re to bring liberty and equality to France. You were elected to represent your constituents, not bow to them.”

“What does it mean to represent them?” Lafayette asked. “To violate the instructions of the people who sent you to be their voice—how can that be honorable? A thousand times in America I saw General Washington obey Congress despite how often they were wrong.”

This was a fair point, but George Washington was a slave owner whose deference to Congress, or at least his own interests, resulted in the continuation of slavery. I didn’t say this. Lafayette, too, was an abolitionist. But our friend worshipped Washington as a father and would hear nothing against him. I was frustrated. Lafayette was still the most influential man in France. More than the king, I believed. Certainly more popular. I wanted him to be bolder.

“I hope you won’t judge him too harshly for his caution,” Condorcet said as we snuffed out candles before bed. “I know you admire courage, but don’t mistake heat of the head for heat of the soul. Because what you want is not heat but force. Not violence but steadfastness.”

He’d described his own virtues, and he was right about what I wanted. I wanted him. I still wanted his child too. He must have sensed it when we made love, because afterward he said, “Sophie, I won’t be a tyrant of a husband who says this is how it must be, and that is the end of it. I’ll never tell you what you must do with your body. And you don’t need me to make a child with it.”

This remark was, of course, the natural product of his honorable heart and the promises he’d made me. I know that now, and I knew it even then. Nevertheless, I took powerful offense. “Are you suggesting I take a lover?” We’d agreed that if we couldn’t be happy together we might seek happiness with others, but everything had changed. Or so I thought. For him to suggest this now infected me with rage. “Or do you think I’ve already taken one?”

“I don’t permit myself to think anything of the sort—”

“If you think I’m bedding Lafayette, you’re a perfect idiot.”

I would regret stooping to insult. But the more rational Nicolas remained, sitting there quietly in thought, the more I burned. I wanted to tell him how foolish it would be to think that any child of mine would not also be his, if only by law. Instead, I snapped, “Have you taken a mistress, then? Is it Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe? She once suggested you were a libertine and that if I gambled with you I’d lose my petticoats. Which is true—in a fashion, I did. Still, she spoke of you with the intimacy of a lover, of which she has several. Are you one?”

His mouth twisted as if he couldn’t decide to be angry or absolutely delighted by my jealousy. Thankfully, his hesitation gave me the necessary pause to recover my senses.

My hands went to my cheeks. “I’m sorry. That was beneath my dignity and yours.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll answer you, quite happily. First, it’s Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe’s vocation to pretend at intimacy. Second, my connection to her is a long friendship formed after having won a fortune at her gambling tables by employing mathematics to guess which cards my opponent might play. Third, I don’t have a mistress or desire one. And, finally, it confounds me that you don’t realize there’s no one else for me but you, nor could there ever be.”

Relief, love, and wretchedness all warred in my breast. “As it confounds me that when I say I want a child, you don’t realize I want your child. No matter what you hear whispered outside the Palais-Royal, I’m not a harlot.”

That made him offer his arms. “I’ve never believed that.” Once I was soothed, both of us embracing and murmuring apologies, he said, “It seems that in the matter of children, one of us needs to decide. You should have the first turn. Like a Roman, I’ll abide by your decision.”

This concession was irrefutable proof that I’d always been right to trust in him. Still, the thrill of his surrender was temporary as I considered that he was surrendering to me the use of his body for a purpose he didn’t approve—and not for the first time. Having resented, all my life, the power men had over my person, I simply couldn’t exercise it over him. Not when he’d told me I could break him, and I’d promised I never would.

“We’ll simply leave it an open question,” I said. “Reasonable people can change their minds . . .”

* * *

Versailles, Spring 1789

My husband was chosen as one of the six who would prepare the complaints of the nobles to the king, an elector for the Luxembourg district, and a commissaire in the Paris General Assembly.

He was, overnight, a politician. And I was a politician’s wife. Which meant we must go to Versailles.

Everyone was excited. Joyous, even. Even those who would later oppose the changes in France would later admit it was the most joyous time in our lives. The roads were clogged with the traffic of horses, wagons, carriages, and litters. So crowded was the king’s capital that none of our friends could host us and we were forced to take rooms at La Boule d’Or Inn to witness the festivities that opened the Estates General.

I woke early, bright-eyed, filled with nervous excitement, chattering away with my lady’s maid as she fastened my mother’s pearls at my throat. Condorcet, too, donned his best. Silk stockings I’d chosen for him to wear beneath his culottes because they showed off his calves. A black coat embroidered with gray, worn in sympathy with common people—for the deputies of the Third Estate were ordered to dress in the traditional black of the lower class.

“It’s getting off on the wrong foot,” I fretted. “The people’s deputies and the nobles should all dress the same. Instead, the Third Estate has to march in black sackcloth like beggars with leprosy.”

“Surely that’s to exaggerate a little,” Condorcet said, taking his place beside me at the balcony rail. But I knew he agreed such distinctions were harmful.

Along the route onlookers pressed together at every window and beneath every awning, craning their necks to see the parade. From bejeweled aristocrats to plain-faced scullery maids and sooty chimney sweeps, it seemed as if every person held their breath in anticipation of the march of the deputies. The trumpets announced them.

The king was at the head of the procession with the Swiss Guard in his wake, their gold-hilted swords glinting beneath red coats with braiding. And the people shouted Vive le roi!

In later years, when I took up my pen to call for the end of the monarchy in favor of a republic, I’d be accused of harboring hatred for the king and perverting my husband’s formidable mind with that same hatred. The truth is, I never hated the king. Especially not that day when he’d called together the people to remake the laws under which we all lived. That act was the king’s greatest and most noble.

So I, too, shouted, “Vive le roi!”

Fewer people shouted for the queen. For my part, I waved to the king’s sister, Madame Élisabeth, though I doubted she could see me through the crowd. Nor did she look up, as her gaze remained always on her brother the king, her expression pinched with submission to the public role he expected her to play.

The royal court was followed by diamond-bedecked nobles in plumed hats, then bishops in violet robes, and then, at last, the Third Estate in black. Lawyers and clerks, but also merchants and farmers, too—men who had come to take up the glorious mantle of governing their nation.

But not a woman amongst them, I thought.

Condorcet didn’t laugh when I mentioned this. “You’re right. In all my writings about election procedures and expanding suffrage, I’ve overlooked half the earth.”

“So has everyone else. I think it’s because women have so long been denied our natural rights that even we aren’t conscious of it.”

But I was conscious of it now. So was Olympe de Gouges and many of the women who held forth in my salons. Now my husband, the most brilliant mind in France, was conscious of it too. One day he’d call for the enfranchisement of women, echoing my words. But that day, we were still awakening.

The Estates were greeted in the Salle des Menus, and we witnessed the pomp and circumstance from the galleries with American friends. Together we watched one deputy of the Third Estate applauded for refusing to wear black. The representatives of the common people were all seated far from the king when he took his place upon a throne of gold and purple—and many took insult.

As the king gave his speech, he still seemed, to me, more marionette than man. Trapped upon this national stage. Perhaps it would’ve been better to replace him with one of the automatas that Nicolas sometimes spoke of, a mechanical king that could be wheeled out for public occasions. Then maybe everyone—even the king—would be happier. And Madame Élisabeth could lead whatever life she chose.

After all, despite my enjoyment of this pageantry at Versailles—what was the cost of it all? In teaching in our school, I’d learned how difficult it was for people struggling to survive; with hungry bellies, they had little time to reflect upon finer sentiments like sympathy. I wondered if we might not all be better served with less pomp. Whether the sharing of our wealth, instead of the display of it, would result in a kinder society . . .

When it was announced that each estate should get a single vote, instead of each deputy having an equal vote, the Third Estate erupted in protest. It meant that the nobles and the clergy could always outvote the people’s representatives, and so it all came to a messy impasse during which several deputies came to prominence.

Maximilien Robespierre, for one.

ARGUMENTS RAGED FOR weeks. Debate spilled into the taverns and coffeehouses where, one afternoon when Nicolas was closeted away with colleagues, I stopped for refreshments with Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe and her daughter, the latter of whom cried in greeting, “Grouchette!”

Once an adorable child, Émilie had since grown to be the prettiest girl in Paris, just as her mother had predicted.

In truth, she was much more than pretty. With flaxen hair, angelic blue eyes, and luminescent skin, Émilie was a moon-kissed beauty who enchanted everyone whose gaze fell upon her. Having learned the practiced art of charm, she was now collecting expensive gifts from various suitors, to her mother’s delight. But at a recent outing at the opera, Émilie confided in me a tenderness for a penniless young singer she kept secret from her mother—delighting me with the knowledge that she was a less biddable girl than she pretended to be.

As we entered the café together, we saw Robespierre, drawing notice to himself in tinted green spectacles, striped coat, and a fastidiously tied cravat. Except for some pockmark scars and a sallow complexion, Robespierre cut a fine and self-possessed figure amongst the gaggle debating the day’s events.

And yet, at the sight of Émilie, he fell silent.

“It’s the queen’s fault,” someone else was saying. “She doesn’t want to give up her diamond necklaces.”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe scowled at this as we took our seats. Émilie sighed, then whispered, “It’s always the queen’s fault somehow . . .”

The Sainte-Amaranthes were staunch royalists who held polite disdain for the reforms we were trying to bring about. Still, Émilie had a point. From market women to princes of the blood, everyone blamed the queen for everything. They called her Madame Deficit, and I won’t say that Marie-Antoinette was blameless. But that day, we couldn’t bear to hear it, for the little dauphin, heir to the throne, had only recently perished at the age of seven, stricken by tuberculosis. How cruel it seemed to speak ill of the queen while she grieved for her child, so I couldn’t help but turn to the crowd to interject, “Can we not spare just a few days’ pity for the queen, who has a mother’s broken heart?”

“Madame la Marquise.” It was Robespierre himself who addressed me, while methodically peeling an orange. “Whatever the private sorrows of the royal family, the business of the nation must go on. And insofar as pity interferes with the nation’s business, then pity is treason.”

His words were chilling, but in those days he wasn’t anyone to fear, so I argued, “What is the business of the nation if it is not easing the suffering of every French person, man, woman, and child?”

“The queen’s not French!” someone cried. “She’s Austrian.”

Robespierre simply took a bite of orange and smiled at Émilie, as if he hoped to impress.

“You mustn’t let him trouble you,” Condorcet said when I recounted this later. “I’ve listened to him speak these past weeks. His sole mission is to preach his religion of reform, and this he does almost constantly. But it is only talk. Robespierre aspires to be a priest and will never be anything else.”

ONE RAINY DAY in June, not long after, Condorcet rushed into our rented rooms, damp and disheveled. I assumed he’d returned for his umbrella, which he’d forgotten in the morning.

I was half right.

“The Third Estate has been locked out of their chambers,” he said, breathlessly, his eyes on the windows overlooking the avenue.

“By the king?” I asked. “To keep them from meeting?”

“Perhaps an accident.” He moved the curtain aside, no doubt looking for the royal cavalry, for we had no idea if this meant some kind of war. “The guards said it was only to make repairs to the hall. Yet it looks ill-intended, given that the king has been demanding that they meet separately and remember their place as inferiors. Either way, the Assembly has made its way through the rain to the tennis courts.”

“To do what?” I asked.

Condorcet turned and met my eyes. “To write a constitution. They’re going to do it. With or without the king.”

Reassured the king’s dragoons weren’t galloping toward the tennis courts to put a stop to it all, he crossed the room and kissed me full on the mouth. Then he reached for his umbrella and started for the door.

Abandoning everything—paper, quill pen, and book—I grabbed my shawl and followed.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To witness a revolution,” I said, feeling the impact of my own words in my bones.

He nearly smiled, but then his brow furrowed. “Sophie, it might be dangerous. There’s no telling how the king will react, whether he’ll surrender to the will of the people or have his Swiss Guards blast the tennis court to smithereens with cannon.”

“All the more reason to go,” I said. “To be with you. Whatever may come. Now, more than ever.”

It was, after all, my revolution too.

A different sort of man would have flatly refused. Condorcet held out his hand to me. My heart pounding with thrill, I put my hand into his and together we splashed through the streets of Versailles, joining the gathering crowd to watch as the nearly six hundred brave, rain-drenched deputies swore a solemn oath “never to separate”—not even if the king should send an army against them—until they’d drawn up for France a true constitution and a Declaration of Rights for every citizen.

I was terrified. I was terrified for the deputies. I was terrified for myself in bearing witness. I was exhilarated too. Because I knew—we all knew—it was a defining moment. The moment that would change everything. And I believed, like a kind of faith, that we would prevail. That after all the pamphlets and debates and societies and all the years of calling for reform, we could, as a people, simply claim our natural right to self-determination through reason, courage, and legislation, without war . . .

Not even the Americans had done that!

It wasn’t seemly for a husband and wife to hold hands in public. I didn’t care. I clutched my husband’s hand, marveling at his steadiness. Remembering, too, how steady his hands had been a different summer in a different rainstorm in this very place, during a moment that had liberated me as much as this one . . .

Tears misted my eyes. I wasn’t alone in the emotion. My husband’s voice was thick when he murmured, “I’ve been wrong.”

“About?”

“You.” He stared with those arresting dark eyes and I felt his joy. “I’ve worried to bring a child into this world, imagining that she’d be left without guidance or protection or strength without me. Now I know she’ll have her courageous mother. I’ve given power to my fears instead of my hopes, but no more after today.” He gestured at the oath-taking deputies, every one of them glowing with hope, courage, and determination. “Here is proof that we’re remaking the whole world for her. Right here and now.”

“Do you mean it?” I asked, almost afraid to believe.

He took my face in his hands and nodded. “Sometimes minds, governments, and marriages do change.”

Ours was a marriage, I realized. No mummery or farce. Not defined by religious tradition or constrained by social rules or tainted by the tyranny of his sex over mine. It was a beautiful creation of our own self-determination, just as the nation would soon be.

And it was, indeed, a glorious time to be alive.