Mistress of the Revolution Read Online Free Page B

perused it and smiled before returning it to me.
    “Quite a letter. You are a good girl, Gabrielle.”
    I received few letters, all from Félicité. I responded to them out of a sense of obligation, but the idea that my correspondence with a schoolgirl would be read by a grown man chilled my inspiration, if indeed I had any. Although my French spelling and grammar were already good, I was aware of the deficiencies of these childish attempts. It was torture to imagine my brother’s contempt as he read them.
    During her next visit, Madeleine warned me, as Joséphine had done, never to be alone with a man, though, to my relief, she did not enter into any details. I felt irritated by the interest the news of my curses elicited and the rapidity with which it had spread. It seemed that it would have been more discreet to have Father Marty, the parish priest, read an announcement to that effect from the pulpit after his Sunday sermon.
    Life went on very quietly. I would sew and embroider with the maids, who came to work in my bedroom. My mother did not part with her money freely, especially when it came to buying anything for me. She presented me with her old dresses, all made of solid black silk, when their dye began to fade and acquire a brownish tint. The maids and I would turn the fabric inside out and do our best to sew them back into something suitable for me. My mother’s gowns were a foot too short for me and we had to add an additional band of fabric at the hem. I knew that I looked strange in my patched clothes, but did not care much about my appearance then. Around the same time, my feet stopped growing, which dispensed with the need to buy me new shoes. I would take mine to the cobbler in Vic to have them mended when the old soles had worn through. This happened often because I was not allowed to wear wooden clogs. They would have made me look, my mother said, like a peasant girl.
    I had always liked Vic. It was the Baillage seat, with its court of justice, a larger, busier town than Lavigerie. It was built high in the valley of the Cère River, and boasted a cluster of handsome townhouses occupied by the minor nobility and the families of attorneys. From anywhere one had a splendid view of the surrounding mountains. On market days, peasants and traders came from afar to buy and sell horses, sheep and cattle. The fragrance of grilled sausages, wrapped in bouriols , thick buckwheat crepes, filled the air.
    I would go to the shops in Vic for my mother and take advantage of these errands to visit Mamé Labro. She was as happy as ever to see me, but I lost the friendship of my milk brother Jacques. Since infancy, we had played in the snow in winter and in the freshly cut hay during the long days of June. We had slipped away together to bathe and fish trout by hand in the Cère River.
    Now Jacques, whenever he saw me, ran from the cottage without greeting me. I was hurt by his disdain and complained to Mamé.
    “It’s all for the best, Gabrielle,” she said. “Jacques has more sense than you. You are a lady now. It would not be proper for you to be friends with a peasant boy.”
    It seemed the silliest of explanations.
     

4
     
    By the age of fourteen, I had acquired the shape of a woman. Yet my mother said nothing about providing me with larger clothes or buying me a new corset, and I was too shy or proud to raise the subject. Such a request would no doubt have been greeted with derision at my vanity, or enquiries about how I thought my family could afford such an expense of finery. I could no longer lace my little girl’s corset and now wore on my bosom only my chemise and the bodice of my dress, while covering as much as I could with a kerchief. Even in my innocence, I knew that there was something wrong about my appearance.
    One afternoon, my brother entered the room while I was sewing alone, seated on a bench in front of the fireplace in the drawing room. I curtseyed to him and returned to my work.
    “Have you