I Am Madame X Read online

  Because Valentine was small and thin, Mama worried constantly over her health. She fussed over the child’s sleep schedule and diet, and every cough and sniffle was cause for grave concern. Such devotion, though, didn’t prevent Mama from losing her temper with Valentine, or, indeed, from behaving cruelly toward her, as she did one evening when Lucas Rochilieu visited.

  Rochilieu was living in a hotel around the corner and frequently came for dinner. That evening, he arrived at seven. Though he had spent the day doing nothing but reading the newspapers in his room and checking his balance at the bank, he was dressed as if for an audience at the Tuileries in pinstriped gray trousers, a starched white linen shirt, and a Prince Albert coat with a cameo stickpin in the lapel. He had regained much of the weight he had lost fighting for the Confederacy, and the wound over his right eye had healed into a thick purple scar.

  “Good evening, my dear. You look lovely as usual,” said Rochilieu as Mama opened the door. His face brightened when he saw her, and he straightened his body to appear taller.

  “Thank you, Monsieur,” she replied, bowing slightly.

  I knew with the sensitive child’s unfailing intuition in such matters that Rochilieu had fallen in love with Mama, just as I knew that she was repulsed by him. Still, he had brought us safely to Paris, and for that Mama had to be grateful.

  We settled ourselves on the frayed furniture in the parlor. Then, as they did every time Rochilieu came to dinner, he and Mama replayed our escape from Louisiana. It was as if they were following a theater script, starting with the boat ride across the Mississippi, then the trek to New Orleans, and, finally, our rescue by La Belle de Jour.

  “The captain of the French ship never would have taken us if I hadn’t given him a few pieces from my sack of candy,” said Rochilieu, patting Valentine, who nestled against him on the settee. Rochilieu pulled from his coat pocket, as he always did at exactly this point in the drama, a small chamois bag and turned it upside down on a table. Twenty uncut jewels of varying sizes tumbled out and scattered like glittering marbles.

  “Ladies, what is your pleasure this evening? A cherry, perhaps?” said Rochilieu, holding a large ruby between his fingers.

  Rather than embarrass Mama with cash handouts, Rochilieu made a little game of presenting her with a jewel every time he visited. Mama sold the gems at a shop on rue de Rivoli where all the expatriate Southerners took items to be pawned. The money paid our room and board.

  As Mama reached for the ruby, Valentine grabbed a pearl on the table, popped it in her mouth, and gulped. “Valentine!” Mama screeched. She slapped the little girl across the face and then locked her in the bedroom. Valentine kicked the door and shrieked; then, after a while, she whimpered quietly. When Rochilieu had gone, I entered the bedroom to find Valentine lying on the rug sucking her thumb and clutching one of her dolls.

  Each day, Mama’s temper seemed to grow worse. Anything could set her off—an undelivered bonnet, say, or a rainy morning. She constantly bemoaned my losing our gold and said it was my fault if I never became educated. “How am I going to pay for your school?”

  She must have mentioned something about it to Rochilieu, because on his next visit, he let Mama pick two jewels instead of one.

  That’s how I found myself on a cool September morning standing with Mama before a vine-covered archway on the rue des Fossés Saint-Victor, behind the Panthéon on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. A taxi had dropped us off, along with a small wicker trunk containing all my belongings. A chilly gust of wind blew leaves around my legs, and I shivered in my shapeless purple serge uniform. I did not want to attend the Couvent des Dames Anglaises. The thought of being cloistered with a group of strange girls and even stranger nuns filled me with misery. Streams of tears dripped off my chin and onto my uniform. Mama looked at me sternly through the black veil of her widow’s bonnet. “Mimi, you must stop so we can go in. The mother superior is expecting us.”

  Taking my wrist with one hand and carrying my trunk with the other, Mama led me through the arched doorway. Before us was a small courtyard paved with flagstones and surrounded by crumbling buildings—on one side a church, on the other a cloister. The convent was one of several English Catholic communities established in Paris during the sixteenth century, and the only one still standing. For several centuries, Catholic women escaping persecution in England had been sheltered in the cloister, and female aristocrats were imprisoned here during the French Revolution. Mama claimed that an ancestor of Grandpère de Ternant had once been locked behind these walls. But the ancient family connection doesn’t explain why she chose it for me. Mama was sending me here because it was the only school she could afford. For many years, the English convent had been a popular repository for the daughters of French nobles, who considered a knowledge of English a valuable social asset. But recently a rumor that Emperor Louis-Napoléon planned to raze the convent to make way for a new boulevard had driven enrollment down. To attract students, the English nuns had drastically reduced their fees. Now most of the girls were daughters not of the aristocracy, but of the petite bourgeoisie: tradesmen, doctors, professors, and minor government officials.

  A porter unlocked a heavy wooden door and showed us into a spacious visiting parlor. A few moments later, two dark figures appeared in habits of deep purple serge—the same fabric as my uniform. One was Mother Superior Mary-Josephine, who lifted her veil to reveal a dry, pale face and watery brown eyes. The other nun was her secretary, Sister Emily-Jean, a young beauty with wide-set blue eyes and a fresh, pink complexion. The mother superior said something to Mama in French that was so poor, and in a voice so small and raspy, that I couldn’t make out the words. Then she lumbered off and disappeared into her office, an old purple bear entering her den.

  Mama kissed me good-bye, and I was alone in the parlor with Sister Emily-Jean. “Virginie, we’re all so happy you’re here, especially the junior girls,” the nun said sweetly. “And the one who is happiest of all is Aurélie Grammont. She’s also from Louisiana. Would you like to meet her?”

  I nodded, too terrified to speak. Sister Emily-Jean led me through a maze of corridors and out a back door to a lovely garden shaded by chestnut trees. At one end stood a marble statue of the Virgin Mary and, at the other, a stone wishing well. On the old flagstones in between, the girls were playing prisoner’s base, a tag game.

  Sister Emily-Jean summoned a tall, thin girl who looked about two years older than I. I’ve always trusted my first impressions of people, and I knew immediately that I would like Aurélie Grammont. She had long, black corkscrew curls, a pleasant tawny face, and hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles, which I’d never seen before on a female under forty.

  “Aurélie, this is Virginie Avegno from Louisiana. Will you take her to Madame Farnsworth’s class, please?” said Sister Emily-Jean.

  “Of course,” answered Aurélie. Her manner was direct, and those deep hazel eyes radiated intelligence and kindness. It was impossible to imagine her ever saying anything stupid or mean.

  The chapel bell clanged, announcing the end of recreation. I marched in line with Aurélie and the other girls, up a creaky flight of stairs to the juniors’ classroom. As we entered, Aurélie pointed to a hat form on the windowsill holding a dingy muslin cap and warned, “Don’t speak a word of French. If Farnsworth hears it, she’ll make you wear that nightcap all day!”

  A fat Englishwoman with a wiry mustache like a man’s was standing next to an old wooden desk. The drafty room was painted a hideous yellow; the desks were wobbly and scarred. The only decorations were a torn, stained map of the world and a chipped plaster crucifix.

  Madame Farnsworth looked at me indifferently and pointed to an empty desk in the second row in the middle of the room. “Grammar books!” she bellowed.

  There was a scramble of rustled papers and slammed desktops. I found my book—its spine was broken and the pages were falling out—at the bottom of the well of my desk. Madame Farnsworth shuffled across the room. �
��Page forty-three,” she announced. Then she turned to me. “Girls, we have a new student, Virginie Avegno from Louisiana in America, where, as you all know, English is the native tongue. Miss Avegno, please demonstrate how English is spoken in your country by reading the first two exercises.”

  A chill rippled through me. Though I understood English, I did not know how to read it. “Excusez-moi, Madame. Je ne lis pas l’anglais,” I stammered.

  Farnsworth’s face turned bright red, and her jowls twitched. It never occurred to her that an American wouldn’t know English. She thought I was mocking her. “Miss Avegno, this is no way to start your career here. On your knees! Five times!”

  Aurélie, sitting directly behind me, leaned forward and whispered, “Virginie, you have to kiss the floor.”

  I dropped below my desk. The worn wood floor was filthy with dustballs and tiny bugs. I bent forward and slipped my hand between my lips and the dreadful surface. But Farnsworth saw me and rushed over to push my face all the way down.

  “Fetch the nightcap, Miss Boirsot!” she roared to another student, her palm still pressing the back of my head. Then she pulled me up by the collar, dragged me to the front of the classroom, and plopped the cap on my head. It smelled like moldy bread.

  I stumbled back to my seat and sat with my face burning. For the rest of the day, whenever the nuns passed me in the hall, they made the sign of the cross and murmured, “Shame! Shame!”

  The dark paneling of the dining hall was covered with portraits of English kings. At dinner, I sat squeezed between two five-year-olds. Throughout the meal, they stared at the nightcap and giggled behind chubby hands. No one began eating until the nun at the head of the table dipped her spoon into the food—a tasteless chicken ragout served on badly chipped green crockery. When we had finished eating, a servant passed a large bowl around the table, and each girl washed her silverware in it and then put the items away in a drawer underneath the table.

  Bedtime came as a relief. The girls slept on cots crammed close together in a cold dormitory under the attic roof. As soon as I was in my cot, I began to sob, burrowing my face in my pillow to muffle the sound. A moment later, I felt soft arms around me and heard a gentle voice. “Shush, Virginie, it’ll be all right.” It was Aurélie. She stroked my hair and held me until I fell asleep.

  The next morning at six, two servants entered the dormitory and woke us by slamming the windows shut. We washed our faces and hands in tubs of freezing water, dressed by candlelight, and marched off to chapel for Mass, followed by a meager breakfast of dry bread and weak tea. We spent all day in class, divided into two groups—the juniors, ages five to twelve, and the seniors, thirteen to seventeen. Our teachers were lay women, most of whom were badly educated peasants from the English countryside. The nuns spent virtually all their time either praying or working in the convent distillery, where they produced mint cordial, their main source of income.

  After my first day, I tried to lay low in Farnsworth’s class. But Aurélie, who didn’t fear her as I did, regularly provoked her. One morning, as the old teacher turned her back to point out the location of Greece on the map, Aurélie whispered in my ear, “Look at Farnsworth’s bottom. It’s almost as wide as her desk.”

  Suddenly Farnsworth wheeled and marched toward us. Grabbing Aurélie and me by our ears, she dragged us out of the classroom. “Would you like to tell me what you girls were talking about?” she demanded. I felt faint, and my throat closed shut. Aurélie, though, remained calm. With perfect composure, she looked levelly at Farnsworth and explained, “Virginie was telling me about her grandfather who was a French marquis.”

  Madame Farnsworth’s face softened. She was a snob in the most conventional sense—nothing impressed her like money and pedigree—and the thought that one of her students might have noble blood filled her with self-importance. She resisted the impulse to ask me for details and sent us back to the classroom with no further punishment.

  Aurélie was the most clever girl in the class. She could memorize a poem after reading it twice, play a piano sonata after practicing it a few times. But what drew me to her was her warmth. I need to be cuddled. Mama and Grandmère were not demonstrative, but Papa had been. After he left for the war, I could always count on Tante Julie for hugs and kisses. Aurélie also was very affectionate. During my first homesick months at the convent, whenever I sobbed at night, she slipped into bed with me and held me until I fell asleep. In the morning, we brushed each other’s hair and sat together in chapel, holding hands under the folds of our uniforms.

  We never dared hold hands openly. The nuns strictly forbade it, just as they outlawed hugging and kissing. We could not even walk around in pairs—it had to be in threes—so fearful were the nuns that we would form “unhealthy attachments,” as they put it. Once, in the garden, a nun slapped Aurélie and me for sitting too close on a swing.

  But the nuns’ vigilance was spotty. For long periods, particularly in the evenings between dinner and bedtime, we were left largely unsupervised. The lay teachers had retired to their rooms, and the nuns were in chapel. Aurélie and I often used these hours to lead expeditions of four or five girls in search of the convent ghost—a female prisoner who died during the Revolution and was said to haunt the catacombs.

  Armed with candles, we wandered the convent, tapping walls and following narrow corridors in search of a secret door that would lead to the catacombs (we never found it). After a half hour or so, we’d give up, scale the stairs to our top-floor dormitory, and fall exhausted into bed.

  Every other Sunday, when the girls were allowed to go home for a visit, Mama picked me up in a hack and took me to the Avenue Montaigne apartment. Usually, we passed the time sitting in the parlor reading or taking a walk with Rochilieu. Afterward he’d dine with us in our rooms. Sometimes Mama and I went to Confederate reunions, lavish parties hosted twice a month by John Slidell, a former Louisiana senator who was the Confederate ambassador to France. As a deserter, Rochilieu never showed his face at these parties.

  Mama had known John Slidell and his plump black-haired wife, Mathilde, in New Orleans, and she looked them up as soon as we got to Paris. As leaders of the expatriate community, the Slidells were doing their best to keep up the spirits of the American Southerners. They helped new arrivals find apartments, schools, doctors, and dressmakers. They lent them money and introduced them to other Rebels and their sympathizers.

  Invitations to their reunions, held at Rebel headquarters in a vast apartment at 75, rue de Marignan, were sought after not only by American Southerners, but also by the French—politicians, writers, newspaper editors, and society hostesses sympathetic to the Southern cause. Mama waited anxiously for her first invitation, and it came in October, two months after we had arrived in Paris.

  Mama and I lifted the ornate brass knocker outside 75, rue de Marignan, and a maid in a black dress and a white organdy apron answered the door. Madame Slidell was standing nearby and rushed over to greet Mama. “Virginie Avegno! Just the person I was hoping to see. We need at least one beautiful woman in the room. Natalie has a cold and won’t come.” Natalie was Natalie Benjamin, the estranged wife of Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State. She was a shapely, green-eyed blonde, famous for her many lovers.

  Mrs. Slidell linked her arm through Mama’s and led us into the parlor. The walls were covered in blue satin, and the room was softly illuminated by pink crystal chandeliers. Elegant women in flounced, high-necked dresses and well-fed men in dark frock coats were gathered in small groups on the enormous Aubusson carpet. A young man sat at the piano playing “La Bannière bleue,” which included the plea, “Aides-nous, Ô France aimée,” a song from the Creole Confederate songbook. A group of pretty girls stood around the pianist and sang. Inone corner, two boys were bent over a chessboard. John Slidell himself—tall and thin, with long, straight gray hair and dark, hooded eyes—was leaning against the pocket doors that led to the dining room, deep in conversation with a fat gentleman who wa
s smoking a pipe.

  After about an hour, the singing and piano-playing stopped and Madame Slidell announced dinner. Twenty-five tables were set up in the cavernous dining room. I sat at the children’s table next to a freckle-faced boy with coarse blond hair who introduced himself as Harry Beauvais from New Orleans. He fled to Paris with his mother after his father’s death during the Yankee occupation of the city, and he was a student at the Lycée Condorcet.

  The meal seemed to last all afternoon, with endless courses delivered on silver platters and carted away by servants wearing gray livery in honor of the Rebels at home. Finally, as the toothpicks and finger bowls were passed around, Mama came over to my table. “Virginie, we must leave,” she said. “If you’re not back by eight-thirty, you won’t get into the convent.”

  Harry Beauvais escorted us to the street to wait for a cab. On the corner, a group of about twenty boys and young men stood bathed in the yellow light from a gas lamp. Several of them were carrying a banner emblazoned with the words “Down with Slidell the Slave-Driver!” The banner depicted a caricature of the ambassador dragging a black man in chains.

  “I know some of those boys. They’re students at my lycée,” said Harry.

  “French?” I asked.

  “No, American. Yankees.”

  Just then, the massive double doors at Number 75 opened and Slidell appeared on the sidewalk with his wife and daughters. Loud booing rose from the swarm of boys. As the Slidells walked in the opposite direction, the swarm followed, hissing and singing “Hang Jeff Davis from a Sour Apple Tree.” Several boys shot pea-shooters at the Slidells and wads of white paper bounced innocuously around the family. One boy, however, approached closely and aimed his shooter directly at Slidell’s face. A hard wad struck the ambassador in the right eye. Slidell grabbed the boy by the collar. Just as he was about to strike him across the face, the boy slipped out of his jacket and ran away, leaving Slidell holding the blue garment. The band of boys dispersed, and we ran toward the Slidells.