50. Madeleine
"Running late. Meet at 6:30?"
Bonnie had been on the point of texting Trev to request a change of her own, but, with his being delayed, it seemed unlikely he would be amenable to crossing town to patronize Paradise Lost when the Founding Fathers was conveniently close by. Checking out Deena Clemens would have to wait, she concluded, if not for another day, at least until after dinner. She texted a thumbs-up in response, and considered her options for killing an hour or so.
She had tentatively decided to catch up with Gabby and the Friday Night Regulars, but then a last cursory check of her email turned up a new message bearing the tantalizing subject line "Initial genealogical report," and all thought of leaving flew from her mind. She dropped quickly back into her desk chair, and pulling up the message, saw its sender was, as she hoped, Richard de Clermont.
"Ma chère Bonnie," he began, "I was flattered to learn from your dear grandmother that you remembered so old and unremarkable a fellow as I, to the extent, even, of recalling my passion for burrowing like the veriest mole into the deepest recesses of the historical archive. As you must be aware, I would have undertaken the research you propose for no other reason than to oblige my dear friend Angèle, but the prospect of being of service to your amiable self as well quite doubles my pleasure in the enterprise. I understand that your need for answers is somewhat urgent, and so, have conducted a quick inquiry using the most readily-available sources, the results of which you will, I hope, find interesting.
I thought it advisable to communicate these initial findings to you in writing rather than over the phone in order to give you time to digest the information and formulate questions. If, having read the following, you require clarifications or have identified areas that need further investigation, you can let me know by return mail, or inform Angèle. She is keeping abreast of developments, as might be expected of a person of her wide-ranging curiosity and sharp intellect.
"Here, then, without further introduction, is what I have discovered to date about Madeleine Lavallière: according to the church register of Rousseleroi, a small town in (what was then) the Blanchard baronial domain, Madeleine, née Chiasson, married Yves Lavallière of that parish on April 22, 1776. Like the groom, the bride hailed from southwestern Picardy. Her place of birth is given as Magny-sur-Oise, a hamlet some forty kilometers to the east of Rousseleroi (note: neither town is very distant from my own home base in Clermont). Madeleine was nineteen years of age at the time of her wedding, had never previously been married, and had been employed as a servant. Her parents are listed as Gilles Chiasson (farmer) and Sabine Michaud (deceased).
"For his part, Lavallière was nearly thirty years the bride's senior (forty-eight), and a widower. He was, like his prospective father-in-law, a farmer, but with this difference: he held a long-term lease on his fields and buildings, while tax records show Chiasson owned ten acres of land, which he'd inherited from his father.
"You are not to deduce from this that Gilles Chiasson was well-to-do; very likely, it was just the opposite. In this era, Picardy's agricultural land was divided in roughly equal parts among the nobility, the church and the so-called 'peasant proprietors.' This last group of farmers had small holdings, generally of a size that did not come close to producing enough to supply all the family's needs. When you consider that a parcel of at least thirty acres was deemed necessary for self-sufficiency, you can appreciate how inadequate Chiasson's holding was. To have a hope of making ends meet, Chiasson and his sons would have hired out as day-laborers to the larger landowners while his wife and daughters would have engaged in such cottage industries as weaving and basketmaking to earn additional income. When possible, the children would have found work as servants, groundskeepers and stable hands with the more prosperous inhabitants of the region, thereby easing the family's economic burden. It would have been a precarious existence, at best.
"Fortunately (from my point of view), the Chiasson and Minaud families had long roots in Magny-sur-Oise. I was able to locate their birth records and those of their children with relative ease. Gilles and his wife were a remarkably fruitful couple: in all, Sabine birthed a dozen children, including two sets of twins (note: apparently, twins run in the Michaud family line, Sabine having, herself, a twin sister, Louise). Tragically, Sabine died in childbed at the age of thirty-eight, leaving nine living children, four under the age of ten. Madeleine, the fifth-born child and third-born daughter, would have been eleven when her mother passed. With two elder sisters in position to take charge of the household, there was no advantage to Madeleine's remaining at home, and that being the case, it is reasonable to assume she began her work as a servant about that time (note: servants not only received wages from their employers, but room and board as well, a double boon for their families who gained financial support without expending precious resources).
"As the data was readily at hand, I followed up on Madeleine's siblings, and discovered a curious circumstance: by 1778, the Chiasson family fortunes had undergone a significant change, decidedly for the better. I was alerted to this by the marriage register for daughter Aline Chiasson (younger than Madeleine by two years). On this document, the father's occupation is now listed as 'innkeeper,' a large step up both in economic and social terms. This improved standing is reflected, additionally, in the occupation of Aline's groom: a cabinetmaker, he belonged to the artisanal class, and would have been considered above a mere farmer's daughter in station. Delphine and Joséphine Chiasson also married "up," if you will: one, a miller, and the other, a merchant. Clearly, the family had managed a quasi-meteoric rise from the proletariat to the lower ranks of the bourgeoisie. The question is: how was this accomplished?
"In the last half of the eighteenth century, the price of land rose continuously, at one point increasing by nearly one-hundred percent. I took it for granted Chiasson had benefited from this trend to sell his fields at a huge profit, and had subsequently invested that capital in a small hostelry. The record, however, did not bear this out. Chiasson continued to pay taxes on his farm property as long as he lived, and it passed, upon his death, to his eldest son, Gustave. The inn, in turn, was bequeathed to Gustave's twin brother, Philippe. Chiasson père had not traded one property for another; he had acquired a second. How had a man living on the edge of ruin come by a sum substantial enough to purchase an inn, and in so short a time?
"I put the question to Étienne Blanchard when, by happy coincidence, I ran into him two days ago at a meeting of our local chapter of l'ANF (note: an organization offering moral and financial support to struggling noble families). He is an amateur historian, with, admittedly, a fund of knowledge many times deeper than it is wide, but as he specializes in his family's doings in our corner of Picardy, that is all to the good. Even knowing his expertise, I was impressed when he immediately recognized the name 'Madeleine Lavallière.' I had expected to have to supply him with quite a bit of background information, but it proved completely unnecessary.
"It was not, after all, so brilliant a display of historical memory as I at first supposed. As it happens, Blanchard was approached not long ago about purchasing those recently discovered paintings by his ancestor Eugène, so the old affair had already been called to his attention and was much on his mind (note: negotiations with the Lavallières have bogged down due to their obstinacy in rejecting his 'perfectly reasonable offers'). He was very excited about the paintings and spoke of them at length, calling them 'windows on the past' and as intimate a glimpse into his ancestor's life as any diary or cache of private letters might have been. Taken together, they tell a compelling story of domestic happiness, of a man's love for his mate and their children, a very different picture, indeed, from the strictly convenient arrangement Blanchard had always assumed obtained between them. The paintings strongly suggest that Madeleine was the wife of Eugène's heart. 'If a baron might have married a milkmaid in that era,' Blanchard told me, 'she would probably have been his legal wife as well.'
"It was because he was revising his ideas about the importance of Madeleine in Eugène's life that Blanchard was reminded of a novel penned by a female ancestor in the early 1800s. The tale of a young noblewoman's trials and tribulations, it is generally understood in the family to have been inspired by the real-life experience of Clotilde-Andrée Blanchard, the author's grandmother and Eugène's baroness. The grand outline of the story is this: the naive heroine, having taken up residence in her new home with every expectation of living happily-ever-after, discovers after a short honeymoon period that her noble husband is, and has long been, in thrall to a local siren of surpassing outward beauty and inner moral corruption. She fights to free her husband from the clutches of this evil rival, at first for his sake and later, for the sake of their three sons, whose patrimony the baron is squandering to meet his mistress' increasingly outrageous demands. What the baroness finds unendurable (and this is of particular relevance to our investigation), is that her husband not only lavishes time and money on his paramour and her offspring, but supports a horde of her grasping relatives as well.
"And there we have it: a plausible explanation for the Chiasson family's mysterious good fortune. I do not mean to imply I believe Madeleine was a merciless harpy intent on bleeding her noble lover dry — that is the version of a humiliated wife, after all. I believe rather, as does Blanchard, that Eugène raised Madeleine's family out of poverty of his own volition, out of love for her. It must have been a great romance.
"I find I am now intrigued by their story on my own account, and have asked Blanchard if he might arrange for me to see the paintings. Time permitting, I may also take him up on his invitation to stop by his library and read through Love Betrayed (a fitting title for so melodramatic a novel). Speaking of which, in case you had any doubt, the much-wronged baroness triumphs in the end: she succeeds in running her wicked rival off and saving her sons' inheritance, but, sadly, only after her husband's death.
"Such is the information I have been able to gather for you, Bonnie. I hope there is something in the above that will prove useful. I will continue my digging, and if I uncover anything of interest, I will contact you. Let me have your questions or suggestions as well. I will entertain them gladly. In the meantime, I remain your, ever cordially, Richard de Clermont."
"Bonnie?"
She started violently, and turning, saw Bear standing just over the workroom threshold. "I didn't hear you come in."
He came forward, slowly closing the distance between them. "What're you still doing here? I thought everyone'd left an hour ago."
"I was on my way out when I noticed this." She gestured toward the screen. "It's the background information I requested about Madeleine Lavallière."
"That wild goose chase?" Leaning back, he half-sat on her worktable, and folded his arms across his chest. "Learn anything?"
"Quite a bit, but I'm not sure what it means, if anything. It seems she was a simple country girl from a large family who worked for a while as a servant. There's no indication she was ever in Paris, which is disappointing, but she was born and raised in Picardy only about twenty miles from the Blanchard estate, so maybe she was employed there, and that's where she caught Lebrun's eye. Blanchard could have invited Lebrun to stay at the family chateau when they returned from Rome…"
"And then what? Lebrun enticed her to move to Paris and set her up as his mistress? He'd only just begun to make a name for himself, remember. I can't imagine he could afford it."
"But Blanchard could."
"Granted, but then she'd've been Blanchard's mistress, and Lebrun would've had no business feeling betrayed when she didn't return his feelings."
Bonnie sighed. "You're right. Their meeting her in Picardy doesn't work. It has to be Paris." She frowned thoughtfully at the screen, strongly tempted to read through the report again.
"Well," Bear said, pushing to his feet. "I've got to get going. Danny's expecting me."
Bonnie glanced at the clock: nearly six. If she left now, she'd arrive at the restaurant too early. She spare a last look at the text, and then logged out. "Time I was heading out, too."
