alt=""/>Looking through the low door, I can only gasp. Our maison is merely a single room! Hardly even that—a mere storeroom! Still, warmth flows outward from the fire on the hearth, and so, compressing our redingotes about our traveling gowns, we dare to enter, Maman first.
Inside, we take in the rude furnishings. Gateleg table against one log wall. Candleholder and candle upon the table. Three wooden, utterly plain chairs. A peculiar small bed against the opposite wall. A bench with a high back near the fireplace. Black iron utensils to either side of the raised hearth, with wood stacked on the left. One unglazed window open to the darkness gathering outside. As workers carry in our three barrels and two trunks, Maman and I must press against one another to make room for them. When they leave, I set Sylvette down on the plank floor. At once she jumps upon the bench and sits trembling before the fire.
“We cannot stay here,” I say. “We must have something better than this.”
“Ah, but at least it is warm,” Papa says, maneuvering around us to get to the hearth. There, he removes his wet cape and drapes it over the back of the bench. “We are fortunate, are we not, my ladies? Tonight the formidable Madame de Sevigny has only the boughs once attached to these logs.”
“Perfectly appropriate, given her disloyalty,” I say. “Reveling in Florentine’s ignoble joke about our family crest! Poles, indeed. Still, you did bring it upon us by insisting upon poling the boat, Papa, when you needn’t have. It served only to humiliate us.”
“I am sorry, my Eugenie.”
“Why did you, Papa?”
“For the selfish pleasure of it, I am afraid. It relieved me, for a while at least, of the burden of thought.”
“While we had to bear the burden of their cruel words. How dare they, after all we have lost!”
“Ah, Eugenie, let us leave petty grievances behind. We have experienced too many grievous ones, have we not? They make all else insignificant.”
Papa’s play on words—grievances, grievous—cheers him. “This land inspires largeness, I think,” he goes on.
“Tell that to Talon,” Maman says, “when you see him concerning this hut, for he must do better than this. Also, please tell him that we require more candles and a lamp.”
“And Papa,” I add, “where is my bed? Tell him, please, that a bed for me must be brought here at once. If there is no other place for us to stay tonight, at least I must not sleep upon the floor, surely.”
“Ah, chérie—”
“Papa, this is more wretched than any peasant’s hut. At least they have something resembling beds.”
I am somewhat sorry to harass him so. He is sitting before the fire, his eyes nearly shut.
“I will see about it,” he says. “After dinner.”
“And we can well imagine what that will be. I shall not eat it. Nor will I sleep on this so-called floor. In fact, I would prefer traveling all the way back to Philadelphia and risking the rebel sympathizers and yellow fever rather than remain here.”
“Eugenie,” Papa begins, but he then pauses as if thinking. Soon he is slumped against one narrow corner of the bench, dozing.
Our poor luck holds. The girl who so rudely spoke to us before first being addressed is to be one of our servants. I look down at the food she has served and anticipate being repelled, as in so many American taverns and hostelries. But to my surprise, the meat looks like meat. The carrots and potatoes, too, are identifiable. And the ragoût offers a fragrant aroma. Cinnamon, perhaps. To mask rancidity, no doubt. Still, I offer a merci, which is an invitation for her to speak, but now she remains silent.
Maman tells her not to stand there like some mule, for heaven’s sake. “Curtsy!”
She remains motionless, her face quite scarlet. But after a moment she abruptly turns and leaves.
“Maman, when she comes tomorrow, we shall instruct her. Please do not be upset. She at least looks like a proper servant. Perhaps the curtsy is not an American custom.”
“Well, it should be, here. This is a French settlement, where our etiquette must prevail. Mon Dieu, if the Queen were here . . . You are right. We shall instruct the girl, Eugenie, for the Queen’s sake as well as our own. Clearly, this is a savage land, one that we must civilize.”
“Far better to just leave!” I look about the room again in lingering disbelief. The Comtesse de Sevigny’s harp takes up the back wall. The harpsichord Papa purchased for us in Philadelphia rests upended in a corner. Our two barrels, shoved into another corner at the foot of the bed, will have to serve as our wardrobe closet. Either that or our trunks. Intolerable! Most distressing, however, is that there is no salle de bain, but merely a wooden stand with a bowl and ewer upon it. And only two covered chamber pots. How humiliating. Papa shall have to request another. We do not even have a table for our toilet in the morning, or a mirror. All this Papa promises to discuss with the marquis. And too, the matter of the slaves being here, which we cannot tolerate.
Now Papa says, “My dear family. I have a surprise for you!”
He goes to one of the barrels in the corner, tips himself into it, rather like a duck bobbing for something in a pond, and retrieves a bottle of wine from our château. He’d wrapped it, he said, in one of our featherbeds.
Something very near joy burns away my ill mood, at least for a moment. Maman and I applaud, Maman’s eyes shining with tears.
Then he pours wine into the glass goblets Talon has brought us, and we raise our goblets to the Queen and her children, Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles, who by this time, we pray, have been safely delivered from the ruthless rebels in France. “God grant that they arrive here soon!”
The wine tastes of our vineyard, the sun, la France itself. Like Maman, I cannot restrain tears.
“Let us be thankful for our deliverance,” Papa is saying, “and hopeful for our future, God willing!” He takes our hands in his. “Now. Our dinner.”
I am thankful for our deliverance from the rebels, but where, in my heart, is any hope? There is just disbelief, still, that this is to be our home. I touch fork to the ragoût. My inclination is to push it aside, but I am so hungry. Anticipating the worst, I nibble on a carrot like a timid rabbit. Mon Dieu, it is decent. Not overly salted at all. I try another. The same! Then for the true test—the meat. Eyes closed, I raise a tiny bit to my mouth. I chew, swallow, and then open my eyes to meet Maman’s.
“C’est bon!” Maman exclaims.
We each take another forkful while Papa eats like one starved. The ragoût is not merely good but excellent. Sylvette is frantic for the bits of meat I give her. Our new servant has brought bread as well and it, too, is delicious, with its sweet butter. “You see?” Papa says. “All will be well yet, my ladies.”
After we finish, Maman asks, “But where is our servant?”
We look to the closed door.
“The
