please indeed, Monsieur.”
It was her husband’s voice, icy cold. She turned to find he had followed them onto the terrace. He regarded them both with a look of barely contained fury.
“Monsieur le Baron....” The guardsman attempted to speak but Jean ignored him and, turning his back, went to the door opening onto the ball. Anne felt a strange surprise to see that it was still going on exactly as it had been.
“Philippe!” Jean barked his majordomo’s name. Several of the guests looked curiously in his direction, but he ignored them.
“Philippe!”
The majordomo appeared, hurrying through the crowd.
“Have the carriage brought around at once,” Jean ordered.
The servant looked confused.
“At once,” Jean repeated. He turned back to his wife and the soldier.
“As for you,” he addressed Guy, “you will leave my house immediately, before I have you whipped like a dog and thrown into the streets.”
The guardsman was twenty years young and nearly a head taller; ordinarily the young man would have challenged such a remark, but something about the look in the other man’s eyes and the tone of his voice gave him pause.
He clicked his heels smartly and bowed. “Monsieur, my apologies,” he said. He strode briskly away, disappearing inside without so much as a backward glance at Anne. She might have been, she thought, some fille de joie that he had picked up off the streets.
She was left alone in the moonlight with her enraged husband. Shock and fear had cleared her head of any befuddlement, and she stared wide-eyed back at him as he turned his attention to her.
“My dear,” he said, speaking with frigid contempt, “did you really think I would allow you to give to someone else what I paid so dearly for?”
She managed the courage to say, “How dare you!” but he was not interested in her remarks or her indignation. He seized her wrist in a grip so harsh it sent a jolt of pain up her arm.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Let go of me, I won’t.”
But she did, because she had no choice. He fairly dragged her back into the ball and through it, past the startled faces of their wedding guests. He looked neither right nor left, nor did he so much as pause, even when her mother came running up white-faced.
“What’s wrong?” Mama cried, but they rushed right on by her.
“Where are you taking me?” Anne demanded; he made no answer.
A lackey rushed to open the front door, and for a moment Anne thought he meant to have her whipped and thrown into the street as he had threatened to do with the soldier.
The carriage came clattering into the courtyard, the driver hastily trying to button his coat as he came. It stopped, and before the footman could hurry down to open the door, Jean had dragged her to it and, throwing the door open, shoved her forcibly inside.
He’s mad, she thought, terrified. She looked desperately at the crowd that had followed them to the door, but although they all watched in astonishment, no one moved to intervene. This was her husband, after all, dragging her about like a piece of baggage. Husbands did what they would with their wives; it was the order of things. And it sometimes made for delicious gossip.
Jean spoke to the driver—she was in too much of a state to even try to hear what he said—and then he, too, climbed into the carriage, slamming the door, and a moment later it lumbered off, clattering across the stones of the courtyard. The gates were opened; the crowd outside parted before them. The wedding guests gaped after them, some of them bewildered, others plainly amused. Tiens, they would not soon forget this wedding ball.
For Anne, it was too much to bear—the humiliation, being dragged away in the middle of the ball and carried off to God alone knew where, still dressed in her wedding gown. She began to cry, sobbing noisily into her hands. Once he moved on the seat beside her, and she threw herself into the far corner of the carriage.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried, but apparently he had no interest in touching her; he was only making himself more comfortable.
She became increasingly angry as they went along. She was cool without a wrap of any kind. She had no idea how long they would be out because she had no idea where they were going and disdained to ask. They drove through the darkened streets of Paris, only occasionally passing another carriage or some foot traffic. She could hear shouts in the distance from time to time. Once she thought she saw a pale glow in the sky and wondered if it could already be dawn, but she dismissed the idea at once; she knew it could be no more than midnight.
The coach came to a halt. Glancing out, she saw some soldiers on horseback talking to the driver. Her husband got out of the carriage and went forward to talk to them himself. She leaned as far out the window as she dared, trying to get the gist of their conversation.
“...Another uprising,” she heard, and, “They’ve barricaded the streets...burning...fighting going on....”
One word, snatched from all the others, made her shudder and draw fearfully back into the carriage; she heard one of the soldiers say, “Revolution.”
Another revolution! It struck terror into her aristocratic heart. It had been forty years since the Great Revolution, but no one of her class had ever forgotten what happened. She had not been born then, of course, but she knew the stories. Her own grandfather on her mother’s side had taken that horrible ride to the guillotine, and one of her aunts had been slain by the mobs. Surely not even her madman of a husband would risk remaining out on a night such as this one.
The soldiers rode away. Looking out, she saw her husband talking earnestly to the driver. She heard him say, “We’ll take the rue Bercy,” as he turned and strode back to the carriage.
“Are we going home?” she asked when the carriage started up again. They were the first words she had spoken to him since ordering him not to touch her.
He did not answer, but when he turned to look at her, she cringed inwardly. The answer was written plain on his face. He hated her. He would not care if they were killed by the Parisian mobs.
“In the name of God,” she cried, “if you will not think of me, think of yourself, what good—”
She stopped short in mid-sentence. The carriage had been speeding along, but now as they rounded a corner it halted again. They had only to glance from the window to see why.
The street ahead was barricaded with wood, furniture, even an overturned buggy. Standing on either side of the barricade were peasants, armed with guns, pitchforks, axes, even rocks. A block or so beyond them a house was afire, its flames providing an eerie light that silhouetted the peasants and sent their shadows dancing crazily along the street.
Shouts went up as the men at the barricade saw the carriage. She heard someone shout, “You there, driver, bring the coach up here where we can have a look.”
Her husband leaned out the window and called to the driver, “Turn around.”
The carriage began
