Page 48 of My Dear Hamilton

Freedom is the first need of the human heart.

—Sophie de Grouchy, in her Letters on Sympathy

Paris, Spring 1786

Sympathy is our most natural and moral sense.

And its origin is pain.

From our first wail of infancy, we’re creatures who suffer.

Perhaps women most of all.

From cradle to grave, we gather bruises, scrapes, and cuts. And all of us—from peasant to queen—stumble and fall.

What’s more, every injury hurts infinitely.

First, when the bone breaks.

Then in every remembrance of it, such that when we see another person in pain, we feel the echo in our own body.

That’s why, blinded by tears, I shuddered with every crack of the hammer over the scene of torture playing out before me in the majestic place de Grève, where a doomed prisoner screamed for mercy as the executioner shattered his bones.

I didn’t know the condemned criminal strapped to the cartwheel.

I didn’t know his family.

I didn’t even know if he was guilty.

I had no relation to him whatsoever except the most important one—that we were both human beings.

But when the executioner raised the steel rod to break the victim’s forearm, I quite nearly prayed for him to miss his mark and kill the man. Let the blow end his suffering. Let the victim’s senses go quickly, like mine were beginning to as I grasped my uncle’s gloved hand to fight off a swoon.

But I didn’t pray, because this suffering to which I bore witness was in the name of the king’s justice, supposedly ordained by a god I didn’t believe existed.

Any god who ordained this would be a devil.

And I didn’t believe in devils, either, unless they be men.

“I shouldn’t have brought you, Sophie,”

Uncle Charles whispered as, in anticipation of death, black crows gathered on the rooftop of the nearby H?tel de Ville.

“Come away now.”

His voice was a rasp of emotion with an uncomfortable awareness of the peasantry, for whom this horrific spectacle was meant to be both entertainment ...

and a warning.

Those peasants bold enough to peek up from beneath dirtied caps to look at me and my uncle seemed to say, You don’t belong here. And perhaps we didn’t. Though I wore only a plain somber gray Brunswick gown unadorned by ribbon or lace, and my uncle was dressed in black, the people knew aristocrats on sight.

They also knew that even minor aristocracy, like my family, would never be made to suffer the torment of being broken upon the wheel, shrieking and begging for a swift death.

We had the money and connections to avoid such a fate.

The common people knew it and I knew it too.

So I didn’t obey my uncle, but smeared away my tears, forcing myself to watch as the screaming wretch’s bones were shattered, brittle ends breaking through skin, spattering crimson blood on the cobbles.

His screams were indescribable, but they seared my soul, and I reminded myself that I was here because of my uncle’s important work—our work, he often flattered me to say . . .

Uncle Charles was a magistrate, not a street vendor hawking his wares.

But he knew we might be the only chance to end suffering like this, and for that reason he addressed the crowd.

“I represent three peasants of Chaumont who’ve been sentenced to die this same way,”

he told the knot of people standing nearest.

“I authored a defense of them.”

I held one of his pamphlets now, crumpled in the tightness of my grip as my uncle raised his voice.

“Perhaps you’ve read it . . .”

His words made no impression upon a burly bricklayer who had climbed atop a crate for a better view and cheered every hammer blow.

But we’d captured the attention of a fishwife in brown homespun and a young fruit seller in dirtied skirts, basket in hand and tears in her eyes.

Neither were likely to have the education that would allow them to read my uncle’s pamphlet, but they’d heard about the three peasants of Chaumont.

Oh yes, they’d heard.

And word passed.

“It’s Charles Dupaty,”

someone whispered.

“He’s here.”

My uncle had gained renown (or perhaps infamy) by taking on the case, and more heads turned our way when he shouted, “Three innocent men! Forgotten by our barbaric system of criminal justice, left to rot in prison for thirty months, then condemned without evidence or credible witnesses!”

A priest in the crowd hissed at us, “For shame.”

I did feel shame for using the occasion of one man’s death to draw attention to the plight of three others.

The dying man deserved, perhaps, the witness of every person for his suffering.

But we couldn’t save him.

We could only, if we were lucky, deprive the executioner of his audience and make the end quicker for the dying man.

“If the three peasants of Chaumont were rich men,”

Uncle Charles continued, undaunted, “they’d never have been forgotten in jail.

Rich men would’ve been able to appeal . . .”

My part, now, was to say what my uncle couldn’t.

Ordinarily, it outraged me that the things women said were easily dismissed, but now I wished to take advantage of it.

I was just twenty-two.

I’d be thought a termagant for speaking about legal matters in public, but not a criminal.

So with at least fifty pairs of eyes trained upon us, I found my voice. “But rather than reform a merciless system that celebrates suffering, the Paris Parlement resorts to judicial murder.”

Several men turned with hostile glares.

“Good thing you’re a beauty,”

one snarled.

If I were not a noblewoman on a magistrate’s arm, he would’ve beaten me into silence.

As I swallowed my fear, murmurs in the crowd grew louder, nearly drowning out the screams of the shattered man.

Sensing the change, the executioner ended the prisoner’s suffering with the coup de grace—a blow to the torso that ruptured every organ.

Then all was silent.

The dead body was left upon the wheel, like carrion to be pecked by crows.

Some words were chanted about how the criminal’s suffering purged us all of sin.

Someone else said a prayer, acknowledging our submission to the king.

Then the soldiers commanded us to go ... but some people sullenly took copies of our pamphlet as they went.

Long after our carriage rolled away, the dead man’s screams still echoed in my ears, and I retched out the window, my sour vomit spattering the cobbled streets of Paris.

“Poor Grouchette,”

Uncle Charles said, using my childhood nickname as I fought another wave of nausea.

“However brave you are, you’re still a gently bred young lady.

Now I fear you may never sleep again.”

“Should I?”

I asked with a sob as the horses clopped along.

“Should any of us sleep while things like this take place? It seems as if the whole world has closed their eyes to injustice.”

And I wanted to shake the world awake.

But first, I’d have to get hold of myself.

Uncle Charles valued rationality not emotion.

I feared that if I couldn’t stem my tears, he might trust me less in the great legal matter he’d undertaken at risk to his career and our family reputation.

A fear that was confirmed when he pressed into my palm a silver flask of brandy with which to rinse my mouth and said, “I think it’s time you bow to the wishes of your parents.”

“Not that again, not now,”

I pleaded, taking a gulp to cleanse my tongue.

I’d just seen a man die.

It was obscene to speak of my future when the executed man had none.

My parents wanted me to marry—a fate I dreaded.

In helping my uncle with his practice of the law, I’d learned the myriad ways in which husbands abused their power.

And even if I were ignorant of that, there remained the regrettable reality that my heart already belonged to a young man I could never marry.

A good and brave soldier who risked his life, fortune, and freedom in the cause of liberty.

But because my love was a shameful secret, I only said, “You know I’ve no wish to take a husband, Uncle.

I’m much happier to devote myself to our causes like a nun to Christ.”

My uncle managed a small smile, perhaps remembering the family row when I renounced my faith.

My kindhearted mother had sobbed against her rosary beads.

My father, the Marquis de Grouchy, barked, “I’ll have no godless girl under my roof!”

Only Uncle Charles took my part in the matter.

Sophie is special, he’d argued.

She consumes Rousseau and Voltaire like breathing air.

She’s conversant in every subject.

Let her leave off the prayer beads, the embroidery, and other feminine occupations.

Sophie is a scholar with a man’s mind.

Of course, I didn’t feel as if I were a man in body or mind.

And I believed other young ladies would be scholars if only such qualities were prized and encouraged in us.

Nevertheless, I didn’t protest against my uncle’s defense, because he’d persuaded my parents to allow me to study with him.

If she were a man, I’d take her for a legal apprentice.

She’ll be a great help to me . . .

I liked to think I had been a great help to Uncle Charles during the past year while we fought to save the lives of three condemned peasants.

I’d fetched books, researched precedents, taken notes, suggested arguments, and carried his writings to the printer.

I’d even suggested that he sell his pamphlet, the funds for which might be used for the benefit of the prisoners.

I truly believed we’d save them.

But now in the carriage beside me Uncle Charles said, very gravely, “It’s not going to end well, Sophie.

My clients will likely die upon the wheel, just as that man did today, and it’ll likely be the last case I ever take.”

“You can’t mean it,”

I said.

“Every day we’re overwhelmed by pleas to help other unfortunates condemned by the king’s so-called justice.”

Even if we didn’t save our three prisoners, we might still make a difference.

Not just through charity but by opening the public’s eyes.

That’s what my uncle had said at the start, but now he took the wig from his head and rubbed at his thinning gray hair.

“I have reason to believe the judges of the Paris Parlement will retaliate against me.”

That hardly seemed fair since my uncle’s pamphlet hadn’t accused any judge of corruption.

He’d merely pointed out the unfairness in the system of the ancien régime.

“They’ll see reason,”

I argued.

“They’re learned men.

They can learn to see the humanity of peasants and a kinder way of justice.”

“My darling niece, were your passion alone to count upon the scales of justice, France would be a better nation.

But I can no longer shield you from the expectations of society.

I’ve brought the king’s disapproval down on the family name.

It will be up to you to redeem it with a brilliant marriage.”

I didn’t see how my marriage—brilliant or otherwise—would do anything for the Grouchy name, considering that I’d have to give it up.

The family hopes more properly rested upon my brother, the heir to my father’s title.

But the lines of worry on my beloved uncle’s face made me wish to give comfort.

“I don’t believe you have brought down the king’s disapproval upon us, Uncle Charles.

I don’t believe the king knows half the crimes committed in his name while he gorges himself on dainties at Versailles without any concern whatsoever for the people over whom he rules.”

“Be fair-minded,”

Uncle Charles chided, as he always did when my passions got ahead of me.

I did not like to be strident, but I had, as Maman often told me, an unladylike temper.

“King Louis is still relatively young, and those who know him say he’s well intentioned.

He can learn, if he’s well advised.

But I’m not enough connected at court to have the king’s ear.”

Neither was my father.

If we wanted to save the lives of the three peasants and save my uncle’s career—not to mention preserve me from an unwelcome marriage—we’d need the support of someone very wealthy and sympathetic to our cause.

Someone with the bravery of a lion.

Someone both respected by the king and beloved by ordinary people.

And of course, at that time, there was only one such man in France.

The Marquis de Lafayette.

The very man with whom I fancied myself so helplessly in love.

“It’s disgraceful enough that you skipped Mass,”

Maman said, catching me in the parlor with my charcoal and sketchbook, my mending unfinished, the doors of our Paris apartments thrown open to the courtyard where my little cousins ran wild without supervision.

“Must you also set such an unladylike example?”

I wasn’t sorry for not wasting time in prayer.

But I did feel guilty for having abandoned my mending, because we couldn’t afford as many servants as we used to and holes in hosiery wouldn’t mend themselves.

Besides, spinster daughters should at least be counted upon for watching the younger children when their governess was away.

“I’m sorry, Maman.

It’s just that I keep thinking, if only I can capture his pain in a portrait . . .”

In the weeks since the execution, I’d sketched a hundred men being broken on a hundred wheels and had never been able to expunge the sadness from my heart.

Perhaps I never would.

Perhaps it was important for my own humanity that I didn’t.

And if I could elicit sympathy from even one important person with my art, shouldn’t I try?

Maman sighed.

“I’ll never forgive your uncle for taking you to an execution.

If he keeps agitating for these prisoners, he’ll land himself in the Bastille and drag you with him.”

I shuddered at the mention of the Bastille, the ancient fortress in Paris, with its eight stone towers.

No longer needed as a battlement, it had become a jail.

At first for suspected traitors, then religious dissidents.

More recently for publishers, playwrights, and pornographers.

It was a prison controlled by the king’s whim. A royal guard might take you unawares, strike your shoulder with a ceremonial white wand, and then you disappeared.

The king’s defenders said conditions in the Bastille were much improved, its few occupants ensconced in sumptuous suites enjoying decadent meals.

I found that difficult to believe after having read firsthand accounts of prisoners who’d been forgotten in oubliettes, chained up with rotting skeletons.

Voltaire called it a palace of revenge.

The idea of being imprisoned there made me afraid.

Yet not as afraid as seeing three more men tortured to death without having done something to stop it. “I believe we can win powerful people to our side, Maman. Uncle Charles has secured an invitation to dinner from the Marquis de Lafayette next week and I—”

“Sophie, this obsession with your uncle’s work cannot go on.

I, too, once fancied myself an intellectual.

Then I became a wife and mother, taking on the duties one must.”

“Must one?”

I asked, hotly.

Men devoted themselves to science, the study of the law, and the pursuit of justice.

Because I was female, this and everything else that mattered to me was to be abandoned?

My mother sighed again.

“We all have duties.

Your father served the king as a page and his country as a soldier, and now serves his family by managing our estate even as it falls into disrepair.

In addition to all these responsibilities, he keeps food in your belly and clothes on your back and—”

“Of course,”

I said, painfully reminded of my dependence.

My books, my comfort, and all my intellectual pursuits came at the expense of someone else’s labor.

As a daughter, I was a burden.

Another mouth to feed.

That was the reality, and I didn’t wish to give my parents pain. “At least I’ve not cost Papa a dowry.”

My mother stroked my arm, softly.

“But neither have you secured relations that might help us rise in status.

Worse, you have rejected so many suitors you begin to make enemies.”

It didn’t seem fair that the same men who enjoyed my company in the social whirl of Paris should think me a coquette merely because I did not wish to marry.

But the reality was that most noblewomen my age were long since wed.

The queen had been only fourteen at the time of her nuptials.

Lafayette’s wife too.

And if I didn’t become a wife, I’d remain a daughter all my life. Or at least until my brother inherited my father’s title, in which case I’d be at his mercy, perhaps acting as governess if I wouldn’t take the veil.

Still, none of that seemed important.

“Maman, you taught me we owe a duty to our fellow man.

I took that lesson to heart.

Please don’t prevent me from helping Uncle Charles with this case and, after it’s done, I promise to submit myself to your wishes.”

My mother sighed a third time.

It wasn’t permission, precisely, but neither was it a refusal.

And later that week, Maman contented herself to be vexed merely because I wouldn’t permit the friseur to style my hair under a towering powdered pouf.

Such atrocious creations—festooned with everything from feathers to fat stuffed songbirds—were thankfully going out of fashion.

And I hoped that would not be the only thing to change in France.

“It’s only one of Lafayette’s American dinners, Maman.

We wouldn’t wish to make any of the Americans feel underdressed.

Remember, Monsieur Franklin used to walk about Paris in a beaver hat . . .”

She sniffed.

“Nevertheless, it’s important to make a favorable impression.”

At her urging I donned my best robe à l’anglais—its bold red satin stripes recalled the flag of the new American nation across the sea—and rouged my lips, pleased by the result in the mirror.

The truth was, I did wish to make a favorable impression.

Not only for my family’s sake, but for the Marquis de Lafayette, whose help we needed.

And for whom I harbored every secret, fevered emotion a young lady could feel for a married man . . .

We’d met five years before at a celebratory ball in honor of Lafayette’s return from America, where he’d fought heroically in their cause.

I was just eighteen then, and Lafayette himself was a major general of twenty-four, and also the toast of France, fawned over and feted by even the royals.

But when we were introduced, I’d had the temerity to ask Lafayette how it was Americans could declare all men are created equal and still keep slaves.

Maman had been appalled at my cheek, but the dashing major general lingered at my side to explain the dreadful compromises Americans had made to unify, and the ongoing work to abolish the slave trade.

Lafayette had lingered with me while impatient men in satin suits cleared their throats, and jealous noblewomen flapped their fans.

He made me feel as if it were not impertinent at all for a young woman to take an interest in humanity.

I’d loved him each day since, despite my attempts to reason the feeling away like a philosopher.

I agreed with Adam Smith’s contention in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that love was ridiculous.

Certainly, it’d been the ruin of many women.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Each time I came into Lafayette’s presence I found myself as tongue-tied and giddy as a girl half my age.

Knowing this, I belatedly wondered if I should let Uncle Charles go without me—better to stay home than to make a fool of myself in front of Lafayette, or perhaps even his wife.

For though Lafayette’s wife did not seem to mind his alleged dalliances—what self-respecting French wife would stoop to notice a mistress?—I didn’t wish to be one of the many bejeweled women who flung themselves at the man.

However, the importance of the dinner to the cause of our prisoners renewed my determination to simply compose myself.

That I loved Lafayette ought to be of no consequence—there could never be more to it, for I was no coquette.

So why, then, did my heart kick up its pace that night upon entering his town house on the rue de Bourbon?

In the entryway, a portrait of George Washington—the rebel general under whom Lafayette served in America—was given the place of honor amongst the glittering mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and upholstered neoclassical chairs—none of which were threadbare like ours.

Unlike my father, of falling fortunes, Lafayette was one of the wealthiest men in France, and we meant to recruit that wealth and influence to our cause.

The dinner guests were a mixed company.

Men and women.

American and French.

The tall, distinguished new American minister Thomas Jefferson was present, along with his ginger-haired daughter, Patsy, who looked to be about fourteen.

Also present was a ward of the Lafayettes’—a colorfully dressed young Iroquois who hailed from the North American forests. But even in such varied company, I spotted someone quite unexpected: Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe.

She wasn’t precisely a courtesan, but rather a kept woman—a so-called dame entretenue.

Once, she’d been the mistress of the Vicomte de Pons, more recently the mistress of the Prince de Conti, and it was suspected she took more lovers besides.

Of noble blood, the beauty hosted her own salon, welcoming gamblers at her card tables.

She was rarely shunned in society, but Americans could be shocked by French norms when it came to marital fidelity.

So it surprised me to find Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe here, wearing pink from head to toe—frothy rose bows, pale peony petticoat, and a pink gemstone bracelet on her wrist that dazzled as she offered her hand to my uncle for a kiss.

Then she inclined her head of golden ringlets to me.

“Mademoiselle de Grouchy, where have you been hiding yourself? I haven’t seen you since the Opera last year where you charmed every young man in my box, then broke their hearts.”

I started to tell her that I’d been crusading on behalf of condemned peasants, but she interrupted.

“Allow me to present my daughter, émilie.”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe pulled from behind her skirts a delicate swan of a girl, already powdered and pinned, her youthful beauty on such display that there could be no question her mother meant either to sell her virtue to the highest bidder or find a wealthy husband before the temptation should arise.

“Just thirteen years old, but too pretty to keep under wraps . . .”

émilie looked younger than thirteen; perhaps not even twelve.

Uncle Charles tried, in vain, to hide a frown at Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe’s transparent ambitions.

Meanwhile, little émilie greeted us with great poise, showing that her mother had taught her well.

“Magistrate.

Mademoiselle de Grouchy . . .”

émilie’s adorable curtsy so charmed me that I replied, “Oh, but you must call me Grouchette, like my friends do.”

The girl’s nose nearly twitched in amusement.

Behind us, a man’s voice intoned, “May I also call you Grouchette, mademoiselle, or have we become strangers again after all this time?”

I turned to see our host, the Marquis de Lafayette.

And despite my determination to betray nothing, my breath caught at the sight of him.

Tall, with auburn hair tied back, he wore a sword at his hip we all knew was more than ornament.

He had, at his own expense and in defiance of the king, wielded that sword to help liberate the American colonies so they might govern themselves.

Now twenty-eight, the young officer was at the peak of his physical grace, with long, lean, muscular limbs and an easy confidence.

Lafayette took my hand and raised it to his lips.

Which was my complete undoing.

For the moment his warm lips brushed my skin, I was struck with a bolt of base desire.

Perhaps he realized it, because his eyes danced with mirth.

“Mademoiselle, I’m delighted to see you.

I’ve missed our conversations.”

I smiled, thinking of a quick, witty reply.

The kind I usually engaged in so easily in social situations.

But staring into those gray-blue eyes, I quite forgot what I was going to say.

A flush swept over me, and my fingers trembled in Lafayette’s hand.

Trembled! Worse, when I saw Lafayette’s wife, I snatched my hand back, as involuntary a motion as if it’d been burned upon a stove.

Startled, Lafayette’s brow furrowed.