In Paris, André refused more grandees than just Louis XVIII and the Duc d’Orléans. When the Constitutionalist nobles—Barnave, the Lameth brothers, and Duport—sent him salon invitations, he likewise declined, though in a gentler and more courteous tone, pleading that he was tied up with training at the Versailles camp.
As André saw it, these figures who now thundered across the political stage were, in truth, men of bluster. Within a year or two, they would either mount the scaffold, die abroad, or fade into the background—hardly worth “investing in,” and troublesome to be associated with.
By faction, André was closer to the Constitutionalist line of Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Bailly: they commanded the Paris National Guard, controlled the Paris City Hall, and held sway in the Constituent Assembly. General Lafayette was Colonel André’s nominal superior (nominal—he paid no salary), and André still owed the respected Mayor Bailly a major favor.
As for the Comte de Mirabeau, he counted as André’s mentor in oratory. André’s Brutus-style triumph in the Assembly owed much to that two-faced, licentious man. If André did not know that Mirabeau was mortally ill and near his end, he might have chosen to stand with the Constitutionalist camp led by Mirabeau and Lafayette.
Among the Revolution’s leaders at its various stages, only the keen-witted Comte de Mirabeau understood that, in launching a revolution, one must first think how to shorten it and lessen its destructiveness. Had Lafayette—famed for rectitude, honesty, kindness, and courage—cooperated to support him, France in 1792 might have been spared the runaway horse that, after a hysterical gallop, plunged into an endless abyss of terror.
Of course, this was André’s irresponsible conjecture. In fact, all Paris knew Mirabeau’s health was failing by the day. André himself was already planning for the post-Mirabeau arrangements.
One day, André brought Percy and Larrey to pay a joint call on the great statesman. After they stepped out, the two surgeons told Colonel André bluntly: the case was beyond control. Beyond syphilis, the comte’s suppurating eye disease had worsened; the bloodshot eyeballs looked ready to spring from his face (they strongly suspected late-stage diabetes with multiple complications). Kidney disease tormented him as well. For work, sleep, and women, he had resorted to heavy doses of laudanum; this only aggravated the illness.
“Earliest by next spring, latest by midsummer,” was the doctors’ prognosis for Mirabeau’s life.
On the sickbed Mirabeau motioned André to stay alone. He said frankly, “Days ago I advised the royal family to seize any chance to flee Paris, as Louis XIV did with the Fronde.”
“You are playing with fire, comte. But no matter,” André replied coolly. When Mirabeau struggled to press further, André cut him off:
“Please say no more. In the Marne—whether in Reims, or for myself, or for my troops—we will not welcome any sort of traitor.”
With that, André rose, bowed, and left without another word. With his own power swelling and Mirabeau’s time short, there was no need to indulge excessive requests. Weeks earlier, André had already learned that Mirabeau was plotting the royal family’s flight to the Marquis de Bouillé’s post at Metz.
Back at the ?le Saint-Louis villa, André summoned Javert and ordered him to have men steal back his autograph letters to Mirabeau—eleven in all—and bring them to him intact. Cautious as ever, André was sure he had not discussed the King or any bribes in that correspondence; still, better to retrieve and burn every line—safest of all.
Besides Mirabeau, André also paid a private call at Lafayette’s residence. Thanks to the deft handling of the bogus “comte” affair, André received a warm welcome from the family—warmest of all from Lafayette’s two nieces. In the salon, they recited André’s poems over and over at the top of their voices—from “If Life Deceives You” to the new “I Have Not Loved This World”—winning rounds of applause.
But once in Lafayette’s private room, the talk turned awkward. The “friend of the American people,” the American President’s godson, had a special request from the U.S. minister, Gouverneur Morris: to persuade André, a provincial deputy chief prosecutor, to stop publicly harrying America over its arrears to France.
Months earlier, Minister Morris and Minister of Finance Necker had agreed a memorandum on the 1.06-billion-livre debt. Under the Franco-American alliance, after deducting France’s free military aid, sums already repaid by the United States, and waiving interest, the net American debt came to 200,000,000 livres.
Even so, the Americans kept stalling. Commissioned by the Paris Commune, André attacked the U.S. government in the press. Leveraging his “foreknowledge,” he even “reported” a true-to-come story in Paris papers: that President Washington had quietly diverted the 200,000,000 livres owed to France to build a blue-water fleet—over sixty ships of the line, cruisers, and frigates—to strike the North African pirates preying on American shipping and to overawe European powers across the Atlantic.
The moment it ran, the French Assembly burst into outrage at the untrustworthy American minister, while across the ocean, Congress raised an uproar—not over French funds as such, but over the Washington administration’s autocracy: deploying a vast national outlay without prior approval of the legislature, in gross violation of the Constitution. The U.S. government spent the latter half of 1790 on its back foot.
To Lafayette’s lobbying, André said he would listen—but in his heart, he would not relent. In history, the Americans had only dragged revolutionary France backward—more harm than help. Better to seize the chance to berate the North American rebels and curry favor for a year or two with Westminster and Buckingham, so he might steal more cutting-edge technology from the far side of the Channel.
At least Lafayette brought a happier note. He told André that once Reims stabilized and the Ardennes brigands were crushed, he would, as Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, petition King Louis XVI to confer on André Franck the rank of brevet General, and to expand the Champagne regiment into a 5,000-man Marne-Ardennes composite brigade within the National Guard establishment.
“If possible, my lord marquis, please have the Military Committee of the Constituent Assembly process my promotion—and it should be the Champagne Composite Brigade, not a Marne-Ardennes Brigade,” André reminded him.
He did not wish to court disaster—especially in next year’s sensitive season. Unlike Mirabeau and Lafayette, André held no reverence or awe for monarchy. What worried him more were those tricolor-sashed, tricolor-cockaded ultra-left deputies and Commune members who could rouse the crowd—yet they were his firmest political allies in Paris at present.
As for pay—the matter André cared most about—Lafayette dodged and weaved until he could not. “Well… you must still find your own way.”
Soon Lafayette mentioned his plan for next year: with like-minded friends—Bailly, Mirabeau, Barnave, Talleyrand, the Lameths, and Sieyès—to found a new political club to uphold constitutional liberty, and he hoped André would join.
André turned deaf and soon pled a call of nature. Joking aside—an orphan without even a minor title—he had no need to wade into that mire.
In France—especially Paris—hosting a successful salon is never effortless; for hosts, and especially hostesses, it is a craft of years: learning others’ circles, honing skills, building networks.
Madame Condorcet was outstanding among them: sociable, innately elegant, learned; thanks to her husband, well read in letters, politics, philosophy, art, and music; a Bordelaise, skilled in wine and fluent in several tongues.
When Madame Necker, in tears, had to accompany her husband—stripped of the Finance Ministry—back to Switzerland and shut the doors of the “first salon of Paris,” Madame Condorcet’s salon became the brightest star in Paris—without peer.
Although an hour remained before the Friday at three o’clock start, the clever, gracious, and wealthy hostess kept moving without pause. With notebook and two stewards in tow, she flitted room to room, checking every item: lectern, chairs, and equipment for talks; refreshments and sweets; the rooms’ arrangement and tone—flowers were indispensable. Though Paris was in late autumn, the Jardin des Plantes’ hothouses could supply roses and lilies year-round—at terrifying prices.
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Madame Condorcet turned to ask about preparations: “Today the wines must be Bordeaux reds from my home—Lafite if possible—so that the deputy chief prosecutor will be pleased. … For tea we’ll use a cold buffet; I hear it is the rage in Bordeaux, and I rather like it. Remind the marquis at dinner not to draw Monsieur André into philosophy or mathematics. … And have the attendants keep their ears sharp. When they hear a fine poem, they must copy it down for me at once—the whole text. Yes, especially Monsieur André’s. … If Madame Lavoisier is present, seat her apart from Monsieur André; their relations are poor. Not the same room, and at dinner not face to face.”
Seeing his wife—a year younger than himself—so keyed up over an ordinary salon, the Marquis drew her into the study.
“My dear Sophie, there is no need for such pomp over a new guest named André,” he pleaded once the door shut. Unlike his warm-blooded wife, the marquis—with long, fluffed curls—was habitually shy, stiff in manner, and always buttoned up in plain high-collared linen.
Truth be told, today’s trouble was his doing. As a courtesy, he had invited the Marne Deputy Chief Prosecutor—soon to leave Paris—to his wife Sophie’s Friday salon. To his surprise, André—who had refused two Bourbon princes—accepted. He himself thought little of it, but once he told Sophie, matters changed.
Sophie was from Bordeaux; her family held dozens of hectares of vines and several chateaux. This year, thanks to André’s Bordeaux Mixture, growers and merchants had been spared disaster. Her gratitude was beyond doubt. Her earlier disdain for André—on account of her husband—had vanished.
Now she brushed off his pleas. She had another reason: “I want Monsieur André to leave a poem that will circulate through all Parisian high society. Just yesterday Madame de Sta?l, Necker’s daughter, returned from Geneva; her salon, they say, opens next week.”
The marquis understood: Madame de Sta?l would revive her mother’s salon in Paris, threatening Madame Condorcet’s renown; André—the city’s most popular poet—could offset the impact if he debuted there.
“So,” Madame Condorcet stressed, “by any means, André must leave a poem—and it must be newly composed at Madame Condorcet’s salon.”
To his young wife, the marquis was ever accommodating. To win her, he had labored five years to please her family. In his philosophy, he had even first proposed the shocking political thesis of women’s emancipation and equality.
He would not fail her now. Soon, he had the carriage readied and went himself to fetch André from the judge’s villa on ?le Saint-Louis.
Honored by such a ceremony, André arrived, but when he learned the hosts’ request, he shifted from guest to hard bargainer.
“Well then…” He put on a show of difficulty, said nothing further, neither yes nor no, staring instead at the Académie des Sciences badge on the marquis’s breast—the Louvre statue device.
“All right,” said the marquis, knowing what the man wanted.
A week ago, André had asked the Académie des Sciences to establish a branch at Chalons—a faculty or laboratory. As permanent secretary, the marquis had refused the impertinent request, boasting that only Paris was the proper gathering place for French science.
After a pause, he said, “It cannot be an Académie des Sciences ‘Champagne Branch.’ It can be a ‘Champagne Institute,’ with at most three académiciens at a time working there. You bear all costs.”
Under Louis XIV, the reformed academy was set in the Louvre Library, with revised statutes and two classes of members—salaried and honorary. Today, membership generally runs to seventy to eighty: in descending order, full members, honorary members, corresponding members, and pupils.
André named his price: “At least ten scholars of the academy, attendance voluntary, salaries doubled. Results and patents to be co-owned by the institute and the authors. In addition, United Investment Company will donate a substantial annual research grant to the Académie des Sciences.” Since the scale of the many companies grew, André established the United Investment Company as the above layer of almost all the companies under his control for better management, and patents and investment are controlled through it.
Seeing the marquis frown, he added: “I guarantee the poem composed at Madame Condorcet’s salon will shine—through Paris, France, even all Europe. If not, this gentleman’s agreement is void. Now—what, precisely, does the lady require in the poem?”
…
Life, Love, and Liberty—such was Madame Condorcet’s theme this week.
A regular, the couple’s old friend Brissot, spoke first from the lectern: “…The balance shifts by age and circumstance. In youth, before one knows love, life proceeds; perhaps freedom is most desired. What we call bonds then may not be true bonds, yet we crown freedom with nobility. Life is precious; love is beautiful; yet beside freedom they are somewhat less…”
André had little taste for such philosophizing. With a glass of red in hand, he glanced about the twenty-odd guests and saw many acquaintances. He greeted Robespierre, Pétion, and Buzot, chatted briefly, then moved to Judge Duranthon by the great window, who had signaled him.
“I hear you refused the Comte de Provence and the Duc d’Orléans?” the judge asked casually. In Paris, he had quickly fallen in with Brissot, Condorcet, and the rest.
André nodded, thinking how poorly Paris kept a secret; three days on, and all Europe knew.
“Mind yourself,” Duranthon warned. “The Tuileries’ contacts with the Marquis de Bouillé are mostly managed by the Comte de Provence in person. And the Duc d’Orléans still wields considerable power in the Palais de Justice. I am told he has men shadowing you and inquiring into your appointment as Marne Deputy Chief Prosecutor.”
“Thank you.” André took two glasses from a tray, handed one to his ally, and they drank.
“The Comte de Provence is the cleverest of the Capets—he will not act rashly. As for the Duc d’Orléans—my people will soon have the truth,” André said.
Before he could finish, the hostess’s sweet voice filled the hall again—Brissot had finally ended his long turn to half the room’s applause.
“If it had been Robespierre, I’d suggest a breath of air in the garden,” Duranthon joked; Robespierre’s speeches were deep and obscure, short on fire, and sent listeners dozing.
In 1790, many still took Robespierre for an honest man—upright, sincere, pure, loyal beyond weakening. André, however, knew that behind the wigs, the tight face, the gentle, thin frame, a terrifying virus lay hidden. Once it took him over, Robespierre would become boundlessly vain, cold, and pitiless.
Though André in Paris kept close company with Robespierre—staunch allies on the left—he never ceased to watch and guard against him. Five large drawers at the Police Prefecture held Robespierre’s secret files—Deputy Chief Javert’s handiwork at André’s special order.
After a few minutes of patter, Madame Condorcet announced the next speaker: “The Marne’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Monsieur André!”
To applause, André smiled, passed through the parted crowd, and strolled to the lectern. Mm—no rostrum at height; he felt a touch unmoored.
“I would like to recite a new poem, just composed. I hope you will enjoy it.” Unlike his Assembly performances, he cleared his throat, spoke a little haltingly, with a studied air of pride and oddity—drawing “tittering” laughter. It was deliberate—to hook interest and warm his voice. As for the verse, there was no need to polish: the original author had carried its meaning to a world-beating height.
“Life is dear indeed,
Love is prized yet more;
But for the sake of Liberty,
Both may be given o’er.
Give both—and only then you’ll know:
Without life, where will love be found?”
…
When André’s measured recitation ended, the thirty-odd listeners were silent. As he stepped down, expression clouded, squeezing into the aisle, the guests seemed to wake from sleep and thundered applause—clapping his shoulders and back, crying for an encore… One became five, until everyone could chant it by heart.
Later, Madame Condorcet wrote: “His eyes flashed with wit and passion; in that moment, André enjoyed a reverence like Henri IV’s; even the odd way he left the lectern was memorable. I knew he would bring a surprise, but I still underestimated him. It belonged not just to my salon, but to all Paris and to France.”
After the day’s “borrowing,” André declined the hostess’s repeated pleas and left early. At the door, he signaled the académicien not to forget their gentleman’s pact.
Waiting for his carriage, he saw Lavoisier arriving. They exchanged a nod.
“Thank you,” Lavoisier murmured as they passed, then entered.
The greatest of French chemists had been a lawyer; once calm, he knew that without André’s pushing for reduced penalties and quick plea deals, the successor to the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court—the ultra-left—might have hounded Lavoisier and the rest until the tax-farmers were stripped to ruin.
André halted and looked back. In his heart, he wished to urge Lavoisier and Condorcet both to flee to Britain and return in 1795. But such folly carried political risks no prudent statesman would take. He shook his head hard, cast the thought aside, and mounted the carriage.
…
In mid-November, André left Paris again for the Versailles camp. The Champagne Composite Regiment had completed just over two weeks of intensive training—ready to move the 150 km to the Marne at any time.
Days later, at Colonel André’s order, the regiment’s 1,500 set out for Reims. At the same time, Parisian politics was brewing a tremendous upheaval.
On 11-23, after fierce debate, the Constituent Assembly passed the highly contentious Decree on the Clerical Oath. It required all clergy in France to swear fidelity to the French Constitution of 1791. On 12-26—the second day of Christmas—the vacillating King Louis XVI, on the advice of his new ministers, again chose to yield to the Assembly and signed the decree into law.
Meanwhile, Talleyrand resigned the Bishopric of Autun and ignored Rome’s rebukes and threats, casting off the conservative Church as a revolutionary and freeing himself of all religious bonds. In a public letter to the Sacred College, he exulted: “So long as I am French, everything suits me. The Revolution has revealed a new destiny to the French nation; I will advance with it, laboring for its success. I will devote all my talents to the nation, resolved to serve the fatherland…”
Upon learning that Louis XVI had signed the Decree on the Clerical Oath, thereby making it law, André—the Marne Deputy Chief Prosecutor—sprang to his feet and told his intimates: “Gentlemen, take note! From this moment, France will split. And the shadow of war will follow. For ourselves, our families, and our common interests, we must keep tightly united at all times.”
Notes:
Fronde: was a series of civil wars in France (1648–1653) in which nobles and parlements rebelled against royal authority during Louis XIV’s minority.
brevet general: was an officer granted an honorary or temporary general’s rank—often without the full pay, seniority, or permanent command that came with the substantive grade.