The Academie Read Free

lesson of the day.
    “Good morning, Mademoiselle Eliza,” I say, taking my place next to her. The maid pours out tea for me. Caroline sits down again and bumps the table so that my tea sloshes into the saucer. No matter. She has quite taken my appetite away.
    “I was just giving Eliza some hints about how to manage here,” Caroline says.
    “You mean, about the cold bathing every day, and the lessons where we must carry our books upon our heads?” I smile. She has been talking about nothing of the kind. I wonder if she knows that I am aware of what she has been trying to do to me ever since my mother married her brother.
    She must be. Caroline is not so clever as to hide her distaste for me.
    “Ah yes,” says Caroline. “Madame Campan has some rather antiquated ideas about education, I’m afraid, but she is intelligent, and there is a good library here. All the political writings of the ancients, and Shakespeare—translated, of course.”
    I want to laugh aloud to hear Caroline speak of the library, which she has entered but once. “I hear she has a well-thumbed copy of Machiavelli,” I say, knowing that Caroline can have no idea what I speak of. She could barely read when she arrived two years ago. I’m astonished at how glibly she pretends to be educated.
    Whether she understands my jab or not I do not know, because she deftly changes the subject and studies Eliza, looking her up and down as if she were a new toy. “Dear Eliza, I see we shall have to do something about your hair.”
    “What’s wrong with it?” Eliza asks. She looks cross. Perhaps Caroline has not yet influenced her enough to make her hang on Caroline’s every word and believe all she says.
    “It is so beautiful! I did not mean to criticize. Only with such hair, I know my own maid could work magic with it. But perhaps she should not. You would quite take away all my beaux.”
    Now Eliza’s cheeks glow pink. She is young. Perhaps too young to be thinking of men and love just yet, and perhaps Caroline has embarrassed her. I know Caroline is disingenuous. She has only one interest. It is General Murat, whom she longs to marry, but whom her brother will not permit to see her.
    “I would be honored if she would try,” Eliza says.
    Oh, dear. The process has begun. No one is immune. Caroline even worked her cunning upon Madame Campanin some way, although I feel that at heart Madame does not like her. She accepts her because we must all be Republicans now. But she would prefer to have her fashionable school filled with girls like me, who have titles and lineage, even if it extends to Martinique on my mother’s side. That is why she gives such preference to the Auguier sisters, Marthe and Jeanne.
    I am thankful that our little dance is interrupted by the younger classes in their green, pink, and blue caps. I don’t know them all, but the Blues—Marie, Constance, Émilie, Marguerite, and Catherine—are promising girls who will take their places in society and be a credit to the school.
    “Bonjour! Bonjour!” they call out, full of the energy of children, although they are between eleven and fourteen years old already and could marry in another few years. Caroline reaches into her reticule and pulls out sweets for them—absolutely forbidden before evening tea. Yet if I told Madame Campan, I would only become the enemy. I smile at Eliza, but her eyes are drawn hungrily to the sweets. I shake my head just a little. She turns her attention to the brioche on her plate.
    Chatter fills the air and I sit quietly, sipping my tea. Before long the school bell tinkles in the distance.
    “There is our signal,” Caroline says, standing and crooking her arm with the clear expectation that Eliza will take it, and so she does.
    “That’s the school bell?” Eliza asks. “Where I went to school in Virginia the schoolmistress rang a great loud bell that could be heard clear across my father’s fields.”
    “Did you go to school with Negro children?”