On a brisk Sunday in October 2012, I emerged from the Métro station at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris and walked into a sea of red. A political demonstration was in full swing. Red hot air balloons emblazoned with the logo of the French Communist Party floated above the crowd; rows of marchers chanted their opposition to proposed austerity measures while carrying white sheets painted with red lettering; and men wearing red scarves passed out leaflets that detailed policy positions in black and red ink. The mood was festive, but the color turned my thoughts grim.
From June 13 to July 28, 1794, the Place de la Nation—known at the time as the Place du Trône Renversé (Place of the Overturned Throne)—had run red with blood as a guillotine erected on the spot claimed 1,306 lives. On July 22, 1794, the mother, sister, and grandmother of Adrienne de Lafayette counted among its victims. I was on my way to their final resting place—Picpus Cemetery.
Some Parisian burial sites attract droves of tourists, but Picpus is not one of them. While mounds of flowers accumulate at Jim Morrison’s grave at Père-Lachaise and groups of schoolchildren file past the royal tombs at Saint Denis, only occasional visitors find their way to the low, stucco-covered building with an unmarked wooden door that leads to Picpus. The hours when the cemetery is open vary according to when the groundskeeper is at home. On the day of my visit, a notice on a nearby bulletin board announced that he was out, but I had come too far to give up. Ignoring the barking of a dog, I tried the door. It opened, and I entered.
I found myself standing in a cobblestoned courtyard surrounded by squat beige buildings: the groundskeeper’s house, a convent, a chapel, and, in the far left corner next to the chapel, a tall, narrow metal gate supported by two stone pillars. On each pillar was a plaque—one commemorating Lafayette, the other honoring General Pershing, and both indicating proudly that they had been donated by the Benjamin Franklin Chapter of the Paris Daughters of the American Revolution. Beyond the gate lay the cemetery, but the gate was locked.
Not knowing what to do, I climbed the steps to the chapel, opened the door, and took a seat in the front pew. As I sat in the darkness, I began thinking about the convent next door, about the nuns in my family, and about the communities of religious women who had always welcomed me warmly. Quietly, a side door opened and a woman in her seventies with short, white hair and a plain skirt and sweater—with a simple gold cross hanging from a fine chain around her neck—came in and began tending to the vases of flowers arranged on the floor around the sanctuary.
Mustering my most polite French, I rose and broke the silence: “Excuse me, Madame. Are you a sister?” She was—Sister Marie-Marthe of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and of the Perpetual Adoration. “Please forgive me for bothering you,” I said, “but I wonder if there might possibly be any way for me to take a photograph of Lafayette’s grave? You see, I’m an American writing a book about Lafayette. This is my last day in Paris, and I came here just to take a picture.” She looked at me kindly but said that she was very sorry. She couldn’t allow me into the cemetery. The groundskeeper would be furious.
I understood, I said, but we continued talking. I told her about my aunt, a sister of Saint Joseph, whose order originated in France but was expelled during the revolution. I explained that I found it moving to be at Picpus, the final resting place of the sixteen nuns who sang as they walked to the guillotine in the summer of 1794, and whose stories were memorialized by Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues of the Carmelites. Sensing that this might be a long conversation, we both sat down, and after a while an idea came to me. Might she possibly be willing to go to the cemetery herself and take photos with my camera? Sister Marie-Marthe’s eyes lit up. “Yes! That I could do!” She took my camera, stood up, and walked back out the side door.
Alone again, I began to wander around the sanctuary, examining its walls. Carved into the stone were the names, ages, and occupations of every person guillotined at the Place de la Nation, numbered according to the order of their deaths. Adrienne’s grandmother, sister, and mother were numbers 1039, 1040, and 1041 respectively; the Duchesse d’Ayen had watched her mother and daughter beheaded before the blade fell on her own neck. Many of the inscribed names were aristocrats or people who’d traveled in royal circles: Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was the first husband of Napoleon’s empress Joséphine; the German Prince Frederick III; Marie Antoinette’s architect, Richard Mique. But others were commoners with no particular claim to fame or notoriety: a painter on porcelain, a domestic servant, a police administrator.
Sister Marie-Marthe returned to find me lost in thought. As we sat together on the wooden pew talking about the pictures she had taken, I posed the question that had been on my mind for three years. Would she agree, I asked, that Lafayette is not widely admired in France? Yes, she said. Only Americans visit his grave, and an American flag flies over it. I paused and asked if she had any idea why. She thought for a moment, then gestured to the names on the walls. “The French Revolution was a complicated time,” she said, “and Lafayette was a complicated man. People like simple stories; simple stories get remembered. Lafayette’s story isn’t simple.” I nodded. She was right.
As I gathered my belongings and thanked her for her help, I asked if I could make a donation to the sisters as a token of my gratitude. Again, she considered carefully. At length she answered: “No. Thank you, but no. Go back to the United States. Write your book. And tell Lafayette’s story.”