Cécile (novel)

Cécile is an historical novel by the British writer F. L. Lucas. His second novel, it was first published in 1930. It is a story of love, society and politics in the France of 1775–1776, set largely in Picardy and Paris, which locations form its two parts.

Cécile, 18, and Andrée, 23, are daughters of the Marquis de Maurepaire of Vraulx Saint-Mein in Picardy. Cécile is a joyous may-fly of a girl, just out of her convent and at once married off by her father, for money, to serious Gabriel de Rieux, 25 ("my heavenly bridegroom" ), whom she does not love. Andrée is a young philosophe, romantic about one thing (love), sceptical about all else. She is married to the dashing Gaston, Vicomte de Launay, 30, a proto-Romantic, who makes her miserable by his affair with a fawn-like peasant-girl, whom he swept into his saddle one moonlit evening in the woods. (He is a disciple of Rousseau.) Andrée and Gaston quarrel about this, about their children's education, and about politics. A colleague of Turgot, the reformist Finance Minister, Gaston is shocked by the condition of the rural poor and sets about reforming the estates of his father-in-law and those of his father, the bluff sensible old Comte de Launay – to the mockery and head-shaking of the noblesse and the gratitude of the paysans. The unhappy Andrée is advised by her Parisian aunt, the worldly Madame de Lavaganne, that she must come to Paris and seek distraction. In Paris Andrée frequents her aunt's salon. Cécile meanwhile longs for Paris and for "life". Gabriel, aware that she does not love him and fearing rivals, is reluctant to let her go to the capital. On Andrée's advice he gives way. In Paris Cécile takes a lover, the Abbé Maurice d'Ailly, "a pleasant little fox among the vines of Paris". Gaston takes a second mistress, Madame d'Aymery, whose only idea is "to look ravishing and to be ravished". Andrée soon finds out; the discovery kills her love. She learns, too, that Dick Elliot, a young English army officer on convalescent leave, has fallen in love with her:

On a visit to Saint-Cyr they become lovers. She informs Gaston, who knows he has deserved it. With Turgot fallen, he leaves for America as volunteer in Washington's forces. Months pass, gay with Parisian pleasures. Gabriel discovers Cécile's affair: when they are riding together in her carriage and the coachman is nodding, her horses stop unbidden outside her lover's front door. Stung by Cécile's hatred of him and his religion, he turns vindictive. He asks her father to apply for a lettre de cachet. One evening at a ball Cécile is arrested de la part du roi [:on behalf of the king]. Maurice deserts her and escapes. Andrée, frantic, knowing that such "disappearances" of women of good family are usually final, confronts Gabriel and asks him to relent. He wavers, looks out of the window, sees Dick waiting in Cécile's carriage – and rejects her appeal. She returns to the family château, noticing in passing that without Gaston the estates have gone to rack and ruin, and asks her father to use his influence – only to learn with horror that it was he who ordered the arrest. Telling her father he will never see her again, she rushes out of the château and into the night. Back in Paris Dick fights a duel with Gabriel. Both men are wounded. The authorities try to keep Cécile's identity and movements secret as they transfer her between prisons, but everywhere Madame de Rieux is taken, her looks and charm leave well-wishers, and her ingenuity clues. (She knows her sister will try to find and rescue her.) Andrée and Dick, with the help of their streetwise servants – one of many comic touches in the novel – trace Cécile across France to a convent beyond Nancy. They plan a rescue. Gaston returns from America unexpectedly, disillusioned with the needless bloodshed. He learns that in his absence his father has been killed in a confrontation with poachers. He is just in time to take the wounded Dick's place in the attempt to rescue Cécile. He has at last learnt to value Andrée: but too late – she cannot give up Dick, though Dick has now been recalled to his Regiment in the American War. Gaston requests an audience with the King, officially to give a first-hand account of events in America and to advise against French intervention, but privately to appeal for the release of Cécile. In a memorable scene, Vergennes escorts Gaston to Versailles. The American information is welcomed by Louis, who had regretted the fall of Turgot; the private appeal falls on deaf ears. In her incarceration Cécile learns from the Mother Superior that it was her father who ordered her arrest. Stunned, she attempts to escape alone that night. She is fatally injured in a fall. Gaston and Andrée, unaware, arrive just hours too late. Getting no response from her window they break into the nunnery and find the community in mourning for Cécile, who has won the hearts of the nuns in her brief time with them. Brushing past a distraught Gabriel, also just arrived, they start back for Paris in the desolation of a grey dawn.