Chapter Text
Dearest Gentle Reader, London has long since proven her remarkable talent for overlooking what sits directly before her eyes. This has become nonesomore abundantly clear than in the case of the one Vicomte de Montfaucon. A staple memory ingrained in the younger generation of the Ton, the Vicomte has long since been allowed to wander our most respected drawing rooms with nothing more than a paintbrush, a ragged appearance, and a personality quite unlike the gentlemen who surround him. It should be considered fortunate, then, that the Vicomte’s eccentricity has long been mistaken for innocence.
The Revolution, as we are all aware, was not so considerate towards those of noble blood. For a family such as the Montfaucon’s, this goes double, devoted so as they were to the old order, rather than France’s great experiment at liberty. So, dearest reader, how can it be that when the entire Montfaucon family met their fate during the Terror, what was so different about our mysterious Vicomte that he escaped the blade free and unharmed?
It appears, dear reader, that the Vicomte’s artistic pursuits were not confined to landscapes and the agreeable views of the countryside which now decorate so many of the houses in England, and beyond, if the rumor among collectors are to be believed. In his youth, it seems, our dear Vicomte served as recordkeeper, and later, as pamphleteer and propagandist for causes much less popular in the drawing rooms of London, and men whose name requires no introduction to the well informed. Robespierre. Saint-Just. Architects of Terror.
Finally, dear reader, we get to perhaps the most damning, and most controversial, piece of evidence regarding the enigma that is Vicomte de Montfaucon. The painting, notably not done by the Vicomte, that bears his name. ‘Montfaucon at the Scaffold’, sometimes titled ‘Citizen Montfaucon at the Scaffold’, or perhaps ‘The Libertine Montfaucon at the Scaffold’, is oft considered one of the most important regarding the final days of the Terror. For those familiar with its many incarnations, for several copies, not all carbon copies, have been created by different artists, they will recall the depiction of a young aristocrat, revealed to have been the Vicomte himself after much research, collapsed at the foot of the guillotine, overcome by a grief that some have deemed rather more intimate than friendship ought to permit. Whether such interpretations reveal anything of the subject himself, or merely the appetites of those who have repeated them, is a question this author shall leave to the reader. And if the Vicomte de Montfaucon has kept such company, and concealed such a past, what might his present companions discover should they look a little closer?