The Phantom of Rue Royale

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  No. 8

  Received as security, one lot, for the refundable sum of eighteen livres, five sols and six deniers.

  To be redeemed within one month. This thirty-first of May 1770.

  Signed Robillard,

  Second-hand clothes dealer,

  Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple

  A pawnbroker? A moneylender? A way for the Galaine sisters to make some additional income? It was not so much the nature of the note which intrigued Nicolas as the date. 31 May was the day after the disaster in Place Louis XV. That pointed to a number of new lines of inquiry. He copied out the receipt, then stuck it back in its place, wetting the little piece of sealing wax with his saliva. At the back of the cupboard he found a soiled pair of women’s shoes. There were stains on the soles, which might be coal, or burnt wood, as well as some bits of straw. To which of the two sisters did they belong? Charlotte, the older of the two, or Camille, the younger? For no particular reason, he remembered the ants. He slid under the beds again and pulled out some of the cloths. They were narrow strips of linen, stained with thin trails of something yellowish, along which the insects were still moving. Lifting them to his nose, he retched at the strong smell of sour milk. Why had the sisters kept these soiled cloths? A vague idea came into his mind, and he promised himself to think about it later. He put everything back in its place and left the room.

  Miette was still asleep, and had not moved. Nicolas went into Élodie’s bedroom and looked down at Rue Saint-Honoré, which was filling with Parisians in their Sunday best. He saw the Galaine family returning. Their mourning clothes looked out of place in the bright sunlight, but the rules, although unwritten, had to be obeyed. Everyone in the shopkeeping classes knew the strict dress code in such circumstances. Whether or not to wear a black muslin bonnet or a dark gauze fichu was part of a good upbringing. Only the King wore purple when he was in mourning, and the Queen white. And the Galaines, in the heat of the tragedy and in the absence of a body, which was still at the Basse-Geôle, had not even stopped the clocks, or covered the furniture and mirrors in black.

  He soon heard the cook’s shuffling footsteps as she came to resume her duties at the maid’s bedside. He took advantage of this to escape for a moment. He still had one person to question. He heard her singing to herself in her room, impervious to the sadness around her. Geneviève greeted him with a pout which made her look like her father. She was sitting on a little stool, twisting one of her curls.

  ‘Good morning, Mademoiselle,’ said Nicolas.

  ‘I’m not Mademoiselle. Élodie was Mademoiselle. I’m Geneviève. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Nicolas. I think you were ill, is that right?’

  ‘Oh, yes! But not like Miette.’

  ‘Do you like Miette?’

  ‘Yes, but she cries too much. I don’t like Élodie.’

  ‘Your cousin? Why not?’

  ‘She never wants to play with me. Miette is very ill. I think it’s because of the monster.’

  ‘The monster?’

  She moved closer to him and took his hand. ‘Yes, the monster who took her to see the fireworks.’

  ‘How do you know that? You were ill in bed.’

  ‘No, no! I got out of bed and crept across the floor and listened. I know everything. Everything! That’s how it is. I saw Miette leave with a monster who had a white face. He had a big black hat, and then the others …’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The same ones.’

  ‘You mean they came back after they’d left?’

  She started pounding with her little fists. ‘No, no, you don’t understand, it was because—’

  Madame Galaine appeared at the door. ‘What are you doing to my daughter, Monsieur?’ she asked curtly. ‘Not only do you force yourself on us, you torment our child!’

  ‘I’m not tormenting anyone, Madame. I was merely talking to your daughter – a conversation I will have to resume sooner or later, whether you like it or not.’

  Ignoring this argument, Geneviève started humming, hopping from one foot to the other and staring into space.

  Nicolas looked at Madame Galaine. Of all the mysteries in this case, this woman was not the least of them. She was still young, but her beauty had already begun to fade, as if clouded over by some inner anxiety. But what was the source of that anxiety? Was it the consequence of an ill-matched marriage, in which her low opinion of her husband nourished frustration in a sensitive soul? What gave her that extremely strong character, which manifested itself in the way she defended her child or in her stubborn refusal to answer questions, even if meant attracting the strongest suspicion? Yes, Nicolas said to himself, only some grave secret could justify such an attitude – the attitude of a hunted animal. He made one last attempt to get through to her.

  ‘Madame, you have nothing to fear from me. You can tell me anything at all; I’ll understand and try to help. But please speak if you know anything. At least defend yourself and tell me your whereabouts on the night of the disaster. Otherwise, your silence can only be interpreted as an attempt at concealment.’

  She looked at him with an intensity that was almost palpable, and opened her mouth, as if about to say something. Her cheeks turned bright red, she raised both her hands to her flushed face and her expression hardened again. He sensed that she had almost dropped her guard and yielded, but had immediately clammed up again. She clasped her daughter convulsively to her and stepped back, throwing Nicolas a look almost of hate.

  In the corridor he ran into Charles Galaine. He assumed that the man had overheard the exchange, but had had no desire to intervene. Without further ado, he asked him for the name of the family’s notary. Galaine blinked in surprise and hesitated. At the commissioner’s insistence, he finally informed him that it was Master Jame, in Rue Saint-Martin, opposite Rue de l’Ours. At that moment Semacgus reappeared, with a wicker basket over his arm and Cyrus on a leash. The dog seemed rejuvenated, and was quivering all over at this unexpected outing.

  ‘What a pair!’ said Nicolas, as Charles Galaine slipped away. ‘You’re as laden as a mule!’

  ‘Do your friends a good deed and that’s how they treat you! On the way back, I dropped into the Hôtel d’Aligre. But let’s go downstairs …’

  In the servants’ pantry, he revealed his treasures: a salted capon, tongue from Virezon and a bottle of burgundy. Bread and almond biscuits completed the feast. They immediately sat down to eat. The surgeon tried once again to warn Nicolas against the problems that might result from mentioning in his official report the unusual nature of the phenomena he had witnessed. Damn it, he said, they weren’t in deepest Africa or in a trading post in India – that might have been different! To cheer Nicolas, who had grown sombre at these words, he talked about the last ‘miracle’ that had been seen in Paris, some ten years earlier. During a procession in Faubourg Saint-Antoine, it had apparently been observed that a plaster statue of the Virgin, standing in a niche, had turned her head in greeting as her divine son had passed. The next day, the road was filled with fifty thousand people, placing candles at the feet of the statue. The crowd grew so large that the police were unable to disperse it.

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Nicolas, amused.

  ‘Someone noticed that the statue backed onto a grocer’s shop, the main trade of which was the sale of candles. In fact, the grocer had very quickly run out of them! In the end, the Virgin was taken away and locked up in a secret place a long way from there.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Nicolas. ‘On the twenty-fifth of April, the night of Good Friday, Monsieur de Sartine sent me to keep an eye on the crowd assembled in Sainte-Chapelle and make sure that nothing unfortunate happened. As you know, according to tradition possessed people go to that church to be touched with relics of the true cross and cured of the devils that torment them. I observed that they stop screaming as soon as their contortions cease, and by the time they leave the shrine they’re back to normal. Monsieur de Sartine laughed and told me they’
re beggars paid to play the part! Hard to believe that respectable priests agree to lend themselves to such obscene play-acting.’

  ‘Priests have done much worse things than that, I can tell you! Besides, who needs to create possessed people? The species is so common, it isn’t necessary to create sham ones. One of the holes in your reasoning is to confuse things with their caricatures, and religion with superstition – that’s supposing that religion …’

  They clinked glasses and laughed. Semacgus would have plenty of time to examine the patient while waiting for Nicolas to come back. The commissioner went out to look for a carriage to take him to the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Rue de Vaugirard. But as it was a feast day, and people were travelling to other districts of Paris to visit family members, carriages were hard to come by. He had to wait for a while in Place du Palais-Royal, in front of the Château d’Eau, between Rue Fromenteau and Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, for a coachman to stop for him. He had plenty of time to contemplate this two-storey building, with its monumental oval gate. It was in fact just a façade, a trompe l’oeil construction designed as a companion to the Palais-Royal. There was a Parisian joke about sending a domestic, newly arrived from the provinces, to ask for a position with the verger of the Château d’Eau. The real building whose function corresponded to this name was on Boulevard du Temple, opposite Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. It comprised four pumps, worked by four horses that were relieved every two hours. These pumps filled a tank which, flushed twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, cleaning out the great sewer between the Bastille and the west of the city, a place where refuse was discharged downstream in the Seine. Nicolas knew all these facts from the police department in charge of refuse disposal.

  By the time he got to Rue de Vaugirard, the main Pentecost service was over. He glanced inside the church, which was cloudy with incense, and remembered the dislocated body of the Comtesse de Ruissec found at the bottom of the well of the dead.3 Too many of his memories these days were of the faces of dead people. His work consisted of calming the unquiet shades of victims by finding their murderers. As so often before, he headed straight for the dispensary. Père Grégoire was getting older, and these days barely left his laboratory, where he pursued his studies of medicinal plants, except to attend the daily services. By special permission of the prior, he had had a bed put in, and he spent his sleepless nights in prayer and meditation. Nicolas was sure he would find him there, remote from the life of the monastery.

  When he entered the vast, vaulted room filled with vapours and smells, with its strange retorts in which preparations and mixtures slowly simmered, their colours changing from an opalescent white to a deep emerald green, he found his old friend dozing in a large armchair from the time of the last king, covered in a tapestry depicting a forest of ferns. He was struck by how much the monk’s face had changed in such a short time. It was as if the effects of illness had scoured his round face, making its surfaces angular, bringing out the pinched nose with its sharp bridge. Of the fat monk he had once known, there remained no trace. The man before Nicolas now was an ascetic. It was if he had been transfigured, and the truth of his character revealed. His diaphanous, ivory-coloured hands were folded over his cowl, like those of a recumbent statue. He was probably praying rather than sleeping. Having sensed a human presence, he opened his eyes. They were still lively, but they softened and misted over when he recognised Nicolas.

  ‘My son, here is the miracle of this day of glory, when the Lord called the Holy Spirit on his disciples. An old man receives your visit!’ He raised his left hand and blessed him. ‘I don’t have much time left to live. Every visit is a joy granted me by God.’

  ‘Have you consulted the Faculty?’

  ‘My son, the Faculty can do nothing for what I have. Each of us must meet his end. The plants I have always loved sustain me, and help me to wait for mine. I pray to the Lord, if he deigns to judge me worthy, to send me his angels to bear my soul to Paradise. But you who are still in the world, how are you?’

  He smiled with a kind of delicacy and tapped his fingers on the armrests of his chair.

  ‘You’ve not only come to say hello; you need my help. Speak. Don’t be afraid of tiring me. The silence weighs on me sometimes, and I have a right to the mercy of words, especially as this encounter will probably be our last, my good Nicolas.’

  Nicolas was overcome with emotion. Père Grégoire’s subdued voice reminded him of two other revered voices, those of Canon Le Floch and the Marquis de Ranreuil. Of these three men, who had had a major influence on his life, two were now mere shades, while the third was gradually withdrawing from the world of the living.

  Nicolas pulled himself together and tried to set out, without too much emotion, the tragedy in Rue Royale, the murder of Élodie, the suspicion that had fallen on the members of the Galaine family and the increasingly strange manifestations occurring in the house. He made no attempt to conceal his doubts and his sense of helplessness, nor the hypotheses to which he had clung in an attempt to shine the light of reason on the incomprehensible. Père Grégoire listened with his eyes closed. On hearing certain details, he tensed his lips until they became white, as if in the grip of an invincible pain. He was silent for a moment, then pointed to a small bottle on a nearby sideboard. He lifted it to his lips, and gradually the colour returned to his face.

  ‘It’s a mixture of herbs and snake poison which I concocted,’ he said. ‘It gives me the illusion of a few moments’ respite.’ He took a deep breath. ‘My son, no counsel is more difficult than the one you are asking of me, nor more dangerous … The number of times I’ve witnessed things that seemed to be the work of the devil, and which in the end proved to be a mere collection of tricks! Evil only exists in relation to good. Any believer who boasts that he has never felt the slightest shudder at the thought of the demon is either a hero or a fool.’ He crossed himself. ‘The Scriptures are categorical on the subject. It is not for nothing that Saint John warns us that Satan charms the whole world, or that Saint Peter advises us, when faced with this adversary who prowls around us like a roaring lion, to hold firm to our faith. Whether we are bold or blind, we have every reason to dread his lures. It was to struggle against the fallen angel that the son of God came to earth.’

  A door slammed loudly in the distance. It seemed to Nicolas as if the liquids in the retorts were bubbling with renewed energy.

  ‘Father, how can I judge the genuineness of these manifestations? How to tell what is incomprehensible but real from mere seduction?’

  ‘First, your soul must be at peace. Only the pure can fight the impure. Then you must learn how to recognise the attacks of the devil. Listen to the age-old word of the Church: the signs of possession are well known, verified and immutable: “Speaking or understanding an incomprehensible language, revealing things which are distant or secret and displaying strength beyond one’s age or physical condition.” You must bear these three signs constantly in mind. If you encounter them, be on your guard and commend your soul to God, for there can be no doubt that you are in the presence of one possessed.’

  ‘So far, I have seen only the third of these signs with my own eyes and in a way that I cannot doubt.’

  ‘Wait, then, and observe, and if you see them all together, fight.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘The only lawful way is to call in a priest who is accustomed to dealing with such difficult matters, and who has been authorised by the bishop to do so. Only he can perform an exorcism to chase out the vile beast. When evil has subjugated the victim, has taken over his will and rendered him totally powerless, there is nothing else to do, for the demon is now master of the possessed person’s mind and body. It speaks with his tongue and hears with his ears.’

  ‘If the phenomena in the Galaine house get worse, and if the signs leave no room for doubt, who can help me? You, Father?’

  ‘Can’t you see the state I’m in?’ sighed Père Grégoire, raising his hands. ‘Exorcism requires
not only spiritual strength – that, at least, God still grants me – but also a physical stamina and a zeal I no longer possess. The only person entitled to deal with this matter is the priest with responsibility for such ceremonies in the diocese of Paris. There have been too many abuses in the past; that’s why these precautions are necessary. However, in order for him to intervene, you must obtain authorisation from the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Christophe de Beaumont. You must have met him in the course of your work …’

  ‘I’ve seen him twice at Court. His Majesty keeps him on the sidelines, and has often exiled him.’4

  ‘Alas, that’s the tragedy of our Church … I’ve known him for years, ever since my time in Blois, where he was vicar general. He’s a polite, scrupulous man, but also stubborn, suspicious, opinionated, excessively cautious and too inclined to listen to the advice of his entourage. His delicacy consists in not having any, which means that his bluntness all too often verges on tactlessness. The court is a foreign country in which he cannot help but fail.’

  ‘What else can you tell me about him?’

  ‘He never wanted his elevation. He was perfectly happy being the Archbishop of Vienna. He led a pious, well-ordered life, and was on good terms with his canons. When his predecessor died, no one even thought he was in the running for Paris. His friends were amazed when he was appointed.’

  ‘So he overcame his misgivings?’

  ‘His Majesty intervened personally and wrote him a letter in his own hand, after which there was no way he could back out. He was not used to the ways of the world, and when he took his vow at Versailles, he made rather a ridiculous show of himself. According to tradition, he had to greet the King’s daughters and kiss their hands, but he was so shy and embarrassed that as they walked towards him, he backed away.’