‘Quite an ambition! What does Choiseul say?’
‘He turns up his ugly nose.’
‘Did you know,’ Richelieu went on, ‘that our friend Chauvelin has abandoned his apartment in the chateau and that His Majesty has been so good as to grant it to the Maréchal d’Estrées? Not that Chauvelin has lost out, for he now has the Marquise de Durefort’s apartment. Admittedly, he made the gesture of reimbursing her for all the improvements she made to it, as he was determined to retain it in all its finery.’
The comtesse turned to Nicolas, and the ardour in her eyes made him quiver. The King’s hoarse voice could be heard commenting on his lucky cards and mocking Chauvelin.
‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘I’ve been told I can count on your devotion, and that nothing can equal the fervour with which you serve the King and those … who are close to him.’
‘You are too indulgent, Madame.’
‘I’ve also been told that you were much appreciated by a certain lady. And that the services you rendered her were fully commensurate with your loyalty.’
‘Madame, the King’s service is indivisible.’
‘I’m convinced, Marquis, that one day you will wish to do something which is agreeable to me.’
‘Everything I have I owe to His Majesty, Madame. So you can count on my zeal and my attachment to all those who are dear to him.’
The King’s favourites came and went, he thought, but they all believed they could score points with him if they addressed him by his title – a title which he had renounced and which meant nothing to him. The evening passed like a dream and was an apt reward for his efforts. The King talked to him several times in private with that benevolent open-mindedness that made him so loved by those close to him. Nicolas would have liked to share his happiness with the whole of France. When he found himself in Sartine’s carriage, he had the impression he was reliving a scene he had already lived through ten years earlier. The Lieutenant General of Police, who, beneath his cold, polite exterior, felt things deeply, smiled and said in his ear, ‘May destiny always offer us such happy journeys home from Versailles!’
Nantes, 18 August 1770
A long, high-pitched whistle accompanied Nicolas as he descended the accommodation ladder of the Orion. He stopped for a moment. The skiff that was to take him back to the riverbank was moving up and down on the waves. He waited until the floor of the boat and the ship’s gunwale were level, and jumped into the skiff. Naganda, leaning on the guardrail of the ship, his long hair floating in the wind, waved to him. Soon, a grove of trees on a little island in the Loire hid the ship from sight.
Since the conclusion of the Rue Saint-Honoré case, things had moved quickly. Charlotte Galaine and Marie Chaffoureau, both found guilty of the crimes with which they had been charged, would soon, according to the procedure, undergo the final interrogation before judgement on the ‘saddle of infamy’. The rigour of the law left them no chance to escape the gallows, even after making amends. The other actors in the drama had been exonerated. Charles Galaine, who was strongly suspected of being complicit in the crime, whether passively or not, underwent torture without opening his mouth. Admittedly, he had lost consciousness even before the torturer had approached him and begun his work. His peers in the guild of furriers had interceded for him and, in the absence of hard evidence, he was released. He had immediately set sail for Sweden, where he planned to pick up the threads of his business and open a new shop.
The dishonoured Madame Galaine had broken off all relations with her husband and had retired to a convent in Compiegne. The nest egg amassed through her evil trade had opened the doors of this peaceful retreat to her, and there, sheltered from the world, she would oversee the education of her daughter. Camille Galaine had responded to both interrogation and torture with incoherent answers. She was now vegetating in the house in Rue Saint-Honoré. The strangeness of her character had become accentuated. She collected cats by the dozen and, all alone in the fetid mustiness of their excreta, spoke to the devil. It did not look as though Miette would ever recover her reason: her whole life would be spent amid the horrors of a house of correction. Dorsacq had promised to recognise her child. Made superstitious by the extraordinary events in the Galaine house, he claimed to have been touched by grace and wished to mend his ways.
As for Naganda, who was now free, he had decided to return to the New World in order to succeed his father at the head of the confederacy of Micmac tribes. Monsieur de Sartine had been surprised that Nicolas had not sufficiently pressed home his advantage by forcing the Indian to reveal information, which, apparently, could have helped the investigation to end sooner. ‘What!’ the Lieutenant General had exclaimed. ‘You have a vital witness in your hands and you let him do as he likes in a garret from which he escapes at will, like an alley cat!’ It had not been difficult for Nicolas to counter that, as the procedure had been exceptional and the whole case had an irrational side, putting too much pressure on Naganda would not necessarily have yielded much, and that his presence in the Galaine house had been one of the determining elements in the complicated alchemy of cause and effect in this domestic tragedy. Grudgingly, his chief had been forced to agree. Then, with another smile, he had added a cryptic comment to the effect that ‘whatever we do, we always rebuild the monument in our own manner’.
Remarkably, the King, who forgot nothing and whose curiosity had been aroused by the commissioner’s story, had ordered that the Indian be presented to him. Nicolas would long remember this astonishing conversation between the monarch and the Micmac, who still considered himself his subject, whatever the treaties said. The young Dauphin was also present. Much to his grandfather’s surprise, he shrugged off his usual reticence, and without any shyness asked Naganda many questions, displaying real geographical and cartographical knowledge.
He was also kind enough to thank Nicolas for his investigation into the disaster of 30 May.
A second audience had followed, this time in the King’s secret study with only Nicolas present. Soon afterwards, Sartine communicated to him the decisions the monarch had come to as a result of this extraordinary combination of circumstances. Charmed by Naganda’s talents, the King had decided to use his services. He would set sail on a vessel as the ship’s scribe, and would be secretly landed on the coast of the Gulf of Saint Laurence. Louis wished to be kept informed of events in his former possession. It was important to maintain links with the loyal tribes there, some of whom, like the Micmacs, were still fighting the English. A secretary from the Foreign Ministry initiated Naganda into the subtle mysteries of encoding, and he was given a personal code. An approximate calendar of meetings was drawn up to facilitate regular contacts with a fishing boat that travelled up and down the coast of Newfoundland. The King provided Naganda with all the equipment he needed, and gave him a tobacco pouch with his portrait. The Indian had launched himself enthusiastically into his preparations, over joyed that he was still able to serve the old country.
On 10 August, he had left Paris with Nicolas. Sartine had duly provided his deputy with letters and orders from the Duc de Praslin, Minister of the Navy, introducing the Indian to the commander of the ship. They had reached Nantes in a rented berlin, after travelling along the Loire in small stages. Naganda had gone into ecstasies over the beauty of the towns they had passed through and the prosperity of the countryside. Their long conversations had drawn them together, and Nicolas never ceased to be surprised by his companion’s knowledge and curiosity. But when he asked him about the vision he had had of Élodie’s murderer, the Indian said nothing. Nicolas had the feeling that his reply would have been similar to the comment made by Père Raccard at the end of the hearing. He did not insist.
As soon as they arrived in Nantes, Nicolas was surprised by the dilapidation of the older districts, where the streets were so narrow that their berlin had several times to reverse in order to find a wider lane. High buildings, close together, with lattice windows, dominated the roadways. They put up a
t the Hôtel Saint-Julien on Place Saint-Nicolas. It turned out to be old, dirty and full of vermin, like most of the places they had stayed in since leaving Paris. An inn on the banks of the Erdre provided compensation with a tender roast duck, locally raised, washed down with a wine from Ancenis. The next day they boarded a two-decker whose appearance had been transformed in order to pass it off as a merchant ship leaving for the coast of Africa, and thus deceive the English fleet. Its fifty cannon had been loaded secretly at La Rochelle. They received a polite welcome from the commander. The farewells had to be kept brief. The Indian thanked Nicolas for his support, and expressed the hope that one day he would welcome him among his people.
Now, from the garden of the Capuchin monastery situated on a high rock overlooking the city and its surroundings, Nicolas contemplated the landscape. The river as it widened split into several branches, with a number of little islands, some deserted, others covered with tumbledown houses. Between them could be seen, here and there, the masts of a multitude of vessels. Ahead of him stretched a monotonous countryside of fields, flocks, mills, marshes and the dark masses of distant forests. To his left was the town, with its many steeples, the well-to-do merchants’ districts, and the imposing silhouette of the castle of the dukes of Brittany with the cathedral towering over it. He thought with emotion of Guérande, so close to here, where he had spent his childhood, and this thought led him on to look back over his past. Too many of his friends, he told himself, had left him to cross the seas. Pigneau was continuing his mission in Siam, and now Naganda was going back to his own people. He searched for the Orion with his eyes, but it was nothing more than a toy in the distance. Nicolas filled his lungs with sea air, imagining that, one day, he too would take to sea, and slowly went back down to the town. Paris was waiting
for him, with its crowds and its crimes.
Carthage, La Marsa, April–November 2000
NOTES – CHAPTER XII
1. Concierge of the palace, who had recently died.
NOTES
CHAPTER I
1. ‘Here, there is nothing.’
2. Louis XV’s eldest daughter (cf. The Man with the Lead Stomach).
3. The author cannot resist quoting this very eighteenth-century statement by Talleyrand, spoken when he presented to Emperor Franz of Austria the jewels originally given as a gift by Napoleon to Marie-Louise.
4. A net was stretched across the Seine at Saint-Cloud to collect the bodies of the drowned.
CHAPTER II
1. French baroque painter (1644–1717).
2. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice and The Man with the Lead Stomach.
3. A name given to Madame de Pompadour, who owned this chateau near Paris.
4. Author of Paradoxum médico-légal (1704).
5. Author of Vernünftiges Urteil von tödtlichen Wunden (1717).
CHAPTER III
1. ‘Beneath a mask of simplicity and modesty, he remained impenetrable, simulating a taste for letters and a love of poetry the better to conceal his soul.’
2. A casual garment worn in the morning.
3. This disaster had a long-term effect on the capabilities of the French Navy.
4. The largest and most important Indian tribe in the maritime regions of Canada. They were steadfast allies of the French against the English.
5. A women’s prison.
CHAPTER IV
1. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice.
2. The Duc de Richelieu.
3. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war between the French and the English and enshrined the loss of New France.
4. ‘The Lord having seen him, he was touched and said to him: Do not weep.’ (St Luke’s Gospel)
5. Racine’s Andromaque.
6. Racine’s Britannicus
7. It will be recalled that Nicolas, abandoned as a child, eventually discovered that he was the illegitimate son of the Marquis de Ranreuil (cf. The Châtelet Apprentice).
CHAPTER V
1. The Comtesse du Barry.
2. The month in which he died was in fact November.
3. A fashionable mixture of tea and orgeat.
4. The captain’s quarters on a galley.
5. The King’s eldest surviving daughter in 1770.
6. Contrary to received opinion, it was not Marie-Antoinette who introduced hygiene to Versailles. Quite the contrary, in fact.
7. Leather caskets for dispatches and files.
8. The Maréchal de Villeroy.
CHAPTER VI
1. Small, cone-shaped wafers.
2. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice, Chapter XI.
3. Ibid., Chapter IX.
CHAPTER VII
1. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice, Chapter IV.
2. Madame de Pompadour.
3. Cf. The Man with the Lead Stomach.
4. Three times, in fact.
5. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice.
6. Ibid.
CHAPTER VIII
1. This expression was used for the marshals of France.
2. St Paul.
3. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice.
CHAPTER X
1. Where banned works were printed.
2. This was done to distract the customer from the bitter taste of the medication.
3. A highly malignant disease that makes the skin appear dead.
CHAPTER XII
1. Concierge of the palace, who had recently died.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, I wish to express my gratitude to Marie-Claude Ober for her competence, care and patience in preparing the final version of the text. I am also grateful to Monique Constant, Conservateur Général du Patrimoine, for her encouragement and unfailing assistance. Once again I am indebted to Maurice Roisse for his intelligent and detailed checking of the manuscript. Finally, I wish to thank my publisher for the confidence he has shown in this third book in the series.
Also by Jean-François Parot
The Châtelet Apprentice
The Man with the Lead Stomach
About the Author
THE PHANTOM OF RUE ROYALE
Jean-François Parot is a diplomat and historian. His Nicolas Le Floch mysteries have been published to much acclaim in French. The first two novels in the series, The Châtelet Apprentice and The Man with the Lead Stomach, were enthusiastically reviewed on publication in English
Howard Curtis’s many translations from French and Italian include five novels by Jean-Claude Izzo, four by Marek Halter and three by Gianrico Carofiglio, as well as works by Balzac, Flaubert and Pirandello.
Copyright
First published in 2008
by Gallic Books, Worlds End Studios, 134 Lots Road, London,
SW10 ORJ
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Jean-François Parot, 2008
The right of Jean-François Parot to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 9781906040529
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