Memory of Flames

by Isabel Reid (Translator) Armand Cabasson

  ‘There are too many people,’ remarked Lefine. ‘Instead of wasting time, let’s come back tomorrow. Or another day ... or never...’ Margont didn’t answer. A strange little episode was unfolding. An old man was walking towards him, to the consternation of the staff Three keepers and two municipal guards were following him, while two other guards took up position at the top of the stairs to block the way down. The man looked about eighty, but could have been younger and aged by what he had suffered. His manner and bearing were aristocratic. He was probably a nobleman of the an-cien regime. A man of the past therefore and now, perhaps, a man of the future. He was dishevelled, in grubby clothes with an ill-adjusted cravat and a crumpled black ribbon on the ponytail of his tousled wig. He appeared relaxed, warmly welcoming and unruffled, at ease in his shrunken universe.

  He accosted Margont with an affable Ah, Monsieur! I see you are an ardent supporter of liberty!’

  Margont felt as if he had been seen through, as if, under the old man’s regard, his body had turned to glass and his innermost thoughts were on display like coloured fluids in a crystal

  container. What clairvoyance! How had the man been able to read him so clearly? Was it a coincidence? Or was it just that some people’s insanity was actually just a different way of seeing things? The fallen aristocrat - Margont was pretty sure that’s what he was - saw that he was perplexed.

  ‘It’s simply that I observe that the lack of liberty here shocks you, whereas it reassures your friend. Do you know that liberty harbours a paradox? Everyone says they want it, but at the same time they’re afraid of it!’

  The remark touched a chord with Margont.

  ‘Everyone wants it!’ the man said again. ‘But when we have it, we hurry to throw it off again. We had kings and once we had overthrown them, we replaced them with an emperor!’

  Margont thought he could guess the reason for those guards. The man was probably a republican who had plotted to overthrow Napoleon. A noble republican, by all appearances. He must be a political prisoner. But what was he doing outside Pinel’s office? Did he also have an illness of the mind? He seemed very lucid.

  And the Salpetriere was only for women. Whatever the case, the man was brave to criticise the Emperor openly.

  ‘Let’s take another example. The Revolution demolished religious power. So what do men and women do? Do they take the chance to live freely? No, they marry each other and swear undying loyalty. They bask in monogamy! You, however, seem to cherish freedom for what it really is.’

  He laid his hand on Margont’s arm as he said this, to emphasise the sincerity of what he was saying. However, the gesture felt a little like a caress. Margont pulled his arm away, more sharply than he intended.

  The old man then said regretfully, ‘Oh ... oh, what a shame ... You’re just like all the others, after all. Freedom only appeals to you in the abstract, and not as something to be fully savoured. You want to spend your life seeking it, but only on condition that you never find it...’

  ‘That’s not true at all! You’re mixing everything up!’

  ‘Whilst you, on the other hand, separate everything out! You

  separate the various liberties and rank them, accepting some and forbidding others. Isn’t that just a way of killing off freedom? Isn’t freedom all or nothing? How can one be half free?’

  At that point, one of the municipal guards intervened: ‘Monsieur le Marquis, be quiet!’

  To Margont’s discomfort, the man performed a deep pantomime bow, exaggerating the movement of his arms, then straightened up and patted into place the disordered hair of his powdered wig.

  ‘I am Comte Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, better known by the name of Marquis de Sade. Whom do I have the honour of addressing?’

  ‘Unfortunately I cannot tell you. However, I can tell you that I have readJustine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu. It was very ... um ... original.’

  The Marquis de Sade was overjoyed. ‘A reader! I have fewer of those than I have lovers!’

  ‘You’re embellishing your role, Monsieur le Marquis ...’

  ‘Ah, but that’s all that’s left to me now: my role! Since the real de

  Sade was imprisoned by the monarchy, then imprisoned by the Revolution, then imprisoned by the Consulate, who then sent him to the madhouse; and the Empire keeps him locked up ... The entire world is against me! When I was incarcerated in Sainte-Pelagie - me amongst the saints, the judicial authorities must have a sense of humour! - I was accused of seducing the prisoners. It was true but the conclusion drawn from it was that I was a lunatic and I was sent to Bicetre! Now I’m at Charenton. The great Pinel wants to see me and that will be a pleasure because apparently he’s a little more enlightened than his colleagues. Unfortunately, if he concludes that I am of sane mind, I will have to leave Charenton ... and I will immediately be sent to prison! So it’s in my interests to appear insane and I plan to indulge my “role”, as you call it, to the full. That’s what society today forces me into. And they say it’s me who’s mad.’

  He leant towards Margont and whispered in his ear, ‘If one fine day you finally decide to avail yourself fully of all the freedom nature has to offer, you know my address: hospice de Charenton ...'

  Pinel’s office door opened and a woman and a guardian came out. Margont marched shamelessly over, pushing in front of everyone, saying he was sorry, but his problem could not wait. As he crossed the corridor, gesturing to those trying to go in in front of him to let him through, the Marquis de Sade shouted to him, ‘Do you know what my greatest regret is, Monsieur? In 1789, I was still imprisoned in the Bastille! I had been there for six years and I stayed until 4 July 1789. Until 4 July 1789! Had the Revolution broken out just ten days earlier, the King would have been overthrown and de Sade freed, and I guarantee you that France today would have been nothing like it is now. I would have shown all those revolutionaries the true face of liberty! France failed its revolution. By just ten days!’

  CHAPTER 29

  MARGONT went into the office belonging to the medical director of the Salpetriere. He had been planning to explain everything to Pinel but found himself face to face with a crowd of young doctors and guardians. Exhausted — that was the first word that came to mind on seeing Pinel. Too many people making too many demands of him. And he was nearly seventy. Margont’s entrance annoyed him.

  ‘Go back outside and wait your turn, Monsieur! I don’t doubt that your problem is genuine, I imagine you have come to seek help for one of your relatives, but those in front of you are also in need.’ Already two men had risen. One had his hands on his hips, the other his arms crossed, encouraging Margont to leave of his own accord. Margont undid his belt and fiddled with the buckle until it opened, revealing a small compartment. He took a piece of paper from this strange hiding place, and unfolded it again and again, finally handing Pinel a letter. The latter glanced at it and his eye fell on Joseph Bonaparte’s signature. He looked up, hesitating, unsure whether he was dealing with a madman or with a genuine imperial agent.

  ‘I would request everyone to leave us,’ ordered Margont.

  To everyone’s astonishment, Pinel agreed and they all obeyed without asking any questions. Margont explained the reason for his visit, emphasising how important it was to keep what he said secret. The doctor was immediately interested; his eyes blazed like two little suns above the dark clouds of the circles beneath.

  ‘You want to use my knowledge of insanity to help unmask a criminal? What a novel but tempting idea! Please sit down. So you think the criminal you’re hunting might have a mental illness?’

  ‘It’s just a thought. But the burns inflicted after death ...’

  ‘An insane criminal hiding in the ranks of mentally healthy criminals - if such a concept makes sense. In the eyes of his accomplices he would appear quite normal ...’

  ‘Have you ever come across such a case?’

  ‘I must admit I haven’t.’ Pinel looked thoughtful. ‘Do you know why I was appointed to B
icetre in 1793? It was because they wanted me to categorise patients. People were being guillotined left, right and centre, France had gone mad - that doesn’t just happen to individuals, it can happen to societies, to countries as well. The Committee of Public Safety was convinced that royalists and foreign agents were concealing themselves amongst the lunatics. When I treated a nobleman or a cleric I had to certify that he was genuinely ill. If I were to say that he was of sound mind, he would be sent to the guillotine! Happily I always came to the conclusion that they were insane. Today I can admit that sometimes I lied. All that is just to say how much your question troubles me. In 1793 they wanted me to unmask the sane hiding amongst the insane, so that they could execute them; twenty years on, you would like me to help you find a madman in the midst of healthy people so that he can be sent to prison. Your request is like a mirror image of what I was asked to do in 1793. I don’t really understand why everyone is determined to find a line so that the insane can be put on one side of it and the sane on the other side. Such a line does

  not exist. They are us, we are them. You appear to me to be perfectly reasonable today, but you might just as easily appear to have lost your mind in a year’s time. Whilst the insane might well have recovered their reason. And that’s without taking into account those whom today we consider insane, but whom we will later come to understand just had a different way of looking at the world, a way that we didn’t understand at the time. I’m thinking for example of the Marquis de Sade, whom you must have seen in the corridor...’

  Anxious to bring the conversation back to his inquiry, Margont voiced one of his thoughts. ‘I thought of all the things that fire symbolises in the Bible. The suspects are all aristocratic, so religion for them—’

  ‘Fire? But it’s not fire that is the most striking thing in what you have told me. It’s the repetition of fire. He burnt someone, then he burnt someoneelse.'

  ‘I think I follow, more or less ... So might it be someone who was himself burnt?’ ‘More than that! He’s still burning today.’

  ‘You think this man is in some way haunted by fire? He has been the victim of fire in one way or another. He thinks about it constantly ...’

  Margont vaguely understood that. He had participated in several battles and they regularly came back to him as nightmares. The same went for his childhood memories of being shut up in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, although these days, those memories were not as strong.

  ‘Unlike some of my colleagues,’ emphasised Pinel, ‘I think that mental illnesses have a cause, that they result from shocks to the mind, which themselves stem from violent emotions that the subject was unable to control. The man you’re looking for has probably suffered a traumatic experience to do with fire, which has disturbed the working of his mind.’

  ‘So if we find the original inferno, we will be able to identify the man ...’ said Margont thoughtfully.

  Pinel was delighted. ‘Bravo! You should become a doctor and treat the insane, like I do!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  'I'm serious! Everyone is interested in the mind but no one wants to work with the insane! Do you know what most of my colleagues do when confronted with madness? They bleed the patient! What an aberration! They’re so worried by anything abstract that they want to do something practical, although it has be said that bleeding is the opposite of practical! The profession would appeal to you and I think you would have a gift for it. If you were interested, and you started your medical studies, I would willingly accept you as a pupil.’

  Margont was struck dumb and the doctor went joyously on, ‘Have you never thought what you will do when the war is over?’

  Lefine sniggered. ‘Will it ever be over?’

  ‘I think about it all the time,’ replied Margont. ‘I’d like to launch a newspaper—’ He caught himself. He had said too much!

  ‘Do both!’ suggested Pinel. The study of madness would give you plenty of material for your articles, believe you me! There would be enough to fill ten newspapers on the subject of the ill treatment of the insane. When I decreed they should be freed from their chains,

  I was almost locked up with them!’

  ‘I’ll think about your proposition. But going back to our investigation ... The fire ...’

  ‘You’re hiding behind the fire so that you don’t have to answer my offer. That’s understandable. But it still stands. Take all the time you need to think about it.’

  ‘Do you think the murderer is unstable?’

  ‘No. It’s not someone who was operating in a blind fury otherwise they would have destroyed everything in the room, making an unbelievable uproar, which would have had the police come running. I don’t think either that they hear voices, because the poor souls who suffer from that plague are so deranged by it that when they go to commit a crime, they are easily found out. Because their thoughts are so disturbed, they’re incapable of scheming and carrying through a coherent plan. Besides, their illness is evident in their behaviour and their speech ...’

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything like that in any of my suspects.’

  This man is in full possession of his intellectual faculties. But he has been profoundly affected by fire and is trying to free himself from the grip of its memory. There are many kinds of debilitating or oppressive feelings: grief, hate, regret, fear, remorse, envy, jealousy ... But they don’t degenerate into madness unless they reach great intensity, often after a shock.’

  Margont clasped his hands together. It was an instinctive gesture, as if his ideas were floating in front of him like a cloud of midges, and he was trying to gather them together. It was also like the strange prayer of a believer, who was so exasperated by religion that he thought himself an atheist.

  ‘He’s hiding in a group of monarchists. Might he be dividing his thoughts between his obsessive fear and his political ideals? No, everything is linked to the fire. In one way or another, even his royalist loyalty must relate to fire.’

  Pinel nodded. ‘I think so too. He seems to have a real monomania about fire. It’s an obsession, his only one. Even if there is something else that interests him, which initially has nothing to do with fire, fire will spread in his mind and burn it up.’

  ‘Something else or someone else that interests him. And he will be obsessed until he succeeds in extinguishing the blaze - assuming that’s his aim. How will he be able to do that?’

  Pinel gave an apologetic smile. ‘I think you know how ...’

  In a sense, Margont did. He had been haunted by his own ‘fire’: being sent away to the Abbey Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Unfortunately by the time that fire had in effect been reduced to embers, a new fire had been ignited in him by the war. ‘He has to settle the score with his past ...’

  ‘Isn’t that what we all do, all through our lives?’

  ‘Why are the burns in different places on the two victims? The face, then the arms. Is that significant?’

  ‘Yes, it will be significant, but I’m not sure how. You mustn’t ignore that question. Because fire is at the heart of this criminal’s monomania. All his thoughts converge sooner or later on fire. So nothing he does with fire is without meaning.’

  Pinel could offer no help on the question of curare. Margont shook the doctor’s hand warmly. He was physically exhausted - as if the conversation had been a race several hours long - but his spirit had been completely revived. ‘I can never thank you enough!’

  ‘Good luck. And think about my proposition.’

  CHAPTER 30

  ON 28 March, now that the Allies’ real plan had been discovered, Napoleon held a new council of war at Saint-Dizier. The day before, they had learnt of the destruction of General Pacthod’s division and the retreat of Marshals Marmont and Mortier to Paris. Only Marshal Macdonald was in favour of abandoning the capital and battering the rear of the enemy lines with all their fire power. All the other officers wanted to try to save Paris. The Emperor came to a decision. The French army would hurry towards the capita
l to rescue it - if they could get there in time. A race against the Allies began.

  CHAPTER 31

  MARGONT was waiting under the arcades of Rue de Rivoli. In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte had decided to run a long, large avenue east to west along the Seine. This one went past, amongst other things, the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace. It was part of a grand scheme of urbanisation: fine residences were to be built with steeply pitched roofs, a sewer system, paving of the streets. And so Rue de Rivoli was born. But no one wanted a home in the new buildings, which were all identical and lined up like stone soldiers awaiting imperial review. It was very humiliating for Napoleon to realise that Parisians wanted nothing to do with his magnificent Rue de Rivoli. To encourage people, now the Imperial Government was offering a thirty-year exemption from taxes to each buyer. But it was not working. Rue de Rivoli remained resolutely empty ... Lefine had tried to convince Margont that they should pool their meagre resources to buy lodgings because he was sure that one day they would be very valuable. Margont had, of course, refused.

  Frankly, who would want to leave their children a measly apartment on Rue de Rivoli?

  He spotted Charles de Varencourt, whom he had asked a woman begging in the street to go and find, and waved to him. He looked distraught, resembling a ship in distress. He was almost unrecognisable. He kept wiping his face, which was continually filmed again with sweat.

  He glared at Margont. ‘Are you trying to get us killed? Why have you summoned me? I should never have come. You have five minutes.’

  ‘That’s for me to decide, not you. If you hadn’t come I would have gone myself to knock on your door until you opened up!’ Varencourt was breathing heavily like a hunted deer that hears the baying and the blowing of horns coming nearer. ‘Oh, so that’s why they chose you for this! It’s because you have no awareness of danger! You don’t know it, but you’re the walking dead.’