Knight of Maison-Rouge

by Alexandre Dumas

  With France saved, activism became pointless, and so the moderate party regrouped and recovered. Recriminations over those terrible days of September then began; the words “murderer” and “assassin” were bandied about. A new word was even added to the nation’s vocabulary, and that was septembriseur—Septembasher!

  Danton bravely accepted the term. Like Clovis, he had for a moment dunked his head in this baptism of blood, only to raise it higher and more menacingly than before. A further occasion to resort to past terror presented itself with the trial of the King. Violence and moderation entered not yet into a battle of persons, but into a battle of principles. Relative strengths were tested on the royal prisoner. Moderation was vanquished and the head of Louis XVI fell on the scaffold.

  As the tenth of August had done, the twenty-first of January gave the coalition back all its energy. The same man was still set up to oppose them, but the outcome was not the same. Dumouriez, halted in his military progress by the reigning chaos within the government, which ensured that the needed manpower and money never reached him, declared himself against the Jacobins, whom he blamed for all the chaos, adopted the party of the Girondins, and then promptly sank them by declaring himself their friend—the kiss of death.

  The Vendée then rose up and the departments9 threatened to follow suit; reversals led to betrayals and betrayals to reversals. The Jacobins accused the moderates of trying to polish them off on the tenth of March—that is, on the night on which our story opened. But too much haste on the part of their adversaries saved them, along with, perhaps, the rain that had caused Pétion, that profound anatomist of the esprit de Paris, to say: “It’s raining, nothing will happen tonight.”

  But since the tenth of March everything had gone against the Girondins, spelling ruin: Marat10 was accused and acquitted; Robespierre and Danton were now freshly reconciled, at least as far as a tiger and a lion can be reconciled for the purpose of bringing down a bull they’re both keen to devour; Hanriot,11 the Septembasher, was appointed commander-in-chief of the National Guard. Everything presaged the terrible day when the last dike that the Revolution had flung up to stem the stormy tide of the Terror would be smashed and swept away.

  Those were the momentous events in which, in any other circumstances, Maurice would have taken an active part—which his powerful nature and his passionate patriotism naturally inclined him toward. But, happily or unhappily for Maurice, neither Lorin’s exhortations nor the terrible preoccupations of the street had been able to chase from his mind the single idea that obsessed him. When the thirty-first of May arrived, the fearsome assailant of the Bastille and the Tuileries was lying flat on his back in bed, racked by the fever that kills the strongest, and yet which a mere glance can dispel, a mere word heal.

  13

  THE THIRTY-FIRST OF MAY

  On the infamous thirty-first of May, when the tocsins sounded the call to arms from the break of day on, the battalion of the faubourg Saint-Victor entered the Temple. When all the customary formalities had been completed and the posts distributed, the municipal officers on duty were seen to arrive and four units of cannoneer reinforcements joined those already in place in the artillery at the entrance to the Temple.

  At the same time as the cannon, Santerre arrived with his yellow woolen epaulets and his usual getup, in which his patriotism could be read in great fat stains. He reviewed the battalion, which he found to be in a fit state, and counted the municipal officers, who numbered only three.

  “Why only three municipals?” he asked. “Who’s the bad citizen who’s missing?”

  “The one missing, citizen general, is nevertheless no wimp,” answered our former acquaintance Agricola, “for it is the secretary of the Lepelletier section, the leader of the brave Thermopylae, citizen Maurice Lindey.”

  “Good, good,” said Santerre. “Like you, I acknowledge the patriotism of citizen Maurice Lindey, but that won’t stop him from being entered in the list of absentees if he doesn’t turn up in the next ten minutes.”

  With that Santerre moved on to other things. A few feet away from the general, a captain of the chasseurs and a soldier were standing apart but within earshot, the first leaning on his rifle, the second sitting on top of a cannon.

  “Did you hear that?” the captain half-whispered to the soldier. “Maurice hasn’t turned up yet.”

  “Yes, but he’ll come, don’t worry, unless there’s a riot.”

  “If he can’t make it,” said the captain, “I’ll put you on sentry duty on the stairs, and as she is likely to go up the tower, you can have a word with her there.”

  At that moment, a man recognizable as a municipal by his tricolor scarf1 entered, but this man was unknown to the captain and the chasseur, and they stared hard at him.

  “Citizen general,” said the newcomer, addressing Santerre, “please accept me in place of citizen Maurice Lindey, who is sick; here is the doctor’s certificate. My tour of duty was to arrive in a week, so I’ll do a swap with him; in a week he’ll do my duty, and I’ll do his today.”

  “If the Capets and Capettes are still alive in a week, of course,” jeered one of the municipal officers.

  Santerre responded with a faint smile to the zealot’s joke. Then, turning to Maurice’s replacement, he said, “That’s fine. Go and sign the register in place of Maurice Lindey and write down the reasons for the swap in the comments column.”

  The captain and the chasseur looked at each other in joyful surprise. “One week,” they chorused.

  “Captain Dixmer,” cried Santerre, “take up position in the garden with your company.”

  “Come, Morand,” said the captain to his companion, the chasseur.

  The drum rolled and the company, led by the master tanner, marched off in the prescribed direction. Arms were stacked and the company split into groups that began to pace up and down and all around, as the fancy took them.

  Their patrol ground was the very garden where, in the days of Louis XVI, the royal family used to come sometimes to take the air. This garden was now barren, arid, and desolate, completely bare of flowers, trees, and greenery of any kind.

  At approximately twenty-five paces from the section of the wall that lined the rue Porte-Foin stood a sort of shack, which the municipality in its foresight had allowed to be built for the greater convenience of the National Guards stationed at the Temple, who could get something to eat and drink there when the riots were on and no one was allowed out. There was stiff competition for the running of this little internal canteen, the concession finally being granted to an excellent patriot, the widow of a local killed on the tenth of August who answered to the name of Plumeau.

  The little cabin, built out of wood and cob, a compact mixture of clay and straw, sat in the middle of a flower bed whose outer rim was defined by a hedge of dwarf boxwood. It comprised a single room about twelve foot square, with a cellar beneath. Access to the cellar was down a set of stairs roughly hacked out of the ground itself. That was where the widow Plumeau stored her liquids and comestibles, over which she and her daughter, a girl aged somewhere between twelve and fifteen, took turns keeping watch.

  The National Guards had only just set up when, as we’ve said, they began to disperse, some strolling about the garden, others chatting to the concierges, others examining drawings traced on the wall, all representing some patriotic aim, such as the King strung up, with the inscription “Monsieur Veto air-bathing,” or the King guillotined with “Monsieur Veto coughing up in the sack”; still others making overtures to Madame Plumeau regarding the gastronomic ideas suggested to them by their more or less compelling appetites.

  Among the latter were the captain and the chasseur already noted.

  “Ah! Captain Dixmer!” said the canteen lady. “I’ve got some marvelous Saumur wine today, come!”

  “Lovely, citizeness Plumeau; but in my opinion, at least, a Saumur is nothing without a bit of Brie,” replied the captain, who, before uttering this statement, had carefully looked
around and noted the absence of this particular cheese, one of his favorites, from among the various comestibles proudly displayed on the shelves of the canteen.

  “Ah, Captain! You wouldn’t credit it, but the last slice has just been taken.”

  “Well, then,” said the captain, “no Brie, no Saumur. Pity, I was going to treat the whole company—that would have been worth your while.”

  “My dear Captain, if you’ll just give me five minutes, I’ll run and get some from the citizen concierge who is in competition with me—he always has some. I’ll pay more for it, but you’re too good a patriot not to reimburse me.”

  “Yes, yes, off you go,” Dixmer replied. “Meanwhile, we’ll go downstairs and select our wine ourselves.”

  “Make yourself at home, Captain, please.”

  With that the widow Plumeau began to run in ungainly haste to the concierge’s lodge, while the captain and the chasseur, armed with a candle, lifted the trapdoor and went down into the cellar.

  “Perfect!” said Morand after a cursory inspection. “The cellar extends toward the rue Porte-Foin, it’s nine to ten feet deep, and there is no masonry.”

  “What’s the soil like?” asked Dixmer.

  “Chalky tufa. It’s all made ground; all these gardens have been turned over at different times, there are no rocks anywhere.”

  “Quick,” cried Dixmer, “I can hear our vivandière’s clogs; grab a couple of bottles of wine and we’ll go back up.”

  They both popped up at the mouth of the trapdoor just as Mother Plumeau returned, carrying the famous Brie demanded with such insistence. Behind her traipsed several chasseurs, lured by the fine appearance of the cheese.

  Dixmer did the honors, treating his company to a good twenty bottles of wine, while citizen Morand told of the devotion of Curtius, the disinterestedness of Fabricius, and the patriotism of Brutus and Cassius,2 all stories almost as much appreciated as the cheese from Brie and the wine from Anjou Dixmer provided—which is saying a lot.

  Eleven o’clock struck. It was at eleven-thirty that the sentries were due to be relieved.

  “Doesn’t the Austrian woman normally take a stroll between twelve and one?” Dixmer asked Tison, who was trotting past the hut.

  “Between twelve and one, quite right.” And the man began to sing:

  “Madame mounts her tower,

  Uncle, beef, and onion stew … ”

  This facetiousness was greeted with chuckles all round from the National Guards.

  Dixmer immediately called the roll of the men of his company who were to mount the guard from eleven-thirty to one-thirty, recommended that lunch be hurried up, and got Morand to take up his arms in order to place him, as agreed, on the last floor of the tower, in that same sentry box in which Maurice had hidden the day he intercepted signals intended for the Queen from a window in the rue Porte-Foin.

  If you could have seen Morand when he received these instructions, simple and expected as they were, you’d have seen him turn as white as a ghost beneath his long black locks.

  All of a sudden a dull roar shook the courtyards of the Temple and a great tornado of shouts and growls could be heard in the distance.

  “What’s that?” Dixmer asked Tison.

  “Hmmph! That’s nothing!” said the jailer. “Brissotin3 and his wretched cohorts, the Girondins, are just kicking up a bit of a stink before they’re carted off to the guillotine.”

  The noise became more and more alarming; artillery could be heard rolling along and a throng of people passed close by the Temple, screaming: “Long live the sections! Long live Hanriot! Down with the Brissotins! Down with the Rolandists!4 Down with Madame Veto!”

  “Great!” said Tison, rubbing his hands. “Think I’ll go and open up for Madame Veto so she can enjoy unimpeded the love her people bear her.”

  With that he approached the dungeon wicket.

  “Hey! Tison!” boomed a formidable voice.

  “My general?” Tison replied, stopping in his tracks.

  “No outing today,” said Santerre. “The prisoners will not leave their room.”

  The order was without appeal.

  “Suits me!” said Tison. “That’s one thing less to worry about.”

  Dixmer and Morand exchanged a bleak glance. Then, while waiting for the changeover to the next shift to sound, pointless as that now was, they both strode off to stroll between the canteen and the wall lining the rue Porte-Foin. There Morand began pacing the distance using geometric steps, that is, steps three feet long.

  “What’s the distance?” said Dixmer.

  “Sixty to sixty-one feet,” replied Morand.

  “How many days do we need?”

  Morand thought for a moment and traced a few geometric figures in the sand with a stick before promptly rubbing them out.

  “We’ll need six or seven days, at least,” he said.

  “Maurice is on duty in a week,” murmured Dixmer. “So we must be reconciled with Maurice a week from now—no matter what.”

  The half-hour sounded. Morand grabbed his rifle and sighed, then, led by the corporal, went to relieve the sentry who was pacing about the tower platform.

  14

  DEVOTION

  The day after the day on which the scenes we have just recounted took place, that is, the first of June, at ten o’clock in the morning, Geneviève was sitting in her usual place by the window wondering why, for the last three weeks, the days always began so sadly for her, why they passed so slowly, and why, finally, instead of madly looking forward to the evening, she now dreaded its approach.

  Her nights especially were sad; the nights of yore were so beautiful, those nights spent dreaming of the day before and the day to come. At a certain point her eyes fell on a magnificent tub of carnations, some striped and some solid red, which, since winter, she had taken out of the greenhouse where Maurice had been held captive to let them blossom in her room.

  Maurice had taught her how to cultivate them in the mahogany tub they were now in; she had watered, pruned, and trained them herself when Maurice was around. For whenever he came in the evening, she liked to show him how the gorgeous flowers had grown overnight, thanks to their fraternal care. But since Maurice had stopped coming around the poor carnations had been neglected, and now, thanks to lack of tender loving care, the listless buds remained unopened and drooped, yellowing, over the edge of the tub only to fall on the ground, like half-withered peas.

  Geneviève knew at the mere sight of them the reason they were so forlorn. She told herself it was the same for flowers as for certain friendships that you nourish and cultivate with passion and that cause your heart to blossom. But one day, a caprice or some misfortune cuts this friendship off at the roots and the heart revived closes up again, listless and shriveled.

  The young woman felt a dreadful anxiety clutch at her heart; the feeling she had tried to fight and had hoped to conquer struggled more than ever for breathing space, screaming that it would only die along with her heart. She then had a moment of true despair, for she knew that it was a losing battle for her. She gently bent down and kissed one of the shriveled buds and sobbed.

  Her husband entered just as she was wiping her eyes, but Dixmer was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t sense the painful crisis his wife had just endured and paid no attention to the telltale redness of her eyes. It is true that, when she saw her husband, Geneviève leapt up and ran to him, carefully turning her back to the window so that her face was in darkness. “Well?” she said.

  “Well, nothing new; impossible to get near her, impossible to get anything to her; impossible even to get a glimpse of her.”

  “What!” cried Geneviève. “With all the mayhem in Paris?”

  “It’s precisely the mayhem that made the wardens so nervous. They were worried the general agitation would provide a cover for a fresh assault on the Temple, so just when Her Majesty was supposed to go up to the top of the tower, Santerre gave the order not to let out the Queen,
Madame Elisabeth, or Madame Royale.”

  “The poor Knight, he must have felt horribly vexed.”

  “He was in despair when he saw the opportunity slip through our fingers. He went so white, I dragged him off for fear he’d give himself away.”

  “But,” ventured Geneviève timidly, “weren’t there any municipal officers at the Temple you knew?”

  “Someone was supposed to be there but he didn’t show.”

  “Who?”

  “Citizen Maurice Lindey,” said Dixmer in a tone he forced himself to keep neutral.

  “And why didn’t he show?” asked Geneviève, making the same effort at self-control.

  “He was sick.”

  “Him, sick?”

  “Yes, and pretty seriously, too. Patriot as you know him to be, he was forced to let someone else take his place.”

  Dixmer paused, then went on: “God knows, Geneviève, even if he’d been there, it would have amounted to the same thing. Since we’re supposed to have fallen out, he might have avoided speaking to me.”

  “My friend,” said Geneviève, “I think you’re exaggerating the gravity of the situation. Monsieur Maurice may have given us the cold shoulder for some silly reason, but that does not make him our enemy. He may have cooled, but that would not stop him from being polite, and if he’d seen you coming toward him, I’m certain he’d have met you halfway.”

  “Geneviève,” said Dixmer, “for what we were hoping to get out of Maurice, you need more than politeness—though that wasn’t too much to hope for from a true and deep friendship. Our so-called friendship is in tatters. So there’s nothing more to hope for from that quarter.”

  With that Dixmer let out a deep sigh, while his forehead, usually so untroubled, furrowed sadly.