“Good old Geneviève,” said Maurice, “you really are thoughtfulness itself.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, citizeness!” cried one of Maurice’s two colleagues, who was having a breakfast of bread and sausage in the antechamber. “If you were a prisoner and the Widow Capet was curious to have a look at you, she wouldn’t be so nice about satisfying her whim, the bitch.”
Geneviève flashed a lightning glance at Morand to see what effect this insult had on him. Morand did, in fact, wince; his eyes glinted with a strange kind of phosphorescence and he clenched his fists for a second. But all these telltale signs were so rapid they went unnoticed.
“What’s that officer’s name?” Geneviève asked Maurice.
“That’s citizen Mercerault,” the young man replied. Then he added, as though to excuse the man’s crassness: “A stonecutter.”1
Mercerault heard him and gave him a sidelong look.
“Come, come,” said Mother Tison, “finish your sausage and your half-bottle and let me clear the table.”
“It’s not the Austrian woman’s fault if I’m eating at this hour,” grumbled the municipal officer. “If she could’ve had me killed on the tenth of August, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought; so the day she sneezes in the sack,2 I’ll be in the first row, hale and hearty and happy as a lark.”
Morand turned deathly white.
“Let’s go, citizen Maurice,” said Geneviève. “Come and put us where you promised to put us. I feel like a prisoner here; I can’t breathe.”
Maurice whisked Morand and Geneviève away; the sentries, alerted by Lorin, let them pass without a protest. He set them up in a small hallway on the top floor, so that when the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame Royale went up to the gallery, the august prisoners had no choice but to go past them.
As the promenade was set for ten o’clock and there were still a few minutes to go, Maurice not only did not leave his friends but further, so that not even a whiff of suspicion should fall on this ever so slightly illegal initiative, having encountered citizen Agricola, he brought him along with them.
Ten o’clock sounded.
“Open!” cried a voice from the base of the tower that Maurice recognized as belonging to Santerre.
Immediately the guards took up arms, the gates were shut, the sentries primed their guns. Throughout the courtyard a great clatter of iron and stones and marching feet could be heard. It seemed to have made a vivid impression on Morand and Geneviève, for Maurice saw them both turn pale.
“So many precautions just to guard three women!” Geneviève murmured.
“Yes,” said Morand, trying to laugh. “If the people trying to rescue them were in our shoes now and could see what we see, they’d think twice.”
“Indeed,” said Geneviève, “I’m beginning to think they won’t get away.”
“And me, I hope not,” said Maurice. Leaning over the ramp at those words, he added: “Stand back. Here come the prisoners.”
“Tell me who’s who,” said Geneviève, “I don’t know them.”
“The two in front are the sister and daughter of Capet. The one bringing up the rear, preceded by a little dog, is Marie Antoinette.”
Geneviève took a step forward. But Morand, on the contrary, instead of peering down, pressed up against the wall. His lips were more livid and chalky than the stone of the dungeon.
With her white dress and her beautiful clear eyes, Geneviève looked like an angel in attendance on the prisoners, waiting to light the hard road they had to tread and put a little love in their hearts as they passed.
Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale passed after glancing in amazement at the strangers, no doubt the first of them imagining that these were the friends announced by the signs, for she turned around sharply toward Madame Royale and squeezed her hand, while dropping her handkerchief as though to alert the Queen.
“Be careful, my sister,” she said. “I seem to have dropped my handkerchief.”
With that, she continued to mount the stairs with the young princess.
The Queen, whose panting breath and small dry cough indicated her malady, bent down to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen at her feet. But her little dog beat her to it; he snatched it and ran to give it to Madame Elisabeth. And so the Queen continued to climb the stairs. After a few steps she, too, found herself before Geneviève, Morand, and the young municipal officer.
“Oh! Flowers!” she cried. “It’s such a long time since I’ve seen any. How good they smell and how lucky you are to have flowers, madame!”
As fast as the thought that had just found expression in these searing words, Geneviève held out her hand to offer her bouquet to the
Queen. At that point Marie Antoinette looked up and stared at her and an almost imperceptible blush appeared on her colorless brow.
With a sort of automatic movement, out of habit of passive obedience to the rules, Maurice put his hand out to stop Geneviève. The Queen stood hesistant; she looked at Maurice and recognized the young municipal officer who was in the habit of speaking to her firmly but, at the same time, with respect.
“Are flowers out of bounds, monsieur?” she asked.
“No, no, madame,” said Maurice. “Geneviève, you may offer your bouquet.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, monsieur!” cried the Queen with real gratitude.
And acknowledging Geneviève with gracious affability, Marie Antoinette put out an emaciated hand and selected a carnation at random from among the mass of flowers.
“But take all of them, madame, take them,” Geneviève said timidly.
“No,” said the Queen with a charming smile. “This bouquet perhaps comes from someone you love and I wouldn’t want to deprive you of it.”
Geneviève blushed deeply and her high color made the Queen smile once more.
“Come on, citizeness Capet,” said Agricola. “You must keep moving.”
The Queen nodded and continued on her way. But before disappearing, she looked back and murmured:
“How good this carnation smells and how lovely that woman is!”
“She didn’t see me,” groaned Morand. Practically on his knees in the darkness of the hallway, he had, in fact, failed to come to the Queen’s notice.
“But you saw her, didn’t you, Morand? Geneviève?” asked Maurice, doubly delighted, first because of the show he had been able to put on for his friends, and then because of the pleasure he had just given at so little cost to the unhappy prisoner.
“Oh, yes, yes!” said Geneviève, “I saw her all right, and now, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll go on seeing her.”
“And how did you find her?”
“Very beautiful.”
“What about you, Morand?”
Morand joined his hands together without answering.
“Tell me, then,” Maurice said to Geneviève in a low voice, laughing all the while, “it wouldn’t be the Queen Morand’s in love with, would it?”
Geneviève gave a start but swiftly recovered.
“Heavens,” she said, also laughing, “it certainly looks like it.”
“Well then, you didn’t tell me how you found her, Morand,” Maurice insisted.
“I found her very pale,” Morand replied.
Maurice took Geneviève’s arm again and led her back down toward the courtyard. In the dark stairwell, it felt to him as though Geneviève kissed his hand.
“So,” said Maurice, “what does that mean, Geneviève?”
“That means, Maurice, that I will never forget that, for a whim of mine, you risked your head.”
“Oh!” said Maurice. “Let’s not exaggerate, Geneviève. You know very well it’s not gratitude I want from you.”
Geneviève gently squeezed his arm.
Morand staggered after them.
When they reached the courtyard Lorin came to greet the two visitors and lead them out of the Temple. But before leaving him, Geneviève made Maurice promise to come and dine at the o
ld rue Saint-Jacques the following day.
22
SIMON THE CENSOR
Maurice returned to his post, his heart full of an almost celestial joy, but he found Mother Tison there sobbing.
“Now what’s the matter, Mother Tison?” he said.
“I’m furious, that’s what’s the matter!” the jailer shot back.
“Why’s that?”
“Because everything is unjust for the poor of this world.”
“Yes, but …?”
“You’re rich, you are; you’re bourgeois; you come here for one day only and you’re allowed to be visited by pretty women who give the Austrian woman flowers. And me, I practically nest in the dovecote all year round and I’m not allowed to see my poor daughter Héloïse.”
Maurice took her hand and slipped her an assignat of ten livres.
“Here you go, good Mother Tison,” he said. “Take that and have courage, eh? Heaven knows the Austrian woman won’t last forever.”
“An assignat for ten livres,” said the jailer, “that’s all very well; but I’d rather have a lock of my daughter’s hair.”
As she spoke, Simon, who was coming up the stairs, overheard her and saw the jailer pocket the assignat Maurice had given her.
We had better describe the mood Simon was in.
Simon had come from the courtyard, where he had met Lorin. There was definite dislike between the two men, and this dislike was not so much motivated by the violent scene we have already set before the eyes of our readers as by the genetic differences between them, that eternal source of the animosities or attractions we say are a mystery but which are actually so easily explained.
Simon was ugly, Lorin handsome; Simon was on the nose, Lorin smelled like a rose; Simon was a braggart of a republican, Lorin was one of those genuinely fervent patriots who had made nothing but sacrifices for the Revolution; and then, if it were ever to come to blows, Simon knew instinctively that the fist of the muscadin would have dealt him a thoroughly plebeian punishment, no less elegantly than Maurice would have done.
Simon had stopped short on seeing Lorin and gone pale.
“Not that battalion standing guard again, is it?” he groaned.
“What if it is?” replied a grenadier who was put off by the remark. “Seems to me they’re as good as any other.”
Simon pulled a pencil from the pocket of his carmagnole and pretended to be making a note on a piece of paper that was as black as his hands.
“Hey!” said Lorin. “So you’ve learned to write, Simon, now you’re Capet’s tutor? Look, citizens; my word of honor, he’s taking notes: we give you Simon the Censor.”
A universal burst of laughter broke out, beginning with the ranks of young National Guards, nearly all of whom were educated young men. It dazed, so to speak, the miserable cobbler.
“You’ll get yours,” he said, grinding his teeth and seething with rage. “They’re saying you let strangers into the dungeon without the permission of the Commune. I’ll show you: I’m going to get the municipal officer to file a report.”
“At least he can write,” Lorin retorted. “It’s Maurice, Maurice, the Iron Fist, you know him?”
Just at that precise moment, Maurice happened to be giving Mother Tison the ten-livre assignat as a consolation and he paid no heed to the presence of this miserable wretch, whom he instinctively avoided whenever he came across him, as you avoid a poisonous or hideously repulsive snake.
“Ah, look at that!” said Simon to Mother Tison, who was wiping her eyes on her apron. “So you really are keen to get yourself guillotined, citizeness?”
“Me!” said Mother Tison. “Why do you say that?”
“What! You take money from municipal officers to let aristocrats in to see the Austrian woman!”
“Me?” said Mother Tison. “Shut your mouth, you’re mad.”
“This will be put down in the report,” said Simon, with emphasis.
“What are you talking about? They’re friends of municipal officer Maurice, one of the greatest patriots in existence.”
“Conspirators, I tell you; and the Commune will be informed. Let them be the judge.”
“Right, so you’re going to denounce me, you police spy?”
“Exactly, unless you want to denounce yourself.”
“But denounce what? What am I supposed to denounce?”
“What happened.”
“But nothing happened.”
“Where were they, the aristocrats?”
“There, on the stairs.”
“When Widow Capet went up to the top of the tower?”
“Yes.”
“And did they speak to each other?”
“Just a few words.”
“A few words: you see! Anyway, it reeks of aristocrats here.”
“You mean it reeks of carnations.”
“Carnations! What have carnations got to do with it?”
“But the citizeness was carrying a bunch that filled the air with perfume.”
“What citizeness?”
“The one watching the Queen go up the tower.”
“You see what I mean: you say the Queen, Mother Tison. Hanging out with aristocrats will be the death of you. Right, well … Hang on, what have I stepped on here?” Simon bent down.
“Ha! That’s one!” said Mother Tison. “It’s a flower … a carnation. It must have fallen out of citizeness Dixmer’s hands, when Marie Antoinette took one out of her bouquet.”
“Mother Capet took a flower from citizeness Dixmer’s bouquet?” asked Simon.
“Yes, and it was I who gave it to her, do you hear?” Maurice said in a menacing voice; he had been listening to this little conference for some minutes and he’d had enough.
“Well, well, well: three holes in the ground! A fellow sees what he sees and knows what he knows,” muttered Simon, still holding the carnation he’d crushed with his great big boot.
“I know something too,” retorted Maurice, “and I’ll tell you what it is: it is that you have no business being in the dungeon; your job as a butcher is over there with little Capet, who you will not, however, beat today because I’m here and I forbid you to.”
“Ha! You dare threaten me and call me a butcher!” cried Simon, squashing the flower between his fingers. “Ha! We’ll see if aristocrats are allowed to … Hey, what’s that?”
“What?” asked Maurice.
“What I can feel in the carnation, that’s what! Aha!”
And to Maurice’s stupefaction, Simon pulled a tiny piece of paper out of the calyx of the flower before his very eyes. It had been rolled with exquisite care and introduced artfully into the center of the flower’s thick plume.
“Oh!” cried Maurice. “What the hell is it, for pity’s sake?”
“We’ll soon find out, we’ll soon find out,” chirped Simon, moving over to the window. “Ha! Your pal Lorin reckons I can’t read? Well, I’ll show you.”
Lorin had defamed Simon; the man could read all the letters of the alphabet when they were printed, and even handwriting when it was big enough. But the note was written in such a fine hand that Simon was forced to resort to his spectacles. And so he put the note on the window-ledge while he foraged through his pockets looking for them. But as he was going through this laborious operation, citizen Agricola opened the door of the antechamber, which was right opposite the little window, and the current of air lifted aloft the piece of paper, which was as light as a feather. When Simon finally located his glasses and put them on his nose and turned round, he looked for the note in vain. It had disappeared.1
Simon let out a roar.
“There was a piece of paper here,” he shrieked. “There was a piece of paper. You just watch it, citizen municipal officer, because it had better be found.”
With that he swiftly descended the stairs, leaving Maurice flabbergasted.
Ten minutes later, three members of the Commune entered the dungeon. The Queen was still on the terrace, and the order was given t
o leave her there in a state of total ignorance of what had just occurred. The members of the Commune asked to be taken to her.
The first object that struck their gaze was the red carnation that she was still holding in her hand. They looked at one another in surprise and approached the Queen.
“Give us that flower,” said the president of the delegation.
The Queen, who was not expecting this sudden eruption, gave a start and hesitated.
“Hand over the flower, madame,” cried Maurice in a sort of terror, “I beg you.”
The Queen held out the carnation; the president took it and withdrew, followed by his colleagues, into an adjacent room to complete the inspection and make a report.
When they opened the flower, it was empty.
Maurice breathed deeply.
“One moment, one moment,” said one of the commissioners. “The heart of the carnation has been removed. It’s true, the alveolus is empty; but a note was most certainly stuck in this alveolus.”
“I am ready,” said Maurice, “to provide any necessary explanation; but first and foremost, before anything further, I demand to be arrested.”
“We take note of your proposition,” said the president, “but we will not grant it. You are known as a good patriot, citizen Lindey.”
“And I will answer with my life for the friends I was foolish enough to bring here with me.”
“Don’t answer for anyone,” said the prosecutor.
A great racket was heard in the courtyard.
It was Simon who, having searched in vain for the tiny note that was gone with the wind, had run to get Santerre and had told him about the attempt to break out the Queen, adding all the props his wild imagination could come up with for such a bid at abduction. Santerre had come running. The Temple was sealed off and the guard changed, which greatly annoyed Lorin, who protested loudly against this offense given to his battalion.
“Ah! You lousy cobbler,” he said to Simon, menacing him with his sword. “It’s to you that I owe this little joke; but, never fear, I’ll pay you back.”
Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 20