“Bah! We’ll escape her clutches!”
“I don’t think that for a second,” said Maurice, shaking his head. “You see how to avoid being arrested at home, we have no other recourse but to stay out in the street.”
“So what! We can leave Paris, nothing’s stopping us. So let’s not bewail our fate. My uncle’s waiting for us at Saint-Omer—money, passports, the lot. No gendarme is going to arrest us. What do you think? We only stay because we want to.”
“No, that’s rubbish and you know it, my excellent friend, devoted soul that you are.… You stay because I want to stay.”
“And you want to stay because you want to find Geneviève. Well then, what could be more simple, more right and natural? You think she’s in jail, which is more than likely. You want to look out for her, and to do that you can’t leave Paris.”
Maurice gave a sigh. It was obvious his thoughts were elsewhere.
“You remember the death of Louis XVI?” he asked. “I can still see myself, wan with emotion and pride. I was one of the leaders of the pack I’m hiding among today. I was higher and mightier at the foot of this scaffold than the King who mounted it ever had been. What a difference, Lorin! Who’d have thought it? And when you think it has only taken nine months to bring about such a terrible turnaround!”
“Nine months of love, Maurice! … ‘Love, you sank Troy!’ ”
Maurice sighed once more; his vagabond thoughts took another turn, scanned another horizon.
“That poor Maison-Rouge,” he murmured. “This is a sad day for him.”
“Alas!” said Lorin. “Do you want to know what I think is the saddest thing about revolutions, Maurice?”
“Yes.”
“It’s that your enemies are often people you’d like to have as friends, and your friends people …”
“There’s one thing I have trouble believing,” Maurice cut in.
“Which is?”
“That he won’t come up with some plan, crazy as it may be, to save the Queen.”
“One man against a hundred thousand?”
“I said, crazy as it may be … Me, I know that, to save Geneviève …”
Lorin frowned. “I say again, Maurice, you’re losing the plot. Even if you had to save Geneviève, you wouldn’t become a bad citizen. But that’s enough of that; people can hear us, Maurice, they’re listening. Hey! Heads are starting to sway; wait, there’s citizen Sanson’s valet standing up on his basket and peering into the distance. The Austrian woman is heading for us.”
Indeed, as though to accompany the undulation Lorin had remarked, a prolonged and growing shudder invaded the crowd. It was like one of those gusts of wind that begin by blowing and end by howling.
Maurice increased his considerable height still further by standing on the base of the lamppost and looked toward the rue Saint-Honoré. “Yes,” he said with a shiver. “Here she is!”
They could just glimpse another machine almost as hideous as the guillotine, and that was the cart. To left and right the arms of the escort gleamed, and out in front Grammont responded with the flashing of his saber to the cries of the odd fanatic.
But as the cart drew nearer all cries suddenly died out under the imperious and somber gaze of the condemned woman. Never had a face imposed respect so forcefully; never had Marie Antoinette been greater and more of a queen. She took the pride of her courage to such heights as to strike terror into the hearts of all those who looked upon her.
Indifferent to the exhortations of the abbé Girard, who had stuck with her in defiance of her will, she stood looking straight ahead without glancing either left or right. Whatever thoughts were burning in her mind they shone forth with the rigidity of a conviction in her immutable gaze. The jerky movement of the cart over the uneven cobblestones, by its very violence, further emphasized the inflexible erectness of her deportment; you’d have said a marble statue was being paraded on a chariot; but the royal statue had luminous eyes and her shorn hair was blowing about in tufts in the wind.
A silence like the silence of the desert suddenly battened down on the three hundred thousand spectators of this scene, which the sun shone down upon for the very first time.
Soon, from where Maurice and Lorin were standing, you could hear the screeching of the cart’s axle and the snorting of the guards’ heavy horses.
The cart stopped at the foot of the scaffold.
The Queen, who had doubtless never imagined this precise moment, snapped out of her trance: she swept her haughty gaze over the crowd and the same pale young man she had seen before standing on a cannon appeared to her again from on top of a milestone.
From this vantage point, he sent her the same worshipful salute he had addressed to her as she was leaving the Conciergerie; then he immediately jumped to the ground.
Several people saw him and, as he was dressed in black, the rumor quickly spread that a priest had waited for Marie Antoinette in order to grant her absolution as she mounted the scaffold. They could say what they liked—the Knight didn’t give them a second’s thought. In extreme moments, there is a supreme respect for the things that matter.
The Queen nimbly descended the three steps of the footstool. She was supported by Sanson, who showed her the greatest consideration up until the last, all the while carrying out the task he himself seemed condemned to perform.
While she was walking toward the steps of the scaffold, a number of horses reared up; a number of guards on foot and a number of soldiers on horseback seemed to wobble and lose their balance; then something like a shadow could be seen slipping beneath the scaffold. But calm reestablished itself almost in the same instant. No one wanted to leave their place at this solemn moment, no one wanted to miss the slightest detail of the great tragedy that was about to unfold. All eyes were on the doomed woman.
The Queen was already on the platform of the guillotine with the priest still talking at her. An aide pushed her gently from behind; another undid the fichu that covered her shoulders.
Marie Antoinette felt that infamous hand flutter at her neck; she made a sudden movement and stepped on Sanson’s foot as he was busy, unbeknownst to her, tying her to the deadly frame. Sanson pulled his foot away.
“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the Queen. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Those were the last words uttered by the Daughter of the Caesars, the Queen of France, the widow of Louis XVI.
The quarter hour after midday rang out from the clock at the Tuileries. And at that very moment Marie Antoinette fell into eternity.
A terrible cry, a cry that summed up all that forbearance could possibly contain, such as joy, horror, grief, hope, triumph, expiation, smothered like a hurricane another cry, feeble and lamentable, which came from beneath the scaffold at the same moment.
The gendarmes heard it, faint as it was, and stepped forward. The crowd was thinner now and spread out like a river that has burst its banks, breaking through the hedgerow of soldiers and sending them flying, washing over the foot of the scaffold like a tidal wave and carrying it away.
Everyone wanted to see close up the remains of a royalty they believed forever destroyed in France.
But the gendarmes were looking for something else: they were looking for the shadow that had broken through their lines and slipped under the scaffold. Two of them came back, dragging by the collar a young man who was pressing to his heart a handkerchief stained with blood.
The man was followed by a little spaniel who howled forlornly.
“Death to the aristocrat! Death to the ci-devant!” shouted a few men of the people, pointing at the young man. “He dipped his handkerchief in the Austrian woman’s blood: put him to death!”
“Good God!” cried Maurice. “Lorin, do you recognize him? Do you recognize him?”
“Death to the royalist!” repeated the maniacs. “Get that handkerchief off him! He wants to keep it as a relic. Take it off him! Take it off him!”
A proud smile fluttered across the young man’s
lips. He tore his shirt, baring his chest, and dropped his handkerchief.
“Messieurs,” he said, “this blood is not that of the Queen; it is my own. Let me die in peace.”
And a deep and streaming gash appeared, gaping, under his left breast. The crowd screamed and moved back as the young man slowly fell to his knees, gazing at the scaffold as a martyr would gaze at an altar.
“Maison-Rouge!” Lorin murmured in Maurice’s ear.
“Adieu!” murmured the young man, bowing his head with a divine smile. “Adieu, or rather au revoir!”1
With that, he expired2 in the midst of the stunned guards.
“That’s what we have to do, Lorin,” said Maurice, “before we become bad citizens.”
The little dog ran around the corpse, bewildered and yowling.
“Hey, it’s Black!” said a man holding a huge baton in his hand. “Well, well! It’s Black. Here, boy!”
The dog went over to the man calling him. But as soon as he came within reach the man raised his baton and smashed his skull, bursting out laughing as he did so.
“Oh, the bastard!” said Maurice.
“Quiet!” murmured Lorin. “Quiet, or we’re finished.… That’s Simon.”
50
THE HOME VISIT
Lorin and Maurice had gone back to Lorin’s place, where Maurice was staying. To avoid compromising his friend too openly, Maurice had adopted the habit of going out early and coming back late.
Moving with the throng, keeping up with events, regularly observing the transfer of prisoners to the Conciergerie, he was daily on the lookout for any sign of Geneviève, not having been able to find out which prison she had been locked up in. For since his visit to Fouquier-Tinville, Lorin had given him to understand that the first move he made in public would be his undoing—and that would mean being sacrificed without having come to Geneviève’s aid. Maurice, of course, would have got himself locked up on the spot if it meant being reunited with her; but he opted for prudence for fear of being separated from her forever.
And so every morning he went from the Carmelites prison to Port-Libre, from the Madelonnettes prison to Saint-Lazare, from the prison of La Force to the Luxembourg.1 Stationing himself in front of the prison gates as the carts came out ferrying the accused to the Revolutionary Tribunal, he’d give the departing victims the once-over before running to the next prison on his round.
But he soon realized that ten men would not be enough to keep an eye in this way on the thirty-three prisons that Paris possessed at that time, and he made do with visits to the Tribunal itself to await Geneviève’s court appearance.
This was already the onset of despair. Indeed, what resources remained to the condemned after their arrest? Sometimes the Tribunal, which began its sessions at ten in the morning, had condemned twenty or thirty people by four in the afternoon. The first person condemned enjoyed another six hours’ life; but the last, struck down by a sentence at a quarter to four, fell under the ax at four-thirty.
To resign himself to a similar fate for Geneviève was thus to grow tired of living, of constantly doing battle with fate.
If only he’d been told in advance about Geneviève’s incarceration, how Maurice would have thumbed his nose at the very blind human justice that then held sway! How easily and swiftly he’d have whisked her out of jail! Never was it easier to escape; never was escape more rare. Once all these nobles were thrown in jail, they set themselves up there as though they were still at the château, making themselves completely at home in order to die. To flee was like evading the consequences of a duel: women themselves blushed for shame at a liberty acquired at such a price.
But Maurice would not have shown himself so scrupulous. Knocking off a few dogs, bribing a turnkey: what could be simpler! Geneviève’s was not such an illustrious name that it drew the attention of the world.… She would not be doing herself dishonor in fleeing, and besides … what if she were dishonored? Who could give a fig!
Oh! With what a bitter taste in his mouth he imagined the gardens of Port-Libre, so easy to scale; the rooms of the Madelonnettes, so convenient for busting out of and hitting the street; the ridiculously low walls of the Luxembourg and dim halls of the Carmes, to which any man with a bit of gumption could so easily gain access by taking out a window!
But was Geneviève in one of these prisons?
Devoured by doubt and worn out by worry, Maurice heaped insults upon Dixmer’s head; he threatened him, he savored his hatred for the man whose cowardly revenge cloaked itself in the pretense of devotion to the royal cause.
“And I’ll find him,” thought Maurice. “For if he wants to save the poor woman, he’ll show himself; if he wants to finish her off, he’ll insult her. I’ll find the bastard and it’ll be a sorry day for him when I do!”
The morning of the day on which the facts we are about to lay before the reader occurred, Maurice had gone to set himself up at the place du Tribunal Révolutionnaire. Lorin was still asleep. He was woken up by a great racket at the door composed of women’s voices and the butts of rifles. He threw a frightened glance around the room, like any man surprised and hoping to persuade himself that nothing compromising was in sight.
Four sectionaries, two gendarmes, and a commissioner came bursting in all at once. This visit was so momentous that Lorin hastened to throw on his clothes as quickly as possible.
“Are you arresting me? “he asked.
“Yes, citizen Lorin.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you are suspect.”
“Ah! That’s only fair!”
The commissioner scribbled a few words at the bottom of the arrest sheet.
“Where is your friend?” he said.
“Which friend is that?”
“Citizen Maurice Lindey.”
“At his place, I guess,” said Lorin.
“No, he’s not, he’s staying here.”
“He is? I’ll be damned! Do have a look around, and if you find him …”
“Here’s the denunciation,” said the commissioner. “It is quite explicit.”
He handed Lorin a piece of paper with hideous handwriting and baffling spelling. The denunciation claimed that citizen Lindey was seen every morning coming out of citizen Lorin’s abode and that he was under arrest as suspect. The denunciation was signed: Simon.
“Surprise, surprise! But the cobbler won’t be cobbling much longer,” said Lorin, “if he keeps moonlighting like this. Two jobs! Stool pigeon and boot-soler both! What a Caesar is our Monsieur Simon.…” He burst out laughing.
“Citizen Maurice!” said the commissioner. “Where is citizen Maurice? We order you to hand him over.”
“Even when I tell you he’s not here?”
The commissioner went into the next room, then climbed up into a small loft where Lorin’s officieux lodged. Finally he opened the door of a room below, but there was no trace of Maurice. On the kitchen table, though, a freshly penned letter attracted the commissioner’s attention. It was from Maurice; he had dropped it there as he went out that morning without waking his friend, even though they shared the same bed. It read:
“I’m off to the Tribunal; eat without me, I won’t be back until tonight.”
“Citizen,” said Lorin, “as keen as I am to obey you, you understand I can’t follow you in my shirttails.… Please permit my officieux to dress me.”
“Aristocrat!” said a voice. “He has to be helped to put his drawers on.…”
“My God, yes!” said Lorin. “I’m like citizen Dagobert,2 I am. Notice I didn’t say king.”
“Go ahead,” said the commissioner, “but make it snappy.”
The officieux came down from his loft to assist his master to get dressed. Lorin’s aim was not exactly to have a valet de chambre dress him. It was to ensure that nothing that happened escaped the officieux, so that he could later tell Maurice all about it.
“Now, messieurs … pardon, citizens … now, citizens, I’m ready and I’ll f
ollow you. But please let me take with me the latest volume of Monsieur Demoustier’s Lettres à Emilie.3 I haven’t read it yet and it will help me survive the boredom of captivity.”
“Your captivity?” erupted Simon, who had now become a municipal officer in turn. He happened to enter at that point with four sectionaries in tow. “It won’t be long coming. You feature in the trial of the woman who tried to help the Austrian woman get away. She’s being judged today.… You’ll be judged tomorrow, after you’ve testified.”
“Cobbler,” said Lorin with gravity, “you’re sewing your soles on too fast.”
“Yes, but what a nice leather knife I’ve got!” replied Simon with a ghastly smile. “You’ll see, you’ll get yours, my pretty grenadier.” Lorin gave a shrug.
“Well then, are we going?” he said. “I’m waiting for you.”
And as everyone had turned to go down, Lorin gave municipal officer Simon a swift kick so hard it sent him rolling and howling the whole length of the shiny steep stairs. The sectionaries couldn’t help themselves from laughing. Lorin put his hands nonchalantly in his pockets.
“In the exercise of my duties!” said Simon, livid with rage. “Oh, for crying out loud!” said Lorin. “Aren’t we all exercising our duties?”
They made him get in a fiacre and the commissioner escorted him to the Palais de Justice.
51
LORIN
If the reader will just bear with us while we pay a second visit to the Revolutionary Tribunal, we’ll find Maurice at the same spot where we saw him once before; but we’ll find him quite a bit paler and a lot more agitated.
As we reopen the curtain on this funereal stage where historical events rather than personal predilection have led us, the jurors are out deliberating, for a certain case has just been heard. Two accused who had already spruced themselves up for the scaffold—one of those brazen maneuvers by which, at the time, defendants tried to win over jurors—were chatting with their defense counsels, who were offering the usual vague words that a doctor despairing of a patient might glibly pronounce.
The Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 41