The Man with the Lead Stomach

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  A murmur of consternation and dread ran through the assembly. The royal procession hurriedly formed up again and the King withdrew to his private apartments. Swept along by La Borde, Monsieur de Saint-Florentin, Sartine and Nicolas followed behind the procession. The King, turned round momentarily, noticed his minister and pointed a threatening finger at him.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened. Don’t try to deceive me, just explain.’

  ‘Sire, Your Majesty may rest reassured, the matter is under control and there is no danger now.’

  The fateful word had been spoken and the King immediately seized on it.

  ‘So there was indeed a danger! Sir, enlighten me forthwith.’

  ‘Sire, here is what happened: Truche de La Chaux, one of your Life Guards, was stabbed on the staircase by two villains with a grievance against you. The two evil-doers fled but your guard is at his last gasp.’

  The King leant on the captain of the Guards’ arm. He looked pale and Nicolas noticed sweat pouring from his forehead and red patches appearing on his face.

  ‘Monsieur de Saint-Florentin, take good care of my poor guard. If he survives I shall reward his zeal.’

  The procession formed up again and the King left. Monsieur de Saint-Florentin gathered his men, all except La Borde, who had followed his master. They went off to the minister’s office and there everyone turned to Nicolas, the only one to know Truche de La Chaux. He was bombarded with questions. Could someone whose deceit was well known be trusted? Was it possible that the dishonest gambler, thief and double agent had transformed himself overnight into a heroic defender of the throne? Nicolas responded that it was impossible to tell without knowing all the details of the assassination attempt on the Life Guard. The first reports were coming in but they were either incomplete or made little sense. In exasperation, Monsieur de Sartine ordered Nicolas to go himself to find out what had happened, providing the minister did not object.

  The Life Guard had been taken to the lower part of the palace, near the kitchens. He was lying on a mattress on the floor of a gallery dimly lit by torches, waiting for a surgeon to arrive to dress his wounds. A police officer whom Nicolas knew told him what he knew of the assassination attempt.

  ‘Monsieur Truche de La Chaux was apparently on guard in the palace. As the King was beginning supper in state, between nine and ten o’clock, he is thought to have left his post in the guardroom to go to buy some tobacco.’

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘From the guardroom he went to “the Louvre”. After going through the Princes’ Gallery he then went down a very long corridor leading from the offices of the Comptroller General of Finances, which allows you to go out more or less opposite the Grand Lodgings. It was in the extremely badly lit passageway that he was discovered, lying unconscious on the ground.’

  ‘Who discovered him?’

  ‘One of the servants. He found him covered in blood with his sword broken, so he immediately called for help. I believe Monsieur de Saint-Florentin and the Grand Provost of the palace, his deputy, were informed. The Provost made the initial enquiries and drew up a report in the presence of two Life Guards.’

  Nicolas noted inwardly that the Grand Provost could have made all this known to the minister earlier.

  ‘So the man had regained consciousness, had he?’

  ‘Yes, he regained consciousness almost immediately. He spoke to the guards and gave them the story of his mishap.’

  ‘Can you try to tell me what he said, in exactly the same words?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I’d just arrived, so I heard everything. He spoke in a weak, faint voice as if he were about to die and said that he had been the victim of an assassination attempt. His very words were, “Make sure the King is safe. I was stabbed by two wretches who wanted to kill him. One was dressed as a priest and the other in a green coat. They promised me a considerable sum of money if I would let them into the royal supper or into the King’s apartments.”’

  The man looked at the notes he had written on a small piece of paper.

  ‘He went on: “I was not tempted by that offer and refused to let them in. Whereupon they rushed at me and stabbed me. They declared it was their mission to deliver the people from oppression and to strengthen a religion that has almost been destroyed.”’

  These phrases had a familiar ring to Nicolas. The text of the tract found in Madame de Pompadour’s apartments reflected the same philosophy. But then all these tracts sounded more or less the same.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything else. He was taken away and brought here.’

  The surgeon called to tend to the wounded man had just arrived. He was tall, wiry and stern-looking, with delicate, astonishingly long hands. As Nicolas looked on, he leant over Truche de La Chaux and pulled back his clothes in order to study the wounds. The man was struggling and shouting, screaming with pain. After a few moments the surgeon searched in his bag for a revulsive and some lint. Annoyed by the wounded man’s protestations, he held him down firmly so that he could do his work.

  ‘Sir,’ he said disdainfully, ‘you are making a lot of fuss about very little. You are screaming as if you were in great pain but you are not badly wounded; all I can find are scratches.’

  The surgeon asked who Nicolas was and why he was there, and then asked him to be his witness. He thought the incident was a ruse and was determined get to the bottom of it since there were such serious implications.

  ‘Look, Commissioner, at the wounded man’s coat and jacket. No one would seriously believe this was an assault.’

  He leant over and shook the coat of Truche de la Chaux, who moaned faintly.

  ‘You think, sir, that there has been an attempt at deception?’ said Nicolas

  ‘I do, and I can prove it! He must have wounded himself. Look, the holes in his coat do not at all match the superficial grazes he has.’

  Defenceless and bewildered, the man was like an animal caught in a trap, desperately searching for a way out. In the end he went into nervous convulsions and began to weep like a child.

  Nicolas went up to him. ‘I think it would be best for you if you were to tell us the truth.’

  Truche looked up and recognised him. He grasped his hand as if he had found a saviour.

  ‘Sir, please help me. I shall tell you everything. I did not want to harm anyone. I withdrew between nine and ten in the evening to one of the staircases and there I broke my sword and took off my coat and jacket. I slashed them in several places and stabbed myself in various parts of my body.’

  Nicolas was surprised that the man confessed so readily to a capital offence.

  ‘Did no one see you?’

  ‘I put out the lights so that nobody saw my preparations.’

  The man now seemed perfectly calm, as if he had accepted the idea of being found guilty of an imposture.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I put my coat and jacket back on, lay down on the floor and plaintively called for help.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Sir, one has to make a living. I wanted to obtain a pension from the King, at whatever cost.’

  Nicolas left the Life Guard in the hands of the magistrates. He rushed off to report to Monsieur de Saint-Florentin, who instructed him to keep a close eye on the case. It was very late by the time Nicolas saw Monsieur de La Borde, who had stayed with the King. The sovereign was preparing to spend a restless night. Some people had concluded that because one of the aggressors was said to have been dressed as a priest, it had been a Jesuit plot, and recommended that the members of the Society should be immediately driven out of the kingdom. Nicolas informed his friend how far the investigation had progressed. The Jesuits could still sleep peacefully: they were in no way involved in the insignificant impostor’s pathetic charade. The King’s favourite on the other hand, Nicolas thought, was likely to be racked with anxiety when she learnt of the potentially serious incident that compromised one of her clandesti
ne servants.

  The following day the news of the crime reached the capital and the reaction was either fear or scepticism. But as the investigation continued and uncovered new evidence, everyone was soon agreed that the Life Guard was a calculating rogue. The close interrogation to which he was subjected proved that he had conceived his evil plan as early as the previous October. It was discovered that he had had a scraper sharpened by a cutler from Versailles, and had used that to slash his clothes and inflict the cuts on himself. Those who were better informed put it about that the spineless brigand belonged to Madame Adélaïde’s innermost circle, since her weakness for converts from Protestantism made her incautious. At no point did Nicolas hear mention of any possible collusion between Truche de La Chaux and Madame de Pompadour. That whole aspect of the case seemed cloaked in secrecy.

  On 10 January, Truche de La Chaux was imprisoned in the Bastille, then transferred from the state prison to the Great Châtelet for his trial. In fact the procedure should have taken place before the Grand Provost in Versailles, where the crime had been committed, but taking him to the Bastille had removed him from normal jurisdiction. There were no witnesses produced nor confrontations of the accused. Precedents were quoted: in 1629 a soldier had been broken on the wheel for the same offence; in the reign of Henri III another man found guilty of the crime had been beheaded. Truche did not make use of his letters of nobility in order to be judged by another court. The Parlement of Paris by its decree of 1 February 1762 sentenced him ‘to be placed in a tumbrel in his shirt, with a noose around his neck, a torch in his hand and a notice to front and back bearing the words: “The impostor who fabricated an attack on the safety of the King and loyalty to the Nation”, to be paraded in this state in different districts of Paris, to make the amende honorable in front of Notre-Dame, at the Louvre and the Place de Grève, and having been subjected to preliminary torture to be broken on the wheel.’

  The day after this sentence was passed Nicolas received a messenger from Monsieur de Saint-Florentin giving him verbal instructions to visit Truche de La Chaux, who was in the Conciergerie awaiting execution. The commissioner was somewhat surprised by the manner in which he received the order, which contained no explanation. He returned to Paris. His work at Versailles was in any case over and he now had to draw up his report about the King’s safety in the palace. The study had become even more important since recent events had revealed disturbing deficiencies in this area.

  At the Conciergerie he made his presence known but was received as if he had already been announced and his visit expected. Jangling a bunch of large keys, the gaoler led him through the dark passageways of the prison. They stopped in front of a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron and fitted with a wicket. The locks were unbolted and he was let into the prisoner’s cell.

  At first he saw nothing: only a dim light penetrated through a window protected by a grid of bars. Nicolas asked the gaoler to bring him a torch. The gaoler was reluctant: it was not the custom here and he had not been given orders to that effect. Nicolas overcame the man’s reluctance by offering him a coin; the gaoler hung his own torch on a ring in the wall and withdrew after shutting and locking the door. Nicolas could then examine the cell. To his left, on a bed covered with straw, lay a human figure, his feet clamped in heavy chains, the ends of which were fastened to the wall. His arms were also shackled by lighter, slacker chains that allowed the prisoner to sit up and move his hands. Nicolas remained silent for a time. He could not tell whether the man lying there was asleep. Going closer, he was struck by the change that had come over the Life Guard. Without a wig, his few strands of hair were plastered to his head, his face was greyish and hollow, and he had aged several years in a few weeks. His face wore an expression of deep despondency. His mouth was open and his drooping jaw trembled.

  He opened his eyes and recognised Nicolas. He nodded with the semblance of a smile and tried to sit up, but Nicolas had to help him by taking him under the arm.

  ‘So, sir, you have been allowed to visit me. Despite everything.’

  ‘I can’t see why I might have been prevented from doing so. You are forgetting my function.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m referring to. Are we alone?’ He looked anxiously towards the door of the cell.

  ‘You can see we are. The door is closed and the wicket is shut. No one can hear us, if that is what you are afraid of.’

  La Chaux seemed reassured.

  ‘Monsieur Le Floch, I have every faith in you. I sense that you do not believe that my offence is as great as all that. You had the opportunity to arrest me before the event, before I committed my crime. You refrained from doing so, you took everything into consideration … That is why I asked to speak to you.’

  ‘Sir, I do not exonerate you from your crime. Make no mistake about that. Your offence is a serious one but I think you acted out of fecklessness rather than the desire to do harm. For the rest, I am at your disposal and ready to listen, provided that what you have to say does not impede the discharge of my duties.’

  ‘Can we make a deal?’

  ‘You are in no position to dictate conditions and I am not allowed to negotiate with you.’

  ‘Sir, do not be in such a hurry to say no. Grant a man who has only a few days, perhaps only a few hours, left to live, the favour of listening to him and, hopefully, with a little compassion, of understanding him.’

  ‘Speak, sir, by all means. But I make no promises.’

  ‘First of all I wish to prove my good faith. I imagine you are still searching for Madame Adélaïde’s jewels, are you not?’

  From Nicolas’s startled reaction he could tell he had struck home, and the commissioner was annoyed with himself.

  ‘That may be so, sir.’

  ‘I regret what I did. The princess was always kind to me and my betrayal of her trust is inexcusable. Monsieur Le Floch, you already have the fleur-de-lis ring but the remainder of the stolen jewels are in the Life Guards’ barracks. Go there and dig into the plaster behind my bunk, under the wooden crossbeam of the cob wall; you will find them there. Will you now listen to what I have to say, sir?’

  ‘Certainly, but I cannot promise you anything.’

  ‘That hardly matters now. I have nothing left to lose. Would you agree to take a message from me to the Marquise de Pompadour and to guarantee its safe delivery today?’

  He lowered his voice as he mentioned her name. Nicolas remained impassive. What did this request mean? Could Truche have a last wish to express, a favour to ask? Knowing the relationship between the favourite and the condemned man, Nicolas wondered where his duty lay. He was not fearful of the consequences, but he did have the distinct feeling that acceding to this request might be beyond his remit. On the other hand, could he deny Truche de La Chaux, about to die a terrible, shameful death, his last request? He thought that he could not refuse. He also aware that he was in this prison cell not because he had chosen to be here but because Monsieur de Saint-Florentin had instructed him to come. He wondered how close the minister and the marquise were. Perhaps they had agreed that he should be their messenger to the condemned man on the eve of his execution. What did he risk? He would rather take the responsibility of passing on the information than have on his conscience remorse at having refused a man his last request.

  ‘Very well, sir. How do you wish to proceed?’

  ‘I am not allowed writing materials. Do you have any on you?’

  Nicolas searched his coat pocket. There were the usual items: his black notebook, a black lead, a penknife, a piece of string, a handkerchief, a snuffbox and some sealing wafers.

  ‘Will a page from my notebook and this pencil do?’

  ‘Yes, they will.’

  Nicolas tore off the fragile paper as carefully as possible, smoothed it out and handed it to the prisoner, together with the lead. Truche put the paper flat against the wall, and after wetting the tip of the pencil, began writing in very small characters. Nicolas noted that he did not h
esitate as he wrote; he must have thought out well in advance what he wanted to say. He produced about twenty closely written lines, then carefully folded the sheet of paper like a letter. He gave Nicolas an embarrassed look.

  ‘Monsieur Le Floch, please do not misinterpret my next request: I only wish to protect you. It is better for you not to know the contents of this message. I know that I can trust you in this matter, but the recipient may not. So how can I seal my message?’

  ‘Very easily. I always carry sealing wafers and can give you one. You will close the message and sign across the seal.’

  Truche sighed as if a great weight had been lifted from him. It seemed to Nicolas that in adversity the man had taken on a new dignity. Instead of an ordinary, rather vulgar person Nicolas now saw someone who was suffering but facing his destiny calmly. It was time to say farewell. Nicolas put the note in his coat. As he was leaving the cell, he spoke to the prisoner one last time.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you are an honest man.’

  Nicolas knocked on the door. The key turned in the lock. The gaoler reappeared and retrieved his torch. The visitor turned and bowed to the prisoner, whose form had already merged into the shadows.

  *

  Nicolas had been afraid that some difficulty would arise, preventing him from seeing Madame de Pompadour, but it was not the case. As soon as he asked Monsieur de Sartine if he might see her, having given a full account of what had happened, everything was arranged for him. Without pretending to have to refer the matter to his minister, the Lieutenant General of Police urged him to go immediately to the chateau of Bellevue, where the favourite was in residence. He was certain that she would receive him immediately. He advised him to choose the fastest horse in the stables of the Hôtel de Gramont and to hurry to Sèvres as quickly as possible. Nicolas, by now well aware of the practices of those in power, suspected that behind the haste and the help afforded him in his mission lay the desire to conclude successfully some scheme whose meaning remained a mystery to him.