The Knight of Maison-Rouge Read online

  “What the hell’s that?” asked Devaux.

  “Sounds like a child’s voice,” Lorin replied, listening intently.

  “Right,” said the National Guard. “Some poor kid having the daylights thrashed out of him. Honestly, they should only send guards here who don’t have children.”

  “Are you going to sing now?” came a raucous, drunken voice, which then began to sing, as though setting an example:

  Madame Veto1 promised

  To cut the throats of all Paris.…

  “No,” said the child. “I will not sing.”

  “Are you going to sing?” And the voice began again: “Madame Veto promised …”

  “No,” wailed the child. “No, no, no.”

  “Oh! You little bastard!” cried the raucous voice.

  And the noise of a whistling strap rent the air. The child uttered a cry of pain.

  “Good grief!” said Lorin. “It’s that odious Simon thrashing little Capet.”

  Some of the National Guards merely shrugged their shoulders; two or three tried to smile. Devaux got up and moved away.

  “As I was saying,” he muttered, “they should never send us fathers here.”

  Suddenly a low door opened and the royal infant, chased by his guardian’s whip, took several steps into the courtyard in a bid to get away. But something heavy crashed onto the cobblestones behind him and struck his leg.

  “Ahhh!” the child shrieked as he stumbled and fell on his knees.

  “Bring me my cobbler’s last, you little monster, or I’ll …”

  The child picked himself up and shook his head in refusal.

  “Ah! It’s like that, is it?” cried the same voice. “Just you wait, just you wait, I’ll show you.…”

  And with that Simon the cobbler came out of his lodge like a wild beast out of its lair.

  “Hold it right there!” said Lorin, frowning furiously. “Where do you think you’re going like that, Master Simon?”

  “To chastise that little demon,” said the cobbler.

  “Chastise him? What for?” said Lorin.

  “What for?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Because the little bastard won’t sing like a good patriot should or work like a good citizen.”

  “Well, what’s it to you?” said Lorin. “Did the nation entrust you with teaching Capet to sing?”

  “Hey!” said Simon. “What business is it of yours, citizen sergeant, eh?”

  “What business is it of mine? Anything that concerns any man with a heart is my business. It is unworthy of a man of feeling to see a child being beaten and do nothing about it.”

  “Poppycock. The son of the tyrant.”

  “—is a child, a child who had no hand in the crimes of his father, a child who is not guilty and who, as a consequence, should not be punished.”

  “And I’m telling you they gave him to me to do what I like with him. I’d like him to sing the song ‘Madame Veto’ and he’s going to sing it.”

  “You miserable cur!” said Lorin. “Madame Veto is the child’s mother—his own mother! How would you like it if they forced your son to sing that you were scum?”

  “Me?” screamed Simon. “You lousy aristocrat of a sergeant!”

  “No insults, thank you,” said Lorin. “I’m not Capet—you won’t get me to sing by force.”

  “I’ll get you arrested, but, you rotten royalist.”

  “You!” said Lorin. “You will get me arrested? Just you try and get a Thermopyle arrested!”

  “Right! Well, he who laughs last laughs loudest. Meanwhile, Capet, pick up my last and come and make your shoe or there’ll be trouble.…”

  “And I’m telling you,” said Lorin, stepping forward, the blood drained from his face, putting up his fists and gritting his teeth, “I’m telling you he will not pick up your last; I’m telling you he will not make any shoes, do you hear me, you pathetic buffoon? Oh, yes! You’ve got your big long sword but it doesn’t frighten me any more than you do. Just try and take it out!”

  “Help! Murder!” screamed Simon, blanching with rage.

  At that moment, two women entered the courtyard. One of them held a piece of paper in her hand. She addressed the sentry.

  “Sergeant!” cried the sentry. “It’s the Tison girl asking to see her mother.”

  “Let her through, the Council of the Temple has granted her permission,” said Lorin, without turning his back for an instant on Simon, for fear the man would take advantage of the distraction to bash the child again.

  The sentry let the two women through, but they had scarcely started up the dimly lit stairs when they encountered Maurice Lindey, who was coming down to the courtyard for a moment.

  Night was beginning to fall, so that the women’s facial features could hardly be distinguished. Maurice stopped them.

  “Who are you, citizenesses?” he asked. “And what do you want?”

  “I’m Héloïse Tison,” said one of the women. “I’ve obtained permission to see my mother and so I’ve come to see her.”

  “Yes,” said Maurice. “But the permission is only for you, citizeness.”

  “I’ve brought my friend along so that there are at least two of us women among all these soldiers.”

  “That’s all very well, but your friend will not be able to go up.”

  “As you wish, citizen,” said Héloïse Tison, squeezing the hand of her friend, who backed against the wall, seemingly stricken with shock and fright.

  “Citizen sentries,” cried Maurice, lifting his head and calling to the sentries standing guard on each landing. “Let citizeness Tison pass. But her friend can’t go up. She will wait on the stairs and you will see to it that she is shown respect.”

  “Yes, citizen,” the sentries called down.

  “Up you go, then,” said Maurice.

  The two women passed.

  As for Maurice, he leapt the four or five bottom steps in a single bound and rushed into the courtyard.

  “What’s going on here, then? What was all the racket about?” he asked the National Guards. “You can hear a child crying all the way up in the prisoners’ antechamber.”

  “What’s going on,” said Simon, who was used to the ways of the municipal officers and thought when he saw Maurice that he’d found reinforcements, “what’s going on is that this traitor, this aristocrat, this royalist, is trying to stop me from giving Capet a good hiding.”

  He pointed to Lorin with his fist.

  “I’ll stop you all right,” said Lorin, unsheathing his sword. “And if you call me a royalist, an aristocrat, or a traitor one more time, I’ll run my sword right through your rickety body.”

  “He’s threatening me!” cried Simon. “Guards! Guards!”

  “I am the guard,” said Lorin. “So I wouldn’t call me if I were you, because if I come any closer to you, I’ll exterminate you!”

  “Over here, citizen municipal officer, over here!” cried Simon, feeling seriously threatened this time by Lorin.

  “The sergeant is right,” came the cold reply of the municipal officer Simon had called to his aid. “You dishonor the nation. Let go! Imagine beating a child!”

  “And do you know why he’s beating him, Maurice? Because the child doesn’t want to sing ‘Madame Veto,’ because the son doesn’t want to insult his mother.”

  “You miserable abortion!” said Maurice.

  “You too?” said Simon. “So I’m surrounded by traitors?”

  “You mongrel!” said the municipal officer, seizing Simon by the throat and tearing his strap out of his hands. “Just you try and prove that Maurice Lindey is a traitor.”

  With that, Maurice brought the strap down hard on the cobbler’s shoulders.

  “Thank you, monsieur,” said the child, who was stoically watching the scene. “But he’ll only take it out on me.”

  “Come, Capet,” said Lorin, “come, child; if he hits you again, call for help and we’ll come and chastise him, the butch
er. Come, young Capet, let’s go back to the tower.”

  “Why do you call me Capet, you who protect me?” said the child. “You know very well that Capet is not my name.”

  “Really? How so? It isn’t your name?” said Lorin. “What is your name?”

  “I am called Louis-Charles de Bourbon. Capet is the name of one of my ancestors. I know the history of France, my father taught me.”

  “And you want to teach cobbling to a child to whom a king has taught the history of France?” cried Lorin. “For crying out loud!”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Maurice to the child. “I’ll report him.”

  “And I’ll report you,” said Simon. “Among other things, I’ll say that instead of one woman who had the right to enter the courtyard, you let in two.”

  At that moment, in fact, the two women were coming out of the dungeon. Maurice ran over to them.

  “So, citizeness,” he said, addressing the woman nearest to him. “Did you see your mother?”

  Héloïse Tison immediately slipped between the municipal officer and her companion.

  “Yes, thank you, citizen,” she said.

  Maurice would have liked to see the young woman’s friend or at least hear her voice, but she was swaddled in her mantle and seemed determined not to utter a sound. It seemed to him that she was even trembling.

  Smelling a rat, he swiftly ran up the stairs and, reaching the first room, saw through the glass the Queen hide in her pocket something he assumed to be a note.

  “Oh, no!” he said to himself. “Have I been had?”

  He called his colleague.

  “Citizen Agricola,” he said, “go to Marie Antoinette and don’t let her out of your sight.”

  “Right!” said the municipal officer. “Is the …”

  “In you go, I say, and don’t lose a minute, an instant, a second.”

  The officer entered the Queen’s chamber.

  “Call Mother Tison,” he said to a National Guard.

  Five minutes later, Mother Tison arrived, beaming.

  “I saw my daughter,” she said.

  “Where?” Maurice asked.

  “Here, in this very room.”

  “Very well. And your daughter didn’t ask to see the Austrian woman?”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t go into her room?”

  “No.”

  “While you were talking to your daughter, no one came out of the prisoners’ room?”

  “How do I know? I was looking at my daughter—I hadn’t seen her for three months after all.”

  “Think carefully.”

  “Ah, yes! I remember now, I think.”

  “What?”

  “The girl came out.”

  “Marie Thérèse, the Queen’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she speak to your daughter?”

  “No.”

  “Your daughter didn’t hand her anything?”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t pick anything up off the floor?”

  “My daughter?”

  “No, Marie Antoinette’s!”

  “Yes, she did, she picked up her hanky.”

  “Ah! You sorry woman!” Maurice cried.

  And he hurled himself at a bell-pull and gave it a good tug.

  It was the alarm bell.

  11

  THE NOTE

  The other two officers of the Guard swiftly mounted the stairs, accompanied by a detachment from the post on duty. The doors were locked and two sentries came and stood at the entrance to each room.

  “What do you want, monsieur?” the Queen asked Maurice when he stepped into the room. “I was about to go to bed five minutes ago, when the citizen municipal officer,” here the Queen indicated Agricola, “burst into the room suddenly without stating what he wanted.”

  “Madame,” said Maurice bowing, “it is not my colleague who wants something from you, it is I.”

  “You, monsieur?” asked Marie Antoinette, gazing at Maurice, whose good manners had inspired in her a certain gratitude. “And what is it you want?”

  “I want you to kindly hand me the note that you were hiding a moment ago when I arrived.”

  Madame Royale and Madame Elisabeth both gave a start. The Queen went very pale.

  “You are seeing things, monsieur,” she said. “I hid nothing.”

  “You’re lying, Austrian woman!” shouted Agricola.

  Maurice promptly brought his hand down on his colleague’s arm.

  “One moment, my dear colleague,” he said. “Let me speak to the citizeness. I’m a bit of a prosecutor.”

  “Go ahead! But don’t be so nice to her, for pity’s sake!”

  “You were hiding a note, citizeness,” Maurice said with severity. “You must hand over the note.”

  “But what note?”

  “The one the Tison girl brought you and that the citizeness, your daughter,” and here Maurice nodded toward the young princess, “picked up with her handkerchief.”

  The three women looked at one another in horror.

  “But, monsieur, this is more than mere tyranny,” said the Queen. “We are women! Women!”

  “Let’s be clear,” said Maurice firmly. “We are neither judges nor executioners. We are prison supervisors, that is, citizens whose duty it is to keep watch over you. We have our orders; to violate them would be treason. Citizeness, please, give me the note you hid.”

  “Messieurs,” said the Queen loftily, “since you are supervisors, perhaps you would care to have a look around and deprive us of sleep tonight as always.”

  “God keep us from manhandling women. I am going to notify the Commune and we will await orders. But you will not be going to bed. You will sleep sitting up in these chairs, thank you, and we will keep watch over you.… If need be, the search will begin.”

  “What’s the matter now?” asked Mother Tison, showing her frazzled head at the door.

  “The matter, citizeness, is that you have just deprived yourself of ever seeing your daughter again by lending a hand to her bout of treason.”

  “Ever seeing my daughter! … What are you saying, citizen?” asked Mother Tison, unable to grasp why she would not be seeing her daughter ever again.

  “I’m telling you, your daughter did not come here to see you but to bring a letter to citizeness Capet; and she will not be coming back again.”

  “But if she doesn’t come back again, I won’t be able to see her, since we’re not allowed to leave.”

  “This time you’ve only yourself to blame; it’s your fault,” said Maurice.

  “Oh!” howled the poor mother, “My fault! What are you saying? My fault? But nothing happened, I’m sure of it. Oh! If I thought something had happened, you’d be in for it, Antoinette, you’d really catch it then!”

  With that, the distraught woman shook her fist at the Queen.

  “Don’t you threaten anyone,” said Maurice. “Try and use a little kindness instead to get us what we want. You’re a woman, after all; citizeness Antoinette, who is also a mother, will no doubt take pity on a mother such as herself. Tomorrow your daughter will be arrested, tomorrow she will be locked up.… Then, if they find anything, and you know very well that when they want to find something they always do, she will be finished, and her friend with her.”

  Mother Tison, who had listened to Maurice with growing terror, turned on the Queen her almost deranged gaze.

  “You hear that, Antoinette? … My daughter! … It’s you who will have sunk my daughter!”

  The Queen appeared horrified in turn, not of the threat that glinted in the mad eyes of her jailer but of the despair that she read there.

  “Come, Madame Tison, I have something to say to you.”

  “Wait a minute! No huddling over there,” yelled Maurice’s colleague. “We’re not here for nothing, for pity’s sake! Everything has to be out in the open, in front of the municipality! Out in the open, I say!”

  “Let her alon
e, citizen Agricola,” Maurice whispered in the man’s ear. “As long as we learn the truth, who cares how it comes to us.”

  “You’re right, citizen Maurice, but still …”

  “Let’s go behind the glass, citizen Agricola, and turn our backs, if you’ll just bear with me; I am sure that the woman for whom we show such indulgence will not cause us to regret it.”

  The Queen heard these words as she was meant to do. She threw the young man a grateful look. Maurice casually turned his head away and went through to the other side of the glass partition, followed by Agricola.

  “You see that woman,” he said to Agricola. “As Queen, she’s more than guilty; as a woman, she is a most worthy and noble soul. It’s a good thing to smash crowns; unhappiness purifies.”

  “Good grief, you talk beautiful, citizen Maurice! I could listen to you all day, you and your friend Lorin. Is that also poetry, what you just said?”

  Maurice smiled.

  During this conversation, the scene Maurice had anticipated was taking place on the other side of the glass. Mother Tison had approached the Queen.

  “Madame,” said the Queen, “your despair breaks my heart. I do not want to deprive you of your child, it hurts too much. Just think for a moment: if you do what these men are asking you to do, perhaps your daughter will also be lost.”

  “Do what they say!” shrieked Mother Tison. “Do what they say!”

  “But first, I want you to think what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?” asked the jailer with an almost crazed curiosity.

  “Your daughter brought a friend with her.”

  “Yes, a working lass like herself. She didn’t want to come alone because of the soldiers.”

  “This friend had given your daughter a note; your daughter dropped it. Marie went and picked it up. It’s a perfectly insignificant piece of paper, but people with bad intentions could misconstrue it. Didn’t the municipal officer say that when they want to find something they always do?”

  “So? So? Go on!”

  “Well, that’s all; you want me to hand over this piece of paper. Do you want me to sacrifice a friend without necessarily getting you your daughter back for all that?”

  “Do what they say!” cried the woman. “Do what they say!”