The Knight of Maison-Rouge Read online

  “We are taking you to the station,” said Maurice, “not because you have done any harm, not because we suppose you capable of doing any harm, but because a Commune decree prohibits anyone going out without a card and you don’t seem to have one.”

  “But, monsieur, I didn’t know.”

  “Citizeness, you will find decent men at the station who’ll appreciate your reasons and from whom you have nothing to fear.”

  “Monsieur,” said the young woman, squeezing the officer’s arm. “It is not insult I fear at this point. It is death. If you take me to the station, I am finished.”

  2

  The STRANGER

  In her voice there was such a note of fear and distinction combined that a shiver ran down Maurice’s spine. Like a jab of electricity, that ringing voice pierced his heart.

  He turned to the volunteers, who were busy conferring among themselves. Humiliated at having been brought to heel by a lone man, they were clearly working out how to regain lost ground. They numbered eight to one; three of them had guns, the others pistols and lances. Maurice had only his sword. The battle would hardly be equal.

  The woman herself understood as much, for she dropped her head upon her chest with a heavy sigh. Maurice stood frowning, his upper lip curled in a disdainful sneer, his sword unsheathed, as he wavered between manly instincts that compelled him to defend this woman and his duties as a citizen, which urged him to hand her over.

  Suddenly, at the corner of the rue des Bons-Enfants, several rifles flashed like streaks of lightning and the measured tread of a patrol on the march could be heard. At the sight of people gathered together, the patrol halted, roughly ten feet away, and the voice of their lance corporal sounded the cry: “Who goes there?”

  “Friend! Friend!” cried Maurice. “Over here, Lorin.” The man to whom this injunction was addressed sallied forth at the head of eight men, who followed hot on his heels.

  “Ah! It’s you, Maurice,” said the corporal. “You devil! What are you doing gadding about the streets at this time of night?”

  “As you can probably tell, I’ve just left the Frères et Amis section.”

  “Yes, only to hook up with the Sæurs et Amies.1 I know all about that:

  Listen, ma belle:

  On the stroke of twelve

  An eager hand

  The hand of a lover

  Will silently glide

  Through the shadows

  And slide back the bolts

  That have locked you in

  Since nightfall.

  “That about sums it up, n’est-ce pas?”

  “No, my friend, you’ve got it wrong. I was heading straight home when I found this citizeness struggling in the hands of these citizen recruits. I ran over and asked them why they wanted to arrest her.”

  “That sounds like you,” said Lorin. “Such is the nature of the French cavaliers,2 as Voltaire said.” The corporal-poet then turned toward the recruits. “And why were you arresting this woman?” he demanded.

  “We already told the lieutenant,” came the reply from the chief of the smaller troop. “Because she doesn’t have an identity card.”

  “Oh, what poppycock!” said Lorin. “There’s a juicy crime for you!”

  “Don’t you know about the Commune decree, then?” asked the chief of the volunteers.

  “Yes, of course I do; but there’s another decree that renders that one null and void.”

  “What decree?”

  “It goes like this:

  On the Pindus and Parnassus3

  Love has decreed

  That Beauty, Youth, and Grace

  May, any hour of the day,

  At their own pace

  Pass without a pass.

  “How do you like that as a decree, citizen? Sounds quite gallant to me.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t strike me as exactly decisive. For a start, it’s not in that popular rag Le Moniteur;4 second, we are not on the Pindus or Parnassus; further, this is night, not day; and lastly, the citizeness may well be neither young, beautiful, nor graceful.”

  “I bet you the opposite,” said Lorin. “Let’s have a look, citizeness. Prove to me that I am right. Take down your hood and let everyone see whether you meet the conditions of the decree.”

  “Oh, monsieur!” said the young woman, hiding behind Maurice. “You protected me from your enemies; please protect me from your friends.”

  “You see, you see!” cried the chief of the volunteers. “She’s hiding. I reckon she’s some kind of spy for the aristocrats, the little hussy, some kind of nocturnal man-eater.”

  “Oh, monsieur!” cried the young woman, pulling Maurice toward her and unveiling a face at once ravishingly beautiful, youthful, and distinguished, radiant in the light of the streetlamp. “Look at me! How do I look?”

  Maurice was dazzled. Never had he dreamed of anything remotely resembling what he glimpsed. We say glimpsed, for the stranger covered her face up again almost as swiftly as she had uncovered it.

  “Lorin,” Maurice whispered. “You take charge of conducting the prisoner to the station. You have a right to, as head of the patrol.”

  “Right you are!” said the young corporal. “Say no more.” Then, turning to the stranger, he said, “Follow me, ma belle; since you don’t wish to offer us proof that you meet the conditions of the decree, you’ll have to follow me.”

  “Follow you? How come?” asked the chief of the volunteers.

  “We will, of course, conduct the citizeness to the station at the Hôtel de Ville where we are keeping guard, and we will take down any relevant information about her there.”

  “Not on your life!” said the chief of the original troop. “She’s ours and we intend to hang on to her.”

  “Ah, citizens, we are starting to get annoyed,” said Lorin.

  “Get annoyed all you like; it’s all the same to us. We’re the real soldiers of the Republic. While you’re out patrolling the streets of Paris, we’ll be spilling our blood at the front.”

  “See that you don’t spill it on the way, citizens. That’s exactly what will happen if you don’t show a bit more respect.”

  “Respect is an aristocratic virtue. We are the sans culottes,5 don’t you know!” retorted the volunteers.

  “Bully for you!” Lorin shot back. “But let’s not discuss such things in front of the lady. She may well be English for all we know. No offense, my lovely night owl,” he added, turning gallantly toward the stranger.

  A poet has said, and we can only repeat

  After him, humble echo at best:

  “I’ the world’s volume

  Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it:

  In a great pool, a swan’s nest.”

  “Aha! You’ve given yourself away there!” cried the chief of the volunteers. “Admit you’re one of Pitt’s men,6 in the payroll of England, a …”

  “Do be quiet!” said Lorin. “Poetry is not your forte, my friend. I see I’ll have to address you in prose. Listen, we may be nice polite National Guards, but we’re still children of Paris: when someone really gets our goat, we come down hard.”

  “Madame,” said Maurice. “You see what’s happening and you can guess what’s going to happen; in five minutes, ten or twelve men are going to cut each other’s throats over you. The cause that those who wish to defend you have embraced—is it worth the blood that will be shed?”

  “Monsieur,” replied the mystery woman, bringing her hands together. “There is only one thing I can say, one single thing: if you allow me to be arrested, the consequences for me and others would be so catastrophic, I’d rather you ran my heart through with that weapon in your hand right now and threw my body into the Seine than abandon me.”

  “Say no more, madame,” said Maurice. “I’ll take full responsibility.” And letting go the hands of the beautiful stranger, which he had clutched, he addressed the National Guards: “Citizens, as your officer, as a patriot, and as a Frenchman, I order you to protect th
is woman. And you, Lorin, if these guttersnipes utter a word, use your bayonet!”

  “Ready! Aim!” cried Lorin.

  “Oh God, oh God!” cried the stranger, swaddling her head in her hood and slumping onto a stone post for support. “God protect him.”

  The volunteers stumbled around trying to get into a defensive position. One of them even fired a shot from his pistol, and the bullet whistled straight through Maurice’s hat.

  “Cross bayonets,” said Lorin. “Attack!”

  In the shadows there followed a brief scuffle and momentary confusion during which one or two blasts from firearms rang out, followed by imprecations, cries, blasphemous shouts. Nobody came to help, for as we said at the beginning, the rumor of a massacre being about to take place had made the rounds, a massacre was therefore silently expected, and so it seemed the massacre had begun. Only two or three windows opened—only to promptly shut again.

  Less numerous and less well armed, the volunteers were instantly out of the fight. Two of them were seriously injured, four others stood pinned against the wall with bayonets aimed at their chests.

  “Right,” said Lorin. “I hope you’ll be as gentle as lambs from here on. As for you, citizen Maurice, I order you to take this woman to the station at the Hôtel de Ville. You understand that you will be held responsible.”

  “Yes,” said Maurice, adding, under his breath, “What’s the password?”

  “Oh, damn!” said Lorin, scratching his ear. “The password … is … um.”

  “Aren’t you worried I might put it to bad use?”

  “Please!” said Lorin. “What you do with it is up to you.”

  “So you were saying?” Maurice said.

  “I was saying I’d tell you in a moment. Let’s get rid of these great lumps first. After that, I wouldn’t mind giving you a few other words of advice before I bid you good night.”

  “Fine. I’ll be waiting.”

  Lorin returned to his National Guards, who were still holding the volunteers at bay. “There now, have you had enough?” he asked.

  “Yes, you Girondin dog,” the chief answered.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, my friend,” said Lorin, calmly. “We are better sans culottes than you are, for we belong to the Thermopylae club,7 and no one would question their patriotism, I hope. Let the citizens past, they’re not putting up a fight.”

  “It remains the case that if this woman is a suspect …”

  “If she were a suspect, she would have run away while we were fighting instead of waiting, as you see, for the fight to end.”

  “Hmm!” murmured one of the volunteers. “That’s true enough, what he says, this Mister Thermopyle.”

  “Anyway, we’ll hear all about it—because while my friend here is taking her to the station, the rest of us will go and drink to the health of the nation.”

  “We’re going to go and have a drink?” asked the chief.

  “Certainly. I’m as thirsty as anything, and I know a nice little tavern at the corner of the rue Thomas-du-Louvre!”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place, citizen? We’re sorry to have doubted your patriotism; to prove the point, let’s shake hands in the name of the nation and the law.”

  “Let’s!” said Lorin.

  And the recruits and the National Guards shook one another’s hands heartily. In those days, they were as happy to kiss and make up as they were to cut one another’s heads off.

  “Off we go, friends,” cried the two united troops. “To the corner of the rue Thomas-du-Louvre!”

  “What about us?” wailed the wounded. “You’re not just going to leave us here, are you?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Lorin. “We are going to leave you, we’re going to abandon you, you brave fellows who have fallen fighting for your country—against your fellow countrymen, it’s true; and by mistake, truer still. But don’t worry—we’ll send stretchers for you. While you’re waiting, why not sing the Marseillaise,8 that’ll keep your mind off things.

  Allons, enfants de la Patrie,

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé.”

  With that parting shot, Lorin walked over to Maurice, who was standing with his mysterious captive at the corner of the rue du Coq, while the National Guards and the recruits headed back arm in arm toward the place du Palais-Egalité.

  “Maurice,” he said. “I promised you a bit of advice, so here it is. Come with us—don’t compromise yourself by protecting this citizeness. She seems to me to be a perfectly charming creature, but that doesn’t make her any less suspect. After all, what is a charming woman doing running around the streets of Paris in the middle of the night …?”

  “Monsieur,” the woman cut in, “do not judge me by appearances, please.”

  “First, you use the word monsieur, which is a big mistake, don’t you know, citizeness? Notice you don’t hear me using old, polite forms of address.”

  “All right, citizen; but why not just let your friend finish his kind deed?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “By taking me home and ensuring my safety until I get there.”

  “Maurice! Maurice!” said Lorin. “Think what you are about to do. You are compromising yourself horribly.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware,” said the young man. “But what can I do? If I abandon the poor woman, she’ll be stopped every step of the way by the patrols.”

  “Yes, I will! Whereas, if I’m with you, monsieur … monsieur, I mean citizen, I’ll be saved.”

  “You hear that: saved!” said Lorin. “So she’s in mortal danger?”

  “My dear Lorin,” said Maurice. “Let’s be reasonable. Either she’s a good patriot or she’s an aristocrat. If she’s an aristocrat, we would turn out to be wrong to protect her; if she’s a good patriot, it’s our duty to see she’s safe.”

  “Forgive me, dear friend, and my apologies to Aristotle and all, but your logic is pathetic. You’re like the man who says:

  Iris has stolen my reason

  And demands that I be wise.”

  “Lorin, leave Dorat, Parny, and Gentil-Bernard9 out of it, please. Seriously, will you or will you not give me the password?”

  “In other words, Maurice, you’re putting me in a situation where I have to sacrifice either my duty to my friend, or my friend to my duty. And you know as well as I do that it’ll be duty that goes.”

  “You decide what it’s going to be, my friend. But for heaven’s sake, get on with it.”

  “You won’t misuse the password?”

  “I promise.”

  “That’s not enough: swear!”

  “On what?”

  “Swear on the altar of the nation.”

  Lorin promptly took his hat off and handed it to Maurice with the military insignia known as cockades10 facing him. Maurice, who acted as though the whole performance were perfectly normal, kept a straight face as he swore the required oath on the improvised altar.

  “And now,” said Lorin, “here is the password: Gaul and Lutetia ….11 You might find people will say to you, as they have to me, ‘Gaul and Lucretia,’ but who cares! Let them pass anyway. It’s all Roman.”

  “Citizeness,” said Maurice. “I am now at your service. Thank you, Lorin.”

  “Safe trip!” said Lorin, clapping the altar of the nation back on his head. Then, true to his anacreontic tastes, he sauntered away muttering:

  “At last, my dear Eleanor,

  You have done the delicious deed

  You feared, yet hoped for;

  You tasted, still quivering,

  So, tell me: what’s so frightening?”

  3

  RUE DES FOSSÉS-SAINT-VICTOR

  Maurice suddenly found himself alone with the young woman and was momentarily embarrassed. The fear of being played for a fool, the lure of her wondrous beauty, a vague feeling of remorse that grated on his pure, passionately republican conscience, held him back just as he was about to give the woman his arm.

  “Where
are we going, citizeness?” he asked.

  “Alas, monsieur, quite a way,” she replied.

  “Yes, but …”

  “Over near the Jardin des Plantes.”

  “So be it. Shall we go?”

  “Oh, dear, monsieur!” said the stranger. “I can see I’m being a nuisance. Believe me, if it weren’t for the terrible trouble I’m in, if I were only afraid of the usual dangers, I would not abuse your generosity like this.”

  “Yes, well, madame,” said Maurice, suddenly forgetting the prescribed republican vocabulary in this tête-à-tête and swiftly reverting to everyday speech, “how is it, in all conscience, that you’re out on the streets of Paris at this hour? You can see for yourself there isn’t a soul about except you and me.”

  “Monsieur, I told you: I went to visit someone in the faubourg du Roule. I left at midday without hearing anything about the new decree and I was coming back none the wiser. I spent all my time in a fairly out-of-the-way place.”

  “Yes,” murmured Maurice. “In the house of some ci-devant aristocrat, in some aristocrat’s lair. Admit it, citizeness: while you’re outwardly begging my support, you’re inwardly laughing at me for giving it.”

  “I am!” she cried. “How do you mean?”

  “It’s pretty clear. You’ve managed to get a republican to serve you as a guide. Well, this republican happens to be betraying his cause: it’s as simple as that.”