The Knight of Maison-Rouge Read online

  “Adieu,” he sighed, “beautiful stranger. You’ve played me for a fool or a child. Would she have brought me here if she actually lived here! Not on your life! She merely passed through like a swan on a foul bog. And like a bird on the wing, she’s left no trace.”

  6

  THE TEMPLE

  That same day, while Maurice was going back over the pont de la Tournelle in acute disappointment, several municipal officers, accompanied by the commander of the National Guard of Paris, Santerre, were paying a grim visit to the tower of the Temple, which had been turned into a prison since the thirteenth of August 1792.

  The visit was centered on the apartment on the third floor, comprising an antechamber and three rooms. One of these rooms was occupied by two women, a young girl, and a boy of nine, all dressed in mourning.

  The elder of the two women could have been thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. She was sitting reading a book. The second woman was sitting and working on a hoop of tapestry. She could have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. The girl was fourteen and kept close to the boy, who was lying down sick with his eyes closed as though he were asleep, although it was obviously impossible to sleep with the racket the municipal officers were making.

  A number of them were shoving the beds around, others were unfolding articles of linen; still others, having completed their search, were staring insolently at the unhappy female prisoners, who kept their eyes resolutely lowered, one on her book, the other on her tapestry, the third on her brother.

  The elder of the two women was tall, pale, and beautiful. As she read, she seemed to be concentrating her attention entirely on her book, though no doubt her eyes alone were doing the reading, not her mind.

  One of the municipal officers walked over to her, snatched the book out of her hands, and threw it on the floor in the middle of the room. The prisoner stretched her hand toward the table, took a second volume, and began reading that. The Montagnard made a furious move to tear this second volume from her, but as he did so, the prisoner busy embroidering next to the window started to tremble; the young girl shot forward, put her arms round the reader, and quietly sobbed, “Ah, my poor mother!” giving her mother a kiss.

  The prisoner pressed her lips against the young girl’s ear as though kissing her back, but instead she whispered, “Marie,1 there is a note hidden in the mouth of the stove; get rid of it.”

  “That will do! Enough!” cried the municipal officer, jerking the girl away from her mother. “Enough canoodling for one day!”

  “Monsieur,” said the girl. “Has the Convention banned children from kissing their mothers?”

  “No; but it has decreed that traitors, aristocrats, and former aristocrats will be punished. That’s why we’re here to conduct an interrogation. So let’s get on with it, Antoinette. Answer.”

  The woman so grossly addressed did not even deign to look in her interrogator’s direction. On the contrary, she turned her head away, her cheeks suddenly on fire, drained of color and streaked now with tears.

  “It is not possible,” the man continued, “that you don’t know about the attempt to break you out made this very night. Who is behind it?” Nothing but silence from the prisoner.

  “Answer, Antoinette,” Santerre2 said, coming closer, without noticing the shiver of horror that gripped the young woman at the sight of this man who, on the morning of the twenty-first of January, had come to the Temple to take Louis XVI to the guillotine. “Answer. Last night someone conspired against the Republic, they tried to release you from a captivity that the will of the people has imposed upon you while you await punishment for your crimes. Tell us, did you know about this conspiracy?”

  Marie Antoinette trembled on hearing this voice, which she seemed to be trying to escape by shrinking back to the very edge of her chair. But she no more answered this question than the previous ones, took no more notice of Santerre than she had of the municipal officer.

  “So you don’t feel like answering?” said Santerre, stamping his foot violently.

  The prisoner took a third volume from the table.

  Santerre spun on his heels. The brute power of this man, who commanded eighty thousand men and only needed to wave his hand to drown out the voice of the dying Louis XVI, was shattered by the dignity of a poor woman prisoner whose head he could also cause to roll but whose spirit he could not break.

  Addressing the other woman, who had interrupted her tapestry for a moment to join her hands in prayer—prayer directed not to such men as these but to God—Santerre thundered, “What about you, Elisabeth,3 will you answer?”

  “I do not know what you are asking,” she said. “So I cannot answer you.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake! Citizeness Capet,”4 said Santerre getting hot under the collar now. “What I am saying is perfectly clear. I’m saying that during the night an attempt was made to break you out of here and that you must know who the guilty parties are.”

  “We have no communication with the outside world, monsieur; so we cannot know either what is being done for us or what is being done against us.”

  “All right, then; have it your way,” said the municipal officer. “We’ll see what your nephew has to say on the subject.”

  With that he walked over to the Dauphin’s bed.5 But Marie Antoinette shot to her feet at this threat. “Monsieur,” she said. “My son is ill and he is sleeping.… Do not wake him.”

  “Well then, answer.”

  “I know nothing.”

  At that, the municipal officer leapt to the bed where, as we said earlier, the little captive was feigning sleep. “Snap out of it, Capet!” the man said, shaking him roughly. The child opened his eyes and smiled as the municipal officers surrounded his bed. Rocked by pain and fear, the Queen signaled to her daughter, who took advantage of the moment to slip unnoticed into the room next door, where she opened one of the stove doors, took out the note, and burned it before immediately returning to the main room and giving her mother a reassuring look.

  “What do you want?” the little boy asked.

  “We want to know if you heard anything last night.”

  “No. I was sleeping.”

  “You really like sleeping, it would seem.”

  “I do, because when I sleep I dream.”

  “And what do you dream about?”

  “That I see my father again, even though you have killed him.”

  “So you heard nothing?” Santerre snapped.

  “Nothing.”

  “The cubs are certainly in league with the wolf,” said the officer, furious. “And yet there was definitely a plot.”

  The Queen smiled.

  “She’s laughing at us, the Austrian woman!”6 cried the municipal officer. “I reckon, since that’s how it is, we should carry out the Commune decree to the letter. Up you go, Capet.”

  “What are you going to do?” cried the Queen, forgetting herself completely. “Can’t you see that my son is sick, that he has a fever? Do you want to kill him?”

  “Your son,” said the municipal officer, “is a constant cause for alarm for the Council of the Temple. He is the target of all the conspirators. They flatter themselves they’ll get you all out of here. Well, let them try. Tison! … Call Tison.”7

  Tison was a sort of day laborer and general factotum whose job it was to do the heavy domestic work about the prison. He arrived, a man of about forty with a tanned complexion, a rough-hewn, Neanderthal face, and frizzy black hair that crept down to his eyebrows like a carpet.

  “Tison,” said Santerre. “Who came yesterday to bring the detainees’ food?”

  Tison cited a name.

  “And their linen, who brought that?”

  “My daughter.”

  “So your daughter does the laundry?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And you got her the job of looking after the prisoners’ laundry?”

  “Why not? She might just as well do theirs as anyone else’s. It’s not tyrants’ mon
ey anymore, it’s the nation’s money, since the nation’s paying for them.”

  “You were told to examine the linen carefully.”

  “Well then, didn’t I do my job? The proof is, yesterday there was a handkerchief someone had tied two knots in, so I took it to the Council, who ordered my wife to untie the knots and iron it and give it to Madame Capet without a word.”

  At this reference to two knots tied in a handkerchief, the Queen trembled; her eyes widened and she exchanged a look with Madame Elisabeth and the girl.

  “Tison,” said Santerre, “your daughter’s patriotism is beyond doubt. But from today she will no longer set foot in the Temple.”

  “Oh, my God!” said Tison, frightened. “What are you trying to tell me? No! You mean I’ll never see my daughter again until I get out of here?”

  “You will no longer get out of here,” Santerre retorted.

  Tison looked around him, his haggard gaze not registering any one object. Then he suddenly erupted: “I’m no longer to leave the Temple? So, it’s like that, is it? All right! I’ll leave once and for all, right now! I’m handing in my resignation. I’m no traitor, no aristocrat, not me, to be kept in jail. I tell you I’m leaving this minute.”

  “Citizen,” said Santerre. “Obey the orders of the Commune and hold your tongue or you could well be sorry. Stay here and watch whatever happens. We’ve got our eye on you, I’m warning you.”

  During this time the Queen, thinking she had been forgotten, had regained her composure and put her son back to bed.

  “Get your wife up here,” the municipal officer directed Tison—and Tison obeyed without a murmur. Santerre’s threats had rendered him as docile as a lamb. Tison’s wife stepped in.

  “Come here, citizeness,” said Santerre. “The rest of us are going into the antechamber, and while we’re there you will search the detainees.”

  “Do you know,” Tison said to his wife, “they won’t let our daughter into the Temple anymore.”

  “What! They won’t let our daughter come here anymore? But that means we won’t see her again, doesn’t it?”

  Tison shook his head.

  “What are you muttering about over there?”

  “I’m saying that we’ll file a report with the Council of the Temple and that the Council will decide. Meanwhile …”

  “Meanwhile,” said the wife, “I want to see my daughter.”

  “Quiet!” said Santerre. “We brought you up here to search the prisoners, so search them. We’ll see what happens after that.…”

  “But … I mean!”

  “Oh, dear!” said Santerre, frowning furiously. “It looks like things are going to get nasty.”

  “Do what the citizen general asks you to! Go on, woman! Afterward, you heard him, he says we’ll see.” Tison turned an abject smile on Santerre.

  “Very well,” said the woman. “Off you go. I’m ready to search them.” The men filed out of the room.

  “My dear Madame Tison,” said the Queen. “Please don’t think …”

  “I don’t think anything, citizeness Capet,” said the horrible woman, grinding her teeth. “Except that it’s you who are the cause of all the people’s misery. And if I find anything suspect on you, you’d better watch out.”

  Four men remained in the doorway to lend Madame Tison a hand should the Queen resist. The woman began with the Queen, on whom she found a handkerchief knotted in three places, unhappily looking like a prepared response to the one Tison had spoken of. She also found a pencil, a scapular, and sealing wax.

  “Aha! I knew it!” crowed Madame Tison. “Didn’t I tell the municipal officers that the Austrian woman was writing in secret! The other day I found a drop of wax on the ring around the candlestick.”

  “Oh, madame!” said the Queen in a tone of naked supplication. “Just show them the scapular.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the woman. “Pity you, is it! … And who pities me, I ask you? … They’re taking my daughter away from me.”

  Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale8 proved to have nothing on them, so Madame Tison called out to the municipal officers and they marched back into the room with Santerre at the helm. She handed them the objects she had found on the Queen, which were passed round from man to man, giving rise to numerous conjectures. The handkerchief with its three knots in particular kept the imagination of the persecutors of the royal race busy for some time.

  “Now,” said Santerre, “we will read you the Commune decree.”

  “What decree?” the Queen demanded to know.

  “The decree that orders you to be separated from your son.”

  “So it is true that this decree exists?”

  “Yes. The Convention is too concerned with the care of a child entrusted to the nation to leave him in the company of a mother as depraved as you.”

  The Queen’s eyes flashed fire. “Come up with an actual accusation, at least, tigers that you are!”

  “That’s not hard, for crying out loud,” jeered one of the officers. “Let’s see …” And he named the foul crime—the crime of incest!—Suetonius once accused Agrippina9 of.

  “Oh!” cried the Queen, on her feet, white and magnificent with indignation. “I appeal to any mother who has a heart.”10

  “Come! Come! All this is very well but we haven’t got all day; we’ve already been here too long. Get up, Capet, and follow us.”

  “Never! Never!” cried the Queen, throwing herself between the municipal officers and the young Louis, ready to defend the approach to the bed as a tigress defends her lair. “I will never let anyone take my child away from me!”

  “Oh, messieurs,” Madame Elisabeth entreated, joining her hands in a moving attitude of prayer. “Messieurs, in the name of Heaven! Have pity on two poor mothers!”11

  “Speak, then! Give us names!” said Santerre. “Confess to your accomplices’ plans, explain what these knots mean tied in a handkerchief the Tison girl brought in with your linen and tied in the handkerchief found in your pocket, and we’ll let you keep your son.”

  Madame Elisabeth shot the Queen a look that seemed to entreat her to make the terrible sacrifice demanded. But the Queen, proudly wiping a tear that glittered like a diamond at the corner of her eye, merely said, “Adieu, my son. Never forget your father, who is in heaven, and your mother, who will soon join him there; say the prayer I taught you, every night and every morning. Adieu, my son.”

  She gave her son one last kiss before straightening up, cold and unyielding. “I know nothing, messieurs. Do what you will.”

  But the Queen did not have the superhuman strength required, especially for a mother, to maintain her pose. She fell, utterly annihilated, onto a chair as they took the child away, sobbing and holding out his arms to her, though without uttering a single cry.

  The door shut behind the municipal officers as they carried off the royal child, leaving the three women to themselves. There was a moment of desperate silence, interrupted only by a few stifled sobs. The Queen was the first to break the silence.

  “My daughter, what did you do with the note?”

  “I burned it, as you told me to do, Mother.”

  “Without reading it?”

  “Without reading it.”

  “Adieu, then, last ray of light, supreme hope!” murmured Madame Elisabeth.

  “Oh! You are right! You are right, my sister. This is too much for anyone to bear.” She turned to her daughter again. “But you did see the writing, at least, Marie?”

  “Yes, Mother, for a second.”

  The Queen stood and went to the door to check whether anyone was watching, and then she pulled a pin from her hair and walked over to a part of the wall where there was a crack, out of which she hooked a small piece of paper folded up like a note. She unfolded it. Showing the note to Madame Royale, she said, “Try to remember very carefully, my daughter, before you answer. Was the writing you saw the same as this?”

  “Yes, yes, Mother,” cried the princess. “Yes, I recog
nize it!”

  “God be praised!” cried the Queen, falling to her knees in fervent thanks. “If he was able to write this morning, he must have been saved. Thank you, God! Thank you! Such a noble friend certainly merits one of your miracles!”

  “Who are you talking about, Mother?” asked Madame Royale. “Who is this friend? Tell me his name so that I can commend him to God in my prayers.”

  “Yes, you are right, my darling. I will tell you. Never forget the name, for it is the name of a gentleman full of honor and bravery. This man is not committed out of ambition, he is not some fair-weather friend, for he only came forward when everything collapsed. He has never seen the Queen of France, or, rather, the Queen of France has never set eyes on him, and yet he dedicates his life to defending me. Perhaps he will be rewarded, as all virtue is rewarded these days, by a terrible death.… But … If he should die … Oh! Up there! Up there in heaven! I will thank him.… He is called …”

  The Queen looked around anxiously and lowered her voice:

  “He is the Knight of Maison-Rouge.… Pray for him!”

  7

  A GAMBLER’S OATH

  The attempt to spirit away the Queen, as debatable as it was, since it hadn’t actually gotten off the ground, had excited the wrath of some and the curiosity of others. Besides, this almost overwhelmingly probable event was corroborated, as the Committee of Public Safety1 learned, by the fact that a host of emigrés2 had been crossing back into France via different points on the border for the last three or four weeks. It was obvious that people who would risk their necks in this way would not do so without some intent and that this intent was, in all probability, to help get the royal family out.

  Already, as proposed by Osselin,3 a member of the Convention, a terrible decree had been promulgated condemning to death any emigré convicted of having set foot back on French soil, as well as any French person convicted of having plans to emigrate; any individual convicted of having aided and abetted such a person’s flight or return; and, finally, any citizen convicted of having harbored an emigré. This terrible law ushered in the Terror.4 All that was lacking after that was the law against “suspects.”