“But this piece of paper compromises your daughter,” said the Queen. “Please understand!”
“My daughter is a good patriot, like me,” shrieked the shrew. “Thank God! The Tisons are well known! Do what they say!”
“My God!” cried the Queen. “What can I do to convince you!”
“My daughter! I want my daughter back!” resumed Mother Tison, staggering. “Give me the note, Antoinette, give it to me.”
“Here it is, madame.”
With that, the Queen handed the unfortunate creature a piece of paper that the latter waved above her head, shouting, “Come back, come back, citizen municipal officers. I’ve got the note. Take it and give me back my child.”
“You are sacrificing our friends, sister,” said Madame Elisabeth.
“No, sister,” the Queen replied, with sadness. “I’m only sacrificing ourselves. The note compromises no one.”
At Mother Tison’s eruption, Maurice and his colleague returned and stood before her; she handed over the note and they read: “In the Orient, a friend still keeps watch.”
Maurice had barely glanced at the note when he began to tremble, for the writing seemed to him not unfamiliar.
“Oh, my God!” he intoned silently. “Surely this can’t be Geneviève’s writing! No, it’s not possible! I’m mad. It looks like her writing, no doubt about that; but what connection could Geneviève possibly have with the Queen?”
He spun round and saw that Marie Antoinette was watching him. As for Mother Tison, she was devouring him with her eyes, waiting to hear her fate.
“You’ve done a good deed,” he said to Mother Tison. “And you, citizen, a fine deed,” he said to the Queen.
“Well then, monsieur,” the Queen returned. “Let it be an example to you; burn this note and you will have done a charitable deed.”
“You’re kidding, Austrian woman,” said Agricola. “Burn a piece of paper that’ll help us catch a whole coven of aristocrats, maybe? Good grief, no! That’d be too silly for words.”
“Yes, burn it,” said Mother Tison, “it might compromise my daughter.”
“I think it might—your daughter and all the rest of them,” said Agricola, ripping out of Maurice’s hands the note Maurice would gladly have burned if only he’d been on his own. Ten minutes later, the note was placed on the desk of the members of the Commune. There it was opened instantly and commented upon from every possible angle.
“ ‘In the Orient, a friend still keeps watch,’ ” someone read aloud. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Hell!” answered a geographer. “In the Orient—Lorient, that much is clear: Lorient1 is a small town in Brittany, on the coast between Vannes and Quimper. Good grief! We should burn the town down if it’s true they’re harboring aristocrats that are still keeping watch over the Austrian woman.”
“It’s all the more dangerous,” someone else piped up, “since Lorient is a seaport, so they could establish intelligence with the English.”
“I propose,” said a third, “we send a commission to Lorient and set up an inquiry there.”
Maurice had been informed of the deliberations.
“I very much doubt,” he said to himself, “Lorient can be the Orient in question; we’re not talking about a place in Brittany, that’s for sure.”
The very next day the Queen, who, as we have said, no longer went down to the gardens so as not to have to pass the room her husband had been locked up in, asked to go up to the top of the tower to get a little fresh air with her daughter and Madame Elisabeth. The request was instantly granted. But unbeknownst to the ladies, Maurice went up too beforehand and, hiding behind a kind of compact sentry box housed at the top of the stairs, awaited the outcome of the note of the day before.
At first, the Queen sauntered casually about with her daughter and Madame Elisabeth, then she stood still while the two princesses continued to circle the tower platform. She turned to the east and looked intently at a nearby house in that direction, at whose windows several figures appeared. One of these figures was holding a white handkerchief.
Maurice meanwhile pulled a lorgnette from his pocket, and while he was adjusting it the Queen clearly waved her hand, as though to invite the curious souls at the window of the house to get back inside. But not before Maurice noticed the head of a man with blond hair and a pale complexion whose low bow had been respectful to the point of humility.
Behind this young man, for the curious fellow looked as if he was no more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old, a woman was half hidden. Maurice trained his lorgnette on her and, feeling he’d recognized Geneviève, gave himself away with a sudden jerk. Immediately the woman, who herself held a lorgnette in her hands, jumped back, dragging the young man with her. Was it really Geneviève? Did she in turn recognize Maurice? Or did the strange couple withdraw simply at the Queen’s invitation?
Maurice waited a while, scarcely breathing, to see whether the man and the woman would reappear. But the window remained deserted; so he counseled his colleague Agricola to show the greatest possible vigilance and rushed back downstairs and out to the corner of the rue Porte-Foin, to lie in wait for the curious couple in the house to come out. But he waited in vain, for no one came.
Unable to resist the suspicion that had been gnawing at his heart from the moment the Tison girl’s companion had deliberately kept herself covered up and mute, Maurice wended his way to the old rue Saint-Jacques, his mind in a turmoil of doubt.
When he entered the house, Geneviève was sitting in a white dressing gown by a big pot of jasmine, where she was in the habit of being served lunch. She gave Maurice the usual warm welcome and invited him to have a cup of hot chocolate with her.
Dixmer, too, arrived at that very moment, and appeared tickled pink at seeing Maurice at this unexpected hour of the day. But before Maurice was served the cup of chocolate he had accepted, Dixmer, ever enthusiastic when it came to his commercial enterprise, insisted that his friend the secretary of the Lepelletier section tour the workshops with him. Maurice could only go along.
“My dear Maurice,” said Dixmer, taking the young man’s arm and steering him along, “I have news of the utmost importance to tell you.”
“To do with politics?” asked Maurice, preoccupied as he continued to be with his notion.
“Ha!” Dixmer barked, smiling. “You know we don’t take much notice of politics here, my friend. No, no, it’s a bit of industrial news, I’m glad to say! My honorable friend Morand, who, as you know, is a most distinguished chemist, has just discovered the secret of a red morocco leather never before seen till now. It’s fade-resistant! It’s this dye I want to show you. And you’ll get to see Morand at work; he’s a true artist, that one.”
Maurice didn’t quite see how you could be an artist in red morocco, but he accepted the invitation anyway and trailed after Dixmer through the workshops. In a sort of special dispensary, he saw citizen Morand at work. Morand was wearing his blue glasses this time, along with his work gear, and he seemed incredibly busy indeed, turning a dirty white sheepskin purple. His hands and arms, visible below rolled-up sleeves, were red to the elbow. As Dixmer said, he seemed to have given himself over heart and soul to the joys of cochineal—so much so that he merely nodded to Maurice without stopping what he was doing.
“So, citizen Morand,” said Dixmer, “where were we?”
“We stand to gain a hundred thousand livres a year with this process alone,” said Morand. “But I haven’t slept for a week and the acids are burning my eyes.”
Maurice quickly left Dixmer with Morand and went back to join Geneviève once more, murmuring very softly to himself, “I have to admit the job of municipal officer will turn even a hero into a hardened brute. At the end of a week at the Temple, you’d think you were an aristocrat yourself and turn yourself in. Dixmer’s not a bad bloke and Morand’s the real thing; as for Geneviève, she’s as sweet as they come. To think I could suspect them even for a moment!”
Geneviève was waiting for Maurice with a smile so sweet as to dispel the suspicions he had, after all, entertained. She was all that she always was: gentle, warm and friendly, charming. The hours Maurice spent with Geneviève were those when he really felt alive. The rest of the time he suffered from the fever we might well call “the fever of ‘93,” which split Paris into two camps and turned existence into an eternal struggle—every minute of the day.
At midday, nonetheless, he had to leave Geneviève and return to the Temple. At the far end of the rue Saint-Avoye, he met Lorin coming off duty. He was bringing up the rear, but broke rank and went over to Maurice, whose whole face still glowed with the bliss that seeing Geneviève always made him feel.
“Ah!” said Lorin giving his friend’s hand a hearty shake:
“In vain you seek to stifle your sighs
I know what you desire.
You say nothing; but you’re on fire.
Love is in your heart, love is in your eyes.”
Maurice fumbled in his pocket for his whistle, which was his way of putting a damper on his friend’s poetic verve. But Lorin saw what was coming and ran off laughing.
“By the way,” said Lorin, turning to face Maurice again, “you’ve still got three days at the Temple, Maurice. I commend little Capet to you.”
12
LOVE
After a while, Maurice was very happy and very unhappy at the same time. That is how it always is at the beginning of grand passions. He worked in the day within the Lepelletier section; at night, he visited the old rue Saint-Jacques and occasionally put in an appearance at the Thermopylae club. These things filled his days and nights.
He did not fool himself into thinking that seeing Geneviève every night was anything more than drinking long drafts of a love without hope. Geneviève was one of those apparently easygoing yet shy women who gladly hold out their hand to a friend, who innocently bend their forehead to receive his kiss with all the confidence of a sister or the ignorance of a virgin; to such women, words of love are blasphemy, physical desires sacrilegious.
If in the purest of dreams that the young Raphael managed to put down on canvas there is a Madonna with smiling lips, chaste eyes, and a celestial expression, she is the model we should borrow from Perugia’s student of the divine to serve as the portrait of Geneviève.
Perched among her flowers, whose freshness and perfume she shared, sheltered from her husband’s industry and from her husband himself, Geneviève appeared to Maurice, each time he saw her, like a living enigma whose meaning he could not divine and whose secret he dared not ask.
One night, as usual, they were left alone together, sitting at the casement window he had entered that first night with such a desperate din. The perfume of the lilies in flower floated on the gentle breeze that follows a radiant sunset. After a long silence during which Maurice tracked the intelligent and ecstatic eye of Geneviève as she watched a silver star hatch in the azure sky, he suddenly broke the silence and ventured to ask her how it was that she was so young when her husband was already past his prime; so distinguished, when all the signs were that her husband’s education and upbringing were lower class; so poetic, finally, when her husband was so concerned merely to weigh, stretch, and dye the skins his factory produced.
“How come, in a master tanner’s place, there are a harp and a piano and all these pastels that you admitted to me were your doing? How come—I have to say it!—all this aristocracy, which I loathe in other people and adore in you?”
Geneviève turned candid eyes on Maurice.
“Thank you,” she said, “for asking me that question: it proves you are a man of delicacy and that you’ve never tried to find out about me from anyone else.”
“Never, madame,” said Maurice. “I have a devoted friend who would die for me, I have a hundred pals who are ready to go wherever I lead them; but of all these, there’s only one heart I confide in when it comes to a woman, a woman like you, and that’s my own.”
“Thank you, Maurice. I’ll tell you myself all you want to know.”
“Let’s start with your maiden name. I only know your married name.”
Geneviève saw the amorous egoism of the question and smiled.
“Geneviève du Treilly,” she said.
Maurice repeated it: “Geneviève du Treilly!”
“My family was ruined in the American War, in which my father and my elder brother took part.”
“Both gentlemen?” asked Maurice.
“No, no,” said Geneviève, going red.
“But you told me your maiden name was Geneviève du Treilly.”
“Without the ‘de,’1 Monsieur Maurice; my family was rich, but there was nothing at all noble about them.”
“You don’t trust me,” said the young man, smiling.
“No, no, I do,” Geneviève went on. “In America my father became friends with Monsieur Morand’s father. Monsieur Dixmer was Monsieur Morand’s business agent. Seeing us ruined and knowing that Monsieur Dixmer had an independent fortune, Monsieur Morand introduced him to my father, who then introduced him to me. I could see that a marriage had already been settled on and arranged and that it was what my family wanted. I didn’t love anyone and never had. I accepted. I’ve been Dixmer’s wife now for three years, and I must say that for three years my husband has been so good, so wonderful to me, that I’ve never had a single moment of regret, despite the difference in age and outlook you’ve noticed.”
“But when you married Monsieur Dixmer, he wasn’t yet the head of this factory?”
“No. We lived in Blois.2 After the tenth of August, Monsieur Dixmer bought this house and the workshops that go with it. So I would not be forced to mingle with the workers, to spare me even the sight of things that I might find upsetting given my inclinations, which are, as you said, Maurice, a little on the aristocratic side, he gave me this pavilion, where I live alone and out of the way, just the way I like it; or, if you prefer, according to my tastes, according to my desires, and I’m happy here, especially when a friend such as you comes and distracts me or shares my reveries with me.”
With that, Geneviève gave Maurice her hand, which he kissed fervently, bringing the color back to her face.
“Now, my friend,” she said, withdrawing her hand, “you know how I became Monsieur Dixmer’s wife.”
“Yes,” said Maurice, not taking his eyes off her. “But you haven’t told me how Monsieur Morand became Monsieur Dixmer’s partner.”
“Oh! That’s simple enough.… As I told you, Monsieur Dixmer had something of a fortune, yet not enough of one to take on a factory this size all by himself. The son of Monsieur Morand, his protector, as I said, my father’s friend, as you’ll recall, put up half the money. As he had studied chemistry, he devoted himself to the development of the activity you’ve witnessed and thanks to which Monsieur Dixmer’s business, of which he’s in charge of the material side, has expanded enormously.”
“Tell me, Monsieur Morand is also one of your close friends, is he not, madame?”
“Monsieur Morand is a noble soul, one of the purest hearts you will find under heaven.” Geneviève spoke gravely.
“If the only proof he’s given you of that,” said Maurice, more than a little piqued at her high regard for her husband’s partner, “is in sharing your husband’s business and inventing a new leather dye, permit me to observe that your praise of him is extremely overdone.”
“He has given me other proof, monsieur,” said Geneviève.
“But he’s still young, isn’t he?” asked Maurice. “Although it is hard to tell with those green goggles exactly how old he is.”
“He’s thirty-five.”
“Have you known each other long?”
“Since childhood.”
Maurice bit his lip. He had from the first suspected Morand of being in love with Geneviève.
“Ah!” Maurice exclaimed. “That explains his familiarity with you.”
“Restrained as it is
within the limits you’ve always seen, monsieur,” replied Geneviève, smiling, “it seems to me this familiarity, which is scarcely that of a friend, needs no explaining.”
“Oh, forgive me, madame,” said Maurice, “you know how jealous all strong affection is. As a friend I’m jealous of the friendship you seem to have with Monsieur Morand.”
He shut up. Geneviève, too, remained silent. There was no more talk of Morand that day, and Maurice left Geneviève more in love than ever. For now he was jealous.
Love is blind, they say, and our young man certainly was, but whatever blindfold lay over his eyes, however troubled at heart his passion left him, there were many gaps in Geneviève’s story, many hesitations, many things glossed over, which he hadn’t really noticed at the time but which came back to haunt him strangely afterward, when he was out of her orbit. All the freedom Dixmer gave him to talk to Geneviève as often as he liked and as long as he liked, in the kind of solitude they both enjoyed every evening, could not do much to reassure him. There was something else: having become the regular dinner guest of the house, Maurice was not only left on his own with Geneviève in all confidence—it seemed to him that she was, after all, safely protected against his desires by her angelic purity—he also got to escort her on the little expeditions she was obliged to carry out in the neighborhood from time to time.
The better his standing with the household, the more one thing amazed him, and that was that the more he sought to be in a position, you could say, to police the feelings he believed Morand to have for Geneviève; the more he sought, let’s say, to get acquainted with Morand, whose mind, despite his reservations, seduced him and whose refined manners captivated him increasingly every day; the more the bizarre man seemed keen to elude him. Maurice complained bitterly about this to Geneviève, for he had no doubt Morand felt him to be a rival and that jealousy on Morand’s side drove him to keep his distance.
“Citizen Morand hates me,” he complained to Geneviève one day. “You?” said Geneviève gazing at him with her great round eyes. “You? Monsieur Morand hates you?”
The Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 11
