The Knight of Maison-Rouge

by Alexandre Dumas

  The mansards, as Morand had anticipated, was not quite as high as the top of the tower. This was both a problem and an advantage: a problem because it meant not being able to communicate by signals with the Queen; an advantage because this impossibility would remove any suspicion. Tall houses were naturally the most carefully monitored.

  “We’ll have to find a way of telling her to be on the lookout—through Turgy or Toulan or the Tison girl,” murmured Dixmer.

  “I’ll work on it,” said Morand.

  They went back down. The notary was waiting in the salon with the contract all signed.

  “Wonderful,” said Dixmer. “The house suits me. Count out the 19,500 livres agreed on for the citizen and get him to sign.”

  The proprietor carefully counted out the money and signed.

  “You know, citizen,” said Dixmer, “the principal clause stipulates that the house will be handed over to me this very evening so that I can put my workers to work first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “And I’ll stick to that, citizen; you can take the keys away with you. This evening at eight o’clock sharp it will be perfectly free.”

  “One moment!” said Dixmer. “Didn’t you tell me, citizen notary, that there was a way out onto the rue Porte-Foin?”

  “There is, citizen,” answered the proprietor, “but I had it blocked off, since I have only one officieux and the poor devil was run off his feet trying to keep his eye on two doors. In any case, the exit is constructed in such a way that you can easily open it up again with a couple of hours’ work, if that. Do you want to see for yourselves, citizens?”

  “Thank you, but there’s no need,” said Dixmer. “I doubt if I’ll ever be needing that particular exit.”

  With that both men withdrew, after having for the third time gotten the proprietor to promise to leave the apartment empty by eight that night.

  At nine both men were back, followed at a discreet distance by five or six men to whom no one paid any attention in the midst of all the pandemonium then reigning in Paris.

  The two men entered first and saw that the owner had kept his word: the house was completely empty. They closed the shutters with the greatest care, killed the light, and lit candles that Morand had brought in his pocket. Then the other men filed in, one after the other. They were the master tanner’s usual dinner guests, the same black marketeers who had tried to dispatch Maurice one night and had since become his friends.

  They closed all the doors and went down into the cellar. This cellar, though virtually disregarded earlier that day, had come into its own that evening as the focal point of the house. They first set to work blocking all openings through which any inquisitive eyes could peer inside. Then Morand swiftly upended an empty barrel and began tracing geometric figures on a piece of paper.

  While Morand was drawing, his cohorts, led by Dixmer, left the house and followed the rue de la Corderie to the corner of the rue de la Beauce, where they came to a halt by the side of a covered carriage.

  In this carriage was a man who quietly handed each of them a pioneer’s tool not to be found in a tanner’s kit: one got a spade, the next a pick; the third a lever, the fourth a hoe. Each of the men hid the implement he had been given under his coat, then the miners retraced their steps back to the little house and the car disappeared.

  Morand had finished his work. He went straight to one corner of the cellar.

  “Here,” he said, “start digging.”

  And the workers of deliverance immediately set to work.

  The situation for the prisoners of the Temple had become more and more serious and, especially, more and more painful. For a moment, the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame Royale had had their hopes raised again. The municipal officers Toulan and Lepître, moved by compassion for the august prisoners, had shown them care and kindness. At first, unused to such marks of sympathy, the poor women were mistrustful. But you can’t be mistrustful when you have hope. Besides, what more could happen to the Queen, separated as she was from her son by prison, separated from her husband by death? To go to the scaffold as he had done? That was a fate she had stared in the face for so long now that she had wound up growing used to it.

  When Toulan and Lepître’s tour of duty came around, the Queen asked them to tell her the details of the King’s death, if it was true that they were concerned for her fate. This was a sad test of their sympathy. Lepître had been present at the execution and he obeyed the Queen’s command. The Queen next asked for the newspaper reports of the execution and Lepître promised to bring them next time he was on duty—guard duty came up every three weeks.

  In the King’s day, there had been four municipal officers at the Temple. Once the King was dead, these were reduced to three: one who kept watch in the day and two who kept watch at night. Toulan and Lepître managed to rig it so that they were always on night duty together.

  The guard duty roster was determined by drawing ballots from a hat. On one ballot you had to write “day” and on two other ballots “night.” Each man drew his ballot from a hat so that luck sorted out the night guards. Every time Toulan and Lepître were on duty, they would write “day” on all three ballots before presenting the hat to the municipal officer they wanted to oust. The latter would plunge his hand into the improvised urn and would, of course, pull out a ballot with the word “day” on it. Toulan and Lepître would then destroy the other two ballots, muttering about Providence always handing them the most boring chore—that is, night duty.

  When the Queen was sure of the two guards, she put them in contact with the Knight of Maison-Rouge. But then an escape plan was nipped in the bud. The Queen and Madame Elisabeth were supposed to flee disguised as municipal officers, with identity cards that would be procured for them. As for the two children, that is, Madame Royale and the young Dauphin, it had been remarked that the man who lit the oil lamps in the Temple always brought two children with him roughly the same age as the princess and the prince. It was agreed that Turgy, of whom we’ve already spoken, would don the lamplighter’s clothes and cart off Madame Royale and the Dauphin.

  Let’s have a quick look at what sort of man this Turgy was.

  Turgy was a former serving-man at the King’s table, brought to the Temple along with a part of the household of the Tuileries, for the King at first enjoyed a pretty well organized table service. For the first month alone, this service set the nation back thirty to forty thousand francs.

  But, as you can well understand, such prodigality could not last—the Commune saw to it that that was an order. The chefs were sent packing, along with kitchen hands and assistant kitchen hands. Only a single serving-man was retained, and that man was Turgy.

  Turgy was thus a natural intermediary between the two prisoners and their followers, for Turgy could come and go, and so carry notes with him and carry back replies. In general these notes were rolled as stoppers in the carafes of almond milk the Queen and Madame Elisabeth were brought. They were written in lemon juice and remained invisible until held up to a flame.

  Everything had been ready for the escape when one day Tison lit his pipe with the stopper from one of the carafes. As the paper burned he saw letters appear. He put out the half-burned piece of paper and took the fragment to the Temple Council. There it was held up to a flame, but only a few random words could be deciphered. The rest had been reduced to ashes.

  But the Queen’s handwriting was recognizable. Under interrogation, Tison told how he’d noticed Lepître and Toulan treating the prisoners indulgently now and then. The two agents were denounced to the municipal council and could no longer enter the Temple.

  Turgy remained.

  But wariness had been aroused to the highest degree. Turgy was never left alone with the princesses, and so all communication with the outside world became impossible.

  Still, one day Madame Elisabeth had handed Turgy a small knife with a gold blade she used for cutting fruit and asked him to clean it. Turgy suspected something, and while wip
ing the knife he had tugged at the handle. It contained a note.

  This note consisted of a whole alphabet of signs.

  Turgy gave Madame Elisabeth back the knife, but a municipal officer who happened to be on the scene whipped the knife out of her hands and inspected it closely; he too pulled the blade out of the handle, but luckily the note was no longer there. Though that didn’t stop the municipal officer from confiscating the knife.

  It was at that point that the indefatigable Knight of Maison-Rouge dreamed up this second attempt, which would be carried out by means of the house Dixmer had just bought.

  Yet, little by little, the prisoners had lost all hope. That day the Queen had been sickened by the cries from the street that reached her, informing her that the Girondins—the last bastion of moderation—were to be put on trial. She had been mortally sad when she heard the news. With the Girondins dead, the royal family had no one to defend them at the Convention.

  At seven o’clock, supper was served. The municipal officers examined each dish as they normally did; they unfolded all the napkins one after the other; poked at the bread, one with a fork, the other with his fingers; smashed the macaroons and the nuts—all this for fear that a note might somehow reach the prisoners. Once these precautions had been taken, they invited the Queen and the princesses to sit at the table using this simple formula: “Widow Capet, you can eat.”

  The Queen shook her head to say she was not hungry. But at that moment Madame Royale came over as though to kiss her mother and whispered in her ear:

  “Sit down at the table, madame, I think Turgy is signaling to you.”

  The Queen started and looked up. Turgy was standing opposite her, his napkin placed over his left hand and his right hand touching his eye.

  She stood without further ado and went to take her usual place at the table. The two municipal officers were present throughout the meal, since they were forbidden to leave the princesses alone with Turgy even for a moment. Under the table, the Queen and Madame Elisabeth pressed each other’s feet. As the Queen was seated opposite Turgy, none of the serving-man’s gestures escaped her. Yet all his movements were so natural they could not and did not arouse any mistrust on the part of the municipal officers.

  After supper, the table was cleared with the same precautions as it had been set; the tiniest bits of bread were collected and inspected; and after that Turgy left first, followed by the officers. Only Mother Tison stayed behind.

  This woman had become ferocious since she had been separated from her daughter, of whose fate she was completely in the dark. Every time the Queen embraced Madame Royale she flew into fits of rage that showed all the signs of madness. And so the Queen, whose maternal heart empathized with the mother’s suffering, often stopped at the point of offering herself the consolation, the only one that remained to her, of hugging her daughter to her heart.

  Tison came for his wife. But the woman first declared that she would retire only when the Widow Capet had gone to bed. Madame Elisabeth then said good night to the Queen and went into her room. The Queen undressed and hopped into bed, and so did Madame Royale. It was then that Mother Tison took the candle and left.

  The municipal officers had already lain down on their camp beds in the hallway when the moon, the lodgers’ sole, wan visitor, slipped an oblique ray of light through the opening in the canopy; it lay in a stripe from the window to the foot of the Queen’s bed.

  For a moment all remained calm and quiet in the room. Then a door squeaked softly on its hinges and a shadow passed between the ray of light and the foot of the bed. It was Madame Elisabeth.

  “Did you see?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said the Queen.

  “So you understood?”

  “So clearly that I can hardly believe it.”

  “Come, let’s go over the signals.”

  “First, he touched his eye to indicate to us that something new was afoot.”

  “Then he passed his napkin from his left arm to his right arm, which means they are busying themselves with our deliverance.”

  “Then he brought his hand to his forehead as a sign that the help he announced was coming to us from inside France and not from abroad.”

  “Then, when you asked him not to forget your almond milk tomorrow, he made two knots in his handkerchief.”

  “So it is the Knight of Maison-Rouge once more. Noble heart!”

  “It is he,” said Madame Elisabeth.

  “Are you asleep, my daughter?” the Queen asked.

  “No, my mother,” replied Madame Royale.

  “Well then, pray for you-know-who.”

  Madame Elisabeth crept back to her room without a sound; for five minutes the voice of the young princess could be heard speaking to God in the silence of the night.

  This was at the very moment that, under Morand’s direction, the first blows of the pick were delivered in the little house in the rue de la Corderie.

  18

  CLOUDS

  Apart from the intoxication of their first glances, Maurice found the reception Geneviève had given him well below his expectations, and he was counting on being alone with her to win back the ground he had lost—or seemed to have lost, at least—on the way to her heart.

  But Geneviève had other plans and was counting equally strongly on not giving him the opportunity of being alone with her—all the more so as she remembered how dangerously sweet such tête-à-têtes could be.

  Maurice was about to strike the following day, but a relative, no doubt alerted beforehand, popped up on a visit and Geneviève clung to her visitor for dear life. There was nothing Maurice could say this time, for it might well not have been Geneviève’s fault.

  When he was leaving, Geneviève asked Maurice to escort the relative home, as she lived in the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor. Maurice walked away rather sullenly with his burden, but Geneviève flashed him a smile and he chose to interpret the smile as a promise.

  Alas! Maurice was wrong again! The next day was the second of June, the terrible day that saw the Girondins fall. But Maurice sent his friend Lorin packing when Lorin had done his utmost to cart Maurice off to the Convention, putting everything else aside to go off and see the woman he loved. The Goddess of Liberty had a formidable rival in Geneviève.

  Maurice found Geneviève in her little salon, and she was gracious and full of consideration. But by her side was a young chambermaid, sporting a red, white, and blue cockade, and busy marking handkerchiefs by the windowsill without any apparent intention of budging.

  Maurice scowled; Geneviève could see the Olympian was in a bad mood and she laid her attentions on with a trowel. But as she didn’t push amiability as far as getting rid of the young officieuse, Maurice decided he’d had enough and flounced off an hour earlier than usual.

  Yet, since all this could have been sheer bad luck, Maurice decided to be patient. That evening, in any case, the situation was so terrible that, although Maurice had lived beyond the reach of politics for some time now, the news floored even him. It required nothing less than the fall of a party that had ruled France for ten months to distract him for a second or two from his love.

  The next day saw the same caper on Geneviève’s part, but Maurice had his own plan ready in anticipation: ten minutes into his visit, Maurice noticed that, after marking a dozen handkerchiefs, the chambermaid was starting on six dozen napkins, and so he pulled out his watch, saluted Geneviève, and left without a word. Better than that: as he left, he did not turn round once.

  Geneviève, who’d gotten up to watch him cross the garden, remained momentarily blank, faint, and nervous; she fell back down onto her chair, completely distraught over the outcome of her little diplomatic exercise.

  Right then, Dixmer strode in.

  “Has Maurice gone?” he cried, astounded.

  “Yes,” stammered Geneviève.

  “But he only just got here, didn’t he?”

  “About a quarter of an hour ago.”
<
br />   “So he’s coming back?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Leave us, Peony,” said Dixmer.

  The chambermaid had taken the flower’s name out of hatred of the name Marie, which she had the misfortune to share with the Austrian woman. On her master’s invitation, she rose and left the room.

  “Well, then, dear Geneviève,” Dixmer coaxed, “have you made peace with Maurice?”

  “Quiet the opposite, my friend. I believe we are on worse terms than ever at this moment.”

  “This time who’s in the wrong?” asked Dixmer.

  “Maurice, without a shadow of a doubt.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “What!” said Geneviève, flushing. “Can’t you guess?”

  “Why he’s angry? No, I can’t.”

  “He’s allergic to Peony, it would seem.”

  “Oof! Really? Well then, we’ll have to get rid of the girl. I’m not about to deprive myself of a friend like Maurice for the sake of some chambermaid.”

  “Oh!” said Geneviève. “I don’t think he’ll go as far as demanding we banish her from the house. I think he’ll be satisfied with …”

  “What?”

  “With her being banished from my room.”

  “And Maurice is right,” said Dixmer. “He comes to see you—not Peony; so there’s no point in Peony’s being there all the time when he comes.”

  Geneviève looked at her husband with amazement.

  “But, my friend …” she said.

  “Geneviève,” Dixmer continued, “I thought you were an ally who would make the task I’ve imposed on myself easier; yet I find, on the contrary, that your fears are making our problems twice as bad. I thought we’d reached an agreement four days ago and now we’re back at square one. Geneviève, didn’t I tell you I trust in you, in your honor? Didn’t I say to you that it was essential that Maurice be our friend again—a closer, more trusting friend than ever? God! Women are always getting in the way of our plans!”