“My God!” she murmured, raising her eyes to the skies before turning toward the municipal officer.
“Monsieur,” she said, “please be so good as to remove this woman; you can see she is mad.”
“All right, all right, let’s go,” said the officer. “Move it.”
But Mother Tison clung to the wall.
“No!” she shrieked. “She has to forgive me so he’ll save my daughter.”
“But who are you talking about?”
“The man in the coat.”
“My sister,” whispered Madame Elisabeth, “offer her a few words of consolation.”
“Oh, gladly!” said the Queen. “Indeed, I believe that would be the quickest way.”
Turning to the madwoman, she said: “Good woman, what do you want? Tell me.”
“I want you to forgive me for making you suffer all the insults I’ve heaped on you and for the denunciations I’ve made; and I want you, when you see the man in the coat, to order him to save my daughter, since he does anything you ask.”
“I don’t know who you mean by the man in the coat,” the Queen replied, “but if all that’s needed to salve your conscience is to obtain my forgiveness for the offenses you believe you have committed against me—oh! from the bottom of my heart, poor woman! I forgive you most sincerely; and may those I’ve trespassed against similarly forgive me!”
“Oh!” cried Mother Tison in an inexpressible note of joy. “So he’ll save my daughter, since you’ve pardoned me. Your hand, madame, your hand.”
The Queen was bewildered and, without understanding a word, held out her hand, which Mother Tison grabbed fervently and to which she frantically applied her lips.
At that moment, the hoarse voice of a town crier was heard in the rue du Temple.
“Here,” the man cried, “is the judgment and arrest of the girl Héloïse Tison, condemning her to death for the crime of conspiracy!”
Scarcely had these words struck the ears of Mother Tison when her face disintegrated; she shot up onto one knee and spread her arms wide so that the Queen could not get past.
“Oh, my God!” murmured the Queen who hadn’t missed a word of the terrible announcement.
“Condemned to death?” cried the mother. “My daughter condemned? My Héloïse finished? He didn’t save her, then, he can’t save her! So it’s too late? … Ah!”
“Poor woman,” said the Queen. “Believe me, I pity you.”
“You?” the woman gasped, her eyes becoming bloodshot. “You? You pity me? Never! Never!”
“You’re wrong. I pity you with all my heart. But you must let me pass.”
“Let you pass!” Mother Tison burst out laughing. “Not on your life! I was going to let you get away because he told me that if I asked your pardon and let you get away, my daughter would be saved. But now that my daughter’s going to die, you will not escape.”
“Over here, messieurs! Come to my aid,” cried the Queen. “My God! My God! Can’t you see this woman’s mad?”
“No, I’m not mad, not at all; I know what I’m saying,” cried Mother Tison. “You see, it’s true, there was a plot. It’s Simon who caught on to it; it’s my daughter, my poor daughter, who sold the bouquet. She admitted it at the Revolutionary Tribunal … a bouquet of carnations … There were bits of paper inside.…”
“Madame,” said the Queen, “for heaven’s sake!”
Once again the town crier’s voice was heard, as he repeated: “Here is the judgment and arrest of the girl Héloïse Tison, condemning her to death for the crime of conspiracy!”
“Do you hear that?” screamed the madwoman, now surrounded by a group of National Guards. “You hear that? Condemned to death? It’s for you, for you, that they’re going to kill my daughter! You hear? For you, the Austrian woman!”
“Messieurs,” said the Queen, “for heaven’s sake! If you won’t get rid of this poor madwoman for me, let me at least go back upstairs. I cannot bear this woman’s blame: unjust as it is, it is breaking my heart.”
The Queen turned her head away, letting a painful sob escape.
“That’s right, weep, hypocrite!” jeered the madwoman. “Your bouquet has cost her dearly.… Besides, she should have known. It’s the way all those who serve you end up. You bring bad luck, you Austrian witch: they’ve killed your friends, your husband, your defenders; finally they’ll kill my daughter. When in hell are they going to kill you, so no one else dies for you anymore?”
The unhappy woman hurled these last words at the Queen, accompanying them with a threatening gesture.
“Wretched woman!” risked Madame Elisabeth. “Have you forgotten that the woman you are speaking to is the Queen?”
“The Queen? Her? … The Queen?” stammered Mother Tison, whose derangement was becoming more pronounced by the minute. “If she’s the Queen, let her forbid the executioners to kill my daughter.… Let her grant my poor Héloïse pardon.… Kings let people off.… Until now, all you’ve ever been is a woman, and a woman who brings bad luck, a woman who kills!”
“Ah! For pity’s sake, madame,” cried Marie Antoinette. “See my pain, see my tears.”
With that Marie Antoinette made an attempt to pass, no longer in the hope of escaping but instinctively, to get away from this woman with her alarming obsession.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” screamed the old woman. “You want to escape, Madame Veto.… I know all about it, the man in the coat told me. You want to go and join the Prussians.… But you’re not going to get away,” she went on, clinging to the Queen’s frock. “I’ll stop you! I will! String her up, Madame Veto! Aux armes, citoyens! Marchons … qu’un sang impur! … ”1
And, her arms twisted, her wild grey hair all over the place, her face purple with apoplexy, her eyes swimming in blood, the unhappy woman fell backward, ripping a strip off the frock to which she clung.
The Queen, dazed but at least free of the lunatic, was about to flee into the garden when, all of a sudden, a terrible cry erupted, mingled with barking and some other strange noise. The National Guards snapped out of the stupor they had fallen into as they stood around Marie Antoinette, lured by the scene we have just described.
“To arms! To arms! Treason!” cried a man the Queen recognized by his ugly voice as the cobbler Simon.
Next to this man, who, saber in hand, stood guard at the threshold of the canteen, little Black was barking like fury.
“To arms, all guards!” cried Simon. “We have been betrayed! Get the Austrian woman back inside! To arms! To arms!”
An officer came running over. Simon spoke to him, his eyes inflamed, pointing to the interior of the canteen. The officer in turn cried out:
“To arms!”
“Black! Black!” the Queen called, taking a few steps forward. But the dog did not respond and went on barking like fury.
The National Guards ran to take up arms and rushed toward the cabin, while the municipal officers grabbed hold of the Queen, her sister, and her daughter and forced the prisoners back through the wicket gate, which closed behind them.
“Arms at the ready!” cried the municipal officers to the sentries, and the sound of guns being loaded was heard.
“In there, in there, under the trapdoor,” cried Simon. “I saw the trapdoor move. Nothing surer. Anyway, the Austrian woman’s dog, and a good little fellow he is—he’s not involved in the plot—he yapped at the conspirators, who are probably in the cellar. Listen; you hear? He’s still yapping.”
Indeed, goaded on by the song and dance Simon was making, Black barked twice as hard.
The officer grabbed the ring of the trapdoor. Two of the sturdiest grenadiers, seeing he couldn’t budge it, rushed to his aid, though without any greater success.
“You can see they’re holding the trapdoor down from the inside,” said Simon. “Fire! Through the trapdoor, my friends, fire!”
“Hey!” cried Madame Plumeau. “You’ll break my bottles!”
“Fire!” Simon repeated. “Fire!”
“Shut up, you loudmouth!” said the officer. “And you, bring an ax or two and start on the floorboards. Now, let there be a squad standing by. Watch out! And fire into the trapdoor as soon as it’s open.”
The groan of wooden boards and a sudden jolt told the National Guards that some kind of movement had just been accomplished down below. Soon afterward, an underground noise was heard that sounded like an iron portcullis clanging shut.
“Courage!” said the officer to the sappers who came running.
The man with the ax struck into the floorboards. Twenty rifle barrels were pointed downward in the direction of the hole he hacked out, which grew wider second by second. But no one was to be seen through it. The officer lit a torch and threw it into the cellar. But the cellar was empty. The trapdoor was whipped back and this time yielded without the slightest resistance.
“Follow me!” cried the officer, bravely rushing down the stairs.
“Forward! Forward!” cried the National Guards, hurling themselves after their officer.
“Ah! Mother Plumeau,” said Tison, “you’ve been lending your cellar to aristocrats!”
A wall had been knocked down. Numerous feet had scuffed the damp soil, and a sort of ditch, three feet wide and five feet high, similar to a trench, had been carved out in the direction of the rue de la Corderie.
The officer ventured into the mouth of the ditch, determined to pursue the aristocrats to the center of the earth if he had to; but he had scarcely taken three or four steps when he was stopped by an iron grille.
“Halt!” he said to the men pushing him from the rear. “You can’t go any further. It’s blocked off.”
“What’s happened?” chirped the municipal officers, who had come running to hear the latest after locking up the prisoners again. “Let’s have a look.”
“Cripes!” said the officer, reemerging. “There is a conspiracy all right: the aristocrats were hoping to abduct the Queen during her promenade—probably with her connivance.”
“Blast!” cried one of the municipal officers. “Someone go get citizen Santerre and alert the Commune.”
“Soldiers,” said the officer, “stay in the cellar and kill anyone who pops up.”
Having given this order, the officer went back upstairs to write up his report.
“Aha!” blared Simon, rubbing his hands with glee. “Aha! Who’s going to say I’m mad now? Good old Black! Black is a tremendous patriot, Black has saved the Republic. Come here, Black, here boy!”
The vile man made eyes at the poor dog, only to give him a swift kick in the backside as soon as he was within range, sending Black flying twenty feet away.
“Oh! How I love you, Black!” he crowed. “You’ll cause your mistress’s head to roll yet. Here boy, here Black, come on boy.”
But this time Black did not oblige and opted instead for the way back to the dungeon, yelping.
27
THE MUSCADIN
The events we have just recounted were still roughly two hours old when Lorin was to be found pacing around Maurice’s room, while Agesilaus polished his master’s boots in the antechamber. To make conversation easier the door was left open, and in his travels Lorin would stop by the door and fire questions at the officieux.
“And you say, citizen Agesilaus, that your master went out this morning?”
“For God’s sake! Yes!”
“At the usual time?”
“Ten minutes earlier, ten minutes later, I couldn’t tell you.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
“No, citizen.”
Lorin set off again and circled the room three or four times before perching once more by the door.
“Did he have his sword with him?” he asked.
“Oh! When he goes to the section, he always does.”
“And you’re sure that he was going to the section?”
“That’s what he told me, anyway.”
“In that case, I’ll go and catch up with him there,” said Lorin. “If we miss each other, tell him I called and that I’ll be back.”
“Wait,” said Agesilaus.
“What?”
“I can hear him on the stairs.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Indeed, almost at that same instant, the door to the stairs opened and Maurice came in. Lorin swiftly gave him the once-over and, seeing that nothing looked amiss, said, “Ah! Here you are at last! I’ve been waiting for you for two hours.”
“Well, so much the better,” said Maurice, smiling. “You would’ve had time to come up with a few good distichs and quatrains.”
“Ah! My dear Maurice,” said the improviser, “I’ve given up.”
“Distichs and quatrains?”
“That’s right.”
“Good Lord! It must be the end of the world!”
“Maurice, my friend, I am sad.”
“You, sad?”
“I am unhappy.”
“You, unhappy?”
“Yes, what do you think? I feel rotten: it’s called remorse.”
“Remorse?”
“Remorse, yes! Christ!” said Lorin. “It was you or her, my friend. There was no middle ground. You or her. You understand I didn’t hesitate—not for a second; but all the same, Artemisia is in despair, she was her friend.”
“Poor girl!”
“And since she’s the one who gave me her address …”
“You would have done a lot better to let things follow their course.”
“Oh, yes, and it’d be you right now who’d be on the block in her place. Well thought out, dear friend. To think I came to ask your advice! I thought you were better at logic than that.”
“Never mind. Ask me anyway.”
“Well then, you know? The poor girl. I wanted to do something to try and save her. I feel like a bit of a punch-up on her behalf. It seems to me that’d do me some good.”
“You are insane, Lorin,” said Maurice, shrugging his shoulders.
“Come on, what if I tried something at the Revolutionary Tribunal?”
“It’s too late, she’s been condemned.”
“I have to say it’s horrible to watch that young woman perish like this.”
“All the more horrible in that it’s my salvation that’s spelled her doom. But, after all, Lorin, we must take some consolation in the fact that she was conspiring.”
“You’re kidding! My God! Isn’t everyone conspiring these days, more or less? She just did what everyone else does. Poor woman!”
“Don’t feel too sorry for her, friend, and don’t feel sorry for her too loudly, whatever you do,” said Maurice, “for some of her taint has rubbed off on us. Believe me, we’re not so free of the accusation of complicity that it hasn’t left its mark. Today at the section I was called a Girondin by the captain of the Saint-Leu chasseurs, and just a moment ago I had to give him a jab of my sword to prove him wrong.”
“So that’s why you’re so late getting back?”
“Precisely.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you can’t control yourself when it comes to a showdown; it had to be nipped in the bud straightaway so that no one would get to hear about it. We both grabbed whoever happened to be there as our seconds and the duel was over in two passes.”
“And that scumbag called you a Girondin, you, Maurice, a true believer?”
“For pity’s sake, yes! Which goes to show you, my dear Lorin, that one more episode like that one and we’ll become unpopular. And you know what the synonym of unpopular is, in these terrible times, don’t you, Lorin: it’s suspect.”
“I know,” said Lorin. “And that word causes even the bravest to quake in their boots. Never mind.… I just hate letting poor Héloïse go to the guillotine without asking her pardon.”
“So what do you want to do about it?”
“I want you to stay here, Maurice, you have nothing to reproach yourself with in her regard. Fo
r me, you see, it’s an entirely different story; but since I can’t do anything for her anymore, I just want to put myself in her path; I want to be there, Maurice, my friend, you understand me, and if she would just give me her hand …”
“I’ll go with you, then,” said Maurice.
“No way, my friend, think about it: you are a municipal officer, you are the secretary of your section, you’ve been implicated, whereas I’ve merely defended you. They’ll think you’re guilty, so stay. It’s entirely different for me. I risk nothing by going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Everything Lorin said was so just that there was nothing to say. If Maurice were merely to exchange a sign with the Tison girl as she walked to the scaffold, he would be announcing his complicity himself for all the world to see.
“Go on, then,” he said to Lorin, “but be careful.”
Lorin smiled, shook Maurice’s hand, and left.
Maurice opened his window and bade him a sad farewell. But before Lorin had turned the corner of the street, Maurice ran back to the window more than once, and each time, as though attracted by a kind of sympathetic magnetism, Lorin turned round to smile at him.
Finally, when Lorin had disappeared around the corner of the quay, Maurice shut the window and lapsed into the kind of somnolence which, in strong natures and nervous dispositions like his, presages great turbulence, resembling as it does the calm before the storm.
He was only drawn out of his reverie, or rather trance, by the officieux, who had been on an errand in the outside world and had returned with that bristling air of a domestic servant bursting to tell his master the news he’s just picked up.
But seeing Maurice preoccupied, he didn’t dare distract him and contented himself with passing back and forth in front of his master, apparently innocently—and without letup.
“What is it, then?” said Maurice cavalierly. “Speak, if you have something to say.”
“Ah, citizen! Another incredible plot, eh?”
Maurice shrugged his shoulders.
“A plot to make your hair stand on end,” continued Agesilaus. “Really!” said Maurice in the tone of a man perfectly accustomed to the thirty or so plots a day that then used to occur.
The Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 24
