The mob in the galleries was in a ferocious mood that day, the kind of mood that excites the severity of the jurors: placed under the immediate surveillance of the tricoteuses—knitting away—and the working class faubouriens from the suburbs, jurors hold up better, sticking to their guns like actors redoubling their efforts before a hostile audience.
Accordingly, since ten-thirty in the morning, five defendants had already been turned into so many condemned by the same jurors, now rendered inflexible.
The two who found themselves in the dock were thus waiting to hear the yes or the no that would either restore them to life or hurl them into the jaws of death.
The mob in attendance, made ever more ferocious by the habitual nature of this daily tragedy, which had become its favorite spectacle, was warming them up, hectoring and shouting comments that had by then acquired a frightening force.
“Look, look, look! Look at the tall one!” said one of the tricoteuses, who, not having a cap, was sporting a tricolor cockade as big as a fist on her bun. “See how white he is! You’d think he was already dead!”
The condemned man looked at the harpie poking fun at him with a scornful smile.
“What do you say to that?” said her neighbor. “He’s laughing.”
“Yes—with one side of his face.”
One faubourien looked at his watch.
“What time is it?” his pal asked.
“Ten to one; this has been going on for three quarters of an hour.”
“Just like at Domfront, city of misfortune: arrive at twelve, get hanged at one.”
“And what about the little one!” cried someone else. “Look at him, then. Won’t he look a sight when he sneezes in the sack!”
“Bah! It all happens so fast, you don’t even have time to notice.”
“Hey, we’ll ask Sanson for his head; we’ve got a right to see it.”
“Notice how he’s wearing his best tyrant blue! It’s bloody lovely when poor folks like us can cut well-heeled fops like that down to size.”
Indeed, as the executioner had told the Queen, the poor inherited each victim’s personal effects, the spoils being transported to the Salpêtrière hospital as soon as the execution was over to be distributed among the destitute. That is where the murdered Queen’s clothes had been sent.
Maurice listened to these words whirling around in the air without taking a scrap of notice. Every person was at that moment preoccupied with some potent thought of their own that set them apart. For some days now his heart had beaten only intermittently and fitfully; now and again fear or hope seemed to suspend the ongoing pulse of his life, and these endless oscillations had more or less damaged his heart’s susceptibility: he felt only numbness now.
The jury returned to the chamber and, as expected, the foreman declared the two defendants condemned. They were taken away and marched out with a firm step. They knew how to die in those days.…
The usher’s voice rang out, mournful and sinister.
“The citizen public prosecutor versus the citizeness Geneviève Dixmer.”
Maurice shivered from head to toe and sweat pearled over his entire face. The small door through which the accused came in opened and Geneviève appeared. She was dressed in white; her hair was done beautifully, for she had parted it and curled it artfully instead of cutting it off the way many women did.
Maurice saw Geneviève and felt all the strength he had carefully built up for the occasion drain from him at once. But he had, after all, been expecting the blow, since he had not missed a single hearing for twelve days now and three times already the name Geneviève on the public prosecutor’s lips had struck his ear. But certain kinds of despair are so vast and so deep no one can sound their depths.
All those who saw this woman appear, so beautiful, so childlike, so luminously white and wan, uttered a cry: some of fury—there were, at the time, people who hated all forms of superiority, superiority in beauty as much as superiority in wealth, genius, or birth; others of admiration; still others of pity.
Geneviève no doubt recognized one cry out of all the cries, one voice among all the voices, for she turned to where Maurice was while the president flipped through the accused’s file, looking up at her from time to time.
She saw Maurice at a glance, hidden as he was in his great broad-brimmed hat, and turned to face him smiling sweetly; with an even sweeter gesture, she placed her two trembling pink hands to her lips and blew him a kiss that contained her whole soul as well as her breath. The kiss winged its way across the room to the one man in all the crowd who had the right to claim it.
A murmur of interest rippled through the whole chamber. Geneviève was called to the stand and turned back to the jurors; but she stopped midway, her eyes wide with absolute terror, as she fixed on one point of the room.
Maurice stood on the tips of his toes but he could see nothing, or rather, something more important called his attention back to the stage, that is, to the bar. Fouquier-Tinville had begun reading the act of denunciation.
This act held that Geneviève Dixmer was the wife of a committed conspirator who was suspected of having aided the ex–Knight of Maison-Rouge in his successive attempts to save the Queen.
She had, moreover, been caught in the act of kneeling before the Queen, begging her to change clothes with her and offering to die in her place. This stupid fanaticism, said the act of denunciation, might merit the praises of the counterrevolutionaries; but today, the act added, every French citizen owed his life to the nation alone, and sacrificing one’s life to the enemies of France was to commit treason twice over.
Geneviève, asked if she acknowledged having been, as the gendarmes Duchesne and Gilbert claimed, caught at the Queen’s knees, beseeching her to change clothes with her, answered simply:
“Yes!”
“In that case,” said the president, “tell us about your plans, your hopes.”
Geneviève smiled.
“A woman can conceive hope, but no woman can devise a plan of the kind I am a victim of.”
“How is it you found yourself there, then?”
“I had no choice: I was pushed.”
“Who pushed you?” asked the public prosecutor.
“People who threatened to kill me if I didn’t do as I was told.”
With that the angry gaze of the young woman once again fixed on that point of the room Maurice could not see.
“So to escape from the death with which you were threatened, you braved the death that would surely result from any condemnation.”
“I yielded with a knife at my breast, whereas the blade of the guillotine was still a long way from my neck. I buckled under clear and present violence.”
“Why didn’t you seek help? Any good citizen would have defended you.”
“Alas, monsieur!” replied Geneviève in a tone at once so sad and so tender that Maurice’s heart swelled to bursting. “Alas! I had no one near me to turn to.”
Tender sympathy now took over from interest, as interest had taken over from curiosity. Many lowered their heads, some hiding their tears, others letting them fall freely.
Maurice then saw to his left a head that remained rigid, a face that remained hard. It was Dixmer, standing grim and implacable, not taking his eyes off Geneviève or the members of the Tribunal for a second.
The blood rushed to the young man’s temples; anger rose from his heart to his brow, filling his whole being with a wild desire for revenge. He threw Dixmer a look filled with a hate so electric, so powerful, that
Dixmer, as though scalded by burning liquid, snapped his head around toward his enemy. Their eyes crossed like two darting flames.
“Tell us the names of the instigators,” the president ordered.
“There is only one, monsieur.”
“Who is …?”
“My husband.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us where he is hiding.”
“H
e may be vile, but I will not descend to his level. It is not for me to say where he is hiding; that is for you to find out.”
Maurice looked straight at Dixmer.
Dixmer didn’t move a muscle. The idea crossed Maurice’s mind to denounce the man then and there even if it meant denouncing himself. But he squashed that idea quickly. “No,” he said to himself. “That’s not the way he should die.”
“So you refuse to guide us in our search?” said the president.
“I believe, monsieur, that I cannot do so,” replied Geneviève, “without making myself as contemptible in the eyes of others as he is in mine.”
“Are there any witnesses?” asked the president. “
There is one,” the usher replied.
“Call the witness.”
“Maximilien Jean Hyacinthe Lorin!” barked the usher.
“Lorin!” cried Maurice. “Oh my God! What’s happened!”
Lorin was arrested the very same day this scene occurred and so Maurice knew nothing about the arrest.
“Lorin!” murmured Geneviève, looking around her, appalled.
“Why doesn’t the witness answer the summons?” asked the president.
“Citizen president,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “upon a recent denunciation, the witness has been arrested at his domicile; he will be brought in presently.” Maurice flinched.
“There was another, more important witness,” Fouquier-Tinville went on, “but we haven’t been able to find that one yet.”
Dixmer turned, smiling, to Maurice: perhaps the same idea that had sprung to the lover’s mind had now sprung to the husband’s.
Geneviève went deathly white and collapsed, giving out a groan. At that very moment, Lorin entered with a couple of gendarmes in his wake. Behind him and through the same door, Simon emerged, plunking himself down in the front gallery as though this was his local haunt.
“Your full name?” asked the president.
“Maximilien Jean Hyacinthe Lorin.”
“Your state?”
“Free man.”
“Not for long!” growled Simon, showing him his fist.
“Are you related to the prisoner?”
“No, but I have the honor of being one of her friends.”
“Did you know she was plotting to help the Queen escape?”
“How do you expect me to have known that?”
“She could have confided in you.”
“In me, a member of the Thermopylae section? … Please!”
“You have sometimes been seen with her, however.”
“I could well have been seen—often, even.”
“Did you know her to be an aristocrat?”
“I knew her as the wife of a master tanner.”
“Her husband did not in reality exercise that craft; it was merely the façade behind which he hid.”
“That I know nothing about; her husband is no friend of mine.”
“Tell us about the husband.”
“Gladly! He is a man so odious …”
“Monsieur Lorin,” said Geneviève. “Have pity …”
Lorin continued imperturbably.
“… that he sacrificed his poor wife, whom you have before you, to satisfy, not even his political imperatives, but his personal hatreds. The man is so low I’d put him almost on a par with Simon.”
Dixmer became livid. Simon opened his mouth to speak but the president silenced him with a wave of the hand.
“You seem to know the story rather well, citizen Lorin,” said Fouquier. “Tell us more.”
“Forgive me, citizen Fouquier,” said Lorin, getting up. “I’ve told you all I know.”
He bowed and sat down again.
“Citizen Lorin,” continued the prosecutor, “it is your duty to enlighten the Tribunal.”
“Let it enlighten itself with what I’ve just said. As for this poor woman, I repeat, all she did was obey violence.… Open your eyes! Look at her! Does she look like a conspirator? She was forced to do what she did, that’s all there is to it.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“In the name of the law,” said Fouquier, “I request that the witness Lorin be charged before the Tribunal as a prisoner in complicity with this woman.”
Maurice gave out a groan. Geneviève hid her face in both hands.
Simon cried out in a transport of joy: “Citizen prosecutor, you’ve just saved the nation!”
As for Lorin, without saying a word in reply, he jumped over the balustrade to take a seat by Geneviève’s side, took her hand, and respectfully kissed it:
“Hello, citizeness,” he said with a composure that electrified the assembly. “How are you doing?”
Then he sat back in the dock.
52
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
This entire scene had passed like a nightmare vision before Maurice, who stayed the course, leaning on his sword for support, watching his friends fall, one after the other, into that bottomless pit that never releases its victims. The mortal image was for him so overwhelming that he wondered why he, as the companion of his unfortunate friends, still clung to the edge of the precipice instead of just letting go, giving in to the vertigo that was dragging him down in their wake.
Jumping over the balustrade, Lorin had seen the dark smirking figure of Dixmer. When he sat down next to Geneviève, she leaned and whispered in his ear.
“God help us!” she said. “Did you know Maurice is here?”
“Where?”
“Don’t look now; you might give him away.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Behind us, near the door. He’ll be in agony if we are condemned!”
Lorin looked at the young woman with tender compassion.
“We will be,” he said. “Please don’t have any doubts. Your disappointment would be too cruel if you were reckless enough to hope.”
“Oh, my God!” said Geneviève. “Think of our poor friend, who will be all alone here below!”
Lorin turned round then to Maurice; Geneviève was not able to resist throwing him a quick look, either. Maurice had his eyes fixed on them and he pressed a hand to his heart.
“There is a way for you to save yourself,” said Lorin.
“Is there?” asked Geneviève and her eyes sparkled with joy.
“Oh! I can answer for that!”
“If you manage to save me, Lorin, how I would bless you!”
“But the way …” Lorin trailed off.
Geneviève read the hesitation in his eyes.
“So you saw him too?” she said.
“Yes, I saw him. Do you want to be saved? Let him have his turn in the iron chair and you will be.”
Dixmer doubtless divined what was afoot from the expression in Lorin’s eyes as he spoke to Geneviève, for he at first blanched before returning to his sinister calm and his infernal smile.
“It’s not possible,” said Geneviève. “I couldn’t go on hating him then.”
“Admit that he knows how generous you are and is exploiting you, throwing down the gauntlet, taunting you.”
“No doubt, for he is sure of himself, of me, of us all.”
“Geneviève, Geneviève, I’m not as perfect as you; let me drag him down and let him perish.”
“No, Lorin, I beg you, I want nothing in common with that man, not even death. I’d feel I was being unfaithful to Maurice if I died with Dixmer.”
“But you won’t die.”
“How will I live when he is dead?”
“Ah!” cried Lorin. “No wonder Maurice loves you! You are an angel and the nation of angels is in heaven. Poor dear Maurice!”
Simon was dying to hear what the two accused were saying to each other, but he couldn’t make out their words and had to scrutinize their faces instead.
“Citizen gendarme!” he cried. “How about stopping the conspirators from carrying on with their plots against the Republic—right here in the Revolutionary Tribunal!”
“Right!” said the gendarme. “You know very well, citizen Simon, that plots stop here, or that if people continue to conspire it won’t be for long. The citizens are merely talking, and since the law doesn’t prohibit talking in the tumbrel, why would anyone be prohibited from talking in court?”
The gendarme was Gilbert, who recognized the prisoner as the woman he caught in the Queen’s cell, and was showing, with his usual probity, the sympathy he couldn’t help but feel for courage and devotion.
The president had consulted his assessors; at Fouquier-Tinville’s invitation, he began his questions:
“Accused Lorin, what was the nature of your relationship with citizeness Dixmer?” he asked.
“What was the nature, citizen president?”
“Yes.”
“A friendship like ours, there was none purer,
She loved me as a brother, I loved her as a sister.”
“Citizen Lorin,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “that’s not a good rhyme.”
“How do you mean?” asked Lorin.
“Obviously there’s one too many er‘s.”
“Cut, citizen prosecutor! Cut! That’s your job.”
The impassive face of Fouquier-Tinville paled slighty at the terrible joke.
“And how did citizen Dixmer look upon the liaison of a man who claimed to be a republican with his wife?” asked the president.
“Oh! That I cannot tell you. I’ve told you I never knew citizen Dixmer and was more than happy not to.”
“But,” Fouquier-Tinville went on, “you don’t say that your friend citizen Maurice Lindey was the knot that bound you with the accused in such a pure friendship?”
“If I don’t say so,” answered Lorin, “it’s because it seems tactless to me to say so, and I might add I think you should have followed my example.”
“The citizens of the jury,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “will appreciate this singular alliance of two republicans with an aristocrat, and at the very moment when this aristocrat is convicted of the vilest plot ever hatched against the nation.”
“How could I have known about the plot you’re talking about, citizen prosecutor?” asked Lorin, more revolted than scared by the brutality of the argument.
“You knew this woman, you were her friend, she called you her brother, you called her your sister, and yet you didn’t know what she was up to? Is it thus possible, as you yourself have asked,” asked the president, “that she perpetrated on her own the action imputed to her?”
The Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 42
