by James Runcie
The Marquis was crouched naked on the ground. With the molinillo in his right hand, he was moving stealthily towards my dog. He established a position behind the greyhound, and put down the molinillo. Then he lifted Pedro’s hind legs, and began an act that I can only describe as simultaneous sexual arousal. As I finally regained consciousness I suddenly realised that the molinillo was about to be used for a purpose that it had never known before and that I would have to act with extreme speed if I were to prevent its insertion into Pedro’s rear.
‘Stop!’ I cried.
‘Do not interrupt,’ shouted the Marquis. ‘The bow is taut, the arrow is about to be fired.’
‘Stop,’ I cried again, but the Marquis began to rub Pedro all the more vigorously, and raised the molinillo in the air.
‘The pistol is cocked, I await the explosion,’ he exclaimed. ‘Silence, you filthy Spaniard.’
I leapt across the room, kicking the vile and flatulent man to the ground. Pedro yelped in terror and the molinillo fell to the floor.
Black with fury, I stared down at the sprawling mass before me.
The Marquis was lying on his back, surrounded by his own blubber, all dignity lost.
But he would not be defeated.
Unable to rise from the ground, he let forth a low roar.
‘How dare you!’ he cried. ‘You are mad. You know nothing of the ways of the world.’
‘No, sir,’ I shouted back, ‘you have affronted all decency. You have corrupted my dog, abused my molinillo, and tainted the memory of the woman I love.’
‘Silence is consent,’ wheedled the Marquis.
‘You are the vilest man I have ever known. Life is not meant to be an existence of selfish indulgence,’ I cried. ‘It is precious and rare and we are all responsible, one to another. We are more than mere animals. Do you not understand that?’
‘Bah!’ exclaimed the Marquis. ‘We possess our flesh for but a moment of infinity; we must explore all its possibilities …’
‘No,’ I cried, gathering Pedro to me. ‘You cannot exploit the vulnerable. There cannot be love without responsibility.’
‘Love?’ shouted the Marquis. ‘What do you know of love?’
‘More than you will ever know,’ I lied bravely, and fled from the room.
My head pounded and my throat was dry. A night of hedonistic joy had ended in vice and depravity. I felt a deep shame, and resolved that I would have to escape this desperate place as soon as possible.
For the next two weeks – or at least it seemed like two weeks though my awareness of time had now all but left me – I continued to make my linen rope ladder and avoided all contact with the Marquis. I asked permission to alter the times of Pedro’s daily exercise, and was granted an additional walk each evening. This gave me time to plan my much needed escape.
It seemed that I would have to find a way of passing through three locked doors and then throw my rope out of the latrine window; after this I would have to abseil down the walls, cross the moat, and make my way east for safety. It could not be more difficult than anything I had done at sea and, with my new clothes, I was convinced that I could pass for a Frenchman.
And then, one night, as I sat on the edge of one of the small broken chairs in my cell, I heard the strangest of noises. At first I thought it must be mice or rats, and Pedro’s ears cocked. But the sound seemed to be less like scuttling, and more like a low reverberation.
It was coming from my mattress.
I looked across the room. The nits, mites and moths that had been festering in my bed were now emerging from their eggs and cocoons. I was soon surrounded by cloud upon cloud of dark moths and pale-blue butterflies dancing before my eyes as they flew up towards the dim light above.
Pedro began to leap up after them, barking happily, and I only just managed to hide the ladder before I heard the door of my cell open.
It was the turnkey Lossinote, who had been surprised by the vigour of Pedro’s barking.
‘What has happened?’ he cried.
‘Look at the butterflies,’ I answered with mock anger. ‘How can I sleep if they fly around me so?’
Lossinote paused in amazement.
‘They’re beautiful.’
The room was filled with a veritable mist of quivering butterflies, the most palpable symbol of freedom, alive in my cell.
‘We must catch them,’ I cried. ‘Do you have a net?’
‘Of course not,’ said my gaoler.
‘Then we must use our hands, and release them through the window. I cannot sleep with so many of them around me. And, besides, what if they escape into neighbouring cells? There will be chaos. Help me and be quick about it.’
I leapt up to demonstrate how such a task might be achieved, and Lossinote began to jump forward too, clasping his hands together, amused by the new game in which he found himself employed.
He was a short, fat man, untrained in the capture of butterflies, and his face began to redden still further as time passed. It was clear that he took little exercise, and had spent much of his time in the Bastille eating the better of the food that had been destined for our tables.
After half an hour we had succeeded in catching some eight or nine butterflies, but there were still three hundred of the creatures flying about my cell.
Lossinote was panting for breath.
‘We need help,’ I cried.
‘Nonsense,’ the exhausted gaoler answered, missing yet another butterfly. ‘I can do this.’
Pedro barked loudly and the gaoler stood on a chair to gain extra height. With great effort, he then summoned up all his strength, and threw himself forward into the air, making one last triumphant leap towards the butterflies passing over his head.
He missed –
and fell senseless onto the ground, his face redder than it had been in all his life.
At once Pedro bit the keys from the leather thong at Lossinote’s waist. Clasping the sheeted ladder, we quickly made our way down the stairs.
It was now or never.
I abseiled down the walls, holding Pedro tight against my side. Having been accustomed to climbing the rigging of a ship, we found the descent easy, and were soon outside the moat of that great prison. Not knowing how much time we had before the discovery of our escape, we ran from the Bastille down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Our route was blocked by crowd upon crowd of people all surging towards the monastery of Saint-Lazare. They were obsessed with its destruction, and exhorted us to join them. We had no choice but to agree if we were to avoid being lynched. At the corner of the Rue de Montreuil, I was caught in a further maelstrom of citizens, some two thousand strong, all wearing red or blue cockades, carrying sticks and crying out: ‘When will we have bread?’
As the crowd threatened to turn ugly, I darted down a narrow alley and banged on the first door that I could find.
‘Let me in,’ I cried.
‘Who is it?’ came a voice from within.
‘In the name of all the citizens of France, I urge you to admit me. I have been a prisoner in the Bastille!’
Suddenly the door flew open.
Pedro slipped through the crack, and I was hauled inside and flung on the ground.
Six Frenchmen rose from their stools, and looked down at my broken and dishevelled body. A cacophony of accusation spat from their mouths.
‘Why have you come here?’
‘What do you want?’
‘How dare you interrupt us.’
I looked up in helplessness.
‘Please …’ I began.
‘What shall we do with him?’ said another. They spoke so fast that I could hardly understand them.
Pedro began to bark but found it impossible to stop their advance.
The men then began to crowd around me. I knew I was about to suffer the greatest beating it had ever been my misfortune to endure. Looking from man to man, it appeared that there was no possibility of mercy. I had interrupted the most solemn o
f gatherings and must now, it seemed, be punished.
What this place was, or who these people were, I knew not. In the distance I saw a table scattered with papers. Knives, clubs, muskets, sabres and pistols surrounded me, and a woman was knitting in the corner with almost demented fury. Another was carving meat from a dried ram’s head.
But then, in the corner of my eye, I noticed what appeared to be a row of china drinking vessels. They were almost identical to the trembleuses owned by the Marquis de Sade.
I looked at the men advancing upon me, and then back at the row of trembleuses.
‘Wait!’ I cried.
‘Are you a friend or an enemy of the citizens of France?’
‘A friend. Please. Let me drink some chocolate with you and I can explain everything.’
‘You know about chocolate?’
‘Yes. Chocolate,’ I repeated boldly, without knowing what I was doing.
‘What else do you know?’
‘Nothing. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate; it’s the only thing I know anything about.’
‘Don’t believe him,’ shouted the knitting woman.
‘How did you know about chocolate?’ asked an aggressively large man with discoloured teeth.
‘It happened a long time ago …’
‘But we only decided on the password yesterday …’
‘What?’ I cried. ‘I knew nothing about a password.’
‘Then why did you use it?’
‘I used the word by accident. It has often helped me in my travels.’
The men looked at each other; the woman was unimpressed.
‘I do not know what you wish to do. I have spent many days and nights in the Bastille, a dark and forbidding place piled with guns and weapons from which it is impossible to escape.’
‘How many guns and weapons?’
‘I do not know. But there are over two hundred cases of powder stored there.’
The leader stepped back.
‘Powder?’ He looked at his companions, and then turned to me. ‘Do you think we can take it?’
‘It would be hard. But I know every passage of the Bastille.’
‘Monsieur,’ said the man with the discoloured teeth, ‘if you agree to help us then your tongue will have spared your life. To the Bastille, gentlemen. The Revolution will be ours.’
The following day I found myself swamped in the midst of a huge crowd of desperate people: carpenters, cobblers, locksmiths, tailors, cabinet-makers, wine merchants, glove-makers, hatters, defecting soldiers, gardes-françaises and gunsmiths – all the professions of Paris it seemed, and all now converging on the Bastille.
As we surged towards that dreadful institution, my heart beating hard lest I be re-arrested and re-imprisoned, the Governor sent word that he wished to negotiate with two of our number, inviting them to dine with him so that the situation might be resolved peacefully. Our spirits soared but, when the representatives failed to return after we had waited for more than two hours, we began to doubt the Governor’s words, and suspected that our fellow citizens had been imprisoned.
A second set of representatives was then sent, demanding the gunpowder.
This too met with no success.
The crowd grew impatient, crying, ‘Give us the Bastille!’ and began to bang upon the gates. A carriage-maker climbed onto the roof of a perfume shop that abutted the prison, leaned across, and cut the chains of the drawbridge. It crashed down, killing one of our number, but the crowd surged forward. Soldiers defending the Bastille immediately opened fire, and a terrible battle ensued. Pedro was terrified. It was as if we were back, once again, at the siege of Mexico. We were surrounded by gunfire, smoke, burning carts and frightened horses. The battle seemed to last for hours, but by five o’clock the Governor displayed a white handkerchief, and the prison was taken.
The crowd stormed forward and seized all the guns and powder they could find before releasing the prisoners and shouting triumphantly of liberation. The Marquis de Sade had been moved to Charenton, and, in truth, only seven remaining prisoners emerged: old, infirm and amazed to see the light. On observing the newly vacated prison, it did strike me as strange that I had ever bothered to escape. Major Whyte tottered towards me, his waist-length beard and silver whiskers strangely illuminated by the last of the sun, and was promptly hoisted aloft and declared a hero of suffering and endurance. The crowd surged through the streets, carrying the head of the Governor on a pike, in a cacophonous tumult. The bulk of the people no longer knew who had control of the city and in the weeks that followed any attempt to clarify the situation only resulted in further chaos. Assemblies were convened, trials were established, and politicians were assassinated. Each person appeared to be testing out a new identity, erasing the past while still uncertain of his or her future character. Every day brought new possibilities and new dangers.
I had no choice but to become a citizen of France.
After burning the elegant clothes that had been ordered in the Bastille, I bought a pair of sans-culottes and changed my name to David Dieugagne. Then, having found lodgings with a small company close to the River Seine, I also secured temporary employment in the chocolate house of Messieurs Debauve and Gallais in the Rue des Saints-Pères.
Here we began to experiment with imported ingredients such as Persian salep and Japanese cachou. Convinced of the medicinal properties of chocolate, and knowing of its value in the treatment of those suffering from pulmonary diseases, weak stomachs and nervous disorders, we introduced a new range of remedies, offering a special tablet for the sick and nervously afflicted, a pastille with almond milk to soothe the stomach, and a ganache with barley sugar cream for delicate ladies. The pharmacy was filled each day with the aroma of these new creations as the scents of dark chocolate, orange flower water, ambergris and vanilla mingled with the perfume of anxious and well-dressed ladies, accompanied by small and extremely irritating Chihuahuas.
I became the friend of a baker called Simon Delmarche, who sought my aid in a plan to combine the principles of bread making with the new possibilities offered by chocolate. Anxious to make friends rather than enemies in this great city, I told him that I would be glad to help because I did indeed have certain ideas as to how this might be achieved. And so, over a period of some six months, we rose early each morning, coaxing various combinations of flour, water, almond, yeast and cacao until at last, after several disastrous failures, we succeeded in creating one of the simplest, but I must say greatest, inventions known to humankind: the pain au chocolat.
Back at my lodgings, I also came to befriend a small and extremely rotund Austrian gentleman, whose dream in life was to establish a series of hotels across Europe. He had arrived in Paris to purchase some of the properties that had been newly vacated by the aristocracy. Each evening we would take chocolate together before retiring for bed, and Franz would tell of the estate outside Vienna where he lived with his wife and three children. He was a kindly but other-worldly man who did not fully understand that his business interests might arouse the anger of the revolutionaries. I warned him that it was dangerous to speak loudly of his affairs lest he too be mistaken for an aristocrat, and in the weeks that followed we became increasingly concerned by the volatility of the political situation, the public distrust of foreigners, and the terrible introduction of the guillotine.
Although I was content with my work at the chocolate house, a day did not pass when I did not feel uneasy. The necessary secrecy involved in my long life had become almost intolerable. I was terrified that I would be unmasked as an impostor, that people might guess my Spanish character, and that if I ever told the truth about my condition I would be mistaken, once more, for a madman. With no means of proving our identity, and uncertain as to whether we would be believed in our allegiance to France, the time came when both Franz and I were forced to conclude that the best course of action would be to leave the city.
Sure that he could even find employment for me at one of his establishments in Vienn
a, my companion invited me to accompany him on his journey home. It was an offer which I could not refuse.
And so, after taking leave of the few friends that we had made in Paris, Pedro and I found ourselves travelling in the back of a comfortable carriage pulled by four chocolate-coloured Brabants some seventeen hands high. Although our future was uncertain, and Pedro persisted in licking my face and giving me anxious and soulful looks throughout the journey, I could not help but feel hopeful. Our trust in Franz would be rewarded by a safer, more fulfilling and more comfortable life. Surely our future could not be as frightening as our past?
V
The estate lay close to the Vienna Woods and was well regarded both for its dairy produce and for its apricots, which were harvested each July and August. Indeed, the family was famed for the resulting cordials, brandies, compotes and preserves.
The lady of the house was a tall, dark-haired and nervous woman, as slender as her husband was portly. In fact they seemed to be the exact opposite of each other: Franz being small, blond, weighty and prone to excess perspiration, forever dabbing a handkerchief on his forehead; whereas his wife was pale, powdered and thin. Together they had produced three children: Katharina, aged ten, who performed the duties of a mother when her own was too debilitated to do so, Trude, an opinionated daughter of eight, and Edward, a troublesome and energetic son of three.
On the afternoon that I arrived in Vienna, the family was involved in the making of an apricot preserve. A wooden table had been set in the middle of the orchard and the children ran amidst the trees, selecting the fruit and placing it gently in narrow wicker trays. Pedro followed them with enthusiasm, barking happily, jumping up at them, and even, at one point, picking an apricot himself by leaping up and dislodging it with his nose as if it were a ball with which to play.
It was a beautiful summer’s day, and the green of the trees stretched out before us as if an artist had laid them out on a palette: lime, verdigris, and Prussian green; emerald, pine and terre-verte.
Franz was clearly delighted to be home, and clasped his wife with unbounded affection.
