Knight of Maison-Rouge

  “You’re lying, Simon,” cried a voice full of fury. “You’ll run into him all right, for here he is.” With that, Lorin burst into the room. “Make way!” he cried, knocking spectators out of the way. “Move!”

  He made his way to the front and took a seat next to Maurice. Lorin’s entrance, made unaffectedly but with all the frankness and verve inherent in the young man’s nature, produced the greatest effect on the gallery, who began to clap and cheer “Bravo!”

  Maurice was content to smile and give his friend his hand, as a man who has said to himself, “I’m sure I won’t be on my own in the dock for long.”

  The spectators gazed upon the two dashingly handsome young men with visible interest, accused as they were by the revolting Temple cobbler as though by a demon jealous of youth and beauty.

  The latter couldn’t help but notice that he was losing his audience thanks to the stark comparison. He resolved to strike a final blow.

  “Citizens,” he screeched, “I demand that the generous citizeness Tison be heard, I demand that she speak, I demand that she accuse.”

  “Citizens,” said Lorin, “I ask that beforehand the young flower girl, who has just been arrested and who will no doubt be brought before you, be heard.”

  “No,” said Simon, “it’s just another false witness, some partisan of the aristocrats. Besides, citizeness Tison is just dying to enlighten the court.”

  Meanwhile, Lorin had a few enlightening things to whisper to Maurice.

  “Yes,” cried the gallery. “Yes, bring on the evidence of Mother Tison! Yes, yes, let her testify now!”

  “Is citizeness Tison in the room?” asked the president.

  “Of course she’s here!” cried Simon. “Citizeness Tison, say you’re here, then.”

  “Here I am, my president,” said the jailer. “But if I give evidence, will they give me my daughter back?”

  “Your daughter has nothing to do with the matter that concerns us,” said the president. “Give your evidence first, and then address yourself to the Commune to ask for your daughter again.”

  “You hear that? The citizen president is ordering you to give your evidence,” cried Simon. “So give it to him: what are you waiting for?”

  “One moment,” said the president, turning to Maurice. The calm of this man, ordinarily so fiery, amazed him. “One moment! Citizen municipal officer, don’t you have anything to say first?”

  “No, citizen president; except that before calling a man like me a coward and a traitor, Simon would have done better to wait till he was better informed.”

  “You reckon? You reckon?” repeated Simon in the sniggering tone of the man of the people peculiar to the plebs of Paris.

  “I reckon, Simon,” said Maurice more in sadness than in anger, “that you will be cruelly punished shortly, when you see what’s about to happen.”

  “So what’s about to happen, then?” asked Simon.

  “Citizen president,” said Maurice, without bothering further with his odious accuser, “I join my friend Lorin in asking you to let the young girl who has just been arrested be heard before they make that poor woman say what they’ve no doubt coached her to say in evidence.”

  “You hear that, citizeness?” shrieked Simon. “You hear that? They’re saying over there that you’re a false witness!”

  “Me, a false witness?” said Mother Tison. “Ha! You’ll see. Just you wait. Just you wait.”

  “Citizen,” said Maurice, “please order this unfortunate woman to hold her tongue.”

  “Ha! You’re frightened!” cried Simon. “You’re frightened! Citizen president, I request the testimony of citizeness Tison.”

  “Yes, yes, the testimony!” shouted the galleries.

  “Silence!” cried the president. “The deputies of the Commune are back.”

  At that moment, a carriage could be heard rolling up outside with a great clang of arms and the noise of shouting.

  Simon wheeled around anxiously to the door.

  “Leave the gallery,” the president said to him. “You no longer have the floor.”

  Simon got down.

  At that moment, gendarmes entered with a stream of curious onlookers, who were swiftly shoved back as a woman was propelled toward the front of the courtroom.

  “Is that her?” Lorin asked Maurice.

  “Yes, yes, that’s her,” said Maurice. “Oh! The poor girl, she’s finished!”

  “The flower girl! The flower girl!” the gallery murmured, whipped up by curiosity. “It’s the flower girl!”

  “I demand Mother Tison be heard before anything else,” screamed the cobbler. “You ordered her to give her evidence, president, and you can see she’s not giving it.”

  Mother Tison was called and she began a terrible and detailed denunciation. According to her, the flower girl was certainly guilty; but Maurice and Lorin were her accomplices.

  The denunciation had a visible effect on the public.

  But Simon was gloating, triumphant.

  “Gendarmes, bring on the flower girl!” cried the president.

  “Oh! This is dreadful!” murmured Morand, hiding his head in his hands.

  The flower girl was called and stood at the foot of the gallery, facing Mother Tison, whose testimony had just made the crime the girl was accused of a capital offense.

  It was only then that she lifted her veil.

  “Héloïse!” cried Mother Tison. “My daughter … You, here?”

  “Yes, Mother,” the young woman softly replied.

  “But why are you standing there between two gendarmes?”

  “Because I stand accused, Mother.”

  “You … accused?” cried Mother Tison in anguish. “But who by?”

  “By you, Mother.”

  A fearful silence, the silence of death, suddenly descended on the noisy rabble, and the painfulness of this horrible scene clutched at everyone’s heart.

  “Her daughter!” voices whispered softly and as though far away. “Her daughter, that poor, poor woman!”

  Maurice and Lorin looked at accuser and accused with a feeling of profound commiseration and respectful misery.

  Simon, while wishing to see how the scene played out, still hoping Maurice and Lorin would remain compromised, tried to duck Mother Tison’s gaze as she swiveled her eyes around dementedly.

  “What is your name, citizeness?” said the president, himself moved, to the calm and resigned young woman.

  “Héloïse Tison, citizen.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen years old.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Number 24, rue des Nonnandières.”

  “Is it you who sold to citizen municipal officer Lindey, who is there in the dock, a bouquet of carnations this morning?”

  The Tison girl turned toward Maurice and looked him full in the face.

  “Yes, citizen. It was I,” she said.

  Mother Tison herself looked at her daughter with eyes huge with horror.

  “Do you know that each of the carnations contained a note addressed to the Widow Capet?”

  “I know,” replied the accused.

  A ripple of horror and admiration spread throughout the room. “Why did you offer the carnations to citizen Maurice?”

  “Because I saw his municipal scarf and thought he might be heading to the Temple.”

  “Who are your accomplices?”

  “I have none.”

  “What! You mean you planned the conspiracy all by yourself

  If it is a conspiracy, I planned it all by myself.”

  “But did citizen Maurice know about it? ”

  “That the flowers contained notes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Citizen Maurice is a municipal officer; citizen Maurice could see the Queen in private any hour of the day or night. If citizen Maurice had something to say to the Queen, he had no need to write, since he could speak.”

  “So you didn’t know citizen Maurice???
?

  “I used to see him on duty at the Temple in the days when I was there with my poor mother; but I only knew him by sight!”

  “You see, you murderous swine!” Lorin cried, showing Simon his fist. Crushed by the turn things were taking, Simon put his head down as he tried to slip out unnoticed. “You see what you’ve done?”

  All eyes turned on Simon in outrage.

  The president resumed his questions.

  “Since it was you who handed over the bouquet, since you knew each flower contained a piece of paper, you must also know what was written on the paper?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Well then, in that case, tell us, what was on the paper?”

  “Citizen,” said the girl firmly, “I’ve said all I can say, and, more to the point, all I want to say.”

  “So you refuse to answer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know what you’re exposing yourself to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you’re pinning your hopes on your youth and your beauty?”

  “I am pinning my hopes on God alone.”

  “Citizen Maurice Lindey,” said the president, “citizen Hyacinthe Lorin, you are free. The Commune recognizes your innocence and acknowledges your community spirit. Gendarmes, conduct citizeness Héloïse to the section prison at the Conciergerie.”1

  At those words, Mother Tison seemed to snap out of her trance; she gave a terrible cry and rushed at her daughter to try to embrace her one more time. But the gendarmes stopped her.

  “I forgive you, Mother,” cried the young woman as she was dragged away.

  Mother Tison uttered a bloodcurdling scream and dropped to the ground as though dead.

  “Noble girl!” murmured Morand in grief.

  25

  THE NOTE

  A final scene was added to the events that we have just recounted, as though to complete the tragedy that began to unfold with this somber episode.

  Mother Tison, destroyed by what had just happened, abandoned by those who had escorted her, for there is something heinous even in an involuntary crime—and it is quite a crime for a mother to kill her own child, even if it be through excessive patriotic zeal—Mother Tison, after staying absolutely dead still for some little time, raised her head and looked around her, unhinged. Observing that she was on her own, she gave a cry and rushed to the door.

  A few curious souls, more relentless than the rest, were still camped at the door, but they moved aside as soon as they saw her, pointing at her and saying to one another: “You see that woman? She’s the one who denounced her own daughter.”

  Mother Tison uttered a cry of despair and dashed off in the direction of the Temple. But a third of the way down the rue Michel-le-Comte, a man came and blocked her path. With his face hidden in his coat, he said: “Are you happy now? Now that you’ve killed your child?”

  “Killed my child? Killed my child?” shrieked the poor mother. “No, no, I can’t have.”

  “And yet you have, for your daughter has been arrested.”

  “Where have they taken her?”

  “To the Conciergerie; from there she’ll go to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and you know what happens to people who go there.”

  “Get out of my way,” said Mother Tison. “Let me pass.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Conciergerie.”

  “What are you going to do there?”

  “See her again.”

  “They won’t let you in.”

  “They’ll let me bed down at the door, live there, sleep there. I won’t budge until she comes out, and then I’ll see her again one more time at least.”

  “What if someone promised to get you back your daughter?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you, suppose a man were to promise to get you back your daughter, would you do what this man told you to do?”

  “Anything for my daughter! Anything for my Héloïse!” cried the woman, twisting her arms around each other in despair. “Anything! Anything! Anything!”

  “Listen,” the stranger went on. “It’s God that’s punishing you.”

  “But what for?”

  “For the torture you’ve inflicted on a poor mother like yourself.”

  “Who are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  “You’ve often led the prisoner to the brink of despair, that abyss where you find yourself at this moment, through your brutality and your constant spying. God is punishing you by leading this daughter you loved so much to death.”

  “You said there was a man who could save her. Where is this man? What does he want? What is he asking for?”

  “This man wants you to cease persecuting the Queen, he wants you to ask her forgiveness for the outrages you have done to her, and he wants you, if you perceive that this woman—who is also a mother who suffers, who weeps, who despairs—by some impossible circumstance, by some miracle of the heavens, is about to escape, instead of opposing her flight to help her all you can.”

  “It’s you, isn’t it, citizen?” said Mother Tison. “You’re this man?”

  “What of it?”

  “It’s you who promises to save my daughter?”

  The stranger remained silent.

  “Do you promise me? Will you do it? Swear to me? Answer me!”

  “Listen. All that a man can do to save a woman, I will do to save your daughter.”

  “He can’t save her!” cried Mother Tison, howling. “He can’t save her. He was lying when he promised to save her.”

  “You do what you can for the Queen, I’ll do what I can for your daughter.”

  “What do I care about the Queen? She’s just a woman who has a daughter, that’s all. But if anyone’s going to get her throat cut, it won’t be her daughter, it’ll be her. Let them cut my throat if they like, but let them save my daughter. Let them take me to the guillotine; as long as they don’t touch a hair on her head, I’ll go to the guillotine singing:

  “Ah, things will all be better soon

  When we string the aristocrats from the lampposts.…”1

  With that Mother Tison began to sing in an alarming voice; then, suddenly, she stopped singing and burst into crazy laughter. The man in the coat appeared frightened himself by this onset of madness and took a step back.

  “Oh! You won’t get away that easily,” said Mother Tison in despair, holding him by his coat. “You don’t come and tell a mother ‘Do this and I’ll save your child’ only to tell her afterward ‘Maybe.’ Will you save her? ”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “The day they take her from the Conciergerie to the scaffold.”

  “Why wait? Why not tonight, this evening, this very instant?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Ha! You see, you see,” shrieked Mother Tison. “You see: you can’t!

  Well, I can.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I can persecute the prisoner, as you call her; I can keep an eye on the Queen, as you call her, aristocrat that you are! I can go into her cell anytime I like, day or night, and don’t think I won’t. As for her escaping, we’ll see about that. Ha! We’ll see about that all right, since you don’t want to save my daughter, we’ll see if she gets out, that one. A head for a head, is that what you want? Madame Veto was Queen, I know very well; Héloïse Tison is just a poor girl, I know very well. But on the guillotine we’re all equal.”

  “Well then, so be it!” said the man in the coat. “You save her—and I will save her.”

  “Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “On what?”

  “On whatever you like.”

  “Do you have a daughter?”

  “No.”

  “Well then,” said Mother Tison, dropping both arms in defeat, “what are you going to swear on?”

  “Listen, I swear to God.”

  “Bah!” replied Mother Tison. “Yo
u know very well they’ve taken down the old one and they haven’t put the new one up yet.”

  “I swear to you on my father’s grave.”

  “Don’t swear on a grave, that’ll bring her bad luck.… Oh! My God! My God! When I think that maybe in three days I’ll be able to swear on my daughter’s grave! My daughter! My poor Héloïse!” bellowed Mother Tison, so loudly—for a woman with a carrying voice to start with—that several windows flew open.

  At the sight of the windows being opened, another man seemed to detach himself from the wall and come toward the first man.

  “There’s nothing to be done with this woman,” said the first to the second. “She is mad.”

  “No, she’s a mother,” said the second, dragging his companion away.

  Seeing them walking away, Mother Tison seemed to come to her senses.

  “Where are you going?” she shouted. “Are you going to save Héloïse? Wait for me, then, I’m coming with you. Wait for me, wait for me, for heaven’s sake!”

  The poor woman rushed after them, screaming. But at the nearest street corner she lost sight of them, and, not knowing which way to turn, remained for a moment undecided, looking every which way; seeing herself all alone in the night and the heavy silence, that double symbol of death, she gave a shattering scream and fell unconscious to the ground.

  Ten o’clock rang out.

  Meanwhile, as that same hour was tolling from the Temple clock, the Queen was sitting by a smoky lamp in the room we have come to know, between her sister and her daughter. Hidden from the view of the municipal officers by Madame Royale, she pretended to hug her, while secretly rereading a tiny note written on the finest paper to be found, in a hand so fine that her eyes, scalded by tears, had scarcely enough strength left to decipher it. The note went as follows:

  Tomorrow, Tuesday, ask to go down to the garden, which they’ll allow you to do without any problems, since the order has been given to grant you this favor whenever you ask. After circling the garden three or four times, feign fatigue, go to the canteen, and ask Mother Plumeau for permission to sit down in the canteen. After you’ve been there a moment, pretend to feel much worse and faint. They will then shut the doors so that help can be gotten for you, and you will stay there with Madame Elisabeth and Madame Royale. The trapdoor of the cellar will immediately open; hurry down through it with your sister and your daughter and you will all three be saved.