It must be noted that, in all its eighteen centuries of monarchy,5 France has had few years as mythic as the year of grace 1793. Yet the Knight had not been caught, and so people stopped talking about him. The Queen, widowed of her husband and orphaned of her son, contented herself with crying when she was alone in the company of her daughter and her sister-in-law. The little Dauphin, at the hands of the cobbler, Simon,6 set out on the road to martyrdom that would unite him two years later with his father and mother. There was a momentary lull while the volcano of the Mountain7 lay dormant before erupting and devouring the Girondins.
Maurice felt the weight of this lull, the way you feel how heavy the atmosphere is before a storm, and he did not know what to do with the spare time that delivered him over entirely to passionate feelings which, if not love, certainly bore all the hallmarks. He reread the woman’s letter, kissed the beautiful sapphire she had given him, and resolved that, though he had sworn not to, he would try one last time to find her.
The young man had of course thought of one thing, which was to go to the Jardin des Plantes section to gather information there from his colleague the secretary. But his initial thought, indeed, we might say his only thought, that his beautiful stranger might be involved in some kind of political intrigue, held him back. The idea that some indiscretion on his part might lead such a lovely woman to the place de la Révolution8 and cause her angelic head to fall on the guillotine made his blood run cold.
And so he opted to go it alone, blindly. His plan, in any case, was very simple. The lists posted on every door should provide him with a few basic pointers; he could then question the concierges and thereby have light shed on the mystery. As secretary of the Lepelletier section, he had every right to conduct inquiries of the sort.
In any case, Maurice had no idea of the woman’s name and would have to be guided by analogy. It was impossible that such a charming creature would not have a name in keeping with her appearance: the name of some sylph, fairy, or angel; for when she arrived on earth, her advent had to have been greeted as that of a superior and supernatural being. The name would thus, infallibly, guide him in his groping.
Maurice donned a carmagnole of coarse brown cloth, clapped a red cap on his head, and set off on his exploration without telling a soul what he was up to. In his hand, he held the gnarled cudgel known as a constitution; tucked into his manly wrist, this weapon was as good as Hercules’ club. In his pocket, he carried his commission as secretary of the Lepelletier section, which was meant to ensure his physical safety and vouch for his moral stature at once.
So once more he found himself walking up and down the rue Saint-Victor and the old rue Saint-Jacques, trying to decipher in the dwindling daylight the names scrawled more or less legibly on the panel of each door.
He was up to his hundredth house, and, of course, his hundredth list, without in any way feeling he was getting any closer to tracking down his mystery woman, whom he would be unable to recognize in any case unless his eyes were to light on some fancy name of the kind he’d been dreaming about, when a brave cobbler read frustration writ large across his face and so opened his door and came out, leather thong and bodkin in hand, to peer over his glasses at Maurice.
“Do you need information about any of the tenants of this house? If so, speak, I’m prepared to tell you.”
“Thank you, citizen,” Maurice stammered, “but I’m looking for the name of a friend of mine.”
“Tell me his name, citizen; I know everyone on the block. Where does this friend live?”
“He used to live in the old rue Saint-Jacques, I think; but I fear he may have moved.”
“But what’s his name? I need to know his name.”
Maurice was stumped; he hesitated for a moment then said the first name that came into his head. “René.”
“And what’s he do, this René?”
Maurice was surrounded by tanneries. “He’s a tanner’s assistant.”
“In that case,” said a burgher who had stopped and was looking at Maurice with a friendly expression that did not exclude a certain mistrust, “you should address yourself to the master.”
“That’s right,” said the doorman, “good advice. The masters know the names of their workers, and here’s citizen Dixmer. Hang on, he’s the manager of a tannery with more than fifty men working for him; he’s your man if it’s information you need.”
Maurice turned and saw a fairly tall, decent-looking bourgeois gent with a placid face and the snazzy getup of the wealthy industrialist.
“But as the citizen doorman was saying,” said the burgher, “we need to know the man’s last name.”
“Like I said: René.”
“René’s just a Christian name. I’m asking you for the family name. All the workers on my payroll are listed according to their last names.”
“Heck,” said Maurice, getting tired of this line of questioning, “I just can’t remember his last name.”
“Really?” said the burgher with a smile in which Maurice felt he could sense more irony than the man cared to reveal. “Really, citizen, you don’t know your friend’s last name?”
“No.”
“In that case, you probably won’t find him.”
With that, the burgher graciously bowed to Maurice and disappeared into a decrepit-looking house in the old rue Saint-Jacques.
“The fact is, if you don’t know his last name …,” said the doorman.
“No, I don’t,” snapped Maurice, spoiling for a fight as one way to give vent to his lousy mood. “What’ve you got to say about that?”
“Nothing, citizen, nothing at all; only, if you don’t know your friend’s last name, it’s probable, as citizen Dixmer says, it’s very probable that you won’t find him.”
With that, the citizen doorman went back inside his lodge, shrugging his shoulders. Maurice would have liked to give the citizen doorman a good thump, but the man was old and his very feebleness saved him. If he’d been twenty years younger, Maurice would have provided the scandalous spectacle of equality before the law but inequality before brute strength. Night was about to fall, in any case, and he only had a few minutes of daylight left.
He made use of them by taking the first alleyway, then the second; he examined every door in both, poked into every corner and crevice, peered over every fence, hoisted himself up on every wall, whipped his head inside every gate, peeked through every keyhole in every lock and even hammered on the doors of a few deserted shops without getting any reply. In the end, two solid hours went down the drain in this futile search.
Nine o’clock sounded. Night had fallen: there was no other sound to be heard, no movement to be detected in this deserted neighborhood, where life seemed to have fled with the light.
Maurice was about to turn back in despair when suddenly he saw a light shining in a narrow alleyway. He ventured down the dark passage without noticing that the very moment he did so a curious head, which had been following his every move for a quarter of an hour or so from behind a stand of trees, popped up over the wall and then swiftly ducked down behind it again.
A few seconds later, three men raced out of a tiny door in this same wall and threw themselves down the alley in which Maurice had just been swallowed up, while a fourth man closed the lane door in the interests of precaution.
At the end of the alley, Maurice located the light, shining on the far side of a courtyard. He knocked on the door of a lone, run-down house, but the light went out as soon as he knocked. He knocked harder but no one answered his knock, and Maurice realized it was deliberate policy not to answer around here and that he was stupidly wasting his time, so he crossed the courtyard and came back out into the alley.
At the same time, the door to the house turned silently on its hinges; three men came out and a whistle was heard. Maurice turned and saw three shadows five or six feet away. In the semidarkness, by the light of that sort of illumination you get when your eyes have become used to the dark for quite a while,
three blades of steel glinted, throwing off silvery reflections.
Maurice knew he was surrounded. He tried to swing his cudgel, but the alley was so narrow it hit the walls on both sides. At the same moment, a violent blow to the head stunned him. It was an attack he hadn’t foreseen, carried out by the four men who’d come out of the wall. Seven men at once threw themselves on Maurice and, despite the desperate resistance he put up, they got him to the ground, tied his hands behind his back, and blindfolded him.
Maurice had not uttered a single shout, not once called out for help. Strength and courage are always keen to be enough in themselves, and those who possess both seem to be ashamed of calling on outside help. Besides, Maurice could have called out all he liked in this deserted neighborhood; no one would have come.
So, there he was, noiselessly trussed and muzzled. At least, he thought, they didn’t intend to kill him, not right away, or they would not have bothered with the blindfold. At Maurice’s age hope springs eternal, and this seemed a hopeful reprieve, so he gathered his wits about him and waited.
“Who are you?” asked a voice still roused by the struggle.
“I’m the man you’re assassinating,” Maurice spat out.
“And you’re a dead man if you make any noise.”
“If I was going to make a noise I would have done so by now.”
“Are you ready to answer my questions?”
“Ask me first, I’ll see if I feel like answering.”
“Who sent you here?”
“No one.”
“So you came on your own initiative?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
Maurice made a mighty move to disengage his bound hands, but it couldn’t be done.
“I never lie!” he barked.
“In any case, whether you came on your own initiative or you’ve been sent, you’re a spy.”
“And you are cowards!”
“Cowards, eh?”
“Yes, you’re seven or eight to one bound man and yet you insult that man. Cowards! Cowards! Cowards!”
Maurice’s violence, instead of provoking his adversaries, seemed to calm them down, this very violence being proof that the young man was not what they accused him of being, for a true spy would have been quaking in his boots and begging for mercy.
“No insult intended,” said a voice that was gentler yet at the same time more imperious than any of the others that had spoken so far. “In these troubled times, one can be a spy without being a criminal: only one risks one’s life.”
“Welcome, whoever spoke those words: I’ll answer you in all honesty.”
“What brought you to this neighborhood, monsieur?”
“I’m looking for a woman.”
A murmur of incredulity greeted this excuse. The murmur grew to a howl of derision.
“You’re lying!” the same voice said. “There is no woman and we know what we’re talking about when it comes to women; there is no woman to pursue in this neighborhood. Tell us your plans or die.”
“You’re joking,” said Maurice. “You won’t kill me for the sheer pleasure of killing me—not unless you’re proper crooks.”
So saying, Maurice made an even more violent and sudden effort to free his hands from the rope that bound them; but a sharp and painful chill ripped through his chest and he lurched backward, unable to stop himself.
“Ah! You felt that all right!” said one of the men. “Well, there are another eight blades like the one you’ve just tasted.”
“Get on with it then,” said Maurice, resigned now to his fate. “At least it will be over and done with.”
“Who are you? Let’s have it!” said the soft yet imperious voice.
“You want to know my name?”
“Your name, yes!”
“I am Maurice Lindey.”
“What!” someone shouted. “Maurice Lindey, the revolutionary … the patriot? Maurice Lindey, the secretary of the Lepelletier section?”
These words were said so heatedly that Maurice could tell they were decisive. To reply would be inexorably to seal his fate. Maurice was incapable of cowardice. He bolted upright like a true Spartan and spoke firmly and clearly:
“Yes, Maurice Lindey. Yes, Maurice Lindey, the secretary of the Lepelletier section. Yes, Maurice Lindey, the patriot, the revolutionary, the Jacobin. Maurice Lindey, in short, whose greatest day will be the day he dies for liberty.”
His answer was greeted by a deathly silence.
Maurice Lindey presented his chest, waiting for the blade whose point he had already felt to plunge to the hilt at any moment into his heart.
After a few seconds, a voice betraying some emotion said, “Is that really true? Come on, young man; don’t lie.”
“Look in my pocket,” said Maurice. “You’ll find my commission. Look at my shirt. If my blood hasn’t covered them up, you’ll find my initials, an ‘M’ and an ‘L,’ embroidered on the front.”
Maurice immediately felt himself lifted up by powerful arms and carried a short distance. He heard a first door open, then a second. But the second was narrower than the first and the men carrying him could barely squeeze in with him. The murmuring and whispering continued.
“I’m sunk,” he said to himself. “They’ll put a stone around my neck and throw me into some hole in the Bièvre River.”
But after a short while he could feel that the men carrying him were going up some steps. A milder air struck his face and he was placed on a chair. Then he heard a door being shut and locked and footsteps receding and he sensed that he had been left on his own. He strained his ears the way a man does when his life hangs on a word, and he thought he heard the same voice that had already struck him with its mixture of hardness and softness say to the others:
“Let’s deliberate and take a vote.”
8
GENEVIÈVE
A quarter of an hour went by. It seemed like a century to Maurice. Which was only natural: young, handsome, vigorous, supported in his strength by a hundred devoted friends with whom he someday dreamed of doing great things, he suddenly felt himself, without warning, reduced to losing his life in a shameful ambush.
He knew he’d been locked up in some kind of room, but was the room being watched? As he made another attempt to get his hands free, his steely muscles pumped up and stiffened, but the rope cut into his flesh without breaking.
The worst of it was that his hands were tied behind his back, so he could not tear the blindfold off his eyes. If he could only see, perhaps he could get away. Yet his various efforts were being made without anyone objecting, without any movement near him. He deduced that he was alone.
He trod on something soft and yielding, sand or clay soil, perhaps. A penetrating acrid odor hit his nose, announcing the presence of vegetable matter. Maurice thought he might be in a greenhouse or something of that sort. He took a few steps, struck a wall, turned around to feel with his hands, felt plowing tools, and had to stifle a murmur of joy.
With stupendous effort, he managed to explore each instrument, one by one. His escape then became merely a matter of time: if only lady luck were to grant him five minutes and if among the tools he were to find some instrument with a cutting edge, he would be saved. He found a spade.
The way Maurice was tied up, it was quite a struggle to turn the spade upside down so that the metal blade was uppermost. Along the edge of the metal, which he held against the wall with his back, he cut or rather sawed through the rope that bound his wrists. The operation took some little time; the metal edge of the blade cut slowly. Sweat ran down his brow. He could hear someone coming. He gave one last violent, supreme, superhuman tug and the rope, already half worn through, snapped.
This time he could not suppress a cry of joy, sure as he now was of at least dying while defending himself.
Maurice tore the blindfold from his eyes and saw that he had not been mistaken. It wasn’t so much a hothouse he was in as a kind of pavilion where waxy plant
s too fragile to spend the winter out of doors were kept. In one corner were the gardening implements one of which had rendered him so great a service. Facing him was a window, which he dashed toward, but it had bars and there was a man armed with a rifle keeping guard outside.
On the far side of the garden, about thirty feet away, was a small pavilion matching the one Maurice was in. The shutters had been closed but a light shone through the slats.
He tiptoed to the door and listened; another watchman was pacing back and forth in front of the door. It was his steps he had heard.
But at the end of the hallway a jumble of voices sounded. The deliberations had clearly degenerated into an argument. Maurice couldn’t hear all of what was being said. But a few words did reach him, and among these words, as though for those words only the distance was not so great, he heard the words spy, dagger, death.
Maurice became doubly alert. A door opened and he could hear more clearly.
“Yes,” said a voice. “Yes, he’s a spy; he’s onto something and he has definitely been sent to ferret out our secrets. If we let him go, we run the risk of his denouncing us. But what about his word?”
“Naturally he’ll give us his word and then he’ll go back on it. Is he a gentleman that we should trust in his word?”
Maurice ground his teeth at the notion, still held by some, that you had to be a gentleman to keep your word.
“But does he know who we are to denounce us?”
“No, certainly not, he doesn’t know who we are, he doesn’t know what we’re up to. But he knows this address and he’ll come back with plenty of reinforcements.”
The argument seemed pretty peremptory.
“Well, then,” said the voice that had already struck Maurice several times as being the voice of the leader. “So it’s decided!”
“Well, yes; a hundred times yes. I don’t understand you and your magnanimity, my dear fellow; if the Committee of Public Safety got hold of us, you’d soon see whether they’d bother with all these niceties.”