The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [104]
“Get away through the door; what we’re doing here doesn’t concern you—you are compromising yourselves for no reason.”
The two friends hesitated.
“Get back!” he cried to Maurice. “No patriots with us. Municipal officer Lindey, only aristocrats here, please!”
At that name and at the incredible gall of a man who openly boasted of belonging to a caste that at the time spelled certain death, the crowd gave out a great roar.
But the young blond man and three or four of his foppish friends, far from being daunted by the mob, pushed Maurice and Lorin into the alley and shut the door on them before turning back to throw themselves into the fray with gusto once more. By then the numbers had swelled due to the approach of the cart.
Miraculously saved, Maurice and Lorin looked at each other in amazement. The exit they had been pushed through looked built for the purpose. It led to a courtyard with a small door hidden on the far side, giving onto the rue Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.
At that moment, a detachment of gendarmes appeared from the Pont-au-Change and would soon have swept through the quai, despite the fact that from the cross street where our friends were a fierce battle could be heard raging.
The gendarmes preceded the cart that was taking poor Héloïse to the guillotine.
“Faster!” cried a voice. “Faster!”
The cart bolted forward at a gallop. Lorin could see the poor girl, standing, a smile on her lips and a glimmer of pride in her eye. But he could not even exchange a wave with her; she passed without seeing him through a crazed storm of people, all shouting:
“Death to the aristocrat! Death!”
The noise grew more distant until it receded as far as the Tuileries. At the same time, the door Maurice and Lorin had initially taken opened again and three or four muscadins, their clothes torn and bloodstained, emerged. They were probably all that remained of the small troop.
The young man with blond hair emerged last.
“Alas!” he said. “It looks like our cause is doomed.”
And throwing his chipped and bloody sword down on the ground, he rushed toward the rue des Lavandières.
28
THE KNIGHT OF MAISON-ROUGE
Maurice hurried back to the section to bring a complaint against Simon. It is true that before separating from Maurice Lorin had come up with a more effective plan, which was to assemble a few Thermopylae members, wait till Simon was due to leave the Temple, and kill him in an orderly battle. But Maurice put paid to the scheme.
“You’re finished,” he said to Lorin, “once you descend to battery. We’ll crush that bastard Simon all right, but let’s crush him legally. Lawyers would have a field day with him.”
And so Maurice went off to the section next morning to make his official complaint. He was perfectly stunned when the president of the section turned a deaf ear, declaring himself unable to act and saying he could not take sides between two good citizens both motivated by love of the nation.
“Right!” said Maurice. “Now I know what you have to do to merit the reputation of being a good citizen. Ha! All you have to do is gather a bunch of thugs together to assassinate a man you don’t like! You call that being motivated by love of the nation? I’m quickly coming round to Lorin’s view, which I was silly enough to rule out. From today I’ll practice patriotism as you understand it, and I’ll start by experimenting on Simon.”
“Citizen Maurice,” replied the president, “Simon may well be less in the wrong than you in this matter. He uncovered a plot without being called upon to do so by the terms of his employment. Furthermore, you have either chance or deliberate dealings—which? That we don’t know; we just know you have them—with the enemies of our nation.”
“Me!” cried Maurice. “Ah, this is novel, I’ll grant you that. And with whom then, citizen president?”
“With citizen Maison-Rouge.”
“Me?