The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [123]
“So you’re not thinking about throwing in the towel and curling up your toes anymore? You no longer want to get yourself killed?”
“What do you mean?” asked Geneviève.
“Oh, God!” said Lorin. “What a versatile animal man is; philosophers are right to despise his flightiness! Here’s a man, if you can believe it, madame, who only last night wanted to throw himself in the river and drown; who declared there was no happiness left on Earth for him. And here I find him this morning gay as a lark, jubilant, a smile on his lips, happiness on his brow, life in his heart, before a wellladen table. True, he’s not eating, but that doesn’t mean he’s unhappy about it all.”
“Really!” said Geneviève. “Was it that bad?”
“Worse. I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I’m starving. It’s Maurice’s fault, he had me running all over the quartier Saint-Jacques last night. Allow me to dig into your breakfast, which I see neither of you has touched.”
“You know, he’s right!” cried Maurice, with infantile joy. “Let’s eat. I haven’t had a thing and neither have you, Geneviève.”
He glanced at Lorin when he said her name, but Lorin didn’t bat an eye.
“So you guessed it was her? Really?” he asked Lorin. “It wasn’t exactly hard!” replied Lorin, cutting himself a thick slice of rosy ham.
“I’m hungry too,” said Geneviève, holding out her plate.
“Lorin,” said Maurice, “last night I was sick, you know.”
“You were more than sick, you were out of your mind.”
“So be it! But I think it’s you who aren’t feeling well this morning.”
“How do you mean?”
“You haven’t yet made up a rhyme.”
“I was just getting around to it, this very instant,” said Lorin.
“When he sits among the Graces
Phoebus always strums his lyre;
But when he follows Venus’s traces
Phoebus of music can quickly tire.”
“That’s more like it! He’s always got a quatrain up his sleeve!” laughed Maurice.
“But you’ll have to make do with that one, since we’re about to broach matters that aren’t so gay.”
“What is it now?” asked Maurice anxiously.
“What it is is that I’ll soon be on guard duty at the Conciergerie.”
“At the Conciergerie!” cried Geneviève. “Near the Queen?”
“Near the Queen … I think so, yes, madame.”
Geneviève went pale. Maurice frowned and made a sign to Lorin, who cut himself another slice of ham, twice the size of the first.
The Queen had, in fact, been conducted to the Conciergerie, where we will now follow her.
34
THE CONCIERGERIE
At the corner of the pont-au-Change and the quai aux Fleurs, where the flower market is, sit the remains of the old palace of Saint Louis,1 which was known as the Palace par excellence, just as Rome was once called the Capital; it continues to bear this sovereign name even though, for some time now, the only kings to inhabit it are clerks of the court, judges, and litigants.
It is a huge and somber palace, the Palais de Justice, promoting fear rather than love of that harsh goddess. On show there you’ll find all the paraphernalia of human vengeance brought together in one compact space. Here are the rooms where they hold those charged and awaiting trial; further along are the rooms where they are judged; below that the cells where they are locked up when they have been condemned; at the door the small space where they are branded with an abominable branding iron that burns; and a hundred and fifty paces away from the main square lies that other, larger square where they are killed. This is the place de Grève,2 where what is begun in the Palais de Justice is finished off.
Justice, as you can see, has everything to hand.
This whole pile of buildings heaped on top of one another, mournful, grey, pierced by tiny barred windows, where the cavernous vaults resemble the iron-barred caves along the quai des Lunettes—this is the Conciergerie.
The prison has dungeons that the waters of the Seine regularly slosh with black alluvium. It has mysterious exits that once ejected into the river