The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [126]
The Queen learned of this arrangement the very day it came into play through the conversation between the two men, whose every word reached her unless they had some special reason for lowering their voices. She felt both anxiety and joy when she heard about it, for if, on the one hand, she was bound to realize that the two men must be rock solid if they had been selected from among so many men, she reflected that, on the other, it would be easier for her friends to corrupt two known guards at a fixed post than a hundred unknown men picked at random and coming into her orbit unexpectedly and for just a day at a time.
The first night, before getting into bed, one of the guards had a smoke, as was his habit. The tobacco smoke slid through the gaps in the partition and laid siege to the unhappy Queen, whose sufferings had exacerbated her sensitivities rather than blunting them. She soon found herself seized by the vapors and nausea; her head was heavy with lack of oxygen. But, faithful to her policy of indomitable pride, she did not complain.
As she lay awake, with an insomnia brought on by her physical ills, listening to the undisturbed silence of the night, she thought she heard a whine coming from outside. The whine was mournful and prolonged; it was eerie and piercing, like the noise of wind whistling through deserted passages when a tempest borrows a human voice to breathe life into the passions of the elements.
She soon recognized that this noise that had at first made her start, this painful and persistent cry, was the mournful lament of a dog howling on the quai. She immediately thought of her poor Black, whom she had forgotten while being shunted from the Temple and whose voice she felt she recognized. Indeed, the poor animal whose excessive vigilance had given his mistress away had followed behind her, out of sight, and pursued her carriage right to the Conciergerie gates; he had only run away momentarily when he was almost chopped in two by the double iron blade that shut on her.
But the poor creature had soon come back and, realizing that his mistress was locked away in this great stone tomb, was calling her, howling, as he waited for the caress of a reply, ten feet away from the sentry.
The Queen did reply—with a sigh that caused her guards to prick up their ears. But as this sigh was followed by complete silence, they were quickly reassured and dropped back off to sleep.
The next day, the Queen was up and dressed at the crack of dawn. Sitting by the barred window through which the filtered daylight descended, bluish, over her thin hands, she looked as though she was reading, but her thoughts were miles away.
The gendarme known as Gilbert pushed the screen back a little and watched her in silence. Marie Antoinette heard the noise the screen made as it folded in on itself and scraped the brick floor; but she did not look up.
She had positioned herself in such a way that the gendarmes could see her head entirely bathed in the morning light. The gendarme Gilbert signaled to his comrade to come and watch her with him through the opening. Duchesne went over.
“You see,” said Gilbert in a lowered voice, “how pale she is; it’s positively frightening! Her eyes are red, she’s in pain; you’d have to say she’s been bawling her eyes out.”
“You know very well,” said Duchesne, “the Widow Capet never cries; she’s too proud for that.”
“Well then, she must be sick.” Raising his voice, Gilbert said: “Tell me then, citizeness Capet, are you sick?”
The Queen raised her eyes slowly and her gaze was level, clear, and quizzical as she studied the two men.
“Are you talking to me, messieurs?” she asked in a voice full of sweetness, for she felt she’d noticed a spark of interest in the tone of the man who had addressed her.
“Yes, citizeness, we were,” Gilbert continued. “We asked you if you were sick.”
“Why sick?