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With that Lorin withdrew behind the Commission, laughing cheerfully.

There was nothing further for them all to do but leave. As for the child, once freed from his interrogators, he began to softly sing a melancholy little song sitting on his bed: it was one of his father’s favorites.

39

THE BOUQUET OF VIOLETS

Peace, as one might have foreseen, could not long inhabit the love nest where Maurice and Geneviève lived ensconced. When a tempest unleashes thunder and wind, the doves’ nest is shaken along with the bough that holds it.

Geneviève lurched from one fright to the next; she no longer trembled for Maison-Rouge, she now trembled for Maurice. She knew her husband well enough to know that, from the moment he disappeared, he was safe; thus sure of his salvation, she trembled for herself.

She didn’t dare confide her woes to the least timid man of an age in which everyone was fearless. But they were manifest in her red eyes and bloodless lips.

One day Maurice entered quietly while Geneviève was plunged into a deep reverie and didn’t hear him come in. He stopped at the door and saw her sitting, not moving, her eyes staring, her arms hugging her knees, her face buried in her chest.

He watched her for a moment in deep distress; for all that went through the young woman’s heart was revealed to him as though she were an open book and he could read to the bottom of her soul.

He took a step toward her and said: “You don’t love France anymore, Geneviève. You can tell me. You don’t even want to breathe the air here anymore—you don’t go near the window without dread.”

“Alas!” said Geneviève. “I’m well aware I can’t hide my thoughts from you, Maurice. You guessed right.”

“Yet it’s a beautiful country!” said the young man. “Life here matters and is so rewarding. There’s so much happening these days—all the bustle of the Tribunal, the clubs, the plots: it makes time off at home so blissful. You love all the more passionately when you come home at night not knowing if you’ll be able to love the next day, because the next day you might not be alive!”

Geneviève shook her head. “An ungrateful country to serve!” she said.

“How so?”

“Yes, look at you—you who have done so much for liberty, aren’t you half-suspect today?”

“But you, dear Geneviève,” said Maurice, with a look drunk with love, “you, a sworn enemy of such liberty, you who have done so much against it, you sleep peaceful and inviolate beneath the roof of a republican. There is some compensation, as you see.”

“Yes,” said Geneviève, “yes. But it won’t last long, for what is unjust can’t last.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I, that is, an aristocrat, I who slyly dream of defeating your party and ruining your ideas, I who plot in your very house the return of the ancien régime, I who, as a known felon, condemn you to death and disgrace, according to your views at least, I, Maurice, will not stay here like the bad genie of the house. I will not drag you with me to the scaffold.”

“And where will you go, Geneviève?”

“Where will I go? One day when you’ve gone out, Maurice, I’ll go and denounce myself without saying where I’ve been.”

“Oh!” cried Maurice pierced to the heart. “There’s gratitude for you!”

“No,” she said, throwing her arms around Maurice’s neck. “No, my friend, it’s love and the most devoted love, I swear to you. I didn’t want my brother to be taken and killed as a rebel; I don’t want my lover to be taken and killed as a traitor.”

“Is that really what you’re going to do, Geneviève?” cried Maurice.

“As sure as there’s a God in heaven!” she cried. “Besides, fear is nothing, what I feel is remorse.”

“Oh, Geneviève!” said Maurice.

“You know what I’m saying and what I’m going through, Maurice,” Geneviève continued. “For you feel the same remorse. You know, Maurice, that I gave myself without being mine to give; that you took me without my having the right to give myself.”

“That’s enough,” cried Maurice, “enough!”

He frowned and a grim determination shone in his eyes.

“I will show you, Geneviève,