The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [141]
Geneviève clapped her hands together and looked at her lover with an expression of wild admiration.
“You’re not putting me on, Maurice?”
“When have I ever put you on?” Maurice asked. “Was it the day I dishonored myself to have you with me?”
Geneviève brought her lips to Maurice’s and remained suspended, so to speak, from her lover’s neck.
“Yes, you’re right, Maurice. I’m putting myself on. What I feel isn’t remorse anymore; perhaps it’s the degradation of my soul. But at least you’ll understand, I love you too much to feel anything but fear of losing you. Let’s go far away, my friend; let’s go where no one can ever reach us.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Maurice, over the moon.
“But how can we get away?” said Geneviève, shuddering at the bleak prospect. “These days you can’t easily escape the daggers of the assassins of the second of September, or the axes of the executioners of the twenty-first of January.”
“Geneviève!” cried Maurice. “God will protect us. Listen, a good act I tried to do apropos the second of September is going to bear fruit today. I wanted to save a poor priest who once studied with me. I sought out Danton and, at his request, the Committee of Public Safety signed a passport for the priest and his sister. This passport Danton gave to me; but the unhappy priest, instead of coming and getting it from me as I proposed, locked himself up in the Carmes1—and he died there.”
“What happened to the passport?” asked Geneviève.
“I still have it. Today it’s worth a million; it’s worth more than that, Geneviève. It’s worth life, it’s worth happiness!”
“God be praised!” cried Geneviève.
“Now, as you know, my fortune consists in some land managed by an old family servant, a pure patriot and loyal soul we can trust completely. He’ll send the revenues on to me wherever I am. When we get to Boulogne we can go and see him.”
“Where does he live?”
“Near Abbeville.”2
“When will we leave, Maurice?”
“In an hour.”
“No one must know we are going.”
“No one will know. I’ll run over to Lorin’s. He has a cabriolet without a horse, I have a horse without a carriage. We’ll leave as soon as I get back. You stay here and get everything ready for our departure. We don’t need much, we’ll buy whatever we lack in England. I’ll give Agesilaus a job that gets him out of here for quite a while and Lorin can explain to him what’s happened tonight: by tonight we’ll be long gone.”
“But what if we’re stopped en route?”
“Won’t we have our passport? We’re going to Hubert’s place—Hubert is the intendant. He belongs to the municipality of Abbeville; he’ll go with us and safeguard us from Abbeville to Boulogne; at Boulogne we’ll buy or hire a boat. I can, in any case, drop in at the Committee and score myself some mission for Abbeville. But no—no tricks, right, Geneviève? Let’s gain our happiness by merely risking our lives!”
“Yes, yes, my love: and we’ll succeed. But you smell so delicious this morning!” said Geneviève, burying her face in Maurice’s chest.
“True; I bought a bunch of violets for you this morning when I was passing Palais-Egalité. But when I got home and saw you looking so sad I forgot about everything else.”
“Give them to me! I’ll pay you back.”
Geneviève breathed in the smell of the violets with the sort of fanatic pleasure nervous people almost always get from perfumes. Suddenly her eyes were swimming with tears.
“What’s wrong?” Maurice asked.
“Poor Héloïse!” murmured Geneviève.
“Ah, yes,” said Maurice with a sigh. “But we have to think of ourselves now and let the dead, whatever party they belonged to, rest in peace in the grave their devotion dug for them. Adieu. I’m off.”
“Come back soon.”
“I’ll be back in less than thirty minutes.”
“But what if Lorin’s not at home?”
“It won’t matter! His servant knows me; I can take whatever I like from his place even if he’s not at home, just as he would do here.”
“All right! All right!”
“You, my Geneviève, you get everything ready,