The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [143]
“My God!” murmured Geneviève. “My God! Have pity on me!”
“After that,” Dixmer went on, looking around, “what consoles me, my dear, is that you are so well set up here—you don’t look to me as though you’ve suffered too badly from being in hiding. Me, since the fire in which our home and our fortune went up in smoke, I wandered about willy-nilly, living in basements, the holds of boats, sometimes even the sewers that flow into the Seine.”
“Monsieur!” said Geneviève.
“You’ve got some lovely-looking fruit there.… I often had to go without dessert, being forced to go without dinner.”
Geneviève hid her head in her hands and sobbed.
“Not that I lacked for money,” Dixmer went on. “Thank God, I carried about thirty thousand francs in gold on me, which is now worth five hundred thousand francs. But how can a coalman, a fisherman, or a rag and bone man pull louis3 out of his pocket to buy a bit of cheese or sausage? Oh, God, yes, madame! I played each of those roles in turn. Today I’m a patriot, an extremist one, a Marseillais,4 all the better to disguise myself. I roll my r’s and I swear like a trooper. Heavens! What do you think! A middle-aged outlaw doesn’t get around Paris as easily as a pretty young woman, and I wasn’t lucky enough to know some fanatic republican woman who would stow me away.”
“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried Geneviève. “Have mercy on me! Can’t you see I’m dying?”
“Of worry, yes, I can imagine. You were so very worried about me.
But console yourself, madame, I’m back, and we won’t leave each other’s sight again.”
“Oh! You’re going to kill me!” cried Geneviève.
Dixmer looked at her with a terrifying smile.
“Kill an innocent woman! Oh, madame! What are you saying? You must have missed me so much you’ve gone out of your mind.…”
“Monsieur,” cried Geneviève. “Monsieur, I beg you with joined hands to kill me rather than go on torturing me with such cruel gibes. No, I am not innocent. Yes, I am a criminal. Yes, I deserve death. Kill me, monsieur, kill me!”
“So you admit you deserve death?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And that, to expiate I know not what crime you accuse yourself of, you would accept such a death without complaining?”
“Strike me, monsieur, smite me down; I won’t utter a sound. Far from cursing the hand that strikes me, I will bless it.”
“No, madame, I don’t want to strike you. But you will die; that’s more than likely. But instead of being ignominious, as you might well fear, your death will be glorious, on a par with the very finest deaths. Thank me, madame: in punishing you I will immortalize you.”
“Monsieur, what will you do?”
“You will pursue the goal we were aiming at when we were so rudely interrupted. For your sake and for mine, you will be brought down, guilty; for everyone else’s sake, you will die a martyr.”
“Oh, my God! You’ll make me lose my mind, talking like that. Where are you taking me? What are you dragging me into?”
“To your death, probably.”
“Then let me say a prayer.”
“Your prayer? ”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“None of your business! From the moment you kill me I’ll have paid my debt, and when I’ve paid it I’ll owe you nothing.”
“That’s only fair,” said Dixmer, withdrawing to the other room. “I’ll wait for you.”
He left the salon.
Geneviève went to kneel before the portrait of Maurice, pressing both her hands to a heart that was breaking.
“Maurice,” she said softly, “forgive me. I didn’t expect to be happy myself, but I hoped to be able to make you happy. Now I am taking away from you a happiness that was your life, Maurice. Forgive me for your death, my beloved!”
She then cut a long lock of her hair and wound it around the bouquet of violets, which she laid at the base of the portrait. This inanimate, silent canvas seemed to take on a painful expression on seeing her depart.