The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [148]
“Who are those men?” asked the clerk from the War Ministry.
“I only know one of them: he’s a wicket clerk name of Gracchus.”
“Ah!” said the other man with affected indifference. “So wicket clerks can leave the Conciergerie?”
“They have their day off.”
The investigation was left there as the two new pals took the pont-au-Change. At the corner of the place du Châtelet the clerk from the War Ministry, as he had said he would, bought a bucket of twelve dozen oysters. Then they went on their merry way along the quai de Gesvres.
The War Ministry clerk’s home was very simple: citizen Durand lived in a three-room apartment on the place de Grève in a house without a porter. Each tenant had a key to the alley, and it was agreed that they would alert one another if one of them accidentally locked themselves out by knocking once, twice, or three times with a hammer, according to which floor they lived on: whoever was expecting someone and recognized the signal would then come down and open the door. But citizen Durand had his key in his pocket and didn’t need to knock.
The Palais registrar found Madame Durand very much to his liking. She was, in fact, a charming woman, whose face was made powerfully attractive at a glance by an expression of deep sadness that suffused her entire physiognomy. It is a known fact that sadness is one of the surest means of seduction available to good-looking women; sadness makes all men amorous, without exception—even registrars, for, whatever they say, registrars are men, and no matter how fiercely proud or hardhearted a man is, there isn’t one who doesn’t hope to console a pretty woman so afflicted and turn the white roses of a pallid complexion into gaily blushing roses, as the citizen poet Dorat would say.
The two clerks supped with gusto; only Madame Durand had no appetite. Yet questions were bandied back and forth in between mouthfuls. The war clerk asked his colleague, with a truly remarkable curiosity in these times of everyday tragedy, what went on in the Palais on days of judgment and what were the means of surveillance. The Palais registrar, delighted to have such an attentive audience, happily supplied answers, rabbiting on about the practices of the jailers, those of Fouquier-Tinville, and finally those of Sanson,1 the star performer in the tragedy staged on a daily basis in the place de la Révolution.
Then, addressing himself to his colleague and host, he asked him in turn about his ministry.
“Oh!” said Durand. “I’m not as informed as you are, being a person infinitely less important. I’m just the secretary of the appointed clerk of the place; I do the hard work for the chief clerk. As an obscure employee, I get the pain, the illustrious get the gain: that’s how it goes in all bureaucracies, even revolutionary ones. The earth and the sky may shift one day, but bureaucracies won’t.”
“Well then, I’ll lend you a hand, citizen,” said the Palais registrar, won over completely by his host’s good wine and especially by the beautiful eyes of the host’s wife.
“Oh, thank you!” cried the man to whom this gracious offer was made. “Any change of routine or location is a distraction for a poor employee, and I fear my work at the Conciergerie will end sooner rather than later. But as long as I can take Madame Durand with me every night, since she’d be bored on her own here …”
“I don’t see why not,” said the Palais registrar, delighted with the lovely distraction his colleague promised him.
“She can tell me which nuts to remove,” continued citizen Durand.
“And then, from time to time, if tonight’s supper wasn’t too terrible, you can come and have the same again.”
“Yes, but not too often,” said the Palais registrar fatuously, “for I must tell you