The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [15]
4
THE CUSTOMS OF THE DAY
When Maurice Lindey came to and looked around, he saw nothing but dark alleys running left and right wherever he looked. He tried to get his bearings and work out where he was, but his mind was reeling, the night was dark; the moon, which had come out briefly to shed light on the stranger’s haunting face, had gone back behind the clouds. After a moment of cruel uncertainty, he set off on the path that led to his home in the rue Roule.
When he reached the rue Sainte-Avoye, Maurice was surprised at the number of patrols circulating in the Temple quartier.
“What’s the matter, then, Sergeant?” he asked the chief of a very busy patrol that had just carried out a search in the rue des Fontaines.
“The matter?” said the sergeant. “My dear officer, the matter is that they tried to break out the Capet woman1 and her brood this very night.”
“How’s that?”
“Some patrol of ex-aristocrats managed to get ahold of the password and worm their way into the Temple dressed as chasseurs2 of the National Guard, and they would have carted her off, too, except that, fortunately, the one who was supposed to be the corporal spoke to the officer in charge of the watch and called him ‘monsieur’; gave himself away, he did, the dirty aristocrat!”
“I’ll be damned!” Maurice let out. “And have the conspirators been arrested?”
“No. The patrol made it back out onto the street and scattered.”
“Any chance of catching up with any of them?”
“Oh! There’s only one worth catching and that’s the chief, a great tall streak of a thing. He was introduced into the watch by one of the municipal officers on duty. Did he make us run, the mongrel! But he must have found a back door somewhere and he got away through the Madelonnettes prison.”3
In any other circumstances, Maurice would have spent the rest of the night with the patriots keeping watch over the safety of the Republic.
But for the last hour love of the nation was no longer his main concern, so he continued on his way, the news he had just learned gradually fading from his mind and evaporating behind the experience he had just been through. Besides, these so-called attempts at helping the Queen escape had become so frequent that even patriots knew that in certain circumstances they were more than handy as a political tool, so the news did not inspire any undue anxiety in our young republican.
When he got home, Maurice found his officieux waiting for him there. In those days people no longer had servants. Maurice, therefore, found his officieux waiting for him, indeed having fallen asleep waiting for him, and snoring fretfully.
He woke him with all the consideration due one’s fellow, pulled his boots off for him, and sent him away so as not to have his thoughts disturbed, and then he went to bed and, since the hour was late and he was young, fell asleep in turn despite his preoccupied state.
The next day he found a letter on his night table—a letter written in a fine, elegant, and unfamiliar hand. He looked at the seal; as sole motto, it bore the English word: Nothing.
He opened the letter which contained these words: “Thank you! Eternal gratitude on my part in exchange for eternal forgetfulness on yours!…”
Maurice called his servant. True patriots no longer rang for them, bells being thought to recall past servility. Besides, lots of officieux made this a condition of employment in their master’s service when they signed up.
Maurice’s officieux had been given the name of Jean at the baptismal font some thirty years previously, but in 1792 he had had himself debaptized, by his own private authority,