The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [16]
“Agesilaus!” Maurice began. “Do you know anything about this letter?”
“No, citizen.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“The concierge.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“A messenger, no doubt, since there’s no national stamp on it.”
“Go down and ask the concierge to come up.”
The concierge came up because it was Maurice who asked him to and because Maurice was very much loved by all the officieux associated with him; but when he came, it was not without declaring that if it had been any other tenant, he would have asked him to come down.
The concierge was called Aristides. Maurice questioned him and found that it was a stranger who had brought the letter at about eight in the morning. The young man could ask as many questions as he liked, put them any way he liked, but that was all the concierge could tell him. Maurice begged him to accept ten francs and invited him, should this strange man turn up again, to follow him without further ado and come back and tell Maurice where he had gone.
We hasten to add that, to the great relief of Aristides, a tad humiliated by the idea of following one of his own kind, the man never reappeared.
Left to his own devices, Maurice screwed up the letter in a fit of pique. He pulled the ring off his finger and put it with the crumpled letter on the night table and turned his face to the wall in the vain hope of going back to sleep. But when, after an hour, he’d recovered from this show of bravado, Maurice kissed the ring and reread the letter. The ring was set with a stunningly beautiful sapphire.
The letter was, as we have said, a beguiling little note that reeked of aristocracy a mile off.
While Maurice was lost in contemplation, the door opened. Maurice stuck the ring back on his finger and shoved the letter under his bolster. Could this be the shyness of dawning love? Was it the shame of a patriot who does not want it to get about that he has any kind of connection with someone reckless enough to write such a note, the perfume alone being enough to compromise both the hand that wrote it and the hand that broke its seal?
The man who burst in on Maurice was a young man in patriot’s garb, but of the most supreme elegance. His carmagnole was made of fine fabric, his pants were of cashmere, and his chiné hose were of finest silk. As for his Phrygian cap5 it would have put Paris himself6 to shame with its elegant shape and its luscious purple hue.
On top of all this he wore at his belt a pair of pistols from the former royal manufacture of Versailles, and a short straight sword similar to that used by students at the Champs-de-Mars military academy.
“Ah! You sleep, Brutus,”7 said the visitor, “while the homeland is in danger. For shame!”
“No, Lorin,” Maurice said, smiling. “I’m not sleeping, I’m dreaming.”
“Yes, I understand: you dream of your Eucharis.”8 “I don’t get it.”
“You don’t?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, the woman …”
“What woman?”
“The woman from the rue Saint-Honoré, the woman from the patrol, the mysterious stranger for whom we risked our necks, you and I, last night.”
“Oh, yes!” said Maurice, who knew only too well what his friend was driving at, but had no intention of giving the game away. “The mystery woman!”
“Well, who was she?”
“I’ve got no idea.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Phhuh!” said Maurice with a contemptuous sneer. “Some poor woman abandoned after an amorous tryst.
… Yes, weaklings as you see us, then,
It’s always love that torments us men.”
“That may well be,” Maurice muttered, now most put out by the very idea that he had at first had; he preferred to think of his beautiful mystery woman as a conspirator than as a woman in love.
“And where does she live?”
“I’ve got no idea.”
“How amazing! You have no idea! Sorry, I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?”
“You took her home.”
“She gave me the slip at the pont-Marie …”
“Gave you the slip—you!” cried Lorin, hooting with laughter. “A woman gave you the slip; pull the other one!
Does the dove escape
The vulture, that tyrant