The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [161]
The two antagonists thus found themselves face-to-face; they both let out a stifled cry at the same time, for they recognized each other.
“Oh, citizen Maurice!” said the frail young man in a tone of inexpressible pain. “Let me through; let me see! Please! You can kill me later!”
Maurice, for it was in fact he, felt pierced to the quick with tenderness and admiration for such eternal devotion, for such indestructible determination.
“You,” he murmured. “You, here! How can you be so reckless!”
“Yes, I’m here! But I’m exhausted.… Oh, God! She’s speaking! Let me see her! Let me hear her!”
Maurice moved aside and let the young man through. Since Maurice was at the head of the crowd, nothing now encumbered the view of the man who had suffered so many blows and rebuffs to get there.
This whole episode and the whispering and muttering it occasioned excited the jurors’ curiosity. The accused as well glanced in their direction from the front of the court, and she saw and recognized the Knight. Something like a frisson shook the Queen for a moment as she sat in her iron chair.
The examination was conducted by President Herman, interpreted by Fouquier-Tinville and debated by Chauveau-Lagarde,2 the Queen’s counsel; it went on as long as the jurors’ strength and that of the accused held out.
During all this time, Maurice remained in his place without moving, though spectators had already come and gone several times over in the courtroom and the corridors beyond.
The Knight had found a column for support and leaned back against it, looking no less pale than the white stucco.
Day had been followed by darkest night: a few candles burned on the jury’s tables, a few lamps smoked in sconces on the chamber walls, lighting up with a sinister red reflection the noble visage of this woman who had once looked so beautiful under the splendid lights of parties at Versailles.
She was on her own here, giving short noncommittal replies to the president’s questions, sometimes leaning over to whisper a few words in her defense counsel’s ear. Her polished white forehead had lost none of its habitual hauteur, and she was wearing the black striped dress of mourning she had refused to change out of since the death of the King.
The jurors adjourned to deliberate. The session was over.
“I hope I wasn’t too disdainful, monsieur?” the Queen asked Chauveau-Lagarde. “Was I all right?”
“Ah, madame!” he replied. “You only have to be yourself and you will always be all right.”
“Look how arrogant she is!” cried a woman in the audience, as though a stranger’s voice were answering the question the unhappy Queen had just put to her lawyer.
The Queen turned her head to look at the woman.
“Yes, you heard me,” the woman went on. “I said you’re arrogant, Antoinette—and look where it’s got you!”
The Queen went bright red.
The Knight turned toward the woman who had pronounced that judgment and replied gently:
“She was Queen.”
Maurice grabbed him by the wrist.
“Please!” he said to him in a lowered voice. “Have the courage not to give yourself away.”
“Oh, Monsieur Maurice,” replied the Knight, “you are a man and you know you are speaking to a man. Tell me, do you think they can condemn her?”
“I don’t think it,” said Maurice. “I know it.”
“But a woman!” cried Maison-Rouge with a sob.
“No, a queen,” countered Maurice. “You yourself just said so.”
The Knight in turn grabbed Maurice’s wrist, and with a force you would not have thought he had in him pulled Maurice down to his level. It was three-thirty in the morning; great empty gaps were visible among the spectators. A few lights went out here and there, throwing whole areas of the chamber into darkness. One of the darkest areas was where the Knight and Maurice were, Maurice totally attentive to what the Knight had to say.
“Why are you here, then, and what have you come to do?” asked the Knight. “You, monsieur, who do not have the heart of a bloodthirsty tiger?”
“Alas!” said