The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [180]
“What you mean is you thought I was useful and you used me.”
“No doubt!” Dixmer replied calmly, more and more in control of himself the more Maurice got carried away. “No doubt! Whereas you betrayed your republic and sold it to me for one look from my wife; while you were busy dishonoring yourselves, you by your treason and she by her adultery, I played the wise man and hero. I bided my time and I carried the day.”
“Vile man!” said Maurice.
“Oh! Aren’t I just! You appreciate your own conduct, I hope, monsieur. You are the vile one, surely! You are disgusting!”
“You are wrong, monsieur; what I call vile and disgusting is the conduct of a man to whom a woman’s honor had been entrusted, who had sworn to keep that honor pure and intact and who, instead of keeping his word, used her beauty as bait to hook a hungry heart. Before all else, you had the sacred duty of protecting that woman, monsieur, and instead of protecting her, you sold her.”
“I’ll tell you what I had to do, monsieur,” replied Dixmer. “I had to save my friend, who supported a sacred cause with me. Just as I sacrificed my property to that cause, so I sacrificed my honor. As for me, I completely forgot about myself. I thought of myself only at the very last. Now my friend is no more: my friend was stabbed to death; now my Queen is no more: my Queen died at the guillotine; now, well, now I’m finally thinking of my revenge.”
“Why don’t you say murder.”
“You don’t murder an adulteress: in striking her dead you merely punish her.”
“You forced her into adultery; it was therefore legitimate.”
“You think so?” said Dixmer with a dark smile. “Ask her remorse if she thinks she acted legitimately.”
“The man who punishes strikes in broad daylight; you, you aren’t punishing her—you’re throwing her head to the guillotine while cowering in the dark.”
“You think I’m hiding myself! And how do you figure that, dimwit that you are?” Dixmer asked. “Am I hiding by turning up at her condemnation? Am I running away by going as far as the Hall of the Dead to toss her a last good-bye?”
“So you intend to see her again?” cried Maurice. “You are going to say good-bye to her?”
“Really!” said Dixmer, shrugging his shoulders. “You don’t know the first thing about revenge, do you, citizen Maurice? In my place, I suppose you’d be happy just to let things take their course, let circumstances dictate the outcome? For example, the woman in adultery having deserved death, the moment I punish her with death I’ve evened the score with her, or rather, she’s even with me? No, citizen Maurice, I’ve come up with something better than that: I’ve found a way of paying back that woman for all the wrong she’s done me. She loves you—so she’s going to die far away from you; she hates me, so she’s going to see me again before she dies!”
Taking a wallet out of his pocket, he went on, “You see this wallet? It contains a pass signed by the Palais registrar. With this pass, I can get to where they keep the condemned locked up. Well, I shall go in and find Geneviève; I’ll call her an adulteress; I’ll see her hair fall under the hands of the executioner and, while her hair is falling, she’ll hear my voice repeating over and over: Adulteress! I’ll go with her by the side of the cart, and when she steps onto the scaffold the last word she’ll hear will be the word adulteress.”
“Watch out, Dixmer! She won’t have the strength to bear so much vileness: she will denounce you.”
“No!” said Dixmer. “She hates me too much for that. If she was going to denounce me she’d have done it when your friend whispered to her to do it: since she didn’t denounce me to save her life, she won’t denounce me in order to die with me. For she knows full well that if she denounced me, I’d slow her demise by a day; she knows very well that if she denounced me, I’d go with her, not only