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“We had a deal, I thought. Listen, for what I have to say concerns you as much as Geneviève.”

“My God! My God!”

“Let me speak, then, or I won’t have time to tell you. I wanted to leave to go and buy a knife, rue de la Barillerie.”

“What did you want a knife for?”

“I wanted to kill the good Monsieur Dixmer with it.”

Geneviève shuddered. “Ah!” said Maurice. “I understand.”

“I bought it. This is what I said to myself, and you’ll see what a logical mind your pal has. I’m beginning to think I should have been a mathematician instead of a poet. It’s too late now, unfortunately. So this is what I said to myself—try to follow my reasoning. I said, ‘Monsieur Dixmer has compromised his wife; Monsieur Dixmer came to see her be judged, Monsieur Dixmer won’t deny himself the pleasure of seeing her get on the cart, especially with the two of us on it with her. I will therefore find him in the front row of spectators: I’ll slip in close beside him, I’ll say to him: “Good day, Monsieur Dixmer,” and I’ll plant my knife in his guts.’ ”

“Lorin!” cried Geneviève.

“Don’t worry, dear friend, Providence has done things properly. Just think of it: instead of standing facing the Palais, as is their wont, all the spectators had turned halfway around to the right and were lining the quai. Fancy that, I said to myself, no doubt there’s a dog drowning: why wouldn’t Dixmer be here? A drowning dog always helps to pass the time. So I approached the parapet and I see all along the riverbank a bunch of people raising their arms in the air and leaning down to look at something on the ground, saying alas so many times it was nearly enough to flood the Seine. I went closer.… That something … Guess who it was.…”

“It was Dixmer,” said Maurice in a grim voice.

“Yes. How did you know? It was Dixmer, dear friend, Dixmer! He’d ripped open his guts all by himself. The poor man no doubt killed himself by way of atonement.”

“Ah!” said Maurice with a somber smile. “Is that what you think?”

Geneviève held her head in both hands. She was too feeble to bear such a rush of emotions.

“Yes, I did think that, given that his bloody sword was found nearby; unless somehow … he met up with someone.…”

Without saying a word and taking advantage of the fact that Geneviève could not see him, overcome as she was, Maurice opened his coat and flashed Lorin his bloodstained vest and shirt.

“Ah! That’s something else,” said Lorin.

He gave Maurice his hand.

“Now,” he said, leaning to whisper in Maurice’s ear, “they didn’t search me, you know, because I told them I was in Monsieur Sanson’s party when I came back in, so I still have the knife—if the guillotine is repugnant to you.”

Maurice grabbed the weapon with glee.

“No,” he said, “it would hurt her too much.”

He handed the knife back to Lorin.

“You’re right,” said Lorin. “Long live the machine of Monsieur Guillotine!1 What is the machine of Monsieur Guillotine? One nick to the neck, as Danton said. What’s a nick?”

With that, Lorin threw the knife into the group of condemned. One of them grabbed it, rammed it into his chest and instantly fell down dead.

At the same moment, Geneviève made a move and gave out a cry. Sanson had placed his hand on her shoulder.

56

LONG LIVE SIMON!

Hearing Geneviève shriek, Maurice realized the battle was about to begin.

Love can lift the soul to heroic heights; love can defy natural instinct and propel a human being to desire death; but it does not extinguish in that being the fear of pain. It was clear that Geneviève accepted death more patiently and more religiously from the moment Maurice was going to die with her. But resignation does not exclude suffering, and leaving this world means not only hurtling into that abyss we call the unknown but suffering on the way down.

Maurice glanced around and in his mind embraced it all, and all that was to follow.

In the middle of the room was a body from whose chest a gendarme had rushed to extract the knife, for fear that it would serve others. Surrounding him, men dumb with despair scarcely paid