The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [20]
When war was declared, Maurice signed up and left for the front with the rank of lieutenant, in the company of the first fifteen hundred volunteers that Paris pitted against the invaders, which were to be followed each day by fifteen hundred more.
In the first battle in which he fought, that is, at Jemmapes5 on the sixth of November 1792, he took a bullet that first split open the steel-like muscles of his shoulder before lodging itself in the bone. The people’s representative6 knew Maurice and sent him back to Paris to recover. For a whole month, Maurice thrashed around in bed, devoured by fever and pain, but by January he was back on his feet commanding the Thermopylae club, if not in name then certainly in deed. The club was made up of a hundred young men from the bourgeoisie of Paris, armed to quell all support for the tyrant Capet. There is more: with his brow furrowed by a somber rage, his eyes wild, face pale, heart seized by a singular mix of moral hatred and physical pity, Maurice was there, sword in hand, at the execution of the King; and perhaps alone in all that crowd, he remained silent when the head of this son of Saint Louis,7 whose soul rose to heaven, fell and all his friends cried out: “Long live liberty!” They did not notice that, though Maurice raised his fearsome sword in the air, this time, for once, his voice did not mingle with theirs.
That is the kind of man that was now making his way toward the rue Lepelletier on the morning of the eleventh of March and whose stormy life, a life typical enough for the times, we’ll visit in detail in the course of our story.
At about ten o’clock, Maurice arrived at the section where he was secretary. Things were heating up. At issue was a vote on an address to the Convention with the aim of putting down the schemes of the Girondins. Maurice was impatiently awaited.
All anyone could talk about was the return of the Knight of Maison-Rouge and the audacity with which that dedicated conspirator had entered Paris for the second time, in defiance of the price on his head. The escape attempt at the Temple the day before was linked to his return to town, and each man expressed his hatred for and outrage over all traitors and aristocrats.
But to everyone’s surprise, Maurice remained unmoved and silent, though he cleverly drew up the proclamation and got through all outstanding work in three hours flat before asking if the session was over; when told it was, he grabbed his hat and turned on his heels, heading for the rue Saint-Honoré.
Paris looked entirely different to Maurice from the rue Saint-Honoré. He saw once again the corner of the rue du Coq where the beautiful stranger had appeared to him the night before, struggling in the hands of soldiers. Then he followed the rue du Coq down to the pont Marie, as he had done at her side, stopping where the different patrols had stopped them, going over the words they had exchanged, as in those places the words came back to him like an echo; but it was one o’clock in the afternoon and the sun, shining bright as he strolled along, brought home these memories of the night before every step of the way. Maurice crossed over the Seine and was soon in the rue Victor, as it was then known.
“Poor woman!” murmured Maurice, who the day before hadn’t considered that the night only lasts twelve hours, and that the woman’s secret would probably not outlast the night. “In daylight I’ll find the door she slipped through, and who knows if I won’t spot the woman herself at a window somewhere?”
So he turned into the old rue Saint-Jacques, stood where the stranger had placed him the night before, and for a moment he closed his eyes, perhaps feeling—poor fool!—that last night’s kiss would burn his lips once more. But all he felt was the memory of it—though it’s true the memory of it was still burning.
When Maurice opened his eyes again, he saw two alleyways, one to the right, the other to the left. They were muddy, badly paved, lined with gates and broken up by little bridges thrown across a stream. You could make