The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [25]
“Yes, yes, Mother,” cried the princess. “Yes, I recognize it!”
“God be praised!” cried the Queen, falling to her knees in fervent thanks. “If he was able to write this morning, he must have been saved. Thank you, God! Thank you! Such a noble friend certainly merits one of your miracles!”
“Who are you talking about, Mother?” asked Madame Royale. “Who is this friend? Tell me his name so that I can commend him to God in my prayers.”
“Yes, you are right, my darling. I will tell you. Never forget the name, for it is the name of a gentleman full of honor and bravery. This man is not committed out of ambition, he is not some fair-weather friend, for he only came forward when everything collapsed. He has never seen the Queen of France, or, rather, the Queen of France has never set eyes on him, and yet he dedicates his life to defending me. Perhaps he will be rewarded, as all virtue is rewarded these days, by a terrible death.… But … If he should die … Oh! Up there! Up there in heaven! I will thank him.… He is called …”
The Queen looked around anxiously and lowered her voice:
“He is the Knight of Maison-Rouge.… Pray for him!”
7
A GAMBLER’S OATH
The attempt to spirit away the Queen, as debatable as it was, since it hadn’t actually gotten off the ground, had excited the wrath of some and the curiosity of others. Besides, this almost overwhelmingly probable event was corroborated, as the Committee of Public Safety1 learned, by the fact that a host of emigrés2 had been crossing back into France via different points on the border for the last three or four weeks. It was obvious that people who would risk their necks in this way would not do so without some intent and that this intent was, in all probability, to help get the royal family out.
Already, as proposed by Osselin,3 a member of the Convention, a terrible decree had been promulgated condemning to death any emigré convicted of having set foot back on French soil, as well as any French person convicted of having plans to emigrate; any individual convicted of having aided and abetted such a person’s flight or return; and, finally, any citizen convicted of having harbored an emigré. This terrible law ushered in the Terror.4 All that was lacking after that was the law against “suspects.”
The Knight of Maison-Rouge was too active and too bold an enemy for his reentry into Paris and his turning up at the Temple not to give rise to the gravest of measures. The most thorough searches ever undertaken had been carried out in a host of suspect houses. But apart from the discovery of a handful of emigré women who allowed themselves to be caught and of a few old men who couldn’t be bothered fighting the executioners over the short time remaining to them to live, such searches were entirely fruitless.
As you can well imagine, the sections had their hands full for several days on end following this episode; as a result, the secretary of the Lepelletier section, one of the most influential in Paris, had little time to worry about his mystery woman. At first, as he had resolved walking away from the old rue Saint-Jacques, Maurice had tried to forget; but as his friend Lorin might have said:
Just by thinking one should forget,
One remembers—never fret.
Maurice, though, had said nothing and admitted nothing. He had locked away in his heart all the details of this adventure that managed to escape his friend’s prying eye. But this friend knew Maurice too well, knew him to be joyful and expansive by nature; when he now found him endlessly dreaming and seeking to be alone, Lorin was in no doubt that, as he said, that little rascal Cupid had been by.
It must be noted that, in all its eighteen centuries of monarchy,5 France has had few years as mythic as the year of grace 1793. Yet the Knight had not been caught, and so people stopped talking about him. The Queen, widowed of her husband and orphaned of her son, contented herself with crying when she was alone in the company of her daughter and her sister-in-law.