The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [34]
Maurice looked at him in amazement.
“Upon my word,” he said to himself, “I must have got it wrong. Can this be the same man who, steely-eyed, voice threatening, pursued me with a rifle in hand, absolutely determined to kill me, three quarters of an hour ago? Then I’d have taken him for a hero or a killer. Good Lord! Looks like a love of skins can do something to a man!”
While he was busy making these observations, his heart was filled with such a profound mix of pain and joy that the young man would have been hard-pressed to tell the state of his soul. Here he was, finally, next to the beautiful stranger he’d sought so desperately. Just as he had dreamed, she had a soft and lovely name, and Maurice was intoxicated with happiness to feel her by his side; he drank in her every word, and the sound of her voice, every time it rang out, made his heart sing. But his heart broke at what he saw.
Geneviève was indeed everything he’d glimpsed: the reality had not destroyed that dream of a stormy night. She was indeed the same woman—elegant, sad-eyed, high-minded. It was a case of what so often happened in those years before the notorious year of ‘93 in which they found themselves: she was the perfect young woman of distinction obliged, because of the ruin into which the nobility was sinking deeper and deeper, to ally herself with the bourgeoisie, with mercantile interests. Dixmer seemed like a good sort of fellow. He was incontestably rich; his manners toward Geneviève seemed to be those of a man who makes it his job to make his wife happy. But this bonhomie, this wealth, these excellent intentions, could they really bridge the immense gap between the wife and the husband, between the poetic young girl, distinguished and charming, and the man of material occupations and such common appearance? With what feelings did Geneviève bridge the gulf?… Alas! As luck would have it, the answer was now clear to Maurice: with love. And he was forced to revise the initial opinion he’d had of the woman, that is, that she was returning home from a lovers’ tryst the night he’d met her.
The idea that Geneviève loved another man sickened Maurice to his soul. So he sighed and regretted having come only to let himself in for an even stronger dose of that poison they call love.
Yet at other moments, listening to that soft, pure, melodious voice, questioning those beautifully limpid eyes that didn’t seem to mind revealing her innermost soul, Maurice could not believe that such a creature could possibly lie or deceive; he then experienced a bitter joy in thinking that this beautiful soul made flesh belonged to the good burgher with the open smile and the vulgar jokes—and never would belong to him.
Politics was the topic—how could it be otherwise? What else did you talk about in an era in which politics cropped up everywhere, looked up at you from the bottom of dinner plates, papered the walls, was proclaimed at every hour in the street?
All of a sudden, one of the party who had maintained silence till that moment asked for the news of the prisoners in the Temple. Maurice shivered in spite of himself at the sound of that voice. He recognized the devotee of extreme action who had first struck him with his knife and then voted for his death.
And yet this man, an honest tanner, head of the workshop, or so Dixmer said, soon aroused Maurice’s good humor by expressing the most patriotic ideas and the most impeccable revolutionary principles. In certain circumstances, the young man was not averse to the vigorous measures so fashionable at the time and whose apostle and hero was Danton. If he had been in this man’s shoes, though the man’s voice and weapon