The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [62]
This was the first time Dixmer had ever wholly revealed himself.
Geneviève lifted up her head, fixed on him her beautiful eyes brimming with admiration; then she slowly rose and gave him her forehead to kiss.
“It’s what you want?” she said. Dixmer nodded. “
Tell me what to say, then.”
And she picked up a quill.
“No,” said Dixmer. “It’s bad enough to use, perhaps abuse, this worthy young man. Since he’ll be reconciled with you the moment he receives a letter from you, Geneviève, let the letter be from you and not from Monsieur Dixmer.”
With that, Dixmer planted a second kiss on his wife’s forehead, thanked her, and left.
So Geneviève wrote, trembling all the while:
CITIZEN MAURICE,
You knew how much my husband loved you. Three weeks’ separation have seemed a century to us; have they made you forget? Come, we’ll be waiting for you. Your return will be a real celebration.
GENEVIÈVE
15
THE GODDESS OF REASON1
As Maurice had sent word to General Santerre the day before, he was seriously ill. Since he’d kept to his room, Lorin had come regularly to see him and had done everything in his power to persuade his friend to find some distraction. But Maurice hadn’t budged. There are some sicknesses you don’t want to recover from.
On the first of June, Lorin arrived at one o’clock.
“What’s so special today?” asked Maurice. “You’re done up to the nines.”
In fact, Lorin was wearing the compulsory getup: red bonnet, carmagnole, and red, white, and blue belt, decorated with the two implements then known as abbé Maury’s cruets2 but which, before that and ever since, have been known quite simply as pistols.
“The first thing,” said Lorin, “is the general collapse of the Girondins, which is happening even as we speak—and faster than you can imagine, at that. Right now, for example, they’re laying into them with cannonballs in the place du Carrousel. Then, speaking more precisely, there is a most solemn event to which I invite you the day after tomorrow.”
“But what’s on today, then? You say you’ve come to get me?”
“Yes. Today’s the rehearsal.”
“What rehearsal?”
“The rehearsal for the most solemn event.”
“My dear friend,” said Maurice, “you know I haven’t been able to go out for a week, so I’m no longer up on anything and I really do need to be kept informed.”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“You haven’t told me a thing.”
“To start with, my dear friend, you already knew that we’d gotten rid of God some time ago now and that we’d replaced him with the Supreme Being.”3
“Yes, I know that.”
“Well, it seems they realized something—which is that the Supreme Being was a moderate, a Rolandist, a Girondin.”
“Lorin, please don’t joke about sacred things; you know I don’t like it.”
“What’s a person to do, my friend! You have to keep up with the times. I was pretty fond of the old God myself, first and foremost because I was used to Him. As for the Supreme Being, it appears he really does have some serious defects and that, since he’s been up there, everything’s been going to the dogs. In the end our legislators have decreed him deposed.…”
Maurice shrugged his shoulders.
“Shrug your shoulders all you like,” said Lorin.
“Thanks to philosophy
We, great henchmen of Momus,
Decree that madness
Will have its cult in partibus.
“ ‘Without real functions’—so much so, in fact,” Lorin continued, “that we’ve decided to worship the Goddess of Reason.”
“And you’re mixed up in all these masquerades?” asked Maurice.
“Ah, my friend! If you knew the Goddess of Reason like I know the Goddess of Reason, you’d be one of