The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [7]
“Hey, you! You there, citizeness!”22 cried one of the volunteers, the chief, in fact, for already the need to be told what to do, so natural to human beings, had caused our worthy patriots to appoint chiefs to rule over them. “Hey! You! Where do you think you’re going?”
The fugitive kept running without a word.
“Take aim!” said the chief. “That’s got to be a man in disguise, some aristocrat hoping to escape!”
The sound of two or three guns going off in hands a little too unsteady to be accurate told the poor woman that the jig was up.
“No! No!” she cried, coming to an abrupt halt and retracing her steps. “No, citizen, you are mistaken. I am not a man.”
“Well, then, come forward—and that’s an order!” said the chief. “So tell me where you’re going like that, my little night owl. And don’t beat around the bush.”
“But, citizen, I’m not going anywhere.… I’m going home.”
“Ah! You’re going home!”
“Yes.”
“Going home a little late for an honest woman, citizeness.”
“I’ve been visiting a sick relative.”
“Poor little lamb,” said the chief, with a movement of the hand that caused the woman to swiftly step back in fright. “So where’s our card?”
“Card? What card, citizen? What are you talking about? What do you want? ”
“Didn’t you read the Commune decree?”
“No.”
“You must have heard the town crier shouting about it?”
“No, I did not. What does it say, this decree? God!”
“First of all, we no longer say ‘God’; we say ‘Supreme Being.’ ”
“Sorry, I forgot. Old habits die hard.”
“Bad habits, aristocratic habits.”
“It won’t happen again. But you were saying …?”
“I was saying that the Commune decree bars any excursion after ten o’clock at night without an identity card. Do you have your identity card?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Did you leave it at your relative’s?”
“I didn’t know you had to have this card to go out.”
“In that case, we’d better check in at the nearest station and you can have a nice little chat with the captain. If he’s happy with you, he’ll get a couple of lads to escort you home; if not, he’ll keep you till we have more information. To the left, quick, march!”
Hearing the small shriek of terror that escaped the prisoner, the chief of the volunteers realized that the poor woman was more than a little alarmed at such a prospect.
“Oh, dear!” he said. “Something tells me we’ve caught us a most distinguished little bunny rabbit here. All right, my little ci-devant23 aristocrat, let’s move it!”
With that the chief grabbed the defendant’s arm, clamped it under his own, and dragged her off, sobbing, in the direction of the police station at Palais-Egalité.24 They had gone as far as the Sergeants’ barrier when, suddenly, a young man of considerable stature, wrapped in a greatcoat, turned the corner of the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs at the very moment the prisoner was begging to be set free. But the chief of the volunteers yanked her violently on without paying any heed, the young woman whimpering, half in fright, half in pain.
When the young man saw the woman struggling and heard her cry, he bounded from one side of the street to the other to face the troop.
“What gives? What are you doing with this woman?” he asked the man who appeared to be the chief.
“Why don’t you mind your own business instead of asking me questions? ”
“Who is this woman, citizens, and what do you want with her?” the young man repeated in an even more commanding tone.
“And who are you, might I ask, to question us? ”
The young man threw open his coat to reveal a military uniform on which gleamed an epaulet. “I am an officer,” he said, “as you can see.”
“An officer? What in?”
“In the National Guard.”25
“Well, well, well! And what’s that to us, eh?” said one of the troop. “What are the officers of the National Guard to us?”
“What’s he on about?” asked another of the troop in the special drawl and caustic, ironic tone of a true man of the people,