The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [71]
After supper, the table was cleared with the same precautions as it had been set; the tiniest bits of bread were collected and inspected; and after that Turgy left first, followed by the officers. Only Mother Tison stayed behind.
This woman had become ferocious since she had been separated from her daughter, of whose fate she was completely in the dark. Every time the Queen embraced Madame Royale she flew into fits of rage that showed all the signs of madness. And so the Queen, whose maternal heart empathized with the mother’s suffering, often stopped at the point of offering herself the consolation, the only one that remained to her, of hugging her daughter to her heart.
Tison came for his wife. But the woman first declared that she would retire only when the Widow Capet had gone to bed. Madame Elisabeth then said good night to the Queen and went into her room. The Queen undressed and hopped into bed, and so did Madame Royale. It was then that Mother Tison took the candle and left.
The municipal officers had already lain down on their camp beds in the hallway when the moon, the lodgers’ sole, wan visitor, slipped an oblique ray of light through the opening in the canopy; it lay in a stripe from the window to the foot of the Queen’s bed.
For a moment all remained calm and quiet in the room. Then a door squeaked softly on its hinges and a shadow passed between the ray of light and the foot of the bed. It was Madame Elisabeth.
“Did you see?” she asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” said the Queen.
“So you understood?”
“So clearly that I can hardly believe it.”
“Come, let’s go over the signals.”
“First, he touched his eye to indicate to us that something new was afoot.”
“Then he passed his napkin from his left arm to his right arm, which means they are busying themselves with our deliverance.”
“Then he brought his hand to his forehead as a sign that the help he announced was coming to us from inside France and not from abroad.”
“Then, when you asked him not to forget your almond milk tomorrow, he made two knots in his handkerchief.”
“So it is the Knight of Maison-Rouge once more. Noble heart!”
“It is he,” said Madame Elisabeth.
“Are you asleep, my daughter?” the Queen asked.
“No, my mother,” replied Madame Royale.
“Well then, pray for you-know-who.”
Madame Elisabeth crept back to her room without a sound; for five minutes the voice of the young princess could be heard speaking to God in the silence of the night.
This was at the very moment that, under Morand’s direction, the first blows of the pick were delivered in the little house in the rue de la Corderie.
18
CLOUDS
Apart from the intoxication of their first glances, Maurice found the reception Geneviève had given him well below his expectations, and he was counting on being alone with her to win back the ground he had lost—or seemed to have lost, at least—on the way to her heart.
But Geneviève had other plans and was counting equally strongly on not giving him the opportunity of being alone with her—all the more so as she remembered how dangerously sweet such tête-à-têtes could be.
Maurice was about to strike the following day, but a relative, no doubt alerted beforehand, popped up on a visit and Geneviève clung to her visitor for dear life. There was nothing Maurice could say this time, for it might well not have been Geneviève’s fault.
When he was leaving, Geneviève asked Maurice to escort the relative home, as she lived in the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor. Maurice walked away rather sullenly with his burden, but Geneviève flashed him a smile and he