Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 5 - Read online

“TAKE A LOOK OVER THERE,” said Peony to Angelique, “that man walking down by the water with his hat over his eyes and his coat up to his moustache. . . . You’ve spotted him, eh? Well, he’s zgrimaut.”
“A grimauii”
“A policeman, if you prefer.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know; I smell it.”
And the ex-soldier pinched his toper’s nose, a bulbous, crimson appendage which had earned him the nickname of Peony.
Angelique leaned on the little hump-backed bridge that passed over the moats before the Nesle Gate. A pallid sun was dispelling the fog that had been hanging over the city for several days. The opposite bank, with the Louvre, was still invisible, but there was a mellowness in the air. Ragged children fished in the moats, while a lackey at the river’s edge was washing two horses.
The man whom Peony had pointed out with the tip of his pipe-stem looked like a harmless stroller, like some shopkeeper taking an after¬dinner walk on the banks of the Seine. He was watching the lackey rub down the beasts, and now and then raised his head towards the Tower of Nesle as if interested in this crumbling old vestige of a by¬gone era.
“You know who he is looking for?” Peony went on, blowing the smoke of his coarse tobacco into Angelique’s face.
She drew away a litde.
“No.”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, the Marquise of the Angels.”
Angelique gave a vague smile.
“You’re a visionary.”
“I’m a . . . what?”
“Never mind. I mean you’re having notions. Nobody is looking for me. Nobody is thinking of me. I no longer exist.”
“Maybe. But for the time being it’s Martin the constable who no longer exists. . . . You remember, at Rarnez the Auvergnat’s? Big-Bag shouted to you: ‘Hurry, Marquise of the Angels!’ Thar stuck in the ears of those policemen, and when they found the archer with his belly open, ‘The Marquise of the Angels,’ they said to themselves, ‘that’s the hussy who’s done him in.* And they’re looking for you. I know it because we old soldiers sometimes get together for a drink with old war раь who’ve taken service at the Chatelet. You get to know things that
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way.
“Pah!” Calembredaine’s voice said behind them, “it’s nothing to get into a panic about. If we wanted to, we could dump that fellow down there into the river. What can they do against us? They’re hardly a hundred, while we . . .”
He made a proud, possessive gesture as if gathering the whole city around him. From upstream, through the mist, came the clamour of the Pont-Neuf and its mountebanks.
A carriage began to drive over the bridge and they stepped aside to let it pass; but at the other end of the bridge the horses shied for, a beggar had thrown himself under their hooves. It was Black-Bread, one of Calem- bredaine’s rogues, an old, white-bearded man, decked out with thick rosaries and pilgrim’s shells.
“Have pity!” he intoned. “Take pity on a poor pilgrim on his way to Compostella to make a .vow, and who hasn’t the wherewithal to continue his pilgrimage. Give me a few sols and I shall pray for you on the grave of Saint-Jacquer.’’
The coachman dealt him a violent blow with his whip.
“Get back, devil’s pilgrim!”
A lady put her head out of the carriage-window. Her half-open cloak afforded a glimpse of beautiful jewels at her neck.
“What is going on, Lorrain? Hurry the horses up a bit. I want to be at the Abbey of Saint-Gcrmain-dcs-Pres for compline.”
Nicholas stepped forward and put his hand on the handle of the carriage- door.
“Pious lady,” he said, removing his tattered hat, “would you, who are on your way to compline, refuse a gift to this poor pilgrim who is going to pray to God so far away in Spain?”
The lady stared at the black-bearded face that had appeared out of the dusk, scrutinised the creature whose torn tunic showed a wrestler’s biceps, and whose belt held a butcher’s knife. She opened her mouth wide and began to scream:
“Help! Help! Murd ”
Peony already had his rapier’s tip against the coachman’s belly. Black- Bread and Flipot, one of the gutter-snipes who had been fishing in the moat, were holding back the horses. Prudent arrived at a run. Calembre- daine had jumped into the coach and was stifling the woman’s cries with a brutal hand.
He cried to Angelique:
“Your kerchief! Hey! Your kerchief!”
Without knowing how, Angelique found herself in the carriage, smelling again the scent of iris powder, of sarin and fine, gold-braided petticoats. Calembredaine had tom off her neckerchief and was stuffing it into the mouth of the captive woman.
“Hurry, Prudent! Tear her sparklers off! Take her money.”
The woman struggled furiously. Prudent was sweating as he tried to unfasten the jewels, a little gold chain and a choker with a beautiful gold plaque encrusted with several large diamonds.
He got tangled up in it.
“Give me a hand, Marquise of the Angels,” he whined. “I get muddled with all these gewgaws.”
“Hurry up, we must be quick. She’s slippery as an eel,” Calcmbredaine grumbled.
Angeliquc’s hands found the clasp. It was very simple. She had worn similar ones. . . .
“Give them the lash, coachman!” cried Peony’s mocking voice.
The carriage hurtled down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Germain with creaking wheels. The coachman, deeming himself lucky to have got off with a fright, lashed his horses. A little farther on, the woman’s screams rang out again.
Angcliquc’s hands were full of the exquisite weight of gold.
“Bring a candle,” shouted Calcmbredaine.
In the Tower, they gathered around the table and gazed at the glittering jewels which Angelique had deposited there.
“A fine stroke!”
“Black-Bread will get his share, he started it.”
“Still,” sighed Prudent, “it was a risky thing. It was still daylight.”
“You can’t miss a chance like this, you’ll learn, you clumsy, dithering fool. Ah! you’re a light-fingered one, you arc. If the Marquise hadn’t given you a hand . . .”
Nicholas looked at Angelique and there was a strange, victorious smile on his lips.
“You, too, will get your share . . .” he murmured.
And he flung her the gold chain. She pushed it back with horror.
“All the same,” Prudent kept saying, “it was a risky deal. Not so smart, with a policeman only two steps away.”
“There was the fog. He didn’t see a thing, and if he heard anything he is still running. What could he do to us, eh? No, there’s only one I am afraid of. But he hasn’t been seen around for a long while. Let’s hope he got himself bumped off somewhere. It’s a shame. I’d have liked to have his hide, him and his blasted dog.”
“Oh! the dog! the dog!” said Prudent, with bulging eyes. “He’s had me here . . .”
And he raised his hand to his throat.
“The man with the dog,” murmured Calembredaine, half closing his eyes, “but, come to think of it, I saw you with him one day, near the Petit Pont. You know him? . .
He approached Angclique and gazed at her musingly, then his face broke into his grim smile.
“You do know him,” he repeated. “That’s fine. You’ll help us get him, won’t you, now that you are one of ours?”
“He has left Paris. He’ll never come back, I know it,” said Angclique, tonelessly.
“Oh yes! he’ll be back. . . .”
Calcmbredaine wagged his head, and the others did likewise. Peony grunted gloomily:
“The man with the dog always comes back.”
“You’ll help us, won’t you?”
Nicholas had picked up the gold chain from the table.
“Take it, pet. You’ve earned it.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like gold,” said Angclique, who was suddenly gripped by a convulsive shaking. “I loathe gold.”
And she walked out, unable to stand this hellish circle any more.
The figure of the policeman had disappeared. Angelique walked along the banks. In the slate-coloured fog glowed the yellow pin-points of the lanterns fastened to the bows of the barges. She heard a boatman tune his guitar and begin to sing. She walked on, towards the far end of the faubourg, whence came the scent of the countryside. When she stopped at last, the night and the fog had muffled all sounds. She heard only the water whispering down below among the reeds, against the boats at their moorings.
She said sofdy, like a child who is afraid of too great a silence: “Desgrez!”
A voice whispered in the folds of the night and the water: “When evening falls on Paris, we two go hunting. We go down to the banks of the Seine, we roam under the bridges and piles, we stroll over the old ram¬parts, we dive into holes full of that vermin of beggars and bandits. ...” “The man with the dog will come back. . . . The man with the dog always comes back. . . .”
“And now, gentlemen, the time has come to make you listen to a solemn voice, a voice which, beyond all human turpitudes, has always sought to exhort the faithful to prudence. . . .” 
“The man with the dog will come back. . . . The man with the dog always comes back. . . .”
Angelique hugged her shoulders with both hands to contain the cry that was bursting in her breast:
“Desgrez!”
But only silence answered her, a silence as deep as the snowy silence in which Desgrez had abandoned her. A silence as frozen as death, in which they had all abandoned her.
She took a few steps towards the river and her feet sank into the mud. Then the water rippled round her ankles. It was icy. . . . Would Bar¬carole say: “Poor Marquise of the Angels, she can’t have enjoyed much dying in cold water, she who was so fond of hot water” ?
Among the reeds an animal moved, a rat probably. A litde ball of wet hair brushed Angeliques calves. She gave a cry of disgust, recoiled, and hurriedly climbed up the bank again. But the clawing paws clutched at her petticoat. The rat was clambering up on her. She struck out in all directions to get rid of it. The animal began to cry shrilly. Suddenly Angelique felt around her neck the clasp of two icy little arms. She cried out with surprise:
“What’s this? This isn’t a rat! . .
Two boatmen were passing on the tow-path with a lantern. Angelique called out to them:
“Hey there! Boatmen! Lend me your light!”
The two men stopped and eyed her suspiciously.
“A pretty wench!” said one of them.
“Don’t move,” said the other, “it’s Calembredainc’s wench. Keep still, if you don’t want to be bled like a pig. He is jealous of this one. A real Turk!”
“Oh! A monkey!” exclaimed Angelique, who had at last managed to make out what type of animal was clinging to her.
The monkey continued to clasp her neck with his thin, long arms, and his black hunted eyes gazed at Angelique in almost human fashion. Although clothed in tiny red silk trunk-hose, he was shivering violently.
“Doesn’t he belong to you or one of your pals?”
The boatmen shook their heads.
“Faith, no. He rather looks as if he belongs to one of the mountebanks of the Saint-Germain Fair.”
“I found him down there. By the river.”
One of the men swung the lantern in the direction towards which she
“There’s someone down there,” he said. 
They approached and discovered a body stretched out in a sleeping position.
“Hey, man, a bit cold for sleeping out!”
As he did not move, they turned him over and gave a cry of fright, for he wore a red velvet mask. His long white beard flowed over his chest. His conical hat with a criss-cross of red ribbons, his embroidered shoulder- bag, his velvet trunks, tucked up at the legs with worn, muddy ribbons, were those of an Italian mountebank, one of those showmen of trained animals who came from Piedmont and wandered from fair to fair.
He was dead. His open mouth was already full of mud.
The monkey, still clinging to Angelique, uttered plaintive cries. The young woman bent down and removed the red mask. It revealed the face of an emaciated old man. Death had already ravaged it; his eyes were glassy.
“There’s nothing left for it but to throw him into the river,” said one of the boatmen.
But the other, who had crossed himself devoutly, said that one ought to fetch an abbe from Saint-Germain-des-Pres and see that this poor foreigner got a Christian burial.
Angelique left them noiselessly and walked back to the Tower of Nesle. She held the little monkey tightly to her bosom, as, shaking her head, she remembered. The tavern of The Trois Maillets was the place where she had first seen him. The monkey had made all the patrons laugh as he imitated their ways of drinking or eating. And Gontran had said, pointing the old Italian out to Ills sister: “Look, what a beauty, that red mask and that shimmering, snowy beard! . . .”
She also remembered that his master had called the monkey Piccolo.
“Piccolo!” '
The monkey gave a sorrowful cry and pressed himself against her.
Angelique noticed only afterwards that she had kept the red mask in her hand.
At this very moment, Monsieur de Mazarin breathed his last. After having himself conveyed to Vincennes and handing his fortune to the King, who had refused it, the Cardinal departed this life, which he had appreciated to the full, having known its most varied facets.
He had bequeathed his deepest passion, power, to his royal pupil.
And raising towards the King his yellowed face, the Prime Minister had transmitted to him in a murmur the key to a sovereign’s absolute power:
“No Prime Minister, no favourite. You alone the master . . .”
Then, spuming the Queen Mother’s tears, the Italian had died.
The Peace of Westphalia with Germany, the Peace of the Pyrenees with Spain, the Northern Peace concluded by him under the auspices of France, all kept watch at his bedside.
The little King of the Fronde, of the civil war and the foreign wars, the little King, whose crown was threatened by the mighty, and whose cooking-pot was more than once knocked over while he roamed from town to town, henceforth appeared in Europe as the King of Kings.
Louis XIV ordered forty hours’ prayers to be said and went into mourning. The Court had to follow his example. The whole kingdom was murmuring prayers before the altars for the hated Italian, and the knell tolled over Paris for two days without interruption.
Then, after having wept the last tears of a young heart determined to have no more to do with sentiment, Louis XIV with royal punctuality settled down to work. Meeting in his ante-room the President of the Assembly of the Clergy, who asked to whom he should henceforward turn concerning questions which the Cardinal used to settle, the King replied: “To me, Archbishop.
“No Prime Minister ... no omnipotent favourite ... I am the State, gentlemen.”
The startled Ministers were standing before the young King whose love of pleasure had led them to indulge in different hopes. Like employees under supervision, they submitted their files. The Court smiled sceptically. The King had drawn up a time-table, hour by hour, comprising all his occupations, balls and mistresses, but work above all: intensive, un¬ceasing, meticulous work. People wagged their heads. That wouldn’t last, they said.
It was to last for fifty years.
On the other side of the Seine, in the Tower of Nesle, Barcarole’s gossip brought an echo of the royal life to the underworld. Barcarole the dwarf was always well informed of what was going on at Court. For in his moments of leisure he would don the costume of a sixteenth-century ‘buffoon with bells and feathers, and act as door-keeper in the house of one of the greatest soothsayers of Paris.
“And however much those fine ladies veil and mask themselves, I recognise them all. . . .”
The names he mentioned and the details he gave left Angclique, who had known them all, in no doubt as to the fact that the brightest flowers of the King’s entourage were frequent visitors to the shady lair of the fortune-teller in question.
The woman was called Catherine Monvoisin, known as La Voisin.
Barcarole said she was terrifying and, above all, extraordinarily clever. Squatting in his habitual toad-like position near his friend Wood-Bottom, Barcarole would reveal in brief phrases to Angeliquc, who was alternately frightened and curious, the secret intrigues and the dreadful arsenal of weird practices and mystifications which he had occasion to witness.
What were they after, all those princes and noble ladies, who slipped out of the Louvre grey-cloaked and masked, to run through the muddy streets of Paris and knock at the door of a disreputable den, which was opened by a grimacing dwarf, to go and confide their most intimate secrets in the car of a half-drunk woman? They were after those difficult things that cannot be obtained with money alone.
Love. Starry-eyed love, but also the love of ripe women who see their lovers slip from them and want to retain them, the love of ambitious, never contented women who wanted to climb higher, ever higher. . . .
They would come to ask La Voisin for magic philtres to shackle the heart, for aphrodisiacs to excite the senses. Others hankered after the legacy of an old uncle who would not die, or wanted to get rid of an elderly husband, or of a rival, or of a child to be born.
Abortionist, poisoner, witch—La Voisin was all these things.
What else did they want? To discover treasures, talk to the devil, conjure up a deceased person, kill by magic from afar? . . . All they had to do was pay a visit to La Voisin. It was merely a question of price, and La Voisin would find the requisite accomplices: an apothecary to concoct poisons, a lackey or chambermaid to steal letters, a debauched priest to hold black masses, or perhaps a baby to be sacrificed at the ritual moment by thrusting a long needle deep into its neck.
Plunged into the depths of the Court of Miracles by a false witchcraft trial, Angeliquc discovered, from Barcarole’s accounts, the existence of real witchcraft. He disclosed to her the appalling corruption of the religious impulse which her century experienced with an intensity and a naivete that future generations found hard to conceive.
Rotten Jean sold La Voisin many children for her sacrifices. It was through him, moreover, that Barcarole had become the soothsayer’s door-keeper. Rotten Jean liked his work to be straightforward, properly done, and well organised.
Angelique could never meet this infamous character without a shudder. Whenever this small white-faced man, with the glassy eyes of a dead fish, sneaked into the room through the crumbling doorway, she trembled. A snake would not have been more terrifying.
For Rotten Jean was a child-merchant. Somewhere around the Faubourg Saint-Denis, in the very domain of the Great Coesre, there was a big mud hovel, about which even the most hardened rogues talked only in lowered voices. Day and night, there came from it the cries of martyrised innocents. Foundlings and stolen children were herded there. The frailest had their limbs twisted so that they could be hired out to beggar-women who would use them to arouse the pity of the passers-by. The prettiest little boys and girls, on the other hand, were carefully brought up and sold, when still quite young, to vicious noblemen who earmarked them well in advance for their dreadful pleasures. The luckiest were those who were bought by barren women, hungry for a child’s smile in their home, or to appease a discontented husband, or else to make sure of a legacy by means of an apparent offspring. Quacks and mounte¬banks for a few sols would acquire sturdy children and train them to perform tricks.
A vast, ceaseless trade was carried on in this pitiable merchandise. Children died by the hundreds. There were always fresh supplies; Rotten Jean was indefatigable. He went to see wet-nurses, sent his men into the countryside, picked up abandoned children, bribed the servants of public orphanages, kidnapped little Savoyards and Auvcrgnats who had come to Paris with their kerchiefs and their chimney-sweep material and who vanished without leaving a trace.
Paris had engulfed them, as it engulfed the weak, the poor, the lonely, the sick, the aged, pcnsionless soldiers, peasants driven from their land by the wars, ruined merchants. To all of them the underworld extended its nauseous welcome and offered all the resources of its industries.
Some learned to become epileptics, others to steal. Old men and women hired themselves out to form funeral processions. Girls pros¬tituted themselves, and mothers sold their daughters. Sometimes a great nobleman would pay for the services of a party of hired assassins to dispatch an enemy. Or else the Court of Miracles served to provide a number of extras for riots that might influence the outcome of some Court intrigue. Paid to yell and shout abuse, the people of the under¬world revelled in their task, and, faced with a circle of threatening tatter¬demalions, many a Minister thought he was on the point of being thrown into the Seine by the rebelling capital and yielded to the pressure of his rivals.
It would also happen that on the eve of high festivals clerical figures could be seen to slip into the most dangerous lairs. Tomorrow the shrine of Saint-Opportune or Saint-Marcel would pass through the streets. The canons and chapter wished an appropriate miracle, occurring at the psychological moment, to revive the crowd’s faith in the excellence of their relics. How could that be brought about, if not at the Court of
Miracles? Well paid, the bogus blind, the bogus deaf, the sham paralytic would post themselves along the path of the procession and suddenly proclaim that they were cured, while shedding tears of joy. *
Who could say that the people of the kingdom of the underworld were living in idleness?
Did not Pretty Boy have his hands full with his battalion of prostitutes, who brought him their wages, to be sure, but whose quarrels he had to settle and for whom he had to steal the finery they needed for their trade? Peony, Gobert and all the ex-soldiers often spent a cold night out and had few spoils to show for it. For one coat they snatched, how many hours’ waiting, how much shouting, what a hue and cry! . . .
And is it such fun to spit soap-bubbles when you are a sham epileptic, rolling on the ground in the middle of a circle of gaping spectators? Particularly when, at the end of the road, there is a lonely death waiting for you, among the reeds of the river-bank or, even worse, torture in the prisons of the Chatelet, torture that makes your nerves crack and your eyes pop, and the gibbet on the Place de Greve, the gibbet at the end of it all. . . .
In the kingdom of the underworld, Angelique, protected by Calem- bredaine and by Wood-Bottom’s friendship, enjoyed a free and sheltered life.
She was untouchable. She had paid her fee by becoming the com¬panion of a vagabond. The laws of the underworld are harsh. Calembre- daine’s jealousy was known to be unforgiving, and Angelique could find herself in the company of rough, dangerous men like Peony or Gobert in the middle of the night without running any risk of even the smallest equivocal gesture on their part. Whatever desires she might arouse, as long as the chief had not lifted his ban she belonged to him alone. So that her life, though wretched to all appearances, was almost wholly divided between long hours of sleep and listlessness and aimless strolls through Paris. She was always sure of having something to eat and of finding a warming fire in the hearth of the Tower of Nesle.
She could have dressed properly, for the burglars sometimes brought back fine clothes, smelling of iris and lavender. But she had no fancy for that. She had kept the same brown serge costume, whose petticoat was by now becoming frayed. The same old linen bonnet held up her hair. But Polack had given her a special belt to hold her knife under her bodice.
“If you like, I’ll teach you how to use it,” she had suggested.
Ever since the night of the tin tankard and the slain archer, a mutual respect had grown between them, which was not far from becoming a friendship.
Angelique rarely went out in the day-time and never far. Instinctively she adopted the rhythm of life of her companions, to whom burghers, traders and archers abandoned the night. So it was one night that the past returned to her, loomed up and woke her so cruelly that she almost died of it.
Calembredaine’s gang was burgling a house in the Faubourg Saint- Germain. It was a moonless night, the street was poorly lit. When Pick¬Lock, a nimble-fingered youngster, managed to turn the latch of the small servants’ entrance, they walked in without taking any great precautions.
“It is a big house, and there’s only one old man in it with a maid who lives on the top floor,” Nicholas explained. “We’ll have all the time in the world to do the job.”
And after lighting his dark lantern, he led them into the drawing-room. Black-Bread, who had frequently come to beg here, had given him a detailed plan of the premises. Angelique brought up the rear. It was not the first time that she had thus entered a house. In the beginning, Nicholas had not wanted to take her along.
“You’ll get into a scrape,” he said.
But she always did as she pleased. She did not follow them to steal. She just liked to sniff again the smell of sleeping houses. Tapestries, highly- polished furniture, the fragrance of cooking and pastries. She would touch the knick-knacks, put them down again. No voice ever rose within her to say: 4What are you doing here, Angelique de Peyrac?’ Except that night, when Calembredainc was burgling the house of the old scientist Glazer in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
Angelique’s hand had come against a torch and a candle on a pier-table. She lit it with her companions’ lantern, then noticed a little door at the end of the room and pushed it inquisitively.
“Christ!” Prudent’s voice whispered behind her, “what is this?”
The candle-flamc was reflected in big, long-beaked glass bowls, and one could dimly make out intertwining copper tubes, earthenware pots with Latin inscriptions, coloured phials of all kinds.
“Whatever can this be?” Prudent repeated, perplexed.
“A laboratory.”
Shrinking back, Prudent knocked over an alembic, which fell and broke with a tinkling noise. They left the room hurriedly. The drawing-room was empty. The others, having finished their raid, had gone. They heard a knock against the stone floor upstairs and an old man’s voice shouted:
“Maric-Josephc, you have again forgotten to lock up the cats. It’s intolerable. Г11 have to go down and see/* Then, leaning over the land¬ing, he cried:
“Is that you, Sainte-Croix? Have you come for the recipe?”
Angelique and her companion dashed into the kitchen, then into the pantry, on to which gave the small door that had been forced by the burglars. A few streets farther on, they stopped.
“Phew!” sighed Prudent, “I did have a fright. Who’d have thought we were dropping in on a sorcerer! ... If only it won t bring us bad luck! Where are the others?”
“They must have gone home by anodier way.”
“They might have waited for us. I can’t see a thing.”
“Oh! don’t always complain, my poor Prudent. People like you must be able to see in the dark.”
But he gripped her arm and panted strangely.
“Listen.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you hear? Listen . . .” he repeated in a tone of unspeakable terror.
And suddenly he uttered a groan.
“The dog! . . . The dog!”
Flinging his sack down, he ran away.
‘The poor fellow is unhinged,* Angelique thought to herself, as she bent down mechanically to pick up the burglar’s booty. Just then she, too, heard it. It came from the depths of the silent streets.
It was like a light, very fast gallop, drawing closer. Suddenly she saw the animal at the far end of the street, like a leaping, white phantom. Angelique, swept by a nameless panic, took to her heels. She ran like a madwoman, paying no heed to the cobble-stones that twisted her feet. She was blind. She felt she was lost and wanted to scream, but no sound came from her throat.
The shock of the animal’s leap at her shoulders threw her face-down in the mud. She felt his weight upon her, and against her neck the pressure of a jaw with fangs sharp as nails.
“Sorbonne!” she cried.
She repeated in a lower voice:
“Sorbonne!”
Then very slowly she turned her head. It was lie, without any doubt, for he had released her at once. She raised her hand and stroked the big head of the Great Dane. He was sniffing her with surprise.
“Sorbonne, good old Sorbonne, you gave me such a fright. That is not nice, you know.”
The dog suddenly gave her face a big lick with his rough tongue.
Angflique got up painfully. She had hurt herself badly in falling. She heard the noise of footsteps. Her blood congealed. Sorbonne . . . that meant Desgrez. Never one without the other. The man with the dog always comes back! . . .
With a bound, Angelique was on her feet.
“Don’t betray me,” she implored under her breath, turning to the dog. “Don’t give me away.”
She had only just time to hide in a doorway. Her heart throbbed as if it were going to break. She had a moment’s mad hope that it might not be Desgrez. He had had to leave town. He could not come back. He belonged to a dead and buried past. . . .
The footsteps were quite close. They stopped.
“Well, Sorbonne,” said the voice of Desgrez, “what’s the matter with you? You did not catch the hussy?”
Angelique’s heart was aching, so furiously did it beat against her chest.
This familiar voice, the lawyer’s voice! “And now, gentlemen, the time has come to make you hear a solemn voice, a voice which, beyond all human turpitudes . . .”
The night was deep and dark as a chasm. Nothing was visible, but Angelique might have reached Desgrez with two steps. She sensed his movements and guessed his perplexity.
“Confounded Marquise of the Angels!” he shouted—and she jumped in her hiding-place. “I’ll be damned if she gives us the slip for long. Come on, sniff, Sorbonne, sniff. The hussy had the good idea of leaving her neckerchief behind in the carriage. With this, she won’t be able to get away. Come, let’s turn back towards the Gate of Ncslc. That’s where the track starts, I am sure.”
He walked away, whistling for the dog, who lagged behind.
Sweat ran down Angelique’s temples. Her legs were giving way. She decided finally to take a few steps out of her hiding-place. If Desgrez was roaming round the Gate of Nesle, it was wiser not to go back there.
She would try to make for Wood-Bottom’s hovel and ask him to give her shelter for the rest of the night.
Her mouth was dry. She heard the murmuring water of a fountain. The little square on which it stood was dimly lit by a lamp in front of a haberdasher’s shop.
Angelique approached and plunged her muddy face into the cool water. She sighed with relief.
As she straightened up, a strong arm encircled her waist while a brutal hand struck her mouth.
“I’ve got you, my pretty bird,” said Desgrez’s voice. “Do you think I’m thrown off the scent so easily?”
Angelique tried to free herself, but he was holding her in such a way that she could not move without crying out in pain.
“No, no, my little chicken, you won’t get away,” the policeman said with a dry laugh.
Paralysed against him, she recognised the familiar smell of his worn clothes: old serge, leather, ink and parchment, tobacco. It was Desgrez with his night-time face. She faltered, a single thought uppermost in her mind: ‘If only he doesn’t recognise me. ... I’d die of shame. ... If only I manage to run away before he recognises me!’
Still holding her with a single hand in a special grip, Desgrez raised a whistle to his mouth and gave three strident blows.
A few minutes later, five or six men arrived from the neighbouring streets. Angelique heard the clatter of their spurs and their sword-belts. They were the constables of the watch.
“I think I’ve got our bird,” Desgrez called out.
“Well! This is a profitable night. We collared two burglars who were trying to get away. If we bring the Marquise of the Angels back as well, we’ll have to grant that you’ve guided us well, sir. You do know the right corners. . . .”
“The dog was the one who guided us. With that hussy’s kerchief, he just had to take us straight to her. But there was something I couldn’t understand. She almost got away. ... Do you know this Marquise of the Angels?”
“She’s Calembredaine’s woman. That’s all we know. The only one of us who ever saw her at close range died—Constable Martin, whom she knifed in a tavern. But we can just pack up the wench you’ve got there, sir. If it’s her, Madame de Brinvilliers will recognise her. It was still day¬light when her coach was waylaid by the bandits, and she very clearly saw the woman who was their accomplice.”
“Damn piece of cheek!” one of die men growled. “They are no longer afraid of anything, these bandits. To waylay the coach of the Police Lieutenant’s own daughter, and in broad daylight in the middle of Paris!”
“They’ll pay for it, don’t you worry.”
Angelique listened closely to this conversation. She was trying to keep stock-still in the hope that Desgrez might release his grip. She would leap, with a jerk, into the helpful darkness and run away. She was certain that Sorbonne would not pursue her. And those awkward fellows in their heavy uniforms would never be able to catch her. But the ex-lawyer seemed in no mood to forget his capture. He searched her with an expert hand.
“What is this?” he said.
She felt his hands sliding under her bodice. He gave a little whistle.
“A knife! Upon my word! And not a pen-knife, either, you can believe me. Well, sister, you don’t seem very meek to me.”
He slipped Rodogone the Egyptian’s dagger into one of his pockets and continued his inspection.
She quivered as his rough, warm hand passed over her breasts and lingered there.
“Goodness, what a heart-beat!” Desgrcz chaffed in an undertone. “That doesn’t sound like a clear conscience. Let’s pull her under that shop- light and see what she looks like.”
With a wrench she jerked herself free, but ten iron fists promptly grasped her, and a shower of blows rained upon her.
They dragged her into the light. Desgrcz seized her hair with a rough hand and pulled her head back. Angclique closed her eyes. With those smears of mud and blood on her face, he might not recognise her if she closed her eyes. She shook so much that her teeth chattered.
The seconds that passed while she was thus exposed to the crude light of the candle seemed to her like centuries. Then Desgrcz released her with a disappointed growl.
“No. It isn’t she. It isn’t the Marquise of the Angels.”
The constables swore in unison.
“How do you know, sir?” asked one of them.
“I’ve seen her. She was pointed out to me one day on the Pont-Neuf. This girl looks rather like her but she’s not the one.”
“Let’s take her along anyway. She might spit up some information.” Desgrez seemed to ponder, somewhat perplexed.
“There was something fishy about this, as a matter of fact,” he went on musingly. “Sorbonne never makes a mistake. Well, he didn’t grab this wench. He left her in peace when she was but a few steps away from him —that shows she isn’t dangerous.”
He concluded with a sigh:
“We’ve drawn a blank. Good thing you caught two burglars at least. Where did they break in?”
“In the rue du Petit-Lion. At an old apothecary’s, a fellow called Glazer.”
“I et’s go back there. Perhaps we can pick up the scent.”
“And what do we do about the girl?” ,
Desgrez seemed to hesitate.
“I wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to let her go. Now that I know her face, I won’t forget her. It may come in useful.”
Without hesitation the constables released the young woman, and dis-appeared into the night with a great clatter of spurs.
Angelique slid out of the circle of light. She groped along the walls and found the darkness again with relief. But she could see something white by the fountain and heard the dog Sorbonne’s tongue smacking his lips as he drank. Desgrezs shadow was by his side.
Angelique grew motionless again. She saw Desgrez lift his hat and make a gesture in her direction. Something hard fell at her feet.
“Here,” said the policeman’s voice, “you can have your knife back. I’ve never stolen from a girl. And for a damsel walking at this time of night, it may be useful. Well, good night.”
She could not reply.
“You don’t say good night?”
She gathered up all her courage to breathe:
“Good night.”
On the ringing cobble-stones she heard Desgrez’s heavy, nailed boots recede. Then once more she began to roam blindly through Paris.