The Phantom of the Rue Royale: Nicolas Le Floch Investigation #3. Jean-Francois Parot

Louis XV’s eldest daughter (cf. The Man with the Lead Stomach).

3. The author cannot resist quoting this very eighteenth-century statement by Talleyrand, spoken when he presented to Emperor Franz of Austria the jewels originally given as a gift by Napoleon to Marie-Louise.

4. A net was stretched across the Seine at Saint-Cloud to collect the bodies of the drowned.

       II

       SARTINE AND SANSON

       Sic egesto quidquid turbidum redit urbi sua forma legesque et munia magistratuum.

      Thus emptied of its turbulence, the city recovers its usual form, its laws and its magistrates with their practice.

      TACTITUS

       Thursday 31 May 1770

      Nicolas moved through a suspended city, a city surprised by its own suffering. Everyone had his own version of the events to peddle. Little groups conversed in low voices. Some noisier ones seemed to be pursuing a long-standing quarrel. The shops, usually open at this hour, were still closed, as if observing a state of mourning. Death had struck everywhere, and the spectacle of the wounded and dying being brought back to their homes had spread the news of the disaster throughout Paris, made all the worse by the false rumours inevitably aroused by such a tragedy. People seemed struck by the fact that this catastrophe had happened during the celebrations for a royal wedding. It was a bad omen, and it made the future uncertain and vaguely menacing. Nicolas passed priests carrying the Holy Sacrament. Passers-by crossed themselves, took off their hats or knelt before them.

      Rue Montmartre lacked its usual animation. Even the familiar, reassuring smell of freshly baked bread coming from the baker’s shop on the ground floor of Noblecourt’s house had lost its enchantment. Breathing it in, he immediately remembered the terrible, musty odour of wet fire and blood hovering over Place Louis XV. An officer of the watch had lent him a mare, a cantankerous animal which snorted and pulled back its ears. Bourdeau had remained on the scene to help the commissioners from the various districts who had come running as reinforcements.

      Nicolas’s first impulse had been to gallop to police headquarters in Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. But he knew all too well that, despite the gravity of the moment, Monsieur de Sartine would not have tolerated anyone appearing before him with a soot-blackened face and dishevelled clothes. He had often experienced the apparent insensitivity of a chief who did not accept any weakness in himself, and hated having to deal with that of his subordinates. The King’s service was all that mattered, and there was no particular advantage in being injured, bruised and dirty. On the contrary, such a lapse in the proprieties would have brought disfavour on anyone who dared to appear in that way. To Monsieur de Sartine, it would have demonstrated neither courage nor devotion, but rather a contempt for all that his office represented, a licentiousness that went against everything he believed in.

      The bells of Saint Eustache were chiming seven o’clock as Nicolas handed the reins of his nag to a young baker’s boy who stood gaping in the doorway. He went straight through to the servants’ pantry where he found his maid, Catherine, slumped beside her stove, fast asleep. He surmised that she had not gone to bed but, having heard of the tragedy, had decided to wait up for him. Old Marion, Monsieur de Noblecourt’s cook, whose age excused her from heavy work, slept later and later these days, as did Poitevin the footman. Noiselessly, he went out to the courtyard and washed himself at the pump, as was his custom in summer. Then he tiptoed upstairs to his room to change his clothes and brush his hair. For a moment he considered telling the former procurator that he was back, but when he thought of the detailed account he would have to give, and the thousand questions that would follow, he changed his mind. He missed being greeted by Cyrus, the little, grey, curly-haired water spaniel. The days were long gone when the dog would jump up and yap excitedly when he arrived. The animal was now quite old and stiff, and only the slow movements of his tail still showed how pleased he was to see Nicolas. He spent all his time on the tapestried rug, from where he observed events surrounding his master with eyes that were still alert.

      Nicolas thought about the passage of time. Soon, it struck him, he would have to bid farewell to this witness to his first steps in Paris. The idea occurred to him that the compassion he felt for Cyrus was a way of avoiding having to think of other imminent farewells which were just as inevitable. He gently placed a short note of explanation in Catherine’s lap and left the house without a sound. He went back to his restive mount, and the baker’s boy smiled and handed him a brioche, still hot from the oven. Remembering that he had not had dinner, he wolfed it down. The buttery taste was a delight to the palate. ‘Come on,’ he said to himself, ‘life isn’t so bad. Carpe diem!’ It was a phrase constantly repeated by his sybaritic friend Monsieur de La Borde, who loved female dancers, fine food and works of art, and was currently writing an opera and a book about China.

      In Rue Neuve-Sainte Augustin, an unusual amount of activity indicated that the night’s events had left their mark. Nicolas climbed the steps four at a time. The elderly manservant greeted him with a flustered look on his face. He was an old acquaintance, for whom Nicolas was almost part of the furniture.

      ‘Here you are at last, Monsieur Nicolas. I think Monsieur de Sartine is waiting for you. I’m very worried: it’s the first time in years he hasn’t asked to see his wigs. Is the case so serious?’

      Nicolas smiled at this reminder of his chief’s innocent obsession. Contrary to the custom of the house, the servant led him to the library. He had only once before had the opportunity to enter the beautifully proportioned room, with its shelves of white oak and its ceiling painted by Jouvenet. He remembered admiring the work of this artist when his guardian, Canon Le Floch, had taken him one day to the parlement of Rennes, and every time duty called him to Versailles he would gaze in awe at the splendid tribune of the royal chapel, which was decorated by the same painter. He tapped softly at the door and opened it. He thought at first that he was alone, until he heard a curt voice he knew well. Monsieur de Sartine, in a black coat and powdered wig, was perched at the top of a stepladder consulting a red Morocco-bound book embossed with his coat of arms: three sardines.

      ‘Greetings, Commissioner.’

      That gave Nicolas pause. The Lieutenant General only addressed him by his rank when he was trying to master his anger – an anger directed less at his men than at the general inertia or obstinacy of things.

      He was looking up at the figures on the ceiling, apparently deep in thought. Nicolas respected his chief’s silence for a few moments, then decided to begin his report. He gave the number of dead which, by early that morning, had been approaching a hundred. Nevertheless, in his opinion, this figure could well be much greater, even by as much as ten times, since many of the injured were unlikely to recover.

      ‘I know what you did, you and Bourdeau. Believe me when I say that it is a comfort to me to know that you were there to bear witness for our force.’

      It occurred to Nicolas that Monsieur de Sartine was ill, and that his illness went deeper than anything he might have imagined. His manifestations of satisfaction were so rare that they were seen as events, and, besides, he never came out with them when a case was in progress. Nicolas saw him opening and closing his book mechanically, as if unsure what to say or do next.

      In a low voice, as if speaking to himself, Sartine resumed, ‘“This man has marr’d my fortune, and manhood is call’d foolery when it stands against a falling fabric …”’

      Nicolas smiled inwardly and recited aloud, ‘“… The tag whose rage doth rend like interrupted waters, and o’erbear what they are used to bear.”’

      Monsieur de Sartine