My father then retired to this same house where I now live, and died here in 1807, at the age of seventy-six.

  Let’s come back to me.

  I mentioned my friends in the Mountain. As a matter of fact, I was acquainted with Danton and Camille Desmoulins. I had known Marat more as a doctor than as a friend. But known him I had. As a result of this relationship I had with him, however short it had been, on the day when they took Mademoiselle de Corday* to the scaffold I decided to go and watch her execution.

  “I was just about,” I interrupted, “to come to your aid, in your argument with Dr Robert on the persistence of life, by relating the facts that history records concerning Charlotte de Corday.”

  “We’re coming to that,” interrupted Monsieur Ledru. “Let me have my say. I was an eyewitness; in consequence, you can trust my words.”

  By two o’clock in the afternoon I’d already taken up my post near the statue of Liberty.* It was a warm July morning; the weather was sultry, the sky was clouded over and a storm was brewing.

  At four o’clock the storm broke; it was at that very moment, so they say, that Charlotte climbed aboard the tumbrel.

  They had gone to fetch her in jail just as a young painter was busy painting her portrait. Envious death seemed intent on ensuring that nothing would survive the young woman, not even her image.

  Her head had already been sketched out on the canvas, and, strange to relate, just as the executioner came in, the painter had reached that part of the neck which the blade of the guillotine was going to sever.

  The lightning flickered, the rain fell, the thunder rumbled, but nothing had been able to disperse the populace, filled with curiosity; the river banks, the bridges and the squares were all crowded; the hubbub of earth almost drowned out the din in the heavens. Those women who were given the vivid name of ‘lickspittles of the guillotine’ followed along, hurling curses at her. I could hear their roars heading towards me like the noise of a cataract. Long before you could make anything out, the crowd swayed; finally, like a fateful vessel, the tumbrel appeared, ploughing through the waves, and I was able to catch sight of the condemned woman, whom I did not know and had never seen.

  She was a fine young woman of twenty-seven, with magnificent eyes, a nose of perfect outline and lips of supreme symmetry. She was standing upright, head erect, less so that she might appear to dominate this crowd than because her hands bound behind her back forced her to hold her head in that posture. The rain had stopped, but as she had been exposed to the rain for three quarters of the journey, the water that had drenched her meant that the wool, soaked through, clung to her charming body and outlined it clearly; she looked as if she had just emerged from her bath. The red nightdress that the executioner had dressed her in gave her face, so proud and vigorous, a strange appearance and a sinister splendour. Just as she reached the square, the rain stopped, and a ray of sunlight, slipping between two clouds, fell and frolicked on her hair, making it shine like a halo. Truth to tell, I swear to you that even though this young woman had committed a murder – a terrible action even if it had been carried out to avenge humanity – and even though that murder filled me with detestation, I would have been quite unable to say whether what I was witnessing was an apotheosis or an execution. When she set eyes on the scaffold, she turned pale; and her pallor was all the more noticeable because of her red nightdress, which reached up to her neck; but, with an effort, she finally turned fully to face the scaffold, gazing at it with a smile.

  The tumbrel came to a halt; Charlotte leapt to the ground without allowing anyone to help her get down, then she climbed the steps of the scaffold, made slippery by the recent rainfall, as quickly as the length of her trailing nightdress and the fact that she was hampered by her bound hands would allow her. When she felt the executioner’s hand on her shoulder, tearing off the kerchief that covered her neck, she turned pale for a second time, but at that very same moment a last smile came to give the lie to that pallor, and of her own volition, without her needing to be tied to the foul bascule, moved by a sublime and almost joyful impulse, she put her head through the hideous opening. The blade slid down, and her head – severed from the trunk – fell onto the platform and rebounded. It was then that one of the executioner’s assistants, Legros by name, seized that head by its hair and, in base and fawning flattery to the multitude, slapped it on the face. Well, let me tell you that when it was slapped, the face went red – I saw it, the whole face, not just the cheek, you hear? – not just the cheek that had been slapped, but both cheeks, which blushed equally red, since there were still live feelings in that head, and it was indignant at having to suffer a shame that had not been part of the sentence.

  The people too noticed this blush, and took sides with the dead woman against the living man, the victim against the executioner. The people demanded vengeance for this indignity forthwith, and the wretched man was thereupon handed over to the gendarmes and led away to jail.*

  “Wait,” said Monsieur Ledru, who saw that the doctor wanted to speak, “that’s not all.”

  I wanted to know what sentiment had impelled that man to perform the vile act he had just committed. I enquired as to where he was being held; I asked for permission to visit him in the Abbey where he had been locked up; I was granted it, and I went to see him.

  A decree of the Revolutionary Tribunal had just sentenced him to three months in jail. He couldn’t understand why he should have been found guilty of a deed so natural as the one he had just performed.

  I asked him what could have impelled him to carry out this act.

  “Ah, that’s a good one!” he said. “I’m a Marat supporter, I am – I’d just punished her in accordance with the law; I wanted to punish her on my own account.”

  “But didn’t you realize,” I said to him, “that your violation of the respect due to death is itself almost a crime?”

  “Pah!” said Legros, gazing fixedly at me. “So do you really think that they’re dead just because they’ve been guillotined?

  “Surely.”

  “Well it’s obvious that you don’t look into the basket when they’re all there together; you don’t see them still rolling their eyes and grinding their teeth for a good five minutes after the execution. We have to change the basket every three months, since they ruin the bottom of it with their teeth. It’s a heap of aristocrats’ heads, look you: they can’t resign themselves to death, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one day, one of those heads didn’t start shouting ‘Long live the King!’”

  I’d found out as much as I wanted: I left, obsessed by a single idea – that these heads were in fact still alive. And I resolved to prove this for myself.

  6

  Solange

  During Monsieur Ledru’s narrative, night had completely fallen. The people gathered in the salon now seemed mere shadows, shadows that were not just silent but also motionless, so afraid they were that Monsieur Ledru might otherwise stop talking; everyone realized that behind the terrible tale he had just told an even more terrible one was waiting.

  So not a breath could be heard. Only the doctor opened his mouth. I seized his hand to stop him saying anything, and he did indeed remain silent.

  After a few seconds, Monsieur Ledru continued his story:

  I had just left the Abbey and was crossing the Place Taranne to get to the Rue de Tournon, where I lived, when I heard a woman’s voice calling for help.

  It couldn’t be anyone up to no good – it was only just ten o’clock in the evening. I ran towards the corner of the square from which I had heard the cry coming, and I saw, by the light of the moon emerging from behind a cloud, a woman struggling in the midst of a patrol of sans-culottes.

  This woman in turn noticed me, and, seeing from my clothes that I wasn’t altogether a man of the people, she rushed over to me, crying:

  “Ah, look! It’s Monsieur Albert, a friend of mine – he’ll tell you that I’m the daughter of Mère Ledieu, the washerwoman, just as I told you.”

  And at the same time, the poor woman, all pale and trembling, seized me by the arm, clinging to me like a shipwrecked man to the plank he hopes will save him.

  “You can claim you’re the daughter of Mère Ledieu till you’re blue in the face, but you ain’t got no citizen’s card, my lovely, and you’re coming with us to the guardhouse!”

  The young woman clutched my arm; I felt how much terror and supplication there was in the pressure she applied. I had understood.

  As she had called me by the first name that had come to her mind, I in turn called her by the first name that came to mine.

  “What the…Why, it’s you, my poor Solange!” I said to her. “Whatever’s happened to you, then?”

  “There, gentlemen, didn’t I tell you?” she said.

  “Seems to me you could say citizens, my lass.”

  “Listen, sergeant, it’s not my fault if I talk that way,” said the young woman. “My mother had business dealings in high society; she had made me accustomed to being polite, so I picked up the habit, a bad one, I know full well, an aristocratic habit – but what do you expect, sergeant: I just can’t get rid of it.”

  And there was in this reply, made in a tremulous voice, an imperceptible note of mockery that I was the only one to recognize. I was wondering who this woman could be. The problem was impossible to resolve. All I knew for certain was that she was no washerwoman’s daughter.

  “What’s happened to me? You may well ask, Citizen Albert. I’ll tell you what’s happened. Just think: I’d gone to return some linen; the mistress of the house had gone out; I waited for her to come back so I could get my money. Heavens above, given the times we live in, everyone needs their money. Night fell; I’d thought I’d be back home in daylight. I hadn’t brought my citizen’s card with me. I bumped into these gentlemen – sorry, I mean these citizens – they asked for my card; I told them I didn’t have one; they wanted to take me to the guardhouse. I shouted, you came running up – a friend of mine, lucky for me; that reassured me. I said to myself: since Monsieur Albert knows my name is Solange; since he knows I’m the daughter of Mère Ledieu, he’ll vouch for me – isn’t that right, Monsieur Albert?”

  “Certainly I’ll vouch for you. There, it’s done.”

  “Very well!” said the patrol leader. “But who’ll vouch for you, Monsieur Popinjay?”

  “Danton. Will he do for you? Is he a good patriot?”

  “Ah! If Danton will vouch for you, I ain’t got no objections.”

  “Well, it’s the day of the Cordeliers meeting – let’s go there.”

  “Yes, let’s go there,” said the sergeant. “Sans-culottes, my fellow citizens: forward march!”

  The Cordeliers club met in the former convent of that name, in the Rue de l’Observance; we were there in an instant. When I got to the door, I tore out a page from my notebook, pencilled a few words on it and handed the message to the sergeant, telling him to take it to Danton, while we stayed in the hands of the corporal and the patrol. The sergeant went into the club, and returned with Danton.

  “What’s this?” he said to me. “They’ve gone and arrested you – you, my friend! And the friend of Camille too! You, one of the best republicans around! Come now! Citizen sergeant,” he added, turning round to the leader of the sans-culottes, “I can vouch for him. Is that enough for you?”

  “You can vouch for him, but can you vouch for her?” replied the obstinate sergeant.

  “Her? Who are you talking about?”

  “This woman here, damn it!”

  “For him, her and everyone else in the neighbourhood – happy?”

  “Happy, yes, very happy,” said the sergeant, “especially now I’ve seen you!”

  “Ah, by God! That’s a pleasure you can enjoy free, gratis and for nothing. Just gaze your fill while you’ve got me out here.”

  “Thank you! Continue to support the interests of the people as you are doing, and you can rest assured: the people will be grateful to you.”

  “Oh yes! I’m counting on it!” said Danton.

  “Can I shake you by the hand?” continued the sergeant.

  “Why not?”

  And Danton gave him his hand.

  “Long live Danton!” cried the sergeant.

  “Long live Danton!” repeated the entire patrol.

  And they moved off, led by their chief. When he was ten paces away, he turned round and, waving his red cap, cried out once again, “Long live Danton!” His cry was again repeated by his men.

  I was about to thank Danton, when his name, repeated several times within the club, reached our ears. “Danton! Danton!” several voices were shouting. “Your turn to speak!”

  “Sorry, dear fellow,” he said to me, “you can hear them: a quick handshake, and you’ll have to let me go back in. I gave my right hand to the sergeant, I’ll give you my left. Who knows, the worthy patriot maybe had the mange.”

  And, turning round:

  “Here I am!” he said, in that powerful voice that could rouse and calm the storms of the street. “Here I am! Just wait!”

  And he strode back into the club.

  I remained alone outside the door with my new acquaintance.

  “Now, Madame,” I told her, “where would you like me to take you? I am yours to command.”

  “Good Lord! To Mère Ledieu’s,” she replied with a laugh. “You know perfectly well that she’s my mother.”

  “But where does Mère Ledieu live?”

  “Twenty-four, Rue Férou.”

  “So let’s go to Mère Ledieu’s, 24 Rue Férou.”

  We went back down the Rue des Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince until we reached the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, then the Rue du Petit-Lion, and then we made our way back up to the Place Saint-Sulpice, then the Rue Férou.

  We had walked all this way without having exchanged a single word.

  But by the light of the moon, which was shining at full splendour, I had been able to examine her at my leisure.

  She was a charming person, between twenty and twenty-two, dark-haired, with big blue eyes, spirited rather than melancholy; a slender, straight nose, mocking lips, teeth like pearls, the hands of a queen, the feet of a child… and all these features had, beneath the costume of the daughter of Mère Ledieu, preserved an aristocratic allure which had, with reason, aroused the sensitivities of the good sergeant and his bellicose patrol.

  On arriving outside her door, we stopped and gazed at each other for a while in silence.

  “Well, what can I do for you, my dear Monsieur Albert?” my new acquaintance asked me with a smile.

  “I was about to say to you, Solange, my dear young lady, that it was hardly worthwhile meeting if we are to separate so soon.”

  “But I beg your pardon a million times over. I think that it was worthwhile, thoroughly worthwhile, since if I hadn’t met you I’d have been taken to the guardhouse; they would have recognized me as not being the daughter of Mère Ledieu; they would have discovered I was an aristocrat, and they would most probably have cut my head off.”

  “So you admit you’re an aristocrat?”

  “Oh no, I’m not admitting a thing.”

  “Come now – at least tell me your name.”

  “Solange.”

  “As you know full well, that name, which I gave you completely at random, is not your real name.”

  “Too bad! I like it and I’m keeping it, at least for you.”

  “What need do you have to keep it for me, if I’m never going to see you again?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m simply saying that, if we do see each other again, it’s just as useless for you to know my name as it is for me to know yours. I called you Albert – keep the name Albert, and I’ll keep the name Solange.”

  “Very well then! But listen, Solange,” I said to her.

  “I’m listening, Albert,” she replied.

  “You’re an aristocrat, you admit it?”

  “Even if I didn’t admit it, you’d guess as much, wouldn’t you? So my admission loses a great deal of its merit.”

  “And as an aristocrat, you are being pursued?”

  “That seems to be the case, yes.”

  “And you’re in hiding from the pursuers?”

  “At 24 Rue Férou, at Mère Ledieu’s – her husband was my father’s coach driver. You can see I am keeping no secrets from you.”

  “And your father?”

  “I am keeping no secrets from you, my dear Monsieur Albert, so long as those secrets are mine; but my father’s secrets are not mine. My father too is in hiding, while he waits for an opportunity to emigrate. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “And what do you yourself intend to do?”

  “Leave with my father, if possible; if not, let him leave alone and go to join him later.”

  “And this evening, when you were arrested, you were coming from a visit to your father?”

  “I was.”

  “Listen to me, my dear Solange!”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You saw what happened this evening?”

  “Yes, and it gave me the measure of your credit.”

  “Oh, my credit isn’t all that great, unfortunately. Still, I do have a few friends.”

  “I made the acquaintance of one of them this evening.”

  “And as you know, he’s not exactly a nobody these days.”

  “Are you hoping to use his influence to help my father escape?”

  “No, I’m keeping his influence for you.”

  “And for my father?”

  “For your father, I have another means.”

  “You have another means!” exclaimed Solange, grasping my hands and gazing anxiously at me.

  “If I save your father, will you remember me with affection?”