Rue de Cordeliers
"Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat"
The young woman had a dry voice and took long silent pauses, preceded by slow breaths and followed by the sound of the water in the tub and that of the pen while writing on the sheet.
"Armand Guy Simon de Coentempren"- her beautiful voice stopped again.
She was well dressed, but something wasn't right.
That trembling leg, that hidden hand, the rich building of the clothes, but the cotton fabric.
"Come on! What are you waiting for! Read!"- he urged him, with that fiery passion of his that had dragged him where he was and that, from that moment on, would never abandon him again.
"Marguerite Élie Condorcet"- her voice seemed almost seized with fright, overwhelmed by the anxiety of her thin breaths.
She took another very long pause, in which the man urged her on.
"Come on! If you are here to talk, talk then! What's wrong with you?"
Even the tone of his voice seemed intrigued by such hesitation.
"Louise Julie Careau"- she said, her voice becoming only a sigh.
The man's elbow stopped on the surface of the water and she could no longer hear the slow dripping into the tub or the scratching of the pen on the paper, a sign of his continuous writing. It was followed only by the sound of the splash and the slap of one of the hands on the cold surface: the slow stagnation of the tub, the movement of feet and legs and water inside the copper of that bathroom created especially for him.
He had been cheated!
"What? Careau?"- he asked furiously.
The unknown young woman hesitated, but said nothing. The cotton of her fine robes made a rustle, as if she had stood up and stepped forward.
"Simone!"- he shouted, trying to get up, but it was already too late.
Citoyen,
I have just arrived from Caen.
Your love for the homeland makes me suppose that you would have great pleasure in knowing the names of the unfortunate participants of an occurrence that took place in this part of the Republic.
I'll show up at your house at eight.
Have the goodness to devote me just a few minutes.
Goodness.
For all the mistakes and carelessness in that disgusting, self-righteous, deceitful and evil text, the word goodness was just the last she wanted to read.
"Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!"
Those were his last words. The last words he could address to her.
On the verge of death he had called her.
Simone looked at the door, which had become cursed in that long quarter of an hour, her eyes burning with tears spent behind an unbridgeable pain, in a chaotic and infinite night. She should never have let her in, but instead...
The night cleared into a too silent dawn.
Almost every morning, after the last rereading, it was Simone who took the manuscripts to the printer. Together with Catherine she corrected them, aligned them and assembled them patiently in their matrices. Watchmaker eyes and fingers could recognize the details of the mechanisms, such as the tin and lead alloy characters. Her eyes were gray and curious. Eyes that could recognize details well.
How naive! She had noticed it from the first moment and yet... And yet she listened to him.
"Let her in!"- said Jean Paul.
Simone studied her particular guest carefully, from head to toe. A woman almost the same age and similar features as hers, only taller and darker-haired.
Thus, the Citoyenne Charlotte Corday went through her eyes and her nervous silence with the air of one who knew exactly how it would end, the evening of nightmares becoming reality.
It was morning again, but there were no revisions to submit, no print runs to publish. Just silence.
A few hours later, Jean Paul walked out of that door with dignity, but breathless. Already stiff and slightly swollen in the face, washed in the same bathroom that had brought him so much relief during his long period of illness.
They carried him in silence, more people than Simone had ever seen, important and powerful names, intellectuals and orators, legs, feet and trousers sifted through the door instead of his: for his own, in his place.
Just like the day his own legs, then full of life, and Jean Paul's labored breathing had crossed the threshold years ago.
He had amber eyes, an Italian nose and brown hair.
The middle-aged man smiled modestly and bowed briefly as he entered, but to young Simone, he was no man of modesty, he was the passionate orator genius, he was the returning doctor from England. Wild and fiery, the Friend of the People had knocked on her door and she would surely open it. She had even told Catherine, because she lived alone and it was she who had asked for it.
Years of suffering and hopes, of decadent health had passed behind the closed door of Simone's house. Years of silence and smiles, discussions and debate, years of Revolution, spent writing and correcting, listening to animated words and approving philosophies of equality.
There would be no copies to correct and no matrices to assemble at the moment.
The printer would have done without Simone.
Under a sultry Parisian sky, on the fourth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, Simone Evrard left her home on the Rue de Cordeliers, which had suddenly become too narrow and stuffy.
From the Left Bank, she walked through all that remained of the Roman baths of Cluny. She crossed the banks of the Seine, while Notre Dame watched it from the top of its medieval spiers. It was as if the millennia of city history unfolded right in front of her, on a seemingly normal day.
The young woman was impassive at the sight of the crosses, oblivious to the fact that there was no longer room for a Christian deity in old Paris. On the other side of the river, the new and young revolutionary city was waiting for her, but something was wrong: in the midst of the Revolution of bread and hunger, the citizens of the fourth estate had received nothing but crumbs.
The Salon Careau, in Rue de la Chantereine, on the Rive Droite and just north of the Opéra, was a vaguely known place, at least in terms of fame. She remembered well the article published in that Sextidi of Vendémiaire, a few months earlier. The copy of the Journal de la République caused a particular sensation because, hidden among the rumors of lands and regions, the name of Mirabeau could be clearly distinguished.
However Simone had never entered and had never seen any of the men Jean Paul used to talk about. Important and dangerous names that were part of the old nobility. From that day forward, the Salon Careau represented, for people like her, a place of betrayal and condemnation.
Citoyenne Julie Careau-Talma snorted open the door.
As she could notice her signs of pregnancy, the woman walked as if it had been. Other children chased and played around, but there were no housekeepers waiting for them, between the large rooms of the house, and the Salon with the large reception hall. Two twins who were barely walking and two other older children. If she had been pregnant, the one she was carrying would have been the fifth.
As if by instinct and with a sense of rancor, Simone put a hand on her belly. Since she had moved to Paris, there had been only her watchmaking and her brother-in-law's printing house. Hours of intense manual work, a few minutes for a kiss and a discussion.
Love, of course, but love does not feed mouths, it does not bring home bread.
At the sight of that scene, Simone felt a sensation of disgust and resentment: she who in all that time had not been able to afford even a pregnancy, found herself in front of that impatient and disheveled lady, who carried on the fruit of at least five. And with blatant negligence.
"Are you here for my husband? He's not here. What do you want? "- said Julie, without even looking at her.
"No, I'm ... I'm here for you. Do you know what happened yesterday? "
Julie sat down, motioned for Simone to sit down and looked at her better.
"Is it really you? With what audacity do you present yourself to me? "
"You were on Corday's list of names."
"It must have been a very sad disappointment for your... Man, or whatever it was him for you..." - Julie hesitated, her face and mouth curled in a way. of smug disgust, not knowing how to define Simon's companion, but without really worrying about a judgment.
"Conjoint"- Simone corrected her.
"Were you officially related?"- she asked in an incredulous tone.
"At the Temple of Nature. The Goddess of all Goddesses"- she said firmly, trying to hold back the tears. Simone looked down. He wore no rings.
Julie relaxed even more on her sofa, looking up with the air of someone who has heard those words all too often in the last few months and whose meaning she clearly knew.
"You weren't officially married, then?"- she said quickly and without any tact.
Julie sighed, looked up, and checked the portrait of her husband on the living room wall, as if that was the only way to keep him in the house.
For that day, there was no room for courtesies and education. To say or explain. All her feelings had withered behind the door of Jean Paul's study, in Charlotte Corday's last glimpse of conquest and fulfillment of the ultimate mission.
"Why, what about you? Joseph Talma was enrolled in the roll of actors. Under the old law, no priest would ever marry you! "
"I had to do everything myself: get him to drop the roll of actors and become bourgeois. Up the ante and pay him more than the Comédie did. Finding a Christian Priestto Get WillingMarried! What a mistake!"- the woman retorted.
Julie let go and closed her eyes, in tears.
"I want a divorce!"- she exclaimed without turning her gaze to Simone.
"What? Weren't you saying my Republican marriage isn't worth any more than yours?"
"Do we live in this new Republic or not? As for the Marquis of Mirabeau, the time has come to exploit his new laws in my favor!"
Simone didn't answer.
"You came this far, risking your life at the house of the whites... For what? To tell me about that crazy Corday? Not at all!"- Julie shrugged.
"Anyway, now you are compromised and this Corday, in a way, she has betrayed me too. Well, my dear Citoyenne Simone, I really want to see her! As your crazy companion would have said, I want to see her head roll! Come with me to the Place de Grève if blood is shed, blood will spill"- Julie looked out the window.
No Republican guards marched through the streets, so the woman dismissed her and asked her to leave.
With that slow realization, Simone noticed how dangerous it was for someone like her to attend the Salon. Until the two women found themselves together, under that roof on the doorstep of the Opéra, within range of the republican bayonets, they were dead women.
Simone hurried away from the Salon Careau, rethinking how the path for her and Jean Paul had already come to an end and left again. After that night, nothing made sense anymore: there were no blues or whites, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries: as in Julie's words, there was only spite and revenge.
The city and its true citizens, the fourth estate, proceeded their life almost as if under the reign of a feudal ruler. Jean Paul was slowly noticing this and those accusations against the Generals, the tall white heads, were proof of it.
Perhaps the real death sentence of Citoyen Jean Paul Marat came the day the Marseillais clashed with the Commune the year before, the day the September massacres began. Despite the foreign enemies at the gates and the mercenaries in counterattack, in spite of death and dangers, the city proceeded its life normally.
The Supervisory Committee fought hard.
Simone was not in the crowd then. At least, in that week when the blood flowed more than the ink of the editions of the Ami du Peuple, now discontinued and of the Journal de la République, which had just begun, Simone remained in her fighting position, among the lead of the matrices, armed with her own words.
There was only anger and revenge at the news of the capture of Verdun, the Republicans soon realized how Prussia was at the gates of Paris, against their city, ready to crush the ideals of the revolution.
During that fiery month, between the blood, the ink and the pain, there in that court of truth and madness and among the passionate words of Jean Paul, the King was definitively deposed and only in this way the Republic was born.
The first Nivôse arrived quickly on the head of the traitor of the Fatherland.
Louis Capet was executed in the winter. It was cold and the man was dressed only in a shirt and a pair of gray silk culottes. Yet he tried not to tremble, to maintain his human dignity, to show everyone that he was still a man, a King, capable of denying. What did all this mean?
At first, Simone remembered being strangely indifferent to the waste of that necessary blood. She listened to Citoyen Robespierre's words as a fact: blood was spilled. Louis Capet was killed.
It was still January when the King arrived at the guillotine.
Simone recognized between the flags of the City and those of the crosses of Saint Denis and Saint Michel, the Tricolor of the Revolution, waving for the first time: red, white and blue.
However, looking at Jean Paul's eyes, she noticed something. She noticed the resentment of a doctor who, in the past, had been ready to fulfill the Hippocratic Oath, to save all possible lives and not to harm. It was only a moment.
It was then that the time came for Jean Paul to hide from the public, to watch his back. At first he had to proceed to justify himself before the revolutionary tribunal. When he was acquitted, Simone welcomed him again in Rue de Cordeliers at number thirty, with open arms, without thinking of the little time they would still be spending together.
The rain poured thickly between the seams of Simone's cape standing in the crowd.
The executioner handed the umbrella to the woman in cotton robes and her gaze straight and proud towards the audience, contemptuous of danger and her fate. It had all been meticulously calculated and that justice brought nothing but cheers of pride and congratulation.
"[...] what must happen, I have the honor of the guillotine, my cold ashes will be buried among the men of the Pantheon and my memory will be more honored than that of Judith. Peace will return ".
Only moments later, Madame la Guillotine, tore out Charlotte Corday's life.
Simone saw her head roll and Julie didn't smile, with both twins in her arms, she greeted the young woman with a nod of her head. One life for another.
In hindsight, that was a strange goodbye.
[He allowed Hebert and the men to seize him, to lead him away. He followed without a word, without a struggle. His massive figure was hunched up like that of an old man; his hands, which still clung to his identity papers, trembled slightly like those of a man who is very frightened and very helpless. The men of the Surete handled him very roughly, but he made no protest. The woman Evrard did all the protesting, vowing that the people would not long tolerate such tyranny. She even forced her way up to Hebert. With a gesture of fury she tried to strike him in the face, and continued, with a loud voice, her insults and objurgations, until, with a movement of his bayonet, he pushed her roughly out of the way.
After that Paul Mole, surrounded by the guard, was led without ceremony out of the house. Chauvelin gazed after him as if he Had Been brought face to face with a ghoul.]
"Prepare the fire, there is coffee to boil!"
The words of Jeanette, Simone turned her gaze indifferently. Another servant like many others needy, in those hard times. Jeanette threw another loaf of bread in the direction of the shadow covered with rags and soot.
Although apparently it did not seem, Paul was so young ...
Simone had never paid too much attention to the servant with few words and always dirty hands. A practical, active young man with sabot at the bottom of the cot and ears always attentive to the voice of the master.
"Mole! Mole!"- so he called him Jean Paul and in a moment the young servant with an unfortunate back and broken pants stood at attention, still in the service of citoyen Marat. How many years had Paul been in his service? Years? It seemed years had passed, but maybe it was only months... Or a few weeks? Simone tried to count it on her fingertips, but the servant of Count Marat had never made an official entrance in Rue de Cordeliers number third, had not presented recommendations, had not brought letters.
Only one day, a day like many others, those black smoke-black hands had heated the water and carried it to the tub. Nothing exceptional, nothing to really remember.
Simone hesitated when Paul's gaze met hers, Paul was so young his eyes were so clear and fascinating... Surely citoyen Marat had chosen him for the name, she found comfort in remembering it, pronouncing it well and calling it easily.
What a coincidence! Paul Mole had the same initials as him. So that perhaps he would have approached him, an ally among the few, in those hard summer days. Just a moment, he liked to sign and read his long articles with his beautiful name extended in long letters, Jean Paul Marat... The PM letters expertly embroidered on his linens, engraved on his seals ... Paul Mole...
And in those terrible days, Paul Mole had stolen from the dead, was that his accusation? The only remaining ally, who had to defend himself from the clutches of his own people, however, had all the credentials to ask for what was already his, yet citoyen Herbert... Simone shook her head in the confusion of the crowd. She let the crowd recover for a moment. A citizen like any other, a poor servant, who had done nothing but ask for what was his, a gift already received ... Paul Mole ...
Yet Simone was a widow in mourning, she certainly couldn't think of certain things, she could have no other feelings than that of pain and absence. What did Paul have to do with her?
The young servant shook her hand as a sign of comfort before being snatched away by that mass of madmen, animated only by hunger and an ephemeral revenge...
"Paul! I want to see Citoyen Mole! You cannot do this to him!"- Simone ordered. But her voice was ignored for a long time, her face like the one of any other angry woman. Who was she now, that the Friend of the People was dead?
"Mole!" - she said, reaching his cell.
The young man had his hands folded, his eyes lowered, he did not approach the cell and did not look at her.
"Paul!"- the poor widow resumed, with the same arrogance of someone who has been ignored for too long.
He almost seemed to have suddenly gone deaf, or that the name no longer belonged to him.
"Please, Paul, come here!"
Paul seemed to recognize her with difficulty. Hunched over and with trailing legs, he lent himself in front of her. The young man looked up and, once alone, when their eyes met, the widow noticed that strange light, a confidence impossible to explain, and a smile, a smile so ardent that it melted even the coldest and most icy hearts.
Madame Marat... He said in an almost imperceptible whisper...
...Madame ... How much ardor was hidden in that illegal and forbidden word!
"Paul: I know how honest you are. You don't deserve to be locked up in this cell, what's yours is rightfully yours! The ring bears your initials. I know you are an honest man and I will testify for your innocence myself!"- said Simone.
"Let them do it"- he said, a long sigh of exasperation leaked between his parted lips and turned into a fake cough. That noise didn't alarm the guards at first.
"No, I have a conscience and I know that what is right should not be unjustly punished for the habit of some power-hungry citizen. It's not what we've been promised, that's not what we're fighting for…"
Paul shook his head and looked down.
"Madame. Don't fear for me. Why are you here?"
"To do justice, justice to a humble and faithful servant, a man like you Paul, a friend... You are forgiven. We will help you out of here, you will always have my support and that of Jeanette!"
Simone slowly held out her hand to the young man, not expecting the way she would be received.
Paul bowed with surprising grace and kissed her hand, how delicately in those deeds, how sweet were the features of his dirty face. Simone shuddered at the gift of another reassuring smile. A tear streaked her beautiful face, as she too responded to that grace with a bow and the hint of a tender smile, found almost like a shy rainbow at the end of a storm. Comtesse ...
To that kind of honors, the idea that she could have been a Comtesse in other times and other realms hit Simone in the back. At Jean Paul's side there had never been time to think, never was time to…
"I'll pay your bail! You will return to my service! It will all be like…"
Paul shook his head in denial.
"No, my dear, save yourselves from your honor, win your peace and leave me here to die. I know what I have to do... Goodbye forever..."
"But Paul! They will condemn you!"
"Goodbye, Madame..."- the man tapped the heel of the sabot on the bars, making more noise and recalled the guards to their conversation.
However that was, for Simone, the last time she met his beautiful clear eyes and shook those warm hands.
The summer passed slowly and silently on the streets of the city.
After the long pompous funeral, the long rants of Robespierre, Danton and David, destined for the Fatherland and the nation, the young widow almost expected the Republican counterattack, the revenge of the bloodshed. All of this was far too far from her empty heart. Justice on Corday was still not enough, and he regarded the vindication of other prisoners and traitors as a duty.
Julie walked over to her without saying a word. He sat down with difficulty, the pale face and eyes of a woman who, even for that night, had not been able to sleep. He handed her one of his wildest children, and sniffed the other indifferently.
"Just like Castor and Pollux?"- Simone asked, referring to the two sons, in a passive tone.
"Indeed. Castor and Pollux, Talma... Unfortunately for me..."- she said, more attentive to the crowd than to her children.
Again Vendémiaire, cursed Vendémiaire, almost a year after the moral condemnation, a particular Tridi, the one in which Simone decided to wait in front of the door of the Court. She wanted to know, he wanted to see the infamous Widow, he wanted to understand the reason for all that pain.
The accusations fell as thick as the autumn rain, but the faint voice, the dead gaze of a woman dressed in white caught the attention of the two jurors.
["If I have not answered, it is because Nature herself refuses to answer such an accusation against a mother! I appeal to all the mothers who are present! "]
In a moment, all the women on the court jury fell silent.
Citoyen Hébert had risked his accusations, had passed them off as popular, had corrupted and forced poor Dauphin to lie through torture, to the point of total lack of empathy. Julie took the baby back to her knees, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the forehead, not letting him cry. Simone saw a tear streak down her face as she tried to remain completely impassive.
Angrily, she drowned second those thoughts in the indelible image of the bloody water in the tub in Rue de Cordeliers, number thirty, but she could not carry on that cold and imperturbable facade, heavy as the lead of the matrices and black as the ink of the print runs, if not with her own silence.
Rumors of the city told of the facts of a foreign nobleman, never seen before, knocking on Jeanette's door, just for an humble cup of coffee and an old loaf of bread, with Mole's ring between his fingers.