Final Transgression by Harriet Welty Rochefort

Author:Harriet Welty Rochefort [Welty Rochefort, Harriet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9782957244409
Publisher: Understand France
Published: 2020-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter FOURTEEN

Paris: February 6, 1934

Antoine locked the door of his apartment near the Luxembourg Gardens and adjusted his hat and collar. He was on his way across Paris to meet with Yves and other members of the Croix de Feu, a veterans’ organization known for its right-wing views. Today the group was gathering for an anti-government demonstration on the Left Bank of the Seine near the Palais Bourbon, the elegant eighteenth-century country house of the Duchess of Bourbon, which was nationalized during the Revolution and now housed the National Assembly.

The Croix de Feu was only one of the many disgruntled right-wing groups that had taken to the streets to march on the Parliament. It was joined by various right-wing and extreme-right organizations, ranging from the royalist Action Française, which wanted to restore the monarchy, to its more militant youth group, the Camelots du Roi. The one thing the disparate groups had in common was their determination to put an end to the current administration. All were protesting against the corruption of the governing center-left Radical-Socialist party and a growing series of financial and political scandals that had culminated in the notorious so-called Stavisky affair, named after the embezzler Alexandre Stavisky, who had sold hundreds of millions of worthless bonds on Bayonne’s pawnshops and gotten away with it by buying off the newspapers that were trying to investigate him. His trial had conveniently been postponed for nineteen months because the public prosecutor was the brother-in-law of the prime minister, who was accused of protecting him. Stavisky’s sudden death on January 8, 1934 was called a suicide, but the general opinion was that he had been assassinated by the powers-that-be to keep him from revealing secrets. But discontent had not ended with his death, which is why Antoine and his friends were demonstrating today.

As Antoine approached the Seine, he heard the roar of the crowd and saw Croix de Feu members bearing banderoles with the emblem of the cross. Among them he spotted Jean Mermoz, a well-known pilot and proud veteran.

“Mermoz,” he yelled, hurrying over to him. “What are you doing with this sorry group?”

“Same as you,” Mermoz yelled over the brouhaha. The two men linked arms with others to surround the Parliament with their group, but suddenly Antoine felt the itch for action.

“Let’s go over there,” he said, pointing toward the Right Bank. The two pushed their way across the heavily defended bridge to reach the other side.

Once there, they found themselves in the midst of a pitched battle on the Place de la Concorde, where mounted policemen were charging the rioters. Antoine loved a good fight, and was getting ready to use a sharp object he had brought along to defend himself if necessary when he was knocked down by something—perhaps a policeman or a horse, he didn’t know—with enormous force. He fell hard to the cold ground, where he was trampled by the crowd and crushed into the cobblestones. This is it, he thought. This is how it ends.

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