for the King (2010) by Delors Catherine

Author:Delors, Catherine [Catherine, Delors,]
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-14T19:18:17.312000+00:00

31

Roch called all of his Inspectors to his office to discuss their progress and devise new ways of locating Saint-Régent and Short Francis. The date set by Fouché for Old Miquel’s deportation was but twelve days away now. Roch was more convinced than ever that the Mayenne Inn was at the heart of the Rue Nicaise conspiracy and silently cursed the Prefect for preventing him from posting his men there. Little as he liked it, he had no choice but to rely solely on a little beggar to watch the place.

The Rue Nicaise investigation did not absolve Roch of his usual duties. It was the day of the week when he was to visit the Palais-Egalité in his professional capacity. Blanche’s mother was not the only one to have opened a gaming salon there. The Palais-Egalité had been called the Palais-Royal before the Revolution, when it belonged to the Duke d’Orléans, cousin to the King. The Duke had conceived the idea, novel for a prince of the royal blood, to rent part of his palace to shopkeepers to supplement his already enormous income. Then, during the Revolution, the Duke had been guillotined for conspiring to make himself King in place of his cousin.

Yet the shops, unlike him, survived. The rents were twice as high as anywhere else in town, and often drove the tenants into bankruptcy, but much of the business of Paris was still transacted there. A multitude of shops around the pillared galleries sold shiny fabrics, dresses, flowers, jewels, ribbons, toothpicks, jars of rouge, clocks, trinkets, perfumes, embroidered garters and every other imaginable sort of merchandise.

The sound of raised voices burst from the cafés where the Stock Exchange brokers and their customers gathered. Music came from the Frères Provençaux restaurant, while the fragrance of roasting meat rose from the kitchens in the basement. Inside the vast dining parlor, huge mirrors reflected pyramids of pâtés, pastries, jellies, and even peaches and cherries, grown in hothouses during these winter months.

Military men in bright uniforms ambled in the galleries. Austria had been defeated at the battle of Marengo by Bonaparte himself last June, and again at Hohenlinden by General Moreau. The Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, the tyrant of Austria, as Old Miquel called him, had been forced to beg for an armistice. Negotiations for a peace treaty had already commenced. The considerable territorial gains of the French Republic in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands would no doubt be confirmed. England would have to carry alone the burden of prosecuting the war against France.

Roch passed a bookshop that displayed, in the midst of an assortment of libertine prints, Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue, the notorious novel by the ci-devant Marquis de Sade, and its counterpart, The Anti-Justine, by Restif de la Bretonne. Roch knew Restif, who was a clerk at the Ministry of Police and a prolific author of novels and pamphlets, including The Pornographer. The man claimed that his Anti-Justine provided the same kind of entertainment as Sade’s works, without indulging in their excessive cruelty.

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