The Nicolas Le Floch affair Read online

  Soon after he arrived, he saw the young man take a book of drinking songs from his coat. Could it be that he was feeling jealous? Julie leant over the young man’s shoulder and threw her head back in a throaty laugh. She cast Nicolas a mocking glance and beckoned him to her. What did she want? When he reached her, she stood up.

  ‘Monsieur, go and prepare some eggnog for me, my mouth is so dry and I need refreshment.’

  She underlined her request by striking him with her lace fan. The aggressiveness of this gesture seemed to Nicolas to open a rift between them. It had happened in the presence of a witness – that provocative-looking young man – and the tone was quite unacceptable. Not to mention the fact that she had revealed a secret of their private life: the eggnog he had prepared for her every night in the early days of their relationship. He had been patient long enough. Now he lost control, unable to conceal his anger.

  ‘Madame, I shall inform the servants of your wish. I bid you good evening.’

  She was staring at him, the lower half of her face stretched taut in a half-smile, her eyes hard. The assembled company had fallen silent. Nicolas bowed and strode across the room so brusquely that he knocked Balbastre’s glass out of his hand and did not even apologise. He threw his cloak over his shoulders, did not wait for Casimir to open the door for him, ran down the steps four at a time, and plunged into the cold and snowy Rue de Verneuil. He had no idea where to go, and stamped frantically on the cobbles. It was at that moment that a carriage had loomed up and he had regained a sense of reality.

  His first impulse was to dash to Rue Montmartre and join his friends. He soon changed his mind: it was not fitting, either for him or for them, to make them feel that he was only seeking out their company so that his evening would not be totally ruined. Such an attitude did not sit well with the esteem and respect he had for them. He looked at his repeater watch. It had been a gift from Madame Adélaïde, the King’s daughter, to thank him for retrieving her stolen jewels during an investigation. It was Monsieur Caron de Beaumarchais, watchmaker and factotum to the King’s daughters, who had delivered it to him. A lively character, to whom Nicolas had taken a liking, he had explained the workings of the watch, which rang the hours and the minutes with two different chimes, and given him a great deal of advice: always close the lid – which bore a delicate portrait of the princess – carefully rather than snapping it shut, always wind the mechanism slowly, never leave the precious object on cold marble. Surprised by this, Nicolas had asked why, and had learnt that the cold froze the oil in the mechanism and stopped the cogs from moving. He pressed on a spring, and heard six deep strokes, followed by six crystalline strokes: it was six thirty. On the corner of Rue de Beaune, he was jostled good-naturedly by a group of musketeers out for a good time, who had just left the nearby barracks.1

  He reflected for a moment, unsure where to go. No, he was definitely too unhappy to show his face in Rue Montmartre. For some time now, he had been wanting to see the rising new star of the Théâtre-Français, Mademoiselle Raucourt.2 Her debut a year earlier in the role of Dido had been a sensation, and had been duly reported as such in Le Mercure and La Gazette. No other actress in living memory had made such an impression: she was not yet eighteen, and was pretty as a picture, with a voice that was said to be enchanting, an exceptional bearing and a prodigious intelligence in her approach to her roles. Nicolas would go and watch tonight’s play: it would distract him from his worries, and no doubt he would glean in passing some spicy or edifying titbit which would delight Monsieur de Sartine the next day.

  The snow had turned to freezing rain by the time he passed the dark mass of the Pont Royal water pump. The lanterns along the right bank of the river and the terrace of the Tuileries glowed feebly through the damp air. Having a permanent pass, he knocked at the window of the guardroom and identified himself. The guard, grumbling at being disturbed in his enjoyment of a mulled wine which had coloured his white moustache red, opened the gate. As soon as he was in the gardens, Nicolas regretted taking this short cut. Instead of making things easier for himself, he found himself in a vast snowy expanse in which all the paths had disappeared. Now he was going to ruin his shoes – a particularly annoying thought, since they were as comfortable as felt slippers, and allowed him to stand for hours on end without feeling any tightness or fatigue. It would have been more sensible to take the longer way round through the colonnades of the Louvre. In the calm of the evening, he could have got the measure of the improvements the city authorities were making in the area, clearing the square and driving out the market stalls that had cluttered it for so many years. The plan was that when the ground had been properly levelled, it would be covered with a series of enclosed lawns which would be pleasant to the eye and permit a clear view of the Point-du-Jour.

  The great dark masses of the statues helped him to get his bearings, and he waded in a more or less straight line towards the gate to the swing bridge. At the end of the path, he bumped into Nicolas Coustou’s great statue of Caesar. The octagonal basin faced him, its waters glimmering faintly in the darkness. He had to veer right to get to Passage de l’Orangerie and from there reach the Théâtre-Français. For many years, the company had performed at the Étoile tennis court in Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain. In 1770, the building being on the verge of collapse, the theatre had moved to Servandoni’s machine room in the Tuileries, left vacant after the Opéra had been rebuilt in the Palais-Royal. Nicolas shared the opinion of the many critics who judged the layout of this temporary theatre ill suited to its purpose.

  The performance was about to start. He was greeted at the box office like a regular visitor: he was often on duty there, especially when the theatre was attended by members of the royal family or foreign monarchs who wished to remain incognito. In the foyer, his attention was drawn to an animated group dominated by the tall figure of his colleague, old Chorrey, the second oldest member of the police force. He walked up to the group. A sallow-faced man in a threadbare serge jacket was being held by two French Guards while Chorrey frisked him and placed his finds on a baluster console.

  ‘And you claim to be innocent, eh? Your clothes are like a fence’s shop in the Temple! Look, here’s Le Floch! You’ve come just at the right moment, my friend. You’re not on duty, though, are you? Or have I got it wrong?’

  ‘No, my dear fellow. I’m here as a customer.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to get your money’s worth! This blackguard has his pockets full. Two gold watches, one bronze watch, a double Barbette louis, six English guineas. These, too …’ He held up some coins. ‘Three ducats from Berne, a silver ducat from Venice, a few old French crowns. The whole of Europe seems to be here tonight to see La Raucourt. You’re for the galleys!’

  The man was shaking, as if stricken with a fever.

  ‘Find me the lieutenant of the guards,’ Chorrey said to one of the theatre attendants, ‘and be quick about it.’

  Nicolas was surprised that an old policeman with more than forty years’ service should not make the distinction between a lieutenant of the guards, in other words, the bodyguards, and a lieutenant in the Guards, in other words, an officer of the French Guards. He immediately reproached himself for his judgement, realising that his colleague was not as familiar as he was with the Court and its subtleties. The lieutenant, an arrogant-looking fellow, arrived and listened nervously as the commissioner instructed him to take the culprit into custody and to inform the watch to come for him and take him to the Châtelet. Chorrey abruptly turned his back on the officer and drew Nicolas into the auditorium.

  ‘That impostor infuriates me. I suppose he’s too high-born to consider being polite. To think we have to suffer the snubs of a boudoir dandy like that!’

  They took their seats in a box on the left-hand side, with a view of the whole of the auditorium, whose strange layout recalled its original purpose. Amidst a rustle of fabrics and creaking of floorboards, it was gradually filling up in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Look, th
e Prince de Conti is here again. The old rogue! He has his eyes on the new girl. He wants her for his collection!’

  ‘Yes, the young girls in the royal theatres are easy prey,’ said Nicolas. ‘They enjoy, as you know, a very particular privilege. They escape the authority of their parents, and the men who keep them are exempt from all prosecution.’

  ‘You’re telling me! I’ve lost count of those I have seen start like that and finish up amongst the criminal classes. For the moment, her air of decency and reputation for chastity have made her sought after by the greatest ladies, who smother her in jewels and clothes, overjoyed no doubt that this rare creature is no rival. Besides, her old father is still about, keeping his eye open for trouble. Will it last? Let’s wait for the last act. In any case, she’s a true prodigy, enough to make the most consummate of her rivals die of vexation.’

  ‘You’ve certainly been around a long time,’ said Nicolas. ‘More than forty years, I believe?’

  ‘Forty-three, to be exact. Time enough to get a little weary.’

  ‘But what adventures! We’re never bored in our profession.’

  ‘Well, that depends,’ said Chorrey, scratching his head under his wig. ‘I’ve always preferred criminal work, much more diverting than civil cases. At the beginning of my career, I was constantly being sent to do house searches, day and night. After that, I seemed to spend all my time keeping an eye on usurers, swindlers and pawnbrokers, before they started the Mont-de-Piété. Some pretty terrible characters there, I can tell you!’

  ‘But that’s all routine!’ said Nicolas. ‘You must surely have seen some more extraordinary events?’

  ‘Yes, of course. In 1757, the then Lieutenant General of Police, the worthy predecessor of Monsieur de Sartine—’

  ‘Who holds you in great esteem.’

  Chorrey blushed at the compliment. ‘I’m pleased to hear it. As I was saying, in 1757 I knocked myself out going all over the Arras and Saint-Omer regions and the whole province of Artois, searching out and questioning the relatives of Damiens, the King’s would-be assassin. In 1760, I constantly had to deal with thefts from theatres. That led me to a storehouse full of stolen goods in Briare: a mountain of purses, watches, snuffboxes and all kinds of coins. Finally, last year, I went with a company of grenadiers from Enghien, garrisoned at Sedan, to visit the printing works and bookshops in Bouillon and look for banned books.’

  ‘Such is the cross we bear!’ said Nicolas with a sigh. ‘Constantly searching for a needle in a haystack!’

  *

  The footlights had just been lit, and the three knocks interrupted their conversation. The evening’s play was Athalie by Racine. Knowing the work all too well, Nicolas soon found his attention wandering, the details of the actors’ performances proving more arresting than the plot. The newcomer certainly had an attractive countenance, although it was her partner, Lekain, playing the role of Abner to perfection, who impressed him more with his supreme skill: through some miracle of artifice, his prodigious ugliness disappeared and his stern, forbidding expression grew softer. Part of the audience, however, seemed to resent Mademoiselle Raucourt for taking a role in which Mademoiselle Dumesnil and La Clairon had won fame. For weeks now, Monsieur de Sartine’s spies had been reporting that a cabal had been organised by Mademoiselle Vestris. A member of the famous dynasty of dancers as well as of the Théâtre-Français, Mademoiselle Vestris was protected by the Duc de Choiseul, still in exile in Chanteloup since his disgrace, and by the Duc de Duras. These highly placed contacts were the basis of her self-importance and capacity to create trouble.

  Suddenly, a cat was heard miaowing. Whether the cat belonged to the establishment or had been surreptitiously brought in, the effect of the animal’s cry was extraordinary: the actors stopped in astonishment, and the youngest members of the choir were swept up in a fit of laughter that spread to the audience. The laughter reached its height when a young man in the stalls cried out in a bright, nasal voice, ‘I wager that’s Mademoiselle Vestris’s cat.’

  Hilarity swelled in the auditorium like a wave. Lekain imposed silence and was about to resume the performance when something else interrupted his flow. A man stood up in the stalls and leapt over the footlights on to the stage. There, shoving the actors who tried to drag him away, he declared that his name was Billard and that he had come to Paris to present a play of his own composition entitled The Seducer. This work, he said, had been praised by a number of men of taste but rejected by the ham actors in this theatre. The audience, amused by this second interlude, were listening so attentively that he was encouraged to continue.

  He was so tired of being repeatedly rejected, he said, that he had decided to declare open war on the present company. He would denounce its bad taste, condemn its members to a thousand misfortunes, and pride himself on no longer having to depend on such judges. He appealed to the spectators in the stalls: he would read his play to them and, if they judged it worthy, that would force this unworthy assembly to accept it. When they tried to prevent him, he brandished his sword, which was soon torn from him by a French Guard. A confused mass of soldiers and theatre employees dragged him by force into the foyer.

  The performance resumed immediately, in order to put an end to the commotion as quickly as possible, but a unanimous cry rose from the stalls, acclaiming the author. The clamour grew and the French Guards came back in force, arresting several spectators. There was an indescribable hullaballoo as members of the audience stood firm, and blows were exchanged.

  Nicolas hurried out after Commissioner Chorrey, who had turned crimson and was puffing and blowing. They came out into the foyer to find the author standing on a chair, reading his play to the guards, who were highly amused. When the watch arrived, Chorrey ordered the officer to conduct the culprit to the mad-house at Charenton, pending further information. This sequence of events had been a great distraction to Nicolas’s wounded soul, chasing away the anger and resentment. There was no point in his staying any longer, he thought. He had seen and heard enough of Mademoiselle Raucourt. Certain rather unnatural vocal effects of hers seemed to him to spoil the charms of her appearance and the elegance of her acting. In fact, at moments, it became so rough, hoarse and excessive as to destroy the music of the verse. He took his leave of Chorrey, who made him promise to come to dinner as soon as possible at his little house in Rue Maquignonne, near the police pavilion at the horse market. Nicolas recalled having been present, a dozen years earlier, while still an apprentice in the profession, at the inauguration, by Monsieur de Sartine, of this elegant building. He recalled, too, that Chorrey had a solid fortune, which he had inherited from his father, a horse dealer.

  The cold and damp of the night revived his anguish. Once again, as had so often happened in his youth, Nicolas found himself incapable of keeping his imagination in check. Left to itself, it would run wild, stubbornly heading down any path that presented itself, and he would be unable to rest until he had explored them all. It was a kind of mental itch, which he tried to dismiss, but in vain. The slightest upset or vexation, and it returned as strong as ever. If only he could take the middle way, see things in all their simplicity, and accept every fleeting moment of happiness for what it was! Monsieur de Noblecourt, being the honest man that he was, had promised him the cure: wisdom would come with age and the waning of the passions.

  Nicolas forced himself to reflect coolly on the current situation. How absurd to make a drama out of a woman’s caprice! A woman on her own, separated from her lover most of the time because of his work, as coquettish as the rest of her sex, susceptible to the attentions of idle young men, and perhaps driven to make him jealous as the only means of gauging the strength of his feelings for her. And he had flown into a rage at the smallest provocation as if he were her lord and master, and had over-dramatised what should only have been a little quarrel intended to reinvigorate their love for each other. He decided to give Julie a surprise and return unexpectedly. No sooner had this idea come into his head than the
desire to see her again took him over completely. He hailed a cab in Rue Saint-Honoré, and was driven across a frozen, deserted Paris as far as Rue de Verneuil. He added such a generous tip to the fare that the astonished coachman called him ‘Monseigneur’.

  He looked up. The lights were still on in the windows of Madame de Lastérieux’s house, and he could see shadows dancing. His ardour cooled: he had imagined that the house would be empty and dark and his lover tired and ready for bed. But perhaps there was still hope. When he got to the first floor, however, and opened the door with his key, he heard loud laughter and the clinking of glasses. Disappointment overwhelmed him like nausea. How wrong he had been to think that the party had been cut short simply because he had left in a hurry!

  Casimir appeared, carrying a tray. Nicolas retreated into a dark corner. When Casimir came back out of the servants’ pantry, his arms were laden with bottles. With an unaccustomed, but welcome, sense of pettiness, Nicolas remembered the bottle of old Tokay from Hungary he had acquired at no small cost from the Austrian ambassador’s butler: the fellow supplemented his wages by selling wine from his country that had been brought in in his master’s baggage, as well as supplying Monsieur de Sartine with interesting information. Julie loved that wine as an accompaniment to truffles, quail and pâté de foie gras in the manner of the Maréchal de Soubise. Nicolas decided to recover the bottle, which he had placed in the servants’ pantry that afternoon. Fortunately, it was still there: doubtless, the veil of dust and spiders’ webs that covered it and the dirty dishes piled around it had prevented it from being used during that evening’s banquet. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his cloak: he had made up his mind to go to Rue Montmartre after all, and there was no point in arriving there empty-handed. He turned, and there, leaning on the doorpost, his right hand on his hip, looking at him mockingly, was the young man who had been playing the pianoforte. Where the devil had he seen that face before? Nicolas walked out past him, shoving him slightly as he did so. Casimir watched in surprise as he raced down the stairs like a madman.