Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne

It could not be true, he must be raving! He had stopped shouting at her, stopped hitting her. Quite suddenly, he had become all gentleness and tenderness. His hands were moving to caress her. He was bending down, slowly, inexorably, towards her lips, as though they held some fascination for him. In a flash, Marianne realized that he was on the point of subjecting her to a repetition of her unpleasant experience in the barn. At once, with an instinctive reaction of her whole body, she thrust him away with all her strength and screamed.

'No!—'

With a quick jerk, she was on her feet while Jean clutched at the bed to prevent himself falling. Smoothing out the disordered folds of her dress, Marianne folded her arms and stared defiantly at her attacker.

'Who do you take me for? You come in here, insult me, strike me and then on top of that, you think you only have to babble a few words of love and I'll fall into your arms! You love me? I am much obliged, and now, sir, do me the favour of leaving this room instantly! I have no wish to renew our – converse of the other night!'

By now, he too was on his feet, automatically brushing down his clothes with one hand. The expression of his face was heavy with chagrin.

'And once, there in Brittany, just for a moment, I could have thought you loved me—'

A rush of childish anger made her answer in words full of scorn.

'Me? Love you? You must be mad, I think! I needed you, that was all.'

The name he called her was too base not to betray the depths of his disappointment. With a look of hatred, he went to the door and opened it at last. But on the threshold he turned.

'You have rejected me, well, it will be the worse for you, Marianne! You shall be sorry!'

'I doubt it! Goodbye!'

She heard him go downstairs and, dropping into a chair, poured herself a few drops of wine to calm her. As her anger left her, she tried to think sensibly about the threat he had uttered but she finally came to the conclusion that there was nothing in it beyond the venom of a child that has failed to get its own way. He loved her, and therefore would do nothing to hurt her! In which she showed very little understanding of masculine vanity.

Marianne was still nursing these optimistic thoughts and wondering which novel it was where the heroine had been obliged to deal with a similar situation, when the door of her room was flung violently open from outside. Jean Le Dru burst in, followed by two gendarmes and pointed at the girl who sat there thunder-struck.

'There she is! She's an émigrée and has entered the country illegally. Her name is Marianne d'Asselnat and she is a royalist agent!'

Before Marianne could think of resistance, the two representatives of the law had seized her, each by one arm, and dragged her out of the room. Under the horrified gaze of the worthy Bobois and those, infinitely less agitated but still highly interested, of the other customers of the inn, she was hustled ignominiously down the stairs, thrust into a waiting cab and driven off.

She found herself inside a small black box with lowered blinds, beside a heavily moustached gendarme. Her first impulse was to scream aloud in a frenzy of rage and indignation, in the vain hope that someone would come to her rescue.

The gendarme tucked himself into his corner, and merely observed quietly: 'I shouldn't shout like that, if I were you, little lady. Or I'll have to gag you and truss you like a chicken! Be good now, it'll be best for everybody.'

Defeated, Marianne gave up the struggle and huddled as far as she could away from her guard. If ever she got her hands on that wretch Le Dru, she vowed, he would see what she was made of! To have her arrested like a common criminal! How could he—

Anger soon gave way to tears and then, because she was, after all, very tired and the swaying of the coach was soporific, Marianne fell asleep at last with the tears still wet on her pretty face.

Waking in the middle of the night to find herself in a cell of the prison of St Lazare, Marianne thought at first she must be dreaming. She had been snatched from her pretty little room so suddenly that, still half asleep, she could not help trying to shake off the nightmare but, little by little, it dawned on her that it was real.

The candle which had been left on a rickety table showed her a high, narrow room into which, during the day, the light must filter from a barred window set high up in the wall. The damp had made strange maps on the grey walls while broken flagstones and rusty locks revealed the antiquity of this one time convent. The only furniture, apart from the table and a stool, was a narrow bed on which was a straw mattress and a blanket. It was, as Marianne discovered by sitting on it, very hard. It was also extremely cold, since no fire was provided for the comfort of the prisoners. They had given her no time to snatch up her coat or carpet bag and, with nothing but her dress, Marianne could only hug herself in a desperate attempt to keep warm.

Her situation was a highly critical one. Nicolas Mallerousse had explained to her the perils awaiting the émigrées who returned to France illegally and, what was worse, the precious letter had been left behind in her bag. Marianne's feelings wavered between despair, when she thought of herself, and fury when she thought of the dastardly Le Dru who had denounced her because she refused to submit to his embraces. Finding this second state infinitely more stimulating than the first, she concentrated on it and even managed to extract a certain additional warmth from the anger that made her blood boil.

Dragging the blanket off the bed, she draped it round her shoulders and began striding furiously up and down the narrow space allotted to her, becoming increasingly wide awake as she grew warmer. She had to think, and think clearly, if she did not mean to moulder in this prison until it pleased Napoleon's police either to incarcerate her in some yet deeper dungeon, execute her or send her back to England under a strong guard. She was not altogether sure what happened to exiles who returned illegally since Nicolas had not seen fit to tell her, probably to avoid frightening her, but she guessed that it was bound to be unpleasant.

Nor did she know precisely where she was. The gendarme had told her on arrival that it was the prison of St Lazare but that meant nothing to her, the only prisons she was at all acquainted with being the Tower of London and the Plymouth hulks. However, since prisons were the department of the Minister of Police, the important thing was to see him as quickly as possible. She no longer had her letter, it was true, but she still had in her head the words which Nicolas had made her learn by heart and told her to repeat to him.

She must therefore see this lofty personage as soon as possible, and that meant drawing as much attention to herself as possible. The silence all about her was unendurable. To keep her spirits up, she thought of Jean Le Dru and of what she would do to him were fate ever good enough to deliver him up to her bound hand and foot. The method worked. Once more wide awake and stirred to a fine rage, Marianne flung herself on the door and began pounding on it and screaming at the top of her voice.

'I want to see the Minister of Police! I demand to see the Minister of Police!'

Nothing happened at first but she went on shouting still more loudly without losing heart. In a little while, there was a pattering of footsteps in the passage and a nun's austere face appeared at the barred peep-hole in the door.

'What is the meaning of this disturbance! Be quiet at once! You will wake everyone!'

'I don't care if I do. I have been wrongfully arrested. I am not an émigrée, I am Marianne Mallerousse and it says so in my papers if they had given me a chance to bring them. I want to see the Minister!'

'Ministers cannot be woken up in the middle of the night for the sake of little girls who lose their temper. Go to sleep! No doubt your case will be dealt with in the morning.'

'If it can wait till morning, I can't see why I wasn't allowed to sleep peacefully in my own bed. The rate your gendarmes moved, you'd have thought there was a fire on!'

'They had to make sure of you. You might have given them the slip.'

'I'm sorry to have to tell you, sister, but you're talking nonsense. I had just taken a room at the inn after a long and tiring journey. Can you tell me why I should have run away again, or where?'

The few square inches of face framed in the black and white headdress seemed to become still more withdrawn.

'I am not here to argue with you about the method of your arrest, my girl. You are in prison. And I am under orders to guard you. Be quiet and try to sleep!'

'Sleep? Could anyone sleep with such a sense of injustice!' Marianne cried in ringing, melodramatic tones. 'I shall not sleep until my cries are heard! Go and fetch the Minister. He must listen to me!'

'He can listen to you just as well tomorrow. Be quiet, now. If you persist in this disturbance I shall have you transferred to a punishment cell where you will be no better off—'

The words carried conviction and since she was by no means anxious to find herself thrown into an even gloomier dungeon, Marianne thought it wisest to lower her voice. But she did not admit defeat.

'Very well! I will be quiet. But mind this, sister. I have something important to communicate to the Minister, something very important indeed – and he may not be best pleased if you prevent me reaching him in time. However, if the Minister's displeasure means nothing to you—'

That it did mean a good deal, Marianne could see from the sudden alarm reflected on the nun's face which, she could have sworn changed colour. The Citizen Fouché, so recently elevated to a dukedom, could not be an easy man.

'Very well,' the sister said quietly. 'I will inform our Mother Superior and she will take the necessary steps tomorrow morning. But, for God's sake, make no more noise!'

She looked round anxiously. In fact, the inmates of the neighbouring cells were awake and the murmur of grumbling voices could be heard on all sides. The silence was peopled and the desert lived, to all appearances much to the wardress's annoyance.

'There!' she said crossly. 'You have woken the whole floor. It will take me a good quarter of an hour to get them quiet again. You deserve punishment.'

'Don't upset yourself,' Marianne said kindly. 'I'll be quiet. But you be sure to keep your promise!'

'I have promised nothing. But I do promise. Now, be quiet.'

The face vanished and the hatch snapped shut. The prisoner heard the nun's voice, loud and firm now, moving along the corridor telling each one to be quiet.

Satisfied with her progress, Marianne returned to her mattress, her ears alert for the various noises around her. Who were they, these women whose sleep she had disturbed, whose dreams she had unwittingly entered? Were they real malefactors, thieves and prostitutes or, like herself, innocent victims of the terrible police machine? She felt an instinctive sympathy for these faceless, complaining voices, simply because they were women. How many of them had suffered, like herself, at the hands of one or more men. In all the books she had read, excepting possibly the frightful story of Lady Macbeth, every wretched woman who came to a bad end was always driven to it by a man.

And so, pondering on these other women, invisible yet ever-present, with whom fate had thrown her, Marianne fell asleep at last without realizing it. When she woke, it was broad daylight, as broad, that is, as daylight could be in a cell in St Lazare, and the sister wardress was standing beside her with a bundle under her arm. Dumped on the bed, this bundle proved to contain a plain grey woollen dress, a cap and fichu of unbleached linen, a coarse shift, thick, black woollen stockings and a pair of clogs.

'Take off your clothes,' the sister commanded sternly, 'and put these on.'

It was a different nun from the night before and suddenly Marianne lost her temper.

'Put on these hideous things? Certainly not! To begin with, I am not staying here. I am to see the Minister of Police this morning and—'

The newcomer's face was expressionless as her voice. It was so large and pale as to be almost indistinguishable from her veil, so that the total effect was something like a full moon, utterly devoid of character. Apparently, however, its owner knew how to obey orders. In exactly the same tone, she repeated: 'Get undressed and put these on.'