on Place Louis XV. The great noise of the festivities had died down, but cries and moans rose on all sides. Nicolas ran straight into Inspector Bourdeau, his deputy, who was giving orders to some men of the watch.
‘Ah, Nicolas!’ he exclaimed. ‘We don’t know if we’re coming or going! The fire has been contained, the water pumps from La Madeleine and Saint-Honoré market have seen to that. Most of the criminals have scattered, although some are still trying to strip the dead of their belongings. The victims are being removed, and those bodies that have been identified have been taken to the boulevard.’
Bourdeau seemed overwhelmed. The vast esplanade looked like a battlefield at night. An acrid black smoke rose into the air, whirled about, then, blown back down by the wind, fell again, shrouding the lights beneath a lugubrious veil. In the middle of the square, the remains of the triumphal structure stood like a sinister scaffold. Wreathed in smoke, the bronze monarch looked down at the scene, unruffled and indifferent. Semacgus, who had noticed Nicolas looking at the statue, murmured, ‘The Horseman of the Apocalypse!’ To their right, in Rue Royale, people had started to lay out the dead against the wall of the Garde-Meuble and were searching them in order to determine their identities and putting labels on them so that they could be recognised more easily by their families. Bourdeau and his men had restored a semblance of order. The area had been cordoned off with some difficulty and groups of volunteers were going down into the trenches on Rue Royale. A chain was starting to form. As soon as the victims had been brought out, an attempt was made to determine which of them were still alive so that they could be taken to the improvised emergency posts. There, doctors and apothecaries who had come running did whatever they could to treat them. Nicolas noted with horror that it was no easy task to bring up the bodies; those who lay at the bottom were crushed beneath the weight of those on top, and it was difficult to disentangle the various layers. He noted, too, that most of the dead belonged to the humblest classes. Some of them had wounds which could only have been caused by deliberate blows from canes or swords.
‘The street was claimed by the strongest and richest,’ Bourdeau muttered.
‘The criminals will get the blame,’ Nicolas replied. ‘But the cabs and carriages played their part in the slaughter, and those who forced their bloody way through even more so!’
They worked all night, helping to sort the dead and injured. As the sun was rising, Semacgus drew the commissioner and Bourdeau to a corner of La Madeleine cemetery where a number of bodies had been gathered. He had a puzzled look on his face. He pointed to a young girl lying between two old men. He knelt and uncovered the upper part of her neck. On each side were bluish marks that appeared to have been left by fingers. He moved the dead girl’s head. Her mouth was twisted and half open, and let out a sound like sand.
Nicolas looked at Semacgus. ‘That’s quite a strange injury for someone who’s supposed to have been crushed.’
‘That’s my impression, too,’ the surgeon agreed. ‘She wasn’t crushed; she was strangled.’
‘Have the body put to one side and taken to the Basse-Geôle, Bourdeau, we’ll have to tell our friend Sanson.’ Nicolas turned to Semacgus. ‘You know, he’s the only person I’d trust with an operation like that – apart from you, of course.’
He made a preliminary search of the body. The victim had nothing on her except her clothes – of high quality, he noted. No bag or reticule, no jewellery. One of her hands was clenched: he prised it open to reveal a small pierced pearl, of jade or obsidian. He wrapped it in his handkerchief. Bourdeau returned with two porters and a stretcher.
As they stared at the young victim’s distorted face, they were overcome with exhaustion. It was out of the question that they would go to La Paulet’s and eat now. The sun rising on this grim, bloodstained morning could not dissipate the damp mist which presaged a storm. Paris was shapeless and colourless, apparently finding it hard to awaken from a tragedy that would gradually spread to city and court, districts and faubourgs, and, when it reached Versailles, would cast a shadow over the waking moments of an old King and a young couple.
NOTES – CHAPTER I
1. ‘Here, there is nothing.’
2. Louis XV’s eldest daughter (cf. The Man with the Lead Stomach).
3. The author cannot resist quoting this very eighteenth-century statement by Talleyrand, spoken when he presented to Emperor Franz of Austria the jewels originally given as a gift by Napoleon to Marie-Louise.
4. A net was stretched across the Seine at Saint-Cloud to collect the bodies of the drowned.
Sic egesto quidquid turbidum redit urbi sua forma legesque et munia magistratuum.
Thus emptied of its turbulence, the city recovers its usual form, its laws and its magistrates with their practice.
TACTITUS
Thursday 31 May 1770
Nicolas moved through a suspended city, a city surprised by its own suffering. Everyone had his own version of the events to peddle. Little groups conversed in low voices. Some noisier ones seemed to be pursuing a long-standing quarrel. The shops, usually open at this hour, were still closed, as if observing a state of mourning. Death had struck everywhere, and the spectacle of the wounded and dying being brought back to their homes had spread the news of the disaster throughout Paris, made all the worse by the false rumours inevitably aroused by such a tragedy. People seemed struck by the fact that this catastrophe had happened during the celebrations for a royal wedding. It was a bad omen, and it made the future uncertain and vaguely menacing. Nicolas passed priests carrying the Holy Sacrament. Passers-by crossed themselves, took off their hats or knelt before them.
Rue Montmartre lacked its usual animation. Even the familiar, reassuring smell of freshly baked bread coming from the baker’s shop on the ground floor of Noblecourt’s house had lost its enchantment. Breathing it in, he immediately remembered the terrible, musty odour of wet fire and blood hovering over Place Louis XV. An officer of the watch had lent him a mare, a cantankerous animal which snorted and pulled back its ears. Bourdeau had remained on the scene to help the commissioners from the various districts who had come running as reinforcements.
Nicolas’s first impulse had been to gallop to police headquarters in Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. But he knew all too well that, despite the gravity of the moment, Monsieur de Sartine would not have tolerated anyone appearing before him with a soot-blackened face and dishevelled clothes. He had often experienced the apparent insensitivity of a chief who did not accept any weakness in himself, and hated having to deal with that of his subordinates. The King’s service was all that mattered, and there was no particular advantage in being injured, bruised and dirty. On the contrary, such a lapse in the proprieties would have brought disfavour on anyone who dared to appear in that way. To Monsieur de Sartine, it would have demonstrated neither courage nor devotion, but rather a contempt for all that his office represented, a licentiousness that went against
