A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (book suggestions TXT) 📕

Seine, we would find the Faubourgs Saint-Germain, Saint-Marcel, and Saint-Michel—all, of course, according to the old nomenclature. All names and titles connected with religion, particularly districts, have of course been changed. That was done by order of the National Convention, in 1792. But I’m afraid many people are like me, and keep using the old names, which no doubt is enough to get one arrested these days.”

      “But then one could just as likely be arrested for nothing at all.”

      “Very true. So be careful. Look, over there you can see the towers of Notre Dame. Of course now it too is supposed to be called something else, I forget what.”

      He gazed at the upper parts of the cathedral, visible above green summer trees and lesser buildings. “That I do remember.” Here and there were a few such sights. Another was l’Hotel Royal des Invalides, one of the largest buildings in Paris, a retirement home and hospital for veterans. On the high ground of Montmartre was a profusion of windmills.

      Entering the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, one of the original hotbeds of revolutionary fervor, Radcliffe observed no great improvement. The streets were narrow and filthy, the dwellings wretched, the people dressed in rags.

* * * * * *

      The journeying couple—Jules, unless reminded, tended to tag along behind them, playing the servant’s role in dangerously, conspicuously reactionary fashion—paused briefly to look at the Bastille. Or rather they stopped to survey the pile of ruins, inhabited by a few slow-moving workmen, that were now all that remained of that once forbidding fortress.

      “So, this is where your Revolution had its beginning.”

      “Don’t call it mine!”

      “Sorry.”

      Melanie thought it over. She looked tired. “Yes, the thing began here, as much as anywhere. The nation, the government, all turned upside down. And it seemed necessary, and for a time I thought that we might really find a better way to live—as you did in America, without aristocrats or an established church. But soon…” Her voice trailed off, and she gave an expressive shrug.

      “But what will they do with all the stones?” Philip gestured; the piles of disassembled masonry were impressive both in height and in extent. “There are certainly enough to do a lot of building. Schools? Better houses for the poor?”

      Melanie shrugged. “No one knows. People argue about it. Construction is not one of the things that the new regime seems particularly good at. I have heard that the engineers in charge of demolition have sold many as souvenirs, and made a tidy profit.”

      Watching people coming and going on the city streets, Radcliffe observed that men generally wore red workers’ caps, or tricorn hats with Revolutionary cockades of red, white, and blue paper pinned on them. Radcliffe was reminded that the carmagnole was a workman’s jacket as well as a song, and the jacket had become part of the Revolutionary uniform.

      In some ways the city showed itself about as Radcliffe had expected; in others it presented great surprises. Fascinating of course, but disappointingly unstable. On some streets people appeared to be going on with their lives, buying and selling, laughing and arguing and bargaining, as if things were normal after all. In other neighborhoods it was obvious that life had deviated a long way from its regular course. The slogans, and the scent of fear, were everywhere.

* * *

      Melanie now guided Philip Radcliffe to the Jacobin club, a political organization so called because it met in a former Jacobin convent. Paine, whom they were hoping to encounter, was not there.

      Philip was still puzzled. “Jacobin convent? I don’t remember hearing of any such religious order.”

      “It is what the Dominicans are called in Paris,” Melanie explained.

      Radcliffe gazed around the large room furnished with desks and tables, and half-filled with men of a variety of ages and backgrounds—there were a few women present, seemingly as spectators—engaged in arguing pairs and groups.

      Radcliffe overheard some fond whispers recalling Danton, who had so recently been guillotined. He had been loud, gross, and blustery, the very opposite of Robespierre in many ways. When Danton was holding forth, they said, one would require a very unusual voice to make oneself heard.

      And then the voices cut off suddenly. Robespierre himself was approaching.

      “It is Citizeness Romain. And how are you, my child?” The Incorruptible, his power now at its zenith, was holding a little nosegay of flowers. Not least among his achievements was the fact that he had been president of the Jacobin club since 1791. In that same year Robespierre had proposed that the death penalty be abolished. Since then he had changed his opinion, on that subject at least.

      Melanie introduced her companion as the natural son of Benjamin Franklin, and an acquaintance of Tom Paine.

      Radcliffe found himself face to face with a man of modest stature, thirty-six years old, wearing impeccably neat, jarringly aristocratic clothing, complete with powdered wig. Maximilien de Robespierre had a small and somewhat catlike face with greenish eyes. Green-tinted spectacles added a tint of that color to his sallow skin.

      Robespierre’s pair of bodyguards, armed with oaken cudgels, were large, fierce men, rudely dressed and with huge mustaches, seeming in every way a contrast to the man they served so loyally.

      Radcliffe wondered if Robespierre was the only man in Paris who still wore the powdered wig and the fine clothes of a gentleman. The point of his doing so seemed to be that this individual stood serenely above all need to demonstrate where his sympathies lay.

      In Paris the Incorruptible now maintained lodgings of becoming modesty, at 366 Rue St. Honore, in the house of Duplay the carpenter and cabinetmaker.

      Melanie said: “My father’s life is dearer to me than almost anything else in the world.”

      Robespierre responded piously: “Nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic.” The words were spoken with a terrible sincerity.

      Standing beside the Incorruptible was a man introduced to Radcliffe as Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just. He was younger and taller than Robespierre, and classically handsome; Radcliffe had already heard him referred to in whispers as the Angel of