As I entered the building through a wide-open servants' entrance, I was greeted by a loud crash of crockery in the huge kitchen adjoining.
I poked in my head and looked around. Inside, everything had been turned topsy-turvy. Everyone was grabbing whatever he or she could manage to grab, some serious about gathering booty, others seeking only souvenirs.
Looking down into the wine cellars I beheld a hundred soon-to-be-drunken revelers jostling and fighting with each other, each determined to have the first choice of the King's best wine.
Standing at the foot of the great staircase, I looked up at an unstained expanse of marble. It seemed strange to me then that this one area should be entirely free of death, and I have no explanation for it now.
Pink cupids, secure in niches among their rosy clouds, looked down with wide, uncaring eyes from the high, plastered ceilings. Their expressions did not alter when now and then a new scream echoed from the mirrored walls.
I moved on, pausing at intervals to look and listen, my feet despite vampirish reflexes occasionally slipping and sliding in a mixture of wine and blood which anointed the floors of tile and polished wood. Boldly I proceeded into the palace, and then strode through one suite of rooms after another.
It was as true then as it is now, that when a man of robust appearance walks as if he had a right to be where he is, few are going to challenge him.
The main hallway had been newly redecorated with blood, here and there still fresh enough to be bright red.
Up the stairs and into the chapel. Here, as if they had been brought as offerings in some profaning black mass, the dead were piled. The air sang with hungry flies. Some indecipherable mess, oozing blood, had been dumped onto the high altar; in the rear, the organ had been smashed.
No living soul besides myself was present. It seemed to me that I had entered one of those times and places on this earth where the existence of Hell is foreshadowed, as it were, beyond any reasonable doubt. And those are the very places and the times where one is well-advised to seek Radu.
Here and there a few candles were simply burning in their holders, flames wavering no more than usual with drafts, their light glinting on a thousand facets of silver as if this were a dinner party. I wondered who had lighted these tapers and set them out, and wondered more that no serious fires had yet started.
In the front of the chapel a well-dressed man was standing in the pulpit, blowing on a horn, and it took me a moment to realize that he was imitating the Angel of the Resurrection. In front of him had gathered a small applauding crowd.
(Radu, where are you?)
But my esteemed sibling was nowhere to be found.
I looked and listened carefully. Some inner sense kept nagging me that Radu was not very far away. And in a long life I had learned that it was usually wise to trust my inner senses.
Now and then some scream of special shrillness burst out loud enough to be heard above the background roar—in my experience, Hell is seldom silent. Fresh cries of agony burst forth when some poor wretch who had been hiding was discovered and dragged out to death.
Two unarmed men—who yesterday, to judge by their clothing, had both been laborers—were fighting tooth and nail, sobbing and gasping in their rage, over a hoard of small coins spilled on the floor from God knew where. Might this trove have represented the eight-year-old Dauphin's childish exercise in greed? Now neither of the robbers was able to pick up a single sou without the other striking it from his hand.
Hundreds of vases, dishes, pieces of statuary, vast mirrors had been smashed to fragments. Half a dozen young girls, part of the invading mob, were haggling and quarreling over the remains of what might have been the Queen's cosmetics.
Their voices rose in fishwife clamor, and they seemed on the verge of hair-pulling and of blows.
In rapid succession I visited the Council Room, and then the Billiard Room. It was the same story everywhere, some apartments ruined and deserted, others still crowded with the many bodies of the Mob, staying near one another as if they feared that separation could cost them their vital madness.
In the dining room, one man, happy with his day's work, was eating jam with his lady friend, the two of them laughing as they smeared the red stuff on each other's faces. Another, enacting the role of a servant, laughing like a madman all the while, was handing out neatly folded napkins to his unwashed comrades and delicately filling their wineglasses. Someone had been using the table linen to clean and test the sharpness of a bloodstained sword.
Well, no one was going to be washing and mending these tablecloths tomorrow. All that I heard and saw assured me that any servants who had not joined the mob were going to be murdered as the lackeys of aristocrats.
Other people were methodically smashing plates and glasses. A very young but ugly woman had bared her breasts, and was dancing wildly on a table to music that she alone could hear. A man with a pot of honey and a spoon in hand stood in front of her, trying to attract her attention.
I pushed on, having forgotten for the time being my recent new acquaintance outside. Now and then someone bumped into me, took a look into my face, and moved on. I patiently proceeded.
Here was the doorway to what I realized must have been the Queen's private suite of rooms. The way was partially blocked by a row of dead bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets. Such a neat enshroudment must have taken place earlier in the day, when some tidy-minded members of the household staff had still had time to worry about the dead.
Inside the Queen's rooms, more women of all ages were ransacking the wardrobe of Marie Antoinette, trying on hats and bonnets. Nearby stood a piano, violently bereft of ivory keys, steel strings pulled out and broken. A bust of the young Dauphin, which must have been on the piano, now lay on the floor, chipped and soiled.
Poor Marie Antoinette! Not that I ever met her, but I doubt she meant anyone any harm, no more than her husband did. There is no shred of evidence, you know, that she ever really said it: I mean of course the famous quote about letting the poor eat cake if they could find no bread.
Ah! ca ira, ca ira, ca ira,
Les aristocrates a la lanterne…
So it goes, so it goes, so it goes. To the nearest lamppost with those damned aristocrats, and hang them high. The ragged chorus dissolved in incoherent noise. Other musical instruments had been smashed also.
(Radu, where are you? Surely you, as inevitably as the million flies, will be drawn to this scene.)
"Hey! You, there!"
The roar of triumph had come from behind me. I thought that the voice of Satan was in that noise. Turning, I beheld the speaker. He was advancing on me, a massive, archetypal figure in a red cap, clad in the rags and wooden shoes of a homeless Parisian, wearing the apron of his trade and waving a butcher's cleaver. Having established eye contact, I raised my eyebrows and slightly shook my head, trying to convey the idea that it would do him no good to pursue me further.
Normally when I attempt to communicate an idea of this kind I am successful. But not this time. Try to be kind, as folk in the twentieth century are wont to say, and see where it gets you. The man with the cleaver was all enfevered by the carnage surrounding him; he had me cornered, and plainly he was determined not to be cheated of his fun. No doubt in my hat and cloak I did look like some simpleton's idea of an aristocrat attempting to disguise his appearance.
My righteous butcher, armed with unshakable faith in his own strength and aflame with revolutionary zeal, was at least correct about one thing: He had me cornered, as it was still daylight. Denied the choice of disappearing into nothingness, or of turning into some four-legged or winged beast, I had no really convenient option other than to stand my ground.