Monsieur Natai. Do the same for all the members of the committee — their addresses are in the police reports. I will spend my time fine-tuning my act while I wait for Varencourt to give me the sign. If you need me, you know where 111 be. Have you had time to find lodgings?’
‘Auberge Arcole, practically on your doorstep. The street doesn’t even have a name, but it’s on the banks of the Bievre, between two tanneries. Monsieur Fernand Lami. What am I to Chevalier Quentin de Langes?’
A soldier who served under me in the 84th. You support the King because you think that will earn you money and because you’ve had enough of the war.’
A role almost tailor-made for me! I’ll go and find Monsieur Natai tomorrow morning and see what reports he has for me. Then I’ll be able to tell you all about them in the evening.’
‘No. I don’t think you should do that. I’m not supposed to know the members of the organisation. If you tell me a lot about them now, I’m worried I’ll give myself away when I meet them.’
‘I don’t agree! The more you know about them, the better you’ll be able to adapt your conversation and tell them what they want to hear, if they’re going to accept you as one of theirs.’
The first meeting with them will be fraught with difficulty. The strain of it might make me reveal something written in the police reports ...’
‘You’ll just have to be careful! And if you do ever make a mistake, you can always say that Charles de Varencourt told you about them.’
‘No. That’s against their rules and you can’t assume they’re stupid. The Revolution tried to paint the aristocracy as imbeciles and degenerates. But it never does to underestimate your enemies. No, I’ve made my decision. My strategy is going to be to get into the skin of my character as much as possible, and Chevalier Quentin de Langes doesn’t know much about them. So it must be the same for Lieutenant-Colonel Margont. You mustn’t talk to me about them until after I’ve met them for the first time. That leaves you enough time to study as many police reports as possible.
Afterwards, in my other meetings with them, if I mention something I’m not supposed to know, then I’ll be able to say that I researched them after I had been admitted to the group. That’s exactly what Chevalier de Langes would do.’
‘Well ... all right, perhaps you’re right. You decide - it’s you who has to be Quentin de Langes ...’
Rue du Pique looked unprepossessing. It was dirty, and the smell! The emanations from the tanneries, hide-makers and dye works mingled with the stink of mounds of rubbish ... Number 9, which had been converted into an inn, was so dilapidated it looked as if it might crumble to the ground at any minute. Margont presented himself to the owner as Monsieur Langes and was given the key to a room under the eaves.
He studied the documents Joseph had given him. To help him memorise the events of his life, he imagined them unfolding before his eyes. When he was capable of reciting the life of Quentin de Langes, he burnt anything compromising and got rid of the
ashes.
The room had been suitably furnished before his arrival to suit his new persona. But he spent a little time rearranging things so that they better suited his own preferences. He chased away the cockroaches that scuttled under the floorboards at the approach of his candle, leafed through the books and scribbled notes in some of them, went to the window and hailed a water-carrier, who brought him up a bucket filled with water from the Seine. He ground his teeth when he opened the trunk. All the clothes were brand spanking new! He decided to throw them away and go to a second-hand clothes shop the next day. He would also buy a Bible. He thought about his situation, he was worried ... He felt like a ferret about to be released into an earth filled with foxes and expected to pass himself off as one of them.
CHAPTER 8
AFTER three days spent trying to perfect his royalist persona and avoid being observed, Margont was no longer quite himself. He was so successful in his new role that little by little he was starting to lose his bearings.
He went to ‘his’ printing works, Imperial Press (previously called Crown Press, but hastily renamed during the Revolution), just beside the Botanical Cardens. Joseph and Talleyrand had arranged everything very cleverly. Above the modest doorway, a metal sign with a representation of a newspaper indicated what the premises were. You went down a few steps to reach a large room furnished with a classic printing press with twin wooden frames, a ‘one movement’ Didot and Anisson press, a Nicholson cylinder press -the last word in printing, a dream! - and various broken presses, which were there merely to furnish parts for those that functioned. The manager, Mathurin Jelent, was the only one to know the truth about Margont. He had been secretly passing on information
about the printing press to the imperial authorities for years, denouncing customers who wanted to print illicit documents: anti-government pamphlets, unauthorised newspapers, unofficial proclamations ... He had also undertaken to act as a link between Joseph and Margont, who wouldn’t then have to rely solely on Lefine and Natai. Conveniently, the owner of the print works lived in Lyons and never visited, contenting himself with drinking the profits away. This allowed Jelent to introduce Margont as a new associate. Margont told the employees - two typesetters and two printers - that he had come in person because he hoped to make money out of the current situation.
Margont helped lay out the pages, handling the characters and getting his fingers covered in ink. He familiarised himself with printing and learnt about all the parts of the process: choosing the paper and the typography, setting the type by pushing the characters into the slots of the coffin, inking the formes, placing the virgin sheets between the frisket and the tympan, folding and feeding the whole thing under the plate of the press, turning the
handle to activate the screw ...
He felt like a matryoshka, one of those Russian dolls he had seen in Moscow. On the outside was Monsieur de Langes, a man interested only in turning a profit. Inside there was the royalist secretly preparing posters calling Parisians to sedition. And inside that was Quentin Margont, his true self, who had to be kept well hidden. Nevertheless he derived real pleasure from printing. He turned out invitations, the new menu for the Beauvilliers restaurant in the Palais-Royal arcades, and proclamations from the Imperial Government. He imagined he was working on the newspaper he had wanted to start for so many years. Instead of printing ‘eel pie’, ‘turbot stuffed with rose’ (new recipes and unusual flavours were all the rage) or ‘English green beans’, he imagined the letters spelling out headlines such as ‘What has become of Liberty?’ ‘Will the war ever be over?’ ... The words danced in front of his eyes and the lead characters relaid themselves in his mind, printing his dreams. When he was out and about he took care to throw possible spies off the scent. He forced himself to look with contempt at soldiers,
at the Colonne de la Grande Armée in Place Vendome and at the Arc de Triomphe, which was already very impressive, even though it was still only half its projected height of fifty metres. He ground his teeth when he had to go down Rue Saint-Honoré, turning away to avoid looking at the Eglise Saint-Roch, where on the orders of a certain General Bonaparte, royalist rioters had been felled on the steps by a hail of cannon fire. He trained himself to banish the name ‘Napoleon’ from his thoughts and to replace it with ‘Bonaparte’, ‘the tyrant’, ‘the ogre’, ‘the upstart’, ‘the usurper’ ...
Once a person starts to act contrary to their own instincts they end up losing sight of their true selves. Margont was astonished to notice how far the attitudes he adopted for appearances’ sake started to influence his thoughts. As a result of continually acting like a royalist, he started to wonder whether the restoration of the monarchy might not in fact have some merit. It would mean an end to war, which in turn would mean that many people who longed to do something else could finally leave the army. But to think like that was heresy for a republican like him! How could he even consider abandoning the ideals of the Revolution? He was like an actor who plays a role each evening with such success that he eventually becomes consumed by it.