Margont was perplexed. Lefine’s description did not fit at all with his memory of her. He had the feeling that the more he learned about the woman the less he knew her. ‘I don’t know if I would have had her daring, in the same situation.’
‘Well, I know that I wouldn’t. I would have left with the silver. The district tribunal found in her favour. Her husband emigrated to London, officially because of revolutionary fury, which was set to increase, but also to escape public derision.’
‘Well done, Fernand, good work!’
Lefine looked pleased. When he was complimented, he thrust his chest out like the fabled crow, though he would never have
opened his beak and let the cheese fall out...
Margont grew thoughtful.
‘What you’ve told me explains some of her behaviour.
When I met her, I had the impression that I disgusted her. I had never encountered such a reaction before. Having been deceived for such a long time made the betrayal she suffered much worse. She must have developed a hatred of lies. I think she’s on the lookout for lies everywhere and in everyone she meets. And she’s discerning - she picked up that I was not being honest with them. I’m going to have to be very careful when she’s there!’
‘If she poses the most danger to you, why don’t you seduce her?’ ‘What a despicable idea!’
‘If she’s in love she will be blind to—’
‘I don’t like the way you treat people like pawns.’
‘And how do they treat us?’
‘You can’t see her burning off the face of a corpse ... but I’m not so sure ... In any case, she’s certainly a strong character. She introduced herself under her maiden name and none of the members dared call her “Madame de Joucy”, even though they probably all disapprove of the divorce.’
‘She’s the only other member whose address we know. She doesn’t seem to be aware that the police are investigating her. She lives in Faubourg Saint-Germain - I’m having her house watched.’ ‘Are you using trustworthy men, as I asked?’
‘Yes, I can vouch for them. They haven’t discovered anything very interesting about her daily life.’
Margont rose. ‘Let’s go and stretch our legs.’
They went towards the hill of Montmartre and started to climb it slowly. It was so easy at the moment ... but should the Allies arrive at the gates of Paris, they would inevitably attack Montmartre. And so with every step, Margont imagined he was already stepping over the enemy corpses that would litter the slopes.
‘What did you find out about Honoré de Nolant? I know nothing about him, other than that he was the one the group had allocated to slit my throat, if necessary. So obviously he is capable of killing. Perhaps he has already done so ... He’s the one I know the least,
but at the same time he’s the most dangerous.’
‘You’re right to fear him, because he has done some unpleasant things. The police reports contain some interesting facts about him. His family belongs to the nobility of Champagne. As an adolescent he was part of Louis XVI’s entourage. He used to read to the King and perform other similarly useless services. Nolant really was a good friend. But he was quick to spot the change in the prevailing wind, and after 1790 he began to pass information secretly to the members of the National Assembly who were drawing up the new constitution. He passed on the details of the lives of the King, Marie-Antoinette, the dauphin ... According to what I read, he was the first to reveal the disappearance of the King and his family on the night of 20 June 1791 ...’
The flight of the King, that ended at Varennes, when a postmaster, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, recognised Louis XVI.’
‘Honoré de Nolant was cunning. By the time he had raised the alert, the royal family was already on the road. He claimed that he reacted as soon as he had noticed that the King was no longer there. But I think he was hedging his bets. Had Louis XVI been able to escape abroad, Nolant, who was certainly aware of the plan and had perhaps even helped with arrangements, would have been rewarded. But once the King was arrested, the revolutionaries stopped treating Honoré de Nolant as merely a spy and welcomed him as a real revolutionary. He changed his name to “Denolant” and had a dazzling career. In 1793 he spied on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, the bloodthirsty alliance - Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just - that wanted to guillotine every Frenchman!’ ‘Another spy? Varencourt, me, now Nolant...’
‘If you stick your hand in the hornets’ nest, you shouldn’t be surprised if you keep coming across hornets.’
‘The Swords of the King must be unaware of all that. They would never have accepted such a man into their ranks! They must know only part of his history.’
‘Afterwards he worked for the Revolutionary Tribunal. So he might well have had reason one day to write out the name Louis de Leaume, adding after it, “Condemned to death by guillotine.”
When Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor, Honoré de Nolant became an imperialist and denounced the partisans of the Republic. He had gathered many contacts during his time as part of Louis XVI’s entourage, and then amongst the higher revolutionary echelons. Which was why Fouche, when he was head of the civilian police, decided to take him into his ministry where apparently he was very useful. He helped put together dossiers on the royalists, on revolutionaries and on republicans who were opposed to the Emperor. But in January 1810 people started to suspect that he was embezzling money. Honoré de Nolant immediately disappeared -from one day to the next! The police realised he had been making fools of them. He had claimed to have numerous informants who would only deal with him. But most of them did not actually exist and Nolant simply kept the sums he was supposed to pay over to them for himself. In exchange for the money, he invented republican plots, assassination plans ... it was all hot air. Expensive with it. The civilian police hate him.'
‘He can’t have walked away empty-handed, and I’m not only referring to money. He must have joined the Swords of the King complete with dossiers of information. That’s why he was accepted onto the committee! He’s the reason they are so well informed. Thanks to him they continually avoid detection by the police! He must have given them the names of the investigators in charge of tracking royalist organisations, and the names of their informers ... Perhaps he still has friends in the Ministry of Civilian Police, who continue to keep him informed. Now I understand why Joseph and Talleyrand chose me. It’s because I have nothing at all to do with any of the imperial police forces.’
‘That’s all I have on Honoré de Nolant.’
‘The group must be suspicious of him. They make him pay for his treachery by giving him the dirty jobs. He’s obliged to prove his loyalty by spilling blood. He’s a professional traitor: a royalist, a revolutionary, a republican, an imperialist and then a royalist again ... It must have been he who realised that the best way to disrupt the defence of Paris would be to murder those in charge. He understood the situation from the inside. He must have been the
one to suggest Colonel Berle! So at the very least, he was an accomplice to the crime!’
‘Calm down ... you’re in a state!’
‘At least the others are following an ideology. Even Charles de Varencourt is loyal to his passion for gambling. But Honoré de Nolant...’
‘If he’s arrested, the police will hang him. Unless the army has him shot before that.’
‘I can’t see any connection between him and fire.’
They reached the summit of Montmartre and Paris stretched out before them. Louis XIV had stamped his mark on the city with his grandiose architectural schemes: the golden dome of the Invalides shimmered like a second sun — sparking off dreams that were immediately quenched by fear — Place Vendome ... Napoleon had done the same, to tell the world that he was as great as the Sun King: with the column in Place Vendome, the Arc de Triomphe still under construction, the Eglise de la Madeleine imitating a Greco-Roman temple, the opening up of Rue de Rivoli, the bridges of