The Cavalier of the Apocalypse Page 3

2

  Tuesday, 3 January

  He called on Derville on Tuesday morning as they had arranged. Derville's manservant, with a dubious glance at Aristide's well-worn overcoat and black suit, led him through a small, octagonal anteroom to wait in the salon. He occupied the time by wandering about, inspecting the objects on display.

  Derville's taste, at odds with the prevailing fashions, ran not to bronzes in the classical style, sentimental paintings, or dainty porcelain figurines, but to the bizarre and risqu?. A small terra-cotta figurine-ancient Roman, Aristide thought, either genuine or counterfeit-proved to be the god Priapus, boasting an enormous phallus and a suitably cheerful grin. Reaching a corner, he pushed aside a small velvet curtain to discover a framed, hand-colored engraving of three women and two men-nude, but with their hair perfectly dressed-engaged in athletic and anatomically improbable activities that left nothing to the imagination.

  He hastily dropped the curtain back into place as Derville entered, half dressed, and the manservant brought morning coffee for them. At last Derville threw off his dressing gown, examined with a critical eye the three exquisitely tailored coats and four waistcoats that the servant presented to him, condemned all of them as unwearable, finally shouldered himself into an elegant striped silk coat and warm woolen overcoat, and pronounced himself ready to depart for the pleasure gardens.

  The new construction at the Palais-Royal, surrounding the open grounds, was, in fact, not quite completed. One long row of arcades receded northward into the distance before them, as perfect in its perspective as a draftsman's architectural drawing. On the far side of the gardens, however, beyond the lawns, the fountain, and the severely clipped rows of young lime trees, skeletons in midwinter, the houses were still merely stone shells. Winches strained and workmen shouted as, below them, fashionable shoppers and their servants scurried to avoid any possible falling beams or limestone blocks.

  Derville's conversation that morning consisted mostly of advice about fashions and tailors as they passed the shops and he declared this one to be the best glover, or that one to be a hatter to avoid. Aristide, uninterested in the latest mode, nodded when he felt it was appropriate and tried to recall whether or not Derville had always been so concerned with trivial matters.

  "Have him make your culotte," Derville added, pointing, as they passed a particularly opulent-looking tailor's workroom, "but not your coat or your waistcoat, and if you want a complete suit of clothes, then you should probably go elsewhere. Ah, here we are." He steered Aristide toward an arcade with the legend JOUBERT FR?RES above it, halfway down the row of crowded, colorful shops and doorways. "That bookshop."

  They strolled toward it, dodging the crowds, numerous even on an icy January day: chattering ladies, swaggering dandies, footmen laden with parcels, and pert young shopgirls selling ribbons, paper flowers, trinkets, tobacco, and other such fancies from trays. The boutiques and businesses they passed ranged from the most elegant of perfumeries, jewelers, and dressmakers' shops to caf?s, grand or modest, small hotels, and a tiny theater or two, little more than sideshows. Here and there discreet signs pointed to upstairs establishments offering, Aristide guessed, the amusements of the roulette table or the bedroom or both. Interspersed with the expensive luxury shops were more prosaic enterprises selling books, pamphlets, sheet music, and kitchenware. It being only noon, Derville announced, the whores were not up yet.

  Joubert's shop was lined from floor to twelve-foot ceiling with shelves of books, some already bound in gleaming gilt-stamped leather, but most still in coverless broch? form, so that the customer could have his purchases bound to order, to match the other volumes in his library. Before the counter stood racks of respectable periodicals, from the Journal de Paris, the official daily newspaper, to literary weeklies like the Mercure de France, L'Ann?e Litt?raire, and Derville's own Parnassus. Behind the counter or in a back room, Aristide knew, would be a much greater number of books, pamphlets, and one-page handbills, every kind of banned literature from political satire and anticlerical tirades to the most lurid pornography, complete with illustrations.

  His experience with other Parisian printer-booksellers had colored his expectations, Aristide decided, for he was surprised to discover that Pierre Joubert was not the dry, elderly little man whom he had come to expect when introducing himself to a bookseller. Joubert proved to be a handsome, conservatively dressed man in his late thirties. He invited Derville and Aristide into a tiny parlor at the back of the shop, where another, younger, man was sitting sprawled in an armchair, booted feet to the fire.

  "My brother, Nicolas-Antoine," said Joubert. "He's merely stopped in for a friendly word; haven't you, Nico?"

  "I take it I'm being dismissed," said Nicolas. He swung himself around, dusting ash from his boots with his handkerchief, and stood up. "Oh, good day to you, Derville. Pierre, want me to look in at the printing works on my way home?"

  "If you're not headed home at three in the morning, as usual," the elder brother said, holding open the door for him. "Don't forget you're leaving for Lyon in two days, so you'd better have your trunk packed by tomorrow!" Nicolas grinned, bowed, and went out.

  "Nicolas hasn't improved?" Derville asked dryly as they took seats.

  "I suppose he's sowing his wild oats," said Joubert with a sigh. "I was already managing the business for our father by the time I was twenty-nine?ah well, he'll grow up eventually, and stop throwing away his money on expensive whores and married women. What can I do for you today?"

  "My friend here, Ravel," said Derville, indicating Aristide. "He's an old schoolfellow, looking for work in the literary line."

  "I expect you're not too fussy about the sort of thing I might be willing to buy from you?" Joubert inquired, after they had exchanged commonplaces.

  "Not at all," Aristide said. "I've already written a few gossip sheets for some other people: Demonville, for instance, and Royer. 'The True and Genuine History of Madame de Polignac, Dear Friend to Antoinette,' was mine, and a few songs, and so on."

  "Oh," said Joubert, pursing his lips, "that was yours? I heard it sold fairly well. Honestly, I think you were a bit too kind to the slut, but then there's something to be said for keeping within the bounds of reasonably good taste, isn't there?"

  Derville hooted. Aristide smiled slightly.

  "Frankly, I don't much like writing the vicious sort of rag, full of invented slanders, that gives authors a bad name."

  "Squeamish?"

  "Not in the least. But I'd rather point out, with devastating precision, all the ills besetting the kingdom, including, of course, the king's lack of will, the queen's ignorance, the court's avarice, the ministers' shocking incompetence, a thousand antiquated laws and taxes that make corruption far too easy?"

  Joubert smiled. "Go on."

  "Go on? Well then?all of these, combined with a treasury depleted from an expensive war; a played-out old nobility with nothing left to it but poverty and arrogance, but which will fight to the last man before giving up the least of its medieval privileges; an avaricious new nobility looking out for little but its own self-interest; a despotic, corrupt church, most of whose bishops are either frauds or fanatics; a church, moreover, that dictates to the state, owns a quarter of the land in France yet pays no taxes, and all the while keeps our books and our minds as chained as a lunatic in a madhouse; all of it amounting to such greed, deceit, superstition, intolerance, stupidity, obstinacy, and fear, that it strangles every attempt at reform?need I go on? Oh, yes, and whatever the actual facts may be behind the affair of the diamond necklace, and whether it's the Comtesse de la Motte or the cardinal who's telling the most lies, and what the king and queen might have had to do with it. Monsieur Joubert, why waste time with silly, vulgar inventions about silly courtiers when you can make your point so much more effectively with the simple truth?"

  "Monsieur Ravel," Joubert said promptly, "you're hired."