Where the Light Falls(8)
Jean-Luc worked in a massive administrative building several streets away. Its long corridors were crowded with legal clerks, bankers, and secretaries—bureaucrats of the new regime, most of them happy simply to have employment, to accept paltry salaries with which they could feed their families and brag of a place in the new government.
It was a busy building, a hive of purposefulness and gossip varying in its degrees of legitimacy. On this morning, however, the front halls were quieter than usual. Nodding a greeting to a pair of guards—“Citizens, good day”—Jean-Luc walked up a wide staircase. On the second floor he clipped quickly down the familiar hallway until he reached the chamber that served as a meeting room for his department.
He paused in the doorway. A small crowd had assembled in the office. Several of the faces were familiar to Jean-Luc, colleagues who worked in adjacent offices. However, there were more than those few in here. From the looks of it, Gavreau, his supervisor, had gathered the entire building for this assembly. Whatever the meeting’s purpose, Jean-Luc was late.
“St. Clair!” Gavreau saw him enter and waved him forward. He was addressing the crowd from the front of the office. “Citizen St. Clair, I was just sharing the morning’s news with your compatriots.”
“What news?” Jean-Luc instantly regretted his response, and how plain he had made it that he had not heard whatever it was that had caused such a stir among his peers. The only thing he had observed so far that morning was that the heat had finally broken and the people of Paris still seemed hungry and angry. The manager, thankfully, didn’t note his ignorance but instead continued to address the full room. “As you know, the past three months have seen the people rising up and demanding that their voices be heard with more potency than ever before.”
Several men in the office thumped their fists against the desks, grunting their support for Gavreau’s assertion. The supervisor ignored the interruptions and continued.
“Every prison in the city is overflowing, and those perfumed dukes and duchesses know, at last, what it means to be hungry.”
The crowd muttered and nodded its approval as Jean-Luc shifted his weight, having grown uneasy with rousing talks such as these. He had seen many stirring speeches begin with earnest enthusiasm, only to be overtaken and unleashed as a mob’s fury and the thirst for violence.
Gavreau’s cheeks flushed red. “Just last month, our fellow patriots stormed the Tuileries Palace, where Louis and Marie-Antoinette—”
“You mean Citizen Capet and the Austrian Whore!” A man whom Jean-Luc didn’t recognize interjected with the nicknames that Paris had given to the country’s disgraced king and queen.
“Call ’em whatever you want.” Gavreau waved a hand. “The point is, as of last month, the Bourbons are done getting fat off our starvation and sacrifice. And they are no longer sitting in the Tuileries Palace, hiding behind their hired Swiss guards, as if that’s prison enough.”
“They’re in Le Temple dungeon with the rest of the rats, where they belong,” a voice called out. The crowd cheered in response.
Gavreau lifted his arms, attempting to quell the mounting fervor. “Brothers, my fellow citizens, today, for the first time, an assembly of free Frenchmen, endowed with the full power of the people, will sit in Paris. They, like the rebels in America, will draft a new constitution and will begin an era of liberty, equality, and fraternity!”
The room shook now with the sound of yelps and fists landing on the oak desks. Even Jean-Luc, on thinking about this achievement by the French people, could join in the celebrations. “Vive la liberté!” he shouted.
Gavreau let them revel in their euphoria a moment, his expression indicating his own deep satisfaction, but when he raised his arms, they went quiet once more, greedy for more news. “It’s been a good summer for the people, that is certain enough. Hundreds of our brothers have joined our new government in the National Convention. And thousands fewer of those noble wretches have their heads, thanks to our friend Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.”
Several people in the room laughed and jeered, but Jean-Luc bit his lower lip. His job gave him a front-row viewing to just how many noblemen and women had been toppled, and to think that a severed head corresponded to each of his daily cases made his stomach turn.
“And yet, our Revolution—our very nation—is in danger.” Gavreau’s face grew somber as the room fell silent. “I told you there was news today, and there is. It seems that all of Europe has taken note of the speed and force of our Revolution. And our neighbors to the east are scared.”