Once, long ago, her grandmother had taken her to a house in the Marais, to call on a noblewoman with whom she had some acquaintance. There was a footman to bow them in; on a sofa reclined an old woman, opulently gowned, with a stupid, rouged face. A small dog rose from among her draperies and yapped at them, bouncing on stiff legs; the noblewoman swatted at it, perfunctory, and motioned her grandmother to a low stool. For some reason, in this household, her grandmother was addressed by her maiden name.

She herself was left to stand, hot and silent. Her scalp still burned from the tortures which her grandmother, early that morning, had inflicted on her hair. The old woman shifted on her cushions, rasping on in her dictatorial, oddly uncultivated voice. Urged forward, Manon had bobbed a curtsy inside her stiff best dress. Thirty years later she had not forgiven herself for that curtsy.

Watery eyes regarded her. “Religious, is she?” the noblewoman said. The dog subsided, snuffled by her side; a discarded tapestry lay over the arm of the sofa. She had dropped her eyes, “I try to perform my duties.”

Her grandmother shifted painfully on the stool. The old woman patted at her lace bonnet, as if she were before a mirror; then she turned her hard eyes on Manon again, and began to ask her questions, schoolbook questions. When she answered correctly, with studied politeness, the creature sneered. “Little scholar isn’t she? Do you think that’s what a man requires?”

The catechism over—still standing, feeling faint in the airless room—she had to hear her merits and faults enumerated. A good figure already, the noblewoman said; as if to imply that when she was grown up she would be fat. Sallow complexion, the noblewoman said; might freshen up, in time. “Tell me, my darling,” she said, “have you ever bought a ticket in the lottery?”

“No, Madame, I don’t believe in games of chance.”

“What a prig she is,” the old creature drawled. A hand shot out; grasped her little wrist in a vice of bone. “I want her to buy a lottery ticket for me. I want her to pick the number, you understand, then bring it here to me and give it to me herself. I think she has a lucky hand.”

In the street she gulped in God’s clean air. “Please, I needn’t go back, need I?” She wanted to race home, back to her books and the reasonable people inside them.

Even now, when someone said the word “aristocrat”—when they spoke of “a noblewoman” or “a titled lady”—it called to her mind the picture of that malignant gambler. It was not just the lace cap, the hard eyes, or the crushing words. It was the pervasive odor of a heavy musk, it was the reek of scent which overlay (she knew) the sweetness of bodily decay.

Lottery ticket, indeed. There would be no gambling under the republic, she thought; it would not be permitted.

Paris: “Look,” said the judge to the Clerk of the Court, “I don’t care if they’re retaining John the Baptist. They’ve infringed the gaming laws and I’m giving them six months. Why do you suppose Desmoulins has come back to the Bar, anyway?”

“Money,” said the clerk.

“I thought Orleans paid well.”

“Oh, the Duke is finished,” the clerk said cheerfully. “Mme. de Genlis is in England, Laclos has gone back to his regiment and the Mistresses are making up to Danton. Of course, they get money from the English.”

“What, you think the English have bought Danton’s people?”

“I think they are paying them, but that’s a different matter. They’re an unscrupulous lot. Time was in this country when you paid a man a bribe you could rely on his honesty.”

The judge shifted uneasily in his chair. The clerk was becoming aphoristic; when that happened, they always got home late. “Still,” he said. “To the matter in hand.”

“Ah yes, Maitre Desmoulins. He took his father-in-law’s investment advice and went in for City of Paris bonds. And we all know what’s happened to them.”

“Indeed,” said the judge feelingly.

“And now the authorities have closed the newspaper he wants another source of income.”

“He can hardly be poor.”

“He has money, but wants more. In that, if in no other particular, he resembles the rest of us. I understand he’s playing the stock market. While he waits for that to pay off he intends to recoup his fortunes from the handsome fees he can now command at the Bar.”

“I was told he hated the business.”

“But it’s different now, isn’t it? Now if he gets in difficulties we have to sit and wait for him to finish his sentences. We’re a bit afraid—”

“Not I,” said the judge stoutly.

“And he is able.”

“I don’t deny it.”

“And when milords find the police interfering with their pleasures, how convenient for them to have one of their own to argue the case. Arthur Dillon, de Sillery, that lot, they’ve put him up to this.”

“And he associates with them quite openly—you’d think the patriots—”

“Will tolerate most things from him. After all, in a manner of speaking he is the Revolution. I believe there are mutterings, though. Yet after all—this is Paris, not Geneva.”

“I take it you’re a gambling man yourself.”

“That’s by the way,” the clerk said breezily. “Perhaps, like Maitre Desmoulins, I am interested in limiting the interference of the state in the private life of the individual.”

“You agree with him?” the judge said. “I shall see you soon with your boots up on the table, sansculotte in homespun trousers, a red cap on your reverend pate and a pike against the wall behind you.”

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