Marianne and the Crown of Fire

red silken tassel. This creature's conduct was so revolting that it roused Marianne from her own misery. She was armed with a cavalryman's sabre and was using it to hold up the fugitives who were trying to make their way out of one of the side streets, letting them pass only when she had searched and stripped them of all that they were carrying. Already she had a heap of jewels and valises on the ground beside her, for the wretched people, terrified of the fire at their backs, suffered themselves to be robbed without protest.

The next group to appear consisted of an old man leaning on a stick, a young girl, two children and two men bearing between them a stretcher on which was a woman, evidently very ill. Before any of them could make a move to stop her, the harpy had rushed at the stretcher and begun to search the sick woman with such unfeeling roughness that Marianne could bear it no longer.

She sprang forward, spurred on by a fury that crystallized all her loathing and disgust, and fell upon the woman, grasping her by the grey hair that straggled from under her cap and jerking her backwards with a force that sent her sprawling on the ground, then throwing herself down on her and pummelling her with her fists. Never before had she felt such need to bite and rend and kill. She was ashamed, bitterly ashamed that people like this were her own fellow-countrymen and, somehow or other, she had to show them what she felt.

The woman, meanwhile, was yelling like a stuck pig and in another moment three or four half-drunken soldiers came lurching to her rescue.

'Hold on, Ma!' one of them bawled out. 'We're coming!' Marianne saw that she was lost. The party to whose aid she had so rashly gone had taken the opportunity to make good their escape as soon as their assailant was laid low. She was alone now, face to face with four angry men who were already dragging her bodily away from her victim. The woman herself had staggered to her feet, cursing venomously, with blood pouring from her nose. Reeling slightly, she made for the sword she had dropped.

'Ta, lads,' she wheezed. 'Now you keep a 'old on 'er, acos I'm a goin' ter carve out one o' them there ogles. Jest to larn 'er!'

Holding the sword unsteadily at arm's length, she was advancing on Marianne when she jerked and fell headlong at the feet of the startled girl. A long whiplash had curled around her knees and cut the legs from under her. At the same time a mocking, nasal voice spoke brusquely.

'All right, my lads! That will do! Be off with you, unless you want a taste of my whip – or a noose! And take this doxy with you!'

The men did not wait to be told twice and in another moment Marianne found herself alone with her rescuer, who was even then descending from a kind of open carriage which, at that instant, looked more like a removal van than a respectable conveyance.

'You are not hurt?' the young man asked her as she began automatically brushing down her skirts and pushing back her long, dishevelled hair.

'No, I don't think so. I owe you my thanks, Sir. But for you—'

'Please. It was the least I could do. It is bad enough to have been driven out of every successive refuge by this confounded fire without being forced to realize that one belongs to a race of savages into the bargain. But—' He broke off and, studying Marianne attentively, said suddenly: 'But I know you! Good Lord, this is certainly fated to be the most fantastic night of my whole life! Who would have thought that I should have the luck to run across one of the prettiest women in Paris amid the flames of Moscow?'

'You know me?' Marianne said uneasily, thinking that this was the last thing she wanted after all that had happened at the Kremlin. 'You have the advantage of me, Sir.'

'De Beyle, at your service, Princess. Auditor 1st Class, Council of State, at present attached to the staff of Comte Mathieu Dumas, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the Imperial Army. My name will mean nothing to you, of course, because I have never had the privilege of being introduced to you, but I saw you one night at the Comedie Francaise. The play was Britannicus and you were escorted by that damned scoundrel Chernychev. You were dressed all in red and looked like one of those flames there – only infinitely sweeter! But we must not stay here. The fire is gaining on us. Allow me to offer you – I can hardly call it a seat, but at least a perch in my carriage?'

'The fact is – I don't know where I am going. I was making for St Louis-des-Francais—'

'Well, you will never get there. Indeed, one might say that none of us knows where he is going. What matters is to get out of the city through such roads as are still open to us.'

As he spoke, Monsieur de Beyle was assisting Marianne to climb up on to the heap of baggage which included, in addition to a number of bottles, a small cask of wine and a prodigious quantity of books, for the most part very gorgeously bound. Sprawled among all these was also another passenger in the shape of a very fat man of pallid complexion who seemed within an inch of expiring altogether.

This person turned his head and gazed at her with a complete lack of expression. When he had satisfied himself that she was undeniably about to take her place in the vehicle, he uttered a heartrending sigh and, releasing his clutch upon his stomach, made some effort to shift his ponderous body to one side to enable her to sit down. As he did so, he produced a travesty of a smile.

'Monsieur de Bonnaire de Giff, auditor 2nd class,' Beyle introduced him. 'He is suffering,' he added in a sardonic tone devoid of all trace of sympathy or compassion, 'from a severe attack of dysentery.' It was evident that he found his passenger both irritating and repulsive. Marianne smiled, nevertheless, and murmured a few sympathetic expressions, to which the invalid responded with a groan.

Monsieur de Beyle then climbed in after Marianne and instructed the driver to continue along the boulevard and join the queue of vehicles at its end. As she watched him, Marianne was aware of a vague recollection stirring deep down in her mind. She did remember having seen his face somewhere. It was a young face, not particularly handsome, even rather coarse, but powerful, with a high forehead made higher still by a receding hairline, lively, observant dark eyes and an ironical, almost bitter twist to the lips. He had spoken of that memorable performance of Britannicus and now she realized that that was where she had seen him. Fortunee Hamelin, who knew everybody, had commented somewhat slightingly on his presence among the occupants of Comte Daru's box.

'No one in particular. A provincial young man with literary aspirations, I believe. Some kind of relation of the Comtesse – probably her lover as well. His name is – Beyle. Yes, that's it, Henri Beyle. Rather a ladies' man.'

None of that was much comfort to Marianne. She began to feel that she was dogged by ill-luck. She was trying to find Jolival, her godfather, Gracchus – and instead she had to fall into the hands of someone on the Quartermaster-General's staff, and a man who knew her, at that! She would be lucky if she did not find herself face to face with Napoleon. But then, was there anyone in Moscow at that moment who was not, in some way, connected with him? And she really had no idea of where to go. By this time the only possible place was somewhere out of reach of the flames.

Every bit as much at ease as if they had been conversing in a drawing-room, her companion was explaining to her that he had been obliged to interrupt a most enjoyable dinner in the Apraxin Palace when the flames threatened to engulf it.

'We have already sought refuge in two or three places,' he told her, evidently enjoying himself enormously despite what seemed to be a heavy cold. 'But each time this blessed fire caught us up. That was how we came to visit the Soltikov Palace, an excellent club with a quite outstanding cellar and a library in which I came across a very rare edition of Voltaire's Faceties. Let me show you.' He pulled a small, richly bound book out of his pocket and stroked it lovingly. Then, hastily, he thrust it back again and leaning his arms on the wine cask muttered: 'Unhappily, I fear that all that remains to us now is the open country – supposing we can ever reach it. Look, everything seems to have stopped moving.'

This was true and when they tried to edge into the endless procession of vehicles they were immediately thrust back by a cavalcade of horsemen and carriages which came charging out of a side street and literally plunged straight into the crowd.

'The outriders of the King of Naples!' Beyle muttered. 'That is all we need! Where does the great Murat think he's going?' He spoke to the driver. 'Wait, Francois. I want to see.'

Once again, he jumped down from the carriage and darted into the crowd. Marianne saw him eagerly questioning three men in splendid livery lavishly adorned with gold braid who seemed to be trying to force a way through the traffic for their master's coaches. When he came back, he was white with anger.

'Well, dear lady,' he said acidly. 'We must stay here to be roasted alive, I fear, so that Murat may save his wardrobe. Look there, the fire is creeping forward to overtake us. In a little while it will be threatening the Tver