Memory of Flames

CHAPTER 8

AFTER three days spent trying to perfect his royalist persona and avoid being observed, Margont was no longer quite himself. He was so successful in his new role that little by little he was starting to lose his bearings.

He went to ‘his’ printing works, Imperial Press (previously called Crown Press, but hastily renamed during the Revolution), just beside the Botanical Cardens. Joseph and Talleyrand had arranged everything very cleverly. Above the modest doorway, a metal sign with a representation of a newspaper indicated what the premises were. You went down a few steps to reach a large room furnished with a classic printing press with twin wooden frames, a ‘one movement’ Didot and Anisson press, a Nicholson cylinder press -the last word in printing, a dream! - and various broken presses, which were there merely to furnish parts for those that functioned. The manager, Mathurin Jelent, was the only one to know the truth about Margont. He had been secretly passing on information

about the printing press to the imperial authorities for years, denouncing customers who wanted to print illicit documents: anti-government pamphlets, unauthorised newspapers, unofficial proclamations ... He had also undertaken to act as a link between Joseph and Margont, who wouldn’t then have to rely solely on Lefine and Natai. Conveniently, the owner of the print works lived in Lyons and never visited, contenting himself with drinking the profits away. This allowed Jelent to introduce Margont as a new associate. Margont told the employees - two typesetters and two printers - that he had come in person because he hoped to make money out of the current situation.

Margont helped lay out the pages, handling the characters and getting his fingers covered in ink. He familiarised himself with printing and learnt about all the parts of the process: choosing the paper and the typography, setting the type by pushing the characters into the slots of the coffin, inking the formes, placing the virgin sheets between the frisket and the tympan, folding and feeding the whole thing under the plate of the press, turning the

handle to activate the screw ...

He felt like a matryoshka, one of those Russian dolls he had seen in Moscow. On the outside was Monsieur de Langes, a man interested only in turning a profit. Inside there was the royalist secretly preparing posters calling Parisians to sedition. And inside that was Quentin Margont, his true self, who had to be kept well hidden. Nevertheless he derived real pleasure from printing. He turned out invitations, the new menu for the Beauvilliers restaurant in the Palais-Royal arcades, and proclamations from the Imperial Government. He imagined he was working on the newspaper he had wanted to start for so many years. Instead of printing ‘eel pie’, ‘turbot stuffed with rose’ (new recipes and unusual flavours were all the rage) or ‘English green beans’, he imagined the letters spelling out headlines such as ‘What has become of Liberty?’ ‘Will the war ever be over?’ ... The words danced in front of his eyes and the lead characters relaid themselves in his mind, printing his dreams. When he was out and about he took care to throw possible spies off the scent. He forced himself to look with contempt at soldiers,

at the Colonne de la Grande Armée in Place Vendome and at the Arc de Triomphe, which was already very impressive, even though it was still only half its projected height of fifty metres. He ground his teeth when he had to go down Rue Saint-Honoré, turning away to avoid looking at the Eglise Saint-Roch, where on the orders of a certain General Bonaparte, royalist rioters had been felled on the steps by a hail of cannon fire. He trained himself to banish the name ‘Napoleon’ from his thoughts and to replace it with ‘Bonaparte’, ‘the tyrant’, ‘the ogre’, ‘the upstart’, ‘the usurper’ ...

Once a person starts to act contrary to their own instincts they end up losing sight of their true selves. Margont was astonished to notice how far the attitudes he adopted for appearances’ sake started to influence his thoughts. As a result of continually acting like a royalist, he started to wonder whether the restoration of the monarchy might not in fact have some merit. It would mean an end to war, which in turn would mean that many people who longed to do something else could finally leave the army. But to think like that was heresy for a republican like him! How could he even consider abandoning the ideals of the Revolution? He was like an actor who plays a role each evening with such success that he eventually becomes consumed by it.

His daily meetings with Lefine were all the more precious; they were his one link with reality.

Eventually, one evening, someone knocked at his door. It was Charles de Varencourt. He was very pale and drawn, and had lost his swagger.

They’ve sent me to fetch you. You haven’t changed your mind?’ ‘Not at all.’

‘What bothers me is that by gambling on your life, you’re gambling on mine as well!’

Margont did not reply. His decision was irrevocable. Joseph and Talleyrand were right: he had to meet the royalists himself. While Margont was struggling to conquer his fear, Varencourt shrugged, apparently accepting the situation with fatalistic resignation. ‘They’re waiting for us,’ he concluded.

As they were walking through the darkened streets, Margont again

had the impression that he was just a pawn on an enormous chessboard. A pawn about to embark upon an audacious bluff...