The Retreat by Patrick Rambaud Read Free Book Online Page B

all the virtues of heaven and earth, when an explosion made him jump. On their left a bazaar stall was on fire. Blurred figures were running in all directions, shouting. The postilion whipped up the horses, which broke into a smart trot in the chaos, sometimes hitting a grenadier or a voltigeur as they came rushing out of the Chinese quarter; one of them hung on and climbed onto the footboard. ‘It blew up when we broke the door down!’
    The soldier had knotted a piece of silk round his neck and donned a wolfskin jacket, and he was saying accusingly, ‘You’ll see, we’ll end up roasting in this filthy town!’
    â€˜Hold your tongue,’ Sebastian said with an authority that was new to him. ‘You’re scaring these ladies.’
    â€˜Ladies aren’t the only ones who get jittery. If I could play the bird, I’d fly away from here pretty damn quick, I can tell you!’
    â€˜It’s on fire the other side as well,’ said Mme Aurore.
    â€˜Past the Foundling Hospital. It must be the Solenka.’
    â€˜The what?’ asked Sebastian.
    â€˜The salt fish-sellers’ street, Monsieur Sebastian.’
    Mlle Ornella had just spoken to him. All that registered was the soft musical lilt of her voice and he clean forgotabout those countless fires which no longer seemed fortuitous in the slightest.
    *
    Captain d’Herbigny had claimed Count Kalitzin’s scantly, but nonetheless welcomingly, furnished apartments for himself and was studying a candlelit painting of bathing nymphs that had been spared in the upheaval. He would have preferred real women to these plump, dimpled figures, so out of step with the tastes of the day, but unable to sleep, with a touch of imagination and the prompting of his memories, he was bringing the scene to life and peopling it with young Russian wantons. Paulin had found dinner services emblazoned with the family crest but not much to serve on them: some dried fruit and a brown, sickly sweet jam. The captain held out his glass and his servant filled it with birch wine, which he drank down in a single draught. ‘This really isn’t anything like champagne,’ he said, smoothing his moustache. He had exchanged his dragoon’s uniform, waistcoat and shirt for a fox-fur-lined, vermilion satin coat and was picking at the food, eating the jam with a spoon. Paulin, meanwhile, was making the bed, using tablecloths instead of sheets. At the front of the house, the chained mastiffs started barking again.
    â€˜I should have cracked their skulls, those babbling hounds. Paulin, go and see.’
    The servant opened the casement window, leant out; he reported to his master that some unknown civilians were talking to the sentries.
    â€˜Go down and find out what’s happening, at the double!’
    The captain filled a glass to the brim and gazed at hisreflection in the mirror on the wall facing the table. He liked the look of himself this evening, decked out like a Muscovite, without a helmet, glass in hand. ‘To my very good health,’ he said, saluting himself. The decor, these vast, bare rooms, reminded him of growing up near Rouen in the d’Herbigny chateau, a big farmhouse, really, on an estate which his father farmed. The bedclothes were crawling with insects; the guests who wouldn’t leave ate all the food, because there were always visiting neighbours, a relative who was a parish priest or some other impoverished member of the decayed nobility. In winter everyone huddled round the only fireplace that worked. D’Herbigny had enlisted in the National Guard very young, and learnt the profession of soldiering in the field; after that he was only good for killing, charging at the sound of the trumpet and collecting medals. He’d encountered death so often that everything seemed to be its due. One day he’d buried his sword in a little pipsqueak’s guts who cut him an insolent look. Another day, at a toll