One Thing More Read Online Free PDF

herself. He must also.
    His smile flickered back again as he sat down awkwardly, holding his glass in both hands.
    ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘They want him back on the throne, or the Comte d’Artois in his place. Either way they want a monarch. They haven’t learned a thing. They watch history and it’s like a parade to them, with all the commentary in another language. They understand nothing.’ There was contempt in his face and impatience as well, and she was not sure if she saw pity or not.
    She was sharply aware of knowing so little about him, except that he was Amandine’s cousin, and therefore like her, minor gentry from a once-noble family, in which the endless subdivision of lands had left them with hereditary rights, but little money.
    She looked at him sitting hunched on the mattress opposite her. What had he believed before the revolution had swept away all the old values, and the old safeties? She had no measure of his courage, or his essential humanity. She had seen only his superficial kindness and his loyalty to Amandine, and that reminded her too much of what she had done, and why he was crouched here now, and afraid to go out in daylight. The lines around his mouth were deep in the yellow light, accentuating the weariness in him. He drank slowly from his glass and pulled his lips tight at the tartness of the wine.
    ‘The irony of it is,’ he went on with his train of thought, ‘I don’t think the King cares that much about the Crown himself. He’d have been far happier as a small farmer, or a grocer in some provincial town. That’s what he is at heart: a village shopkeeper; good-natured, small-minded, rather humourless, domestic, eager to please whoever he is with.’
    He was staring at the floor, his face turned half away from her, but she heard the sadness in his voice.
    ‘He’d have made an excellent grocer,’ he continued. ‘All his customers would have liked him. He would have swapped local gossip with them and given apples to their children, and grown old, well-loved and quietly prosperous.’ His tone changed. ‘Unfortunately he inherited the throne of France and never had that choice. So now in four days he’ll go to his death, unless we can save him—and ourselves.’
    She did not argue or question his judgement. The momentousness of what they were proposing filled her mind.
    He turned towards her. ‘Tell Bernave I’ll check the safe houses. I have at least ten people here in Paris we can trust to mob the carriage. We’ll find the coaches and drivers from the safe houses onwards out of Paris, and to their assigned border. But he’ll have to find the passes out of the city.’
    ‘I’ll tell him.’ She stood up, letting the blanket fall and drinking the last of the wine.
    He rose also. ‘Be careful,’ he said softly, picking up her cloak and cap and going to the door ahead of her. I wish I could see you at least as far as the Boulevard St-Germain.’
    ‘Well you can’t,’ she answered, while he helped her put the cloak on. It was her fault he could not, and she hated being reminded of it.
    ‘Go carefully,’ he repeated, his voice urgent with anxiety.
    She turned away, not wanting to face him. ‘I will.’
    His hand was on the door latch. ‘Tell Bernave we’ll succeed,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to. If we don’t, only a miracle will stop civil war.’
    ‘Do you believe in God?’ As soon as she had said it she knew she should not have. It was not a question one asked in France these days. But it was too late now, the words were out.
    He raised his eyebrows. ‘God? I don’t think I’ve much idea who He is.’ Humour lit his expression for a moment. ‘Would you settle for not believing in the Church? I can say that with a whole heart.’
    She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. ‘Then it’s a good thing it’s gone!’ she retorted. She did not want him even to sense the confusion in her, far less see it. She hated the Church, its hypocrisy, its