Chapter 26: The Ball of the Victims

After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with uncovered face.

When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.

“Good!” he said to himself; “I shall not be too late.”

In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose no time. He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth, which caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were in the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite, and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very latest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl buttons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned above the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles. The inevitable eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, it was precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of the Directory.

When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience. At the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.

“Hasn’t the wig-maker come?” asked Morgan.

In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.

“Yes, citizen,” replied the waiter, “he came, but you had not yet returned, so he left word that he’d come back. Some one knocked just as you rang; it’s probably—”

“Here, here,” cried a voice on the stairs.

“Ah! bravo,” exclaimed Morgan. “Come in, Master Cadenette; you must make a sort of Adonis of me.”

“That won’t be difficult, Monsieur le Baron,” replied the wig-maker.

“Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen Cadenette?”

“Monsieur le Baron, I entreat you, call me Cadenette; you’ll honor me by that proof of familiarity; but don’t call me citizen. Fie; that’s a revolutionary denomination! Even in the worst of the Terror I always called my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse me for not waiting for you; but there’s a great ball in the Rue du Bac this evening, the ball of the Victims (the wig-maker emphasized this word). I should have thought that M. le Baron would be there.”

“Why,” cried Morgan, laughing; “so you are still a royalist, Cadenette?”

The wig-maker laid his hand tragically on his heart.

“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “it is not only a matter of conscience, but a matter of state.”

“Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state! What the devil has the honorable guild of wigmakers to do with politics?”

“What, Monsieur le Baron?” said Cadenette, all the while getting ready to dress his client’s hair; “you ask me that? You, an aristocrat!”

“Hush, Cadenette!”

“Monsieur le Baron, we ci-devants can say that to each other.”

“So you are a ci-devant?”

“To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron’s hair?”

“Dog’s ears, and tied up behind.”

“With a dash of powder?”

“Two, if you like, Cadenette.”

“Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the only man who had an atom of powder ‘à la maréchale.’ Why, Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a box of powder!”

“I’ve known people who were guillotined for less than that, Cadenette. But explain how you happen to be a ci-devant. I like to understand everything.”

“It’s very simple, Monsieur le Baron. You admit, don’t you, that among the guilds there were some that were more or less aristocratic.”

“Beyond doubt; accordingly as they were nearer to the higher classes of society.”

“That’s it, Monsieur le Baron. Well, we had the higher classes by the hair of their head. I, such as you see me, I have dressed Madame de Polignac’s hair; my father dressed Madame du Barry’s; my grandfather, Madame de Pompadour’s. We had our privileges, Monsieur; we carried swords. It is true, to avoid the accidents that were liable to crop up among hotheads like ourselves, our swords were usually of wood; but at any rate, if they were not the actual thing, they were very good imitations. Yes, Monsieur le Baron,” continued Cadenette with a sigh, “those days were the good days, not only for the wig-makers, but for all France. We were in all the secrets, all the intrigues; nothing was hidden from us. And there is no known instance, Monsieur le Baron, of a wig-maker betraying a secret. Just look at our poor queen; to whom did she trust her diamonds? To the great, the illustrious Leonard, the prince of wig-makers. Well, Monsieur le Baron, two men alone overthrew the scaffolding of a power that rested on the wigs of Louis XIV., the puffs of the Regency, the frizettes of Louis-XV., and the cushions of Marie Antoinette.”