Chapter 2: The House of the Marquis de Tréville

When Charles de Tréville emerged from the shadowed mouth of the secret passage, the sky had surrendered to an almost impenetrable darkness. The distant crackle of gunshots, like the fading growls of a retreating storm, still pricked the silence at intervals. He cast a swift, cautious survey of his surroundings, then, keeping to the deeper obscurity of the building’s walls, moved with the light, practiced tread of one accustomed to navigating unseen, until he slipped into the sanctuary of a narrow alleyway. It was only when his eyes fell upon his light, two-wheeled carriage, standing undisturbed where he had bidden it wait, that a quiet breath, laden with a relief more profound than he cared to admit, escaped his lips.

“Jacques?” he called, his voice a mere whisper against the brooding stillness.

At the familiar sound of his master’s voice, the white-haired coachman, who had remained a steadfast sentinel upon the driver’s box, turned his head with a start. His weathered face, a roadmap of countless Parisian seasons, creased into an expression of such profound relief and undisguised surprise that it almost brought a smile to Charles’s lips. “Monsieur! Praise be, are you quite unharmed, sir!”

The gunfire, though more sporadic now, persisted – a grim testament to an exchange that had clearly endured for some considerable time.

“I am perfectly well, Jacques, thank you,” Charles replied, his tone affecting a casualness he did not entirely feel. His thoughts, for a fleeting instant, were not on the danger he had just left, but on the gentle concern he might one day hope to see in other, softer eyes. “But tell me, what drama has unfolded here in my absence? Are the gendarmes engaged in a spirited pursuit of some desperate brigands? Or has another unfortunate… effervescence of public sentiment erupted? It possesses a certain echo of the Rue Transnonain affair, does it not?”

In 1834, a republican insurrection in Paris was brutally suppressed by three brigades of government troops, resulting in a bloody and infamous massacre on the Rue Transnonain.

“I have remained here, Monsieur, precisely as you instructed,” the old coachman explained, his head inclined towards the lingering sounds of conflict. “Then, but a short while past, the shooting commenced from yonder direction… I confess, Monsieur, my heart was growing quite heavy with concern for your safety…”

It was evident that Jacques, faithful retainer though he was, knew no more of the specifics than Charles himself.

“Well, it is of no consequence now,” Charles declared, his conscience, burdened by the secrets of the evening, urging a swift departure from this unsettled vicinity. “Let us be on our way, Jacques. The hour grows late.”

“At once, Monsieur! Pray, hold fast!” Jacques, sharing his master’s unspoken eagerness to quit the scene, wasted not a moment in a deft flick of his whip, urging the horses into a brisk trot.

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Seated within the comparative security of the carriage, Charles leaned back against the worn leather squabs, his eyes lightly closed as if in tranquil repose. His thoughts, however, were unbound, winging their way across the vast, unfathomable distances of time and space, to a life that now seemed more dream than memory.

He was a transmigrator, a soul adrift, a traveler plucked from the currents of time – catapulted from the technologically advanced, yet perhaps emotionally sterile, landscape of 21st-century China into the very heart of this turbulent, passionate, 19th-century France.

In that former existence, the one before this astonishing rebirth, he had been an orphan, a solitary figure navigating the world with the aid of state benevolence and the distant kindness of relatives. He had pursued his education, secured a respectable, if unremarkable, position, and lived the circumscribed life of an ordinary young man, his heart perhaps knowing more of duty than of deep, personal joy.

How precisely he had made that impossible journey across the centuries, he could not fathom. It remained a profound mystery, as enigmatic as the stars. It was as if he had merely closed his eyes in one life and awakened, with the startling innocence of an infant, into the bewildering dawn of another, his existence reset, a fresh, unwritten page turned before him.

Initially, in those first disorienting years, Charles had wrestled with this new reality, his mind rebelling against the sheer impossibility of it all. The vibrant, chaotic, and often contradictory world of 19th-century Paris was a far cry from the ordered, predictable society he had known.

But as the years had flowed by, as the seasons had turned with their immutable rhythm, he had gradually, almost imperceptibly, come to terms with his new identity, to embrace the family that was now his own. He had embarked upon this unexpected second odyssey with a burgeoning spirit, a resilience he had not known he possessed, a quiet determination to carve a place for himself in this alien, yet increasingly beloved, land.

Now, save for a few deeply guarded secrets, those precious, perilous fragments of his other self, he had become, to all outward appearances, entirely a man of this era. He faced this new life with a vigour, an almost desperate, clinging positivity, that would have been utterly unimaginable in his former, more detached existence.

For here, in this time, in this place, he had found something he had never truly known before: a family. He had ties, responsibilities, affections. He had something, someone, for whom he must strive, for whom, if fate so decreed, he must fight with every fibre of his being. This new life, with all its uncertainties, held a richness, a depth of feeling, that had become as essential to him as the air he breathed.

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The conspirators’ clandestine rendezvous had taken place on the Rue des Batignolles, nestled within the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris. The carriage now bowled along at a brisk pace down the adjacent Boulevard de Clichy, then, after navigating the Place de Clichy, made its entry into the more genteel eighth arrondissement. Only when Charles sensed they had reached a district where the shadows were less menacing, and the echoes of unrest fainter, did the carriage moderate its speed.

It then wove its way through a labyrinth of streets, some grand and imposing, others narrow and intimate, all lined with an unbroken façade of tall, watchful buildings, until at last it emerged onto the vast, moonlit expanse of the Place de la Concorde – a place of potent memory, known in the gilded days of the Ancien Régime as the Place Louis XV, and during the fiery crucible of the Revolution, as the Place de la Révolution.

It was upon this very ground that Louis XVI and his ill-fated Queen, Marie Antoinette, alongside revolutionary titans such as Robespierre – figures whose names were now indelibly etched into the dramatic tapestry of history – had been brought before the roaring, exultant throngs to meet their final, grim destiny upon the guillotine. Among the Revolution’s countless victims, of course, had been one of Charles’s own “ancestors,” the previous Duke de Tréville, a fact that always cast a faint, melancholic shadow over his thoughts whenever he traversed this historic square.

The carriage skirted the monumental edge of the great square, then made its way onto the Pont de la Concorde. The crossing proved a slow affair, the bridge congested with a multitude of vehicles, each vying for passage, consuming some precious minutes before they finally traversed the dark, swirling waters of the Seine and gained the Left Bank.

Their journey then led them to the fringes of the sixth arrondissement – that distinguished district so often referred to simply as the Saint-Germain. After the dramatic fall of the Bourbon monarchy and the subsequent, inevitable shift of France’s political and social epicentre from the distant splendours of Versailles to the pulsating, ever-watchful heart of Paris, the nation’s great and powerful families had gradually, but inexorably, begun to congregate within the capital’s ancient walls.

Given that the city centre was a densely populated, bustling hive of commerce, teeming with merchants and artisans, the nobility – and those wealthy bourgeois families who, with an almost religious fervour, perpetually sought to emulate their aristocratic betters – had always endeavoured to establish their principal residences as far as practicable from the crowded, often insalubrious, districts. Thus, these luminaries of French society had increasingly chosen to erect their grand hôtels particuliers upon the then less developed, more tranquil, Left Bank of the Seine. And so, slowly, almost organically, the Saint-Germain quarter had transformed itself into the favoured, almost sacred, enclave of France’s hereditary and financial elite.

The carriage moved with a more measured, careful pace now, weaving its way with practiced ease between elegant and imposing private mansions, their shuttered windows like sleeping eyes, until it finally drew to a dignified halt before a smaller, though still eminently distinguished, hôtel particulier situated on the quieter edge of the district. As the liveried gatekeeper pulled open the heavy, ornate gates, the carriage passed through, its wheels crunching softly on the gravel, coming to rest beneath the protective glass awning at the foot of the main steps, where a waiting footman promptly lowered the carriage step.

This was the residence of the old Marquis de Tréville.

A profound, almost palpable sense of relief washed over Charles, easing the tension that had coiled within him throughout the evening’s clandestine activities. He alighted from the carriage, the familiar feel of the stone steps beneath his boots a comforting reassurance, ascended with a lighter heart, and passed through the already opened glass doors into the welcoming embrace of the mansion.

This was his home. The house where he had been born into this second life, the sanctuary where he had grown, where he had found an anchor in a world that was not his own by birth, but had become his by heart.

The main salon, into which he now stepped, was furnished in the quintessential, if somewhat faded, grandeur of the Empire style. It had undoubtedly known a period of considerable splendour in days long past, a time of glittering receptions and whispered intrigues. But, like the Napoleonic Empire itself, whose star had once blazed so fiercely across the European firmament, its glory had slowly, inexorably, dimmed under the relentless, erosive wash of time.

The red silk curtains, which in their youth might have boasted the vibrant hue of a cardinal’s robe, now hung like ancient, venerable banners, their rich colour bleached by the persistent caress of the sun to a muted, almost bruised, purple. Their heavy, luxurious folds, which had once perhaps rustled with the secrets of dancing couples and the murmur of witty repartee, were now worn thin at the edges, threatening to surrender their silken threads to the gentle, insistent tug of decay. The gilt banisters of the grand staircase, which swept with a proud curve from the ground floor to the upper rooms, were chipped and peeling in numerous places, revealing forlorn patches of the plain white wood beneath, like old wounds. The vast red carpet that covered the salon floor, once a sea of opulent crimson, had lost much of its original fire, its colour now a faded, indeterminate pink, a ghost of its former self. The intricate giltwork on the furniture, too, bore the marks of time’s passage, flaking away in small, sad pieces, the patterned silk upholstery, once so fine, now showing the faint, criss-cross lines of its underlying warp and weft.

To summarize the impression in a single, poignant phrase: this mansion had been magnificent, a jewel of its time, some thirty years ago, and it had remained suspended, as if in amber, in that past glory ever since, a proud but melancholic testament to bygone days.

The reason for this palpable air of genteel decline lay in the complex tapestry of fortunes, or rather misfortunes, that had befallen the master of the house, the old Marquis de Tréville himself.

The Tréville family had been a name of considerable lustre during the Ancien Régime; the previous Duke de Tréville, Charles’s great-grandfather, had been a favoured and influential courtier at the glittering, decadent court of Versailles. In the fateful year of 1789, when the tempest of the Great Revolution began its furious, transformative sweep across the length and breadth of France, amidst the pervasive, chilling atmosphere of retribution against the aristocracy, the Duke de Tréville had, almost as an inevitable consequence of his birth and station, met his tragic end upon the guillotine.

He had left two sons, both of whom, with commendable foresight or perhaps sheer luck, had managed to escape the revolutionary fervor, finding refuge in the German states, joining the swelling ranks of the French émigré nobility. The elder son, Philippe, duly inherited the ducal title and continued to serve the exiled Bourbon royal family with unwavering loyalty, becoming a trusted confidant of the Comte de Provence (who would later ascend the throne as King Louis XVIII).

His younger son, a man of different mettle, was named Victor.

In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul and the rising star of France, issued a decree granting amnesty to those nobles who, for a multitude of reasons, had fled their homeland during the preceding years of turmoil. After his formal, spectacular coronation as Emperor on the 2nd of December, 1804, such decrees of reconciliation were issued with increasing frequency. Victor de Tréville, the younger son of the late Duke, after enduring many lean and uncertain years of exile in foreign lands, seized the opportunity and returned to France in 1805.

It was a widely acknowledged truth that Emperor Napoleon, for all his revolutionary origins, was generally magnanimous, even generous, towards the members of the old nobility who returned from abroad and offered him their respectful, if sometimes pragmatic, allegiance – especially those who hailed from ancient and distinguished families. He received Victor with courtesy, treated him with a measure of generosity, and, importantly, granted his expressed wish to serve in the Grande Armée.

Due to the precise timing of his return, Victor did not have the distinction of participating in the legendary Battle of Austerlitz at the close of 1805, that stunning victory which marked the very zenith of Napoleon’s military genius and imperial power. Thus, he was not able to witness firsthand the historic, almost ignominious sight of the Russian Tsar and the Austrian Emperor suing for peace before the triumphant French Emperor. However, in the decisive battles of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, Victor, then a dashing young cavalry officer, fought with conspicuous, almost reckless, bravery. He led his men in thunderous, devastating charges against the vaunted Prussian army across the vast North German Plain, fighting his way, sword in hand, into the very streets of Berlin. His valour earned him the Emperor’s personal commendation and swift promotion, and “le brave Tréville” – the brave Tréville – became a name renowned and respected throughout the Empire. In the subsequent arduous Imperial wars against Austria and Russia, Victor continued to distinguish himself on numerous fields of battle, eventually being promoted by a grateful Emperor to the prestigious rank of General.

The Emperor, it was known, was never parsimonious in rewarding those officers who served him with courage and distinction. He re-created Victor as a Marquis of the Empire – a new title, as the old ducal honours lay with his elder, royalist brother – and bestowed upon him various other honours, decorations, and substantial financial grants. This very mansion, this fading monument to past glories, had been purchased by Victor with the Emperor’s largesse. During the glittering, confident days of the First Empire, the Marquis had frequently entertained guests here, and its salons had become a celebrated social hub for Imperial high society, a place where careers were made and alliances forged. It was even whispered, in hushed, reverent tones, that the Grand Duchess of Tuscany herself (Napoleon’s eldest and most formidable sister, Elisa Bonaparte) had once graced its opulent rooms with her presence.

However, after the cataclysmic collapse of the Empire in 1815, after Waterloo and the Emperor’s final exile, such splendours, such vibrant social scenes, were never to be revived. The music, it seemed, had died.

Following the Bourbon Restoration, Victor de Tréville, unlike many other returning émigrés and former Imperial servants who readily renounced their past allegiances and once more bent the knee before His Majesty King Louis XVIII, stubbornly refused to humble himself, to beg for forgiveness or favour. Instead, he continued, with a proud and perhaps imprudent openness, to display his enduring nostalgia for the old Empire and his unwavering devotion to the memory of his fallen Emperor. Consequently, he was, as a matter of inevitable course, met with a cold and disdainful reception from the new regime and was unceremoniously relegated to the ignominious ranks of half-pay officers, his career effectively over.

After the Bourbon Restoration, most of Napoleon’s officers were dismissed from active service or compelled to retire on significantly reduced half-pay, a measure both punitive and precautionary.

If the drastic reduction in his income had merely threatened the material fortunes of the Tréville family, then being indefinitely placed on the inactive list, with no prospect of future command or active service, was the truly fatal blow to the Marquis’s household. Subsequent French governments, whether the restored Bourbon monarchy or the ensuing July Monarchy under Louis-Philippe, offered the old Bonapartist Marquis no opportunity whatsoever to serve his country again, neither in the military intervention in Spain nor in the ongoing, often brutal, campaigns of colonial expansion in North Africa. Thus, he was denied any chance to supplement his meagre half-pay through active service, prize money, or the other traditional perquisites of a successful military career. (In 1823, Bourbon France had intervened militarily in the Spanish succession crisis, subsequently occupying Madrid; the colonization of North Africa, meanwhile, had remained a consistent, if controversial, French government policy for several decades). The gradual, inexorable decline of the Marquis de Tréville’s household thus became an almost foregone conclusion, a quiet tragedy played out behind the elegant but fading façade of his Parisian mansion.

Yet, whether bathed in the golden light of prosperity or veiled in the long shadows of decline, whether its halls echoed with the laughter of glittering assemblies or the quiet footfalls of solitary remembrance, this was still Charles’s home. That, at least, was a truth as constant and unchanging as the stars in the Parisian night sky.

The Marquis, now advanced in years and noticeably frail, usually retired to his chambers early in the evening. Charles, ever solicitous of the old man’s comfort and anxious not to disturb his slumber, deliberately lightened his footsteps as he ascended the grand staircase, intending to proceed directly to his own rooms on the second floor to rest and compose his thoughts after the evening’s unsettling events.

However…

“Aha! So, our conquering hero, Charles, has finally deigned to return to us!”

The sudden, unexpectedly loud exclamation startled Charles for a fleeting moment, causing him to pause mid-step. Then, recognizing the familiar, beloved timbre of the speaker’s voice, a wave of mingled relief and affection washed over him.

The Marquis, his grandfather, had emerged from his bedchamber and was now standing at the head of the staircase on the second-floor landing, his figure silhouetted against the dim light from the corridor behind him. He was looking down with an expression of unmistakable, tender affection at his grandson, who stood on the steps below.

“Grandfather,” Charles began, looking up at the old man with a mixture of surprise and concern, “what are you… I had thought you would be asleep by now.”

The Marquis, now well past his sixtieth year, his once dark hair entirely white though still meticulously combed and parted with an old soldier’s precision, bore the indelible marks of age upon his noble face. Yet, his features retained a certain proud, almost defiant angularity, the lingering vestiges of the strikingly handsome man he had undoubtedly been in his youth. Most striking, however, and most captivating, were his eyes – they still blazed with a remarkable, unquenchable vitality and an astonishing warmth. Charles had often thought, with a surge of private admiration, that the passion preserved within those aged, intelligent eyes was no less potent, no less capable of fierce emotion, than that which might burn in the heart of a young man on the very threshold of his first great love.

And at this moment, those extraordinary eyes were fixed upon him, Charles, with a look of profound, unwavering tenderness that touched him to the core.

“Once a man reaches my advanced age, my boy,” the Marquis said, his voice raspy but firm, “sleep becomes a capricious and often elusive companion. Besides,” he added, a hint of playful accusation in his tone, “you made such a considerable commotion upon your return, with your carriage and your comings and goings, that you would have roused the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, let alone an old soldier like me.” His tone, though feigning complaint, was imbued with that deep, unwavering affection that old men often hold for their cherished descendants, a love that needs no grand pronouncements. But then, almost in an instant, his gaze sharpened, his expression becoming serious once more, the indulgent grandfather momentarily supplanted by the concerned patriarch. “Well? Your affairs of the evening? Did everything proceed according to plan? Was it… satisfactory?”

“Mm…” Charles hesitated for a fleeting, almost imperceptible moment, his mind racing to frame a reply that was both truthful and reassuring. “Reasonably smoothly, Grandfather, all things considered. Yes, I suppose one could say that.”

“What is it, Charles? Did something untoward occur?” The Marquis, with the keen, almost unnerving perception of age and long experience of men and their deceptions, instantly sensed his grandson’s slight hesitation, the subtle nuance in his voice, and pressed him gently for details. “Speak freely, my boy.”

Charles had initially intended to spare the old man any unnecessary anxiety by omitting the more… unsettling details of the evening. But since his grandfather, with his customary astuteness, had already detected a shadow of concern, he decided it was best to recount everything. “The meeting itself, Grandfather, proceeded without any significant impediment. There were no… unexpected complications in that regard. However,” he paused, choosing his words with care, “in the immediate vicinity of our… gathering place, there was an exchange of gunfire. Quite a spirited one, from the sound of it.”

The old Marquis arched a perfectly sculpted white eyebrow, his expression unreadable.

“The incident occurred…” Charles began to explain further, but the old man suddenly, yet gently, interrupted him.

“You have only just returned, Charles, and the hour is late. First, you must take some refreshment. Have the servants bring you something to eat, and a glass of wine. Rest yourself for a little while. Then, when you are recovered, come to my study, and you shall recount to me, in full and precise detail, everything that transpired this evening.” Having delivered his instructions with a quiet but firm authority, he turned and, with the slow, deliberate steps of age, made his way back along the dimly lit corridor to his own bedchamber.

“Yes, Grandfather,” Charles nodded, a wave of profound gratitude, mingled with a deep affection, warming him from within. The old man’s consideration, his quiet strength, never failed to move him.

After partaking of a light meal and a restorative glass of wine, Charles, feeling somewhat like a nervous schoolboy about to present his week’s efforts to a stern but ultimately beloved master, took a deep breath, composed himself, and knocked upon the heavy oak door of the Marquis’s study.