Review: Murder & mayhem in pre-Revolutionary Paris

Review of: The Phantom of the Rue Royale

Author: Jean-François Parot (translator: Howard Curtis)
Publisher: Gallic Books
Source: Dallas Public Library
Grade: B

Jean-François Parot’s historical mystery, The Phantom of the Rue Royal, isn’t likely to inflame any romantic notions about life in late 18^th century Paris. The Paris of this third book in Parot’s series starring fictional Parisian police commissioner Nicolas Le Floch bears little resemblance to its modern version, so much of which is the result of a massive 19^th century renovation.

One of my book group’s complaints about Phantom was this difficulty of mapping modern Paris onto a city where medieval firetraps of houses crowd narrow alleys, where travelling purveyors of chamber pots, with all the accompanying reeks, mingle with street food vendors. (The first book in the series includes a sketchy map of the old city, although this covers little of the territory of the third volume.)

But the wealth of historical detail, the delightful gossip (true or fictional) about historic persons, and the charming character of Le Floch himself make this a delightful and surprising romp of an historical mystery.

Le Floch’s Paris is a place where torture is a routine method of interrogation for suspected criminals, where the city’s executioner conducts autopsies, and where the Age of Reason competes with exorcism for a place in murder investigations. 

Despite Phantom’s setting during the reign of Louis XV, the monarch whose mistresses included glamour girls Pompadour and du Berry, there’s little bed-hopping. Sandwiched as he was between the reigns of his rapacious great-grandfather Louis XIV and his tragic grandson Louis XVI, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the relatively easy-going monarch whose nickname was Louis the Beloved. But Paris of the 1770’s is a perfect setting for personal tragedies, such as the one at the heart of Parot’s book.

The story opens with a public festivity turned public tragedy. A display of municipal fireworks intended to celebrated the marriage of the teenaged Dauphin (who will become Louis XVI) to the equally youthful Marie Antoinette of Austria. Le Floch’s police superior, Antoine de Sartine, has sent him to observe and report on the proceedings. (Sartine is a historical character who served as the de factor ruler of the city of Paris during much of Louis XV’s reign. His volatile temper and obsession with his collection of wigs provide some of the lighter moments in Phantom.)

Of course, the fireworks misfire, stampeding the panicked crowds, and killing dozens, if not hundreds, of bystanders. But as Le Floch views the stacked bodies of the dead in preparation for his report to Sartine, one corpse stands out from the rest. It is the body of a young woman whose neck bears the marks of death by strangulation. What better place to hide a corpse, a murderer must have thought, than in a mass grave?

Although Sartine isn’t interested in a single murder when there’s so much official negligence to rebuke, he assents to Le Floch’s request to investigate the death of the young woman, whose uncle soon turns up, identifying her as 19-year-old Élodie Galain, the unmarried, orphaned daughter of his brother, a fur trader from the territory formerly known as New France. Eager as Élodie’s relatives are to recover her body, nobody mentions a fact of her recent pregnancy uncovered by the autopsy conducted by public executioner, and Le Floch’s friend, Charles Henri Sanson. another of the historical characters who populate Parot’s story.

In one of several surprising differences between 18^th century and 21^st century police procedure, Le Floch manages to ensconce himself in the Galain household to investigate the young woman's murder and the presumed murder of her child. The suspects will lead him on a chase across the city, and into the highest levels of France’s secular and religious hierarchy.

Fortunately for readers who have relatively little familiarity with the history of pre-Revolutionary France, Parot (or possibly his translator, Howard Curtis) provides a list of characters and chapter notes, including references to earlier books in the Le Floch series. Personally, I would have appreciated even more extensive notes, including information about which of the characters were historical (an effort I had to make on my own).

Adventure classics -- Aristos: better loved when dead

The Scarlet Pimpernel

by Baroness Emma Orczy

***

Could there have been a more timely moment in history for exiled Baroness Emma Orczy to have written The Scarlet Pimpernel than the early twentieth century’s autumn of empire? Within five years of the appearance of the Scarlet Pimpernel (aka fabulously wealthy English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney) England’s King Edward VII, epicurean son of the straitlaced Victoria, would die, his lavish funeral marking the end of an era. Within less than a decade after the Scarlet Pimpernel attempted the triumph of aristocrats over rabble, Europe would be involved in a war in whose aftermath imperial heads would fall like leaves.

Isn’t it true that we always love the rich and famous more after they’re gone?

Why else would Marie Antoinette, pictured in the illustration for today’s post, have morphed from a weak queen, no worse but certainly no better than most women of her caste, into the saint-like being William Hamilton portrayed in his 1794 painting? Or why would the Romanovs and Ottomans and Hapsburgs whose dynasties perished in the First World War have become revered instead of reviled?

Strange what a difference a century or so makes in our collective memories.

I’m not crediting Orczy with prescience in writing her 1905 romantic adventure story about an aristocrat who dedicates his life to rescuing fellow aristocrats from the guillotines of the 18^th century’s French Revolution. Critics labeled her potboiler old-fashioned. The public loved it. They knew in their bones that the world it depicted couldn’t last.

Last week, Adventure classics left Sir Percy Blakeney fearing that his beautiful plebian wife, Marguerite Blakeney (nee St. Just) might betray him to the notoriously sanguinary Committee for Public Safety. Now wonderfully villainous French agent Chauvelin uses threats against Marguerite’s beloved brother to urge her to uncover the identity of the notorious Scarlet Pimpernel.

Like all of fashionable London, where she now resides, Marguerite reveres the Scarlet Pimpernel for his courage, compassion and cunning. At least, Marguerite is certain, this hero can’t be her foppish husband Sir Percy. Or can he?

I wish I had seen the original play Orczy’s novel is based on. The exquisite middle of the book ends on a high note, with Marguerite in a filmy dressing gown confessing her fears to Sir Percy, hoping for a renewal of their love, but still not recognizing him (although everyone in the audience does) as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Only after Sir Percy excuses himself for a suddenly remembered “business” appointment does she find proof of his identity and realize she’s betrayed the man she loves, and who still loves her, to certain death.

Can the Scarlet Pimpernel escape Chauvelin’s machinations? Will Marguerite redeem herself in Sir Percy’s eyes, or -- which seems her only option -- can she at least die by his side?

At which point in the history of the Scarlet Pimpernel, matinee idol Lesley Howard will step in to reinterpret the hero to another generation, on the brink of another world-changing war.

(Next Friday, Adventure classics wonders how much The Scarlet Pimpernel’s reputation owes to the legend of Leslie Howard.)