Post by PAUL CHAUVELIN on Feb 20, 2013 19:20:01 GMT -5
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc172/damijoandamija/sbg.jpg); padding-left: 50px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 10px;] damaged I am merely the product…..of the life that I've lived An amalgam of sorrows.....and the wisdom they give But the weight has grown heavy [style= text-align: center]and it's dragging me down It's so hard not to sink now but I don't want to drown |
chauvelin
tags || Rienne
For all its scars and flaws, Paul Chauvelin loved Paris. He had grown up on a country estate and owned another in the Alsace wine country that provided a very comfortable living, but Paris was his home. Paris was the beating heart of France, the country he'd spent his life striving to protect – sometimes even from itself. Like France, it had its good and evil, its petty cruelties and small acts of kindness, its abominations and its breathtakingly selfless sacrifices. Everything that mattered began here. And ended here as well.
The Bourbon tyranny was coming to an end. He could feel it coming, smell it on the air as a farmer smelled a killing frost, or a mariner an approaching storm. And, like them, he knew there was nothing he could do to prevent it. In truth, he didn't really want to. This regime had been born in blood, and in blood it would die. It would be replaced by another, scarcely better, and on the wheel would turn, crushing the guilty and the innocent alike beneath its weight.
Looking at the people laughing and chattering around him as he strolled through the square, he wondered which of them would survive … and how. Which of them would dance around the guillotine as they now danced around the maypole? Which of them would replace the flower garlands with a red ribbon about their throats? Which of them would drown out the lilting folk songs with "Ca Ira?" With a shake of his head, the old spymaster threw off those ruminations. It didn't matter, he thought as he left them and their celebrations behind. Que sera sera.
It was less crowded on the side street his feet had chosen, but there was still a bustle of activity. A few booths and tents were set up, tucked in wherever they'd fit, and pedestrians flowed around them like a lazy river through rocks. Then one of those pedestrians caught his attention. The man was heading away from him, but even if Chauvelin hadn't been intimately familiar with the woman on the other man's arm, the height and the way he moved would have given him away.
Sir Percy Blakeney, otherwise known as the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Paul had known, of course, that his old nemesis was in the city. And ordinarily he wouldn't have minded a bit of banter here, on his own turf. But at the moment he was about business of his own -- business that didn't need the attention of foreign agents. And, as Blakeney had stopped suddenly and was beginning to turn around, he needed to move fast.
Turning smoothly, as if it had been his intention all along, Chauvelin stepped into the closest tent, brushing aside the colorful curtains that had been hung to form a sort of door. He knew it was a fortune teller, and he had no more belief in Gypsy magic than in the Church, but it was a harmless way to lay low.
Glancing around as he stepped further inside, he took in his surroundings. There was a curtain behind the mystic that probably hid a private area or, knowing the Romany, a rear exit. The visible, public area of the tent struck a good balance between foreign and familiar -- not so alien as to be frightening, but openly exotic enough to avoid the uncanny feel of not-quite-right.
As a man who appreciated competence, Chauvelin smiled a genuine smile as he sat down in the lone chair before the mystic, laying his cane across his knees. "What do the cards hold for me, Phuri Dai*?" he asked.
notes ||
[/b] *wise mother[/div][/center][/td][/tr][/td][/tr][/table]TEMPLATE BY ANYA OF CAUTION 2.0
LYRICS BY ASSEMBLAGE 23[/center]
