The following day—Friday.

  André arrived at the Chatelet Criminal Court shortly after noon, carrying the letter of inquiry issued by the High Court. Behind him trailed Meldar, the housekeeper’s fifteen-year-old nephew, his face full of youthful pimples and nervous curiosity.

  “Good day, Monsieur Franck! Welcome to the Chatelet Court,” came a voice from the marble staircase. Morel, Judge Faria’s first assistant, descended in haste, bowing and smiling with a servility that contrasted sharply with his earlier arrogance.

  André halted, his expression unreadable. When the assistant extended a hand in hollow conciliation, he merely shook his head. To him, Morel was a hollow coward wrapped in formality, unworthy of courtesy. One purpose of his visit, after all, was to make his authority felt within these walls.

  A message from a senior prosecutor at the Palais de Justice had already reached him: within three months, the Chatelet High Criminal Court would be dissolved and reorganised into the Third Circuit Tribunal of Paris. Though still a court of serious offences, its jurisdiction would shrink drastically—from one-third of France’s administrative territory to the forty-eight districts of Paris and its two neighbouring provinces. The Palais de Justice would reclaim administrative control over all such circuit courts. Two years later, under Georges Danton, these would evolve into the Revolutionary Tribunals, while the Palais itself would be stripped of power.

  For André, this was excellent news. It meant that the Chatelet’s ancient privileges—its precedents and discretionary authority—would soon return to the High Court. He could afford to offend every official in the building without fear of retribution.

  His indifference turned Morel’s face white. The assistant drew back his outstretched hand and stood awkwardly, humiliated before his own clerks.

  Born to a family of lawyers and educated at the Sorbonne, Morel had every reason to be proud. He had been destined for a judgeship by the age of forty. Yet only days earlier, he had become a laughingstock throughout the legal circles of Paris. His peers whispered of his misconduct; Judge Faria himself had ordered him to repair the damage, unwilling to be demoted alongside the sinking court.

  Damage? Morel seethed inwardly. Everything I did—blocking Franck’s visits, delaying his petitions—was at Faria’s own suggestion. And the tax-farmers’ gold helped persuade me.

  But most of all, he hated the young man before him—the provincial newcomer who had played the meek little quail only to transform, at the last moment, into a sharp-toothed wolf.

  For now, however, Morel had to endure. He forced a smile onto his pale face. “Monsieur Franck,” he said softly, “if you would sign here, you may proceed to visit your client.”

  He gestured to a clerk holding a registry and a quill soaked in ink. As he offered them, a small purse slipped from his sleeve, hidden beneath the papers—an invitation André was meant to accept discreetly. Morel prayed he would take it. If the young lawyer turned away again, his own career would collapse.

  Instead, André began to laugh. Not politely, but loudly—so loudly that judges, prosecutors, and assistants alike peered from their offices to see who dared disturb the solemn dignity of the Chatelet.

  Morel froze. His smile faltered. He could not see what had gone wrong, only that he was suddenly in danger.

  At the height of the silence, André stepped forward. He took the registry in one hand—and with the tip of his little finger, brushed against the purse. Morel, startled, released it. It fell to the marble floor with a sharp clatter, scattering several gold louis across the shining tiles.

  A collective gasp filled the hall.

  Feigning apology, André smiled at the onlookers and motioned to his young companion. “Meldar, pick them up, if you please.”

  The boy obediently gathered the coins and replaced them in the purse, which André then slipped back—without a word—into the assistant’s coat pocket.

  He signed the ledger in swift, deliberate strokes and turned to the bailiff. “Lead the way.”

  Behind him, the stunned assistant sagged against the wall, his lips trembling. Only when André disappeared down the corridor did Morel give a strangled cry and collapse onto the floor, sobbing in despair. None of the witnesses would ever testify to what they had seen, but everyone knew: his career as a magistrate was finished.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The Chatelet prison lay beyond a shaded arcade connecting court to gaol. Dense trees and the massive grey fa?ade cast the passage into near darkness, lending it a chill that crept beneath the skin.

  At the final iron door, a bailiff knocked three times with a small hammer. A grizzled warden peered through the hatch, squinting at the court’s insignia before unlatching the gate.

  “Forgive me, monsieur,” he said, barring the way of André’s young attendant. “Regulations permit only one visitor—the counsel of record.”

  André’s glare turned cold. The bailiff, trembling, whispered a few hurried words to the warden, who immediately stepped aside.

  Moments later, word of André’s “outrageous insolence” reached the warden-chief, a short, corpulent man who hurried down himself to make amends. Bowing and sweating, he personally led André to Gracchus Babeuf’s cell.

  The door was of solid iron, the locks thick and oiled. The chief slipped in the key and opened it with a clang, bowing low like a servant before a prince. “Everything is in order, Monsieur Franck,” he said obsequiously. “Monsieur Babeuf’s cell is spotless, and aside from the obvious inconvenience of confinement, no harm has come to him.”

  André lowered his handkerchief and nodded. The air inside was cleaner than he expected. The bed was neatly made; the floor swept; a desk, chair, lamp, basin, and even a chamber pot stood in tidy array. But for the bars on the window, it might have been an inn.

  Gracchus Babeuf was leaning against the wall, a book open in his hands. When the door opened, he looked up, startled for a moment, then smiled faintly.

  “Meldar,” André murmured. The boy stepped forward and slipped a small purse of silver into the warden’s hand.

  “I require privacy,” André said. The man nodded quickly and withdrew with his guards to the end of the corridor. Meldar shut the door behind them and remained on watch.

  Approaching the prisoner, André saw that Gracchus Babeuf was about thirty, slight and thin, his hair already streaked with grey, his face lined with hardship—but his eyes were bright, steady, alive.

  He took a quill, dipped it in ink, and wrote on a sheet of paper:

  “Thank you—for all you’ve done for me.”

  André smiled and wrote in return:

  “No need for thanks. It is merely my duty as a lawyer.”

  He added a second line beneath it:

  “Marat sends you his fraternal salute in the name of the Revolution.”

  After a pause, he continued:

  “Now—I must ask you several questions about the case.”

  Gracchus Babeuf shook his head. He turned to his pillow, drew out a thick bundle of papers, and handed them across.

  “You will find every answer you need here,” he wrote.

  As a fellow jurist, he knew exactly what André required and had prepared everything in advance—save for a few final notes, too sensitive to entrust to any hand but his own. These he added now, while André watched.

  When the reading was done, he wrote once more:

  “Anything else you wish to ask?”

  André shook his head. Taking from his coat a small ceramic jar containing a tinder-wick, he struck a spark and burned the most dangerous pages to ash, dousing them in the basin.

  Before leaving, he called to Meldar. “Every three days, you’ll come here,” he said quietly. “Bring books, newspapers, and any word from me he may need.”

  The boy nodded solemnly.

  Back in his attic, André pieced together the truth.

  Four years earlier, the tax-farmer Paulze—father-in-law to Lavoisier—had signed a contract with the Versailles court, paying the Crown 500,000 livres a year for the right to collect salt and tobacco taxes across greater Picardy. His agents had formed an armed inspection brigade, empowered to arrest, interrogate, and even execute resisters in their private prisons.

  According to petitions preserved in the archives of the Palais de Justice—and to Gracchus Babeuf’s own testimony—this militia had killed twenty-one peasants and sympathisers, and maimed hundreds more. None were ever punished. Those few brought before local courts were fined token sums to “compensate” the victims’ families.

  Then came the Revolution. In 1789, the sceptre passed from Louis XVI to the National Constituent Assembly; the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the August Decrees abolished feudal privilege. Yet when the question arose of abolishing the tax-farm itself, the Assembly split.

  To prevent open rupture, the deputies compromised. A tax committee issued a pious appeal to the “patriotic conscience” of the tax-farmers, urging them to reduce their burdens voluntarily.

  It was absurd. The tiger was asked to police its own claws.

  Under the oratory of Marat, Gracchus Babeuf, and others, the people took matters into their own hands. They resisted taxation, hunted down the collectors’ henchmen, and hanged them from the roadside trees.

  Revenues in Picardy fell by half. In retaliation, the tax-farmers struck back—accusing agitators of sedition, bribing judges, and imprisoning men like Gracchus Babeuf. But public outrage forced their release.

  In mid-February, an inspector was found hanging outside Saint-Quentin. Informers named Gracchus Babeuf. The local magistrates dispatched police to arrest him. Lacking the authority to try capital cases, they sent him to Paris. En route, poison was slipped into his food.

  The attempt failed, but his throat was seared, leaving him unable to speak. His court-appointed lawyer—bought by Paulze—betrayed him, agreeing to every unlawful demand of judge and prosecutor alike.

  It was then that Marat intervened, using his influence to replace the traitor with André Franck.

  Now the whole design was clear to André: the murders, the bribes, the forged testimony, all tied by one golden thread to the fermiers-généraux.

  Whether Gracchus Babeuf himself had taken part in the hanging of the inspector no longer mattered. That was not the lawyer’s concern. His duty was not to moral truth but to the defence.

  The second hearing would begin within a week. And André knew—no matter what eloquence he displayed, no matter what evidence he produced—the twelve “gentlemen” of the jury would never side with a peasant against wealth.

  If he wished to win, he would have to find another way.