A cold, grey milieu hung over the Parisian nightmare. From the tower of the cathedral of Notre Dame, an old phantom in a young body breathed murder. For ten years he had plotted his revenge on the city that had wronged him so maliciously. A single tear caressed his cheek as
Dormier poured his poison into the Seine.
*******
"Bonjour, Viscomte Dormier!" The voices of every man Alexandre Dormier passed rang in greeting.
"Bonjour, Monsieur Viscomte." murmured the lips of the townswomen demurely.
Alexandre Dormier was a stunning figure astride his black stallion. Resplendent in the colors of his nobility, an inappropriate Virgin's blue and the purest of silvers, the young Viscomte d'Anjou set every woman's heart to racing. The rakish noble was fully aware of his effect on them, and today, as he did every morning, he sent Schaunard, his Attendant of the Privy Stairs to fetch a wench of his Lordship's choosing. This evening it would be a raven-haired beauty, slim yet voluptuous, with a look of innocence and a ripe pair of breasts. She was sure to be a delight in his splendid bedchamber tonight, and the Viscomte looked forward to their coupling. There was no doubt that she'd come; one way or another, they always did.
*******
Life was good in the summer of 1786. Paris thrived, becoming more like her cousin England every day. The nobles became even richer, the poor became much poorer, and the young Viscomte d'Anjou grew more and more extravagant. Not yet twenty-four, he had amassed and spent the fortunes and had the experiences of a man thrice his age. Not overly taken to wine and song, Dormier sought the deeper pleasures of the flesh, expending all effort and assets in the pursuit thereof. Currently, the whoring-room he called a boudoir was in the midst of a renovation. The garish silver and azure bed and single-mirrored ceiling were gone, soon to be replaced with a glass design that would rival the royal palace of Versailles. Every wall and window would be hung with finely cut Venetian mirrors, displaying the activities of d'Anjou's new crimson and gold bed from every imaginable angle. In place of the great glass above the prodigious bed, Alexandre had hired the finest artists in Europe to design an erotic mural. The end result of the Viscomte's lustful contrivance was a Sistine-like artwork, swarming with full-breasted, round-hipped women portrayed nude in a variety of behaviors with both men and animals. When asked once the reason for such elaborate decoration up so high, Dormier had replied that he wanted to give his women something to look up to.
The piece d' resistance of the room, at least for his courtiers, were what seemed from the inside of the bedroom to be small holes in the walls. Inside the thick walls, however, the holes were funnel-shaped, with their widest end open to the anteroom. Alexandre wanted sound to be well heard from the midst of his crimson-noir apartments, and right at this moment the courtiers playing casino-games in the anteroom while he seduced the evening's wench.
"Mon Dieu!" Sophie moaned, and Alexandre had barely touched her.
He was gently stroking the inside of her thighs, kissing her neck, growling softly in her ear, and the poor girl was writhing uncontrollably.
"Shhhhh, ma petite cherie," he laughed to himself, "You wouldn't want anyone to hear you." With that his hand ceased its gentleness, and his strong fingers slammed into the nexus of all her pleasure. Sophie screamed and moved even faster, her hips rising and falling to meet the
deep hardness of his well-veined hands. As his fingers reached deeper inside of her, he kissed her neck, her cheeks, but never her swollen lips. Nothing was allowed to mute her erotic sobbing.
"Take me!" she cried, and Dormier's courtiers pricked up their ears at the girl's needy moans. Content to wait no more, Alexandre pushed himself inside her, his hard, thick cock tearing apart the tender muscles of her sex. The anteroom fell silent as he took Sophie's maidenhead; the sharp breaths of the little virgin were like gunshot in the perfectly still room. Then she began to scream with pleasure. As she cried out, he drove her harder, making her whimper in pleasure as the pain subsided. They climaxed together, and her screams were so loud, her ecstasy so complete, that Sophie never noticed Alexandre's silence. As she screamed, he watched, but she did not see his own fluid spill out onto the black silk sheets.
"Je' taime," she cried, "I love you."
At this the Viscomte d'Anjou paused. This was something utterly new. Many a whore had been more than willing to give her body to the blond-and-blue noble, but never her heart. Yet Dormier knew that the ears of the Parisian court were listening, and that his reply need come in haste.
"Of course you do, girl." he said, but Alexandre was not altogether so sure.
The courtiers were amused.
Later, as Sophie and Alexandre dressed, she noticed a small opening in the wall.
"What is that, Monsieur?"
"Nothing at all, Mademoiselle."
The Court laughed.
*******
By the winter the Viscomte was seeing Sophie frequently, but he was a man of quality, and the rules of high society forbade relations with just a single courtesan. Alexandre's decadent harem continued, but save for Sophie and one other, d'Anjou's heart was never in the conquests.
The other's name was Timon, and across the Continent could not be found a gentler, more beautiful young man. Timon had dark, curly hair, and the softest blue eyes in Creation. He was slight, yet not truly frail, and he had captured the Viscomte's heart.
Five years the Viscomte's junior, Timon had been sent from Normandy as a footman to his Lordship Alexandre Dormier, Viscomte d'Anjou. Never had Timon dreamed that he would also become his master's lover. But indeed he had, and so secured for himself a seemingly safe and comfortable place in Paris and the French Court. Their activity was to be kept with the utmost of secrecy, however, for in Catholic France before the Revolution, homosexuality could mean death to both parties involved.
They lived together in silence for months. Niether the Vicomte nor his lover ever realized that a woman could decipher mens' tender glances, or that feminine intuition would uncover the true meaning of those stolen caresses. It never dawned on Alexandre and Timon that Sophie was watching, let alone growing ever more jealous and turbulent. Outside the manor walls, the Viscomte did not notice the increasing unrest of the peasants. The people were growing tired of living in hunger and poverty, while watching their lords and ladies in splendor. In the streets, the rumours of pain and revolution could be heard, if only one would listen.
Yet Alexandre never even noticed the hungry children at the manor gates as he embarked on his morning rides. Inside the mansion, his attention was most certainly elsewhere. As Timon and his Master closed out the world, the French nobility began to go off in search of breathing room in other places.
Ignorant of it all, Alexandre Dormier never felt the noose slipping around his own fine neck.
*******
"Another peasant uprising M'Lord!"
"What? Where now?" barked the exasperated Viscomte. This was be the sixth upheaval in a fortnight, and his patience was at an end. For the second time that very day Dormier rode out with a score of sentries, this time to the Latin Quarter in Paris. Les bohemes were in revolt, tired of oppression by the nobility. The people would no longer have their cries of starvation answered with such as absurdities as "let them eat cake." Marie Antoinette was no longer in favor. Her nobles afraid, and the villein's guillotine was coming down on all too many ivory necks.
Having reached the Quarter again, Viscomte d'Anjou was quick to put down the revolt. His own sword, yielded in anger, brought down as many men as did the flashing blades of all his men together. In this way, the uprising was quickly quelled and a tenuous peace was reestablished. Ten men of the Latin Quarter were guillotined that night by the very man that they had aspired to slay. The villains stopped fighting, but they were not pacified.
