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Updated: June 16, 2025
Their voices and footsteps sounded in the cobbled yard of La Citadelle, as they scampered up to prepare for supper. Mother sailed solemnly after them, more like a frigate than ever. The world, on fire, turned like a monstrous Catherine wheel within his brain. Something had lit the universe.... He stood there in the dusk beneath the peeping stars, facing the slender little shadow.
"But my house looked out on the citadelle, and stood very high on a rock. Below it there was a drop and steep steps went down to a street below." "Had you pink curtains in the upper windows?" "Is it not then so damaged?" demanded the woman eagerly, dropping her smile. "The curtains are left? You can see the curtains?" "No, no, it is terribly damaged.
It came, so far as they could make out, from the humped outline of La Citadelle, and from a particular room there, as though some one in that building had a special source of supply. Moreover, it scattered itself over the village in separate swift rivulets that dived and dipped towards particular houses here and there.
But the secret was well kept; no one discovered who had worked the miracle. Pride sealed the lips of the beneficiaries themselves, while the inhabitants of the Citadelle, who alone shared the knowledge, kept the facts secret, as in honour bound.
"And I return alone?" "No, you stay too. You are lent to us for five days. They should have told you!" "Oh, I stay too. In this tunnel, here! How odd, how amusing!" "Monsieur Dellahousse has gone to ask the Commandant of the citadelle to house us all. Here he comes." The Russian returned under the chain of lights. "Follow me," he said, and led them further into his cavern.
Tumbling down the wooden stairs, he crossed the street and made for the Citadelle, where the children opened the door for him even before he rang. Jimbo and Monkey, just home from school, pulled him by both arms towards the tea-table. They had watched for his coming. 'The samovar's just boiling, Mother welcomed him.
To appreciate this properly you should not fail to climb the long flight of steps in effect they seem interminable, but they are really about six hundred that mounts endlessly from near the Cellular Prison to a point by the side of the Citadelle Pierreuse.
They followed him like children, and as they advanced the lieutenant whispered: "We are now well beneath the town. It lies like a crust above our heads. Exactly beneath the palace you will see the steps go up...." "What is the railway line for?" "Bread for the garrison. There are great bakeries in the citadelle."
The village lay cosily dreaming beneath the sky. Once the curfew died away there was only the rustling of the plane trees in the old courtyard. The great Citadelle loomed above the smaller houses, half in shadow half in silver, nodding heavily to the spire of the Church, and well within sight of the sentinelle poplar that guarded the village from the forest and the mountains.
The peasants, however, rather pitied the hard-working author who 'had to write all those books, than paid him honourable tribute for his work. It seemed so unnecessary. Vineyards produced wine a man could drink and pay for, but books ! Well, results spoke for themselves, and no one who lived in La Citadelle was millionaire.
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