TWO PLAYS

By Robert Blumenfeld

The Count of Sainte-Hélène: A Balzacian Melodrama takes place in 1817-1818 in Paris, during the Bourbon Restoration when Louis XVIII had been placed on the throne of France at the decree of the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. This play is based on one of the most sensational cases solved by the first great detective in history, Eugène-François Vidocq, the ex-convict who became head of the French Sûreté (the Security Service of the French police). An altogether extraordinary individual, he was an acquaintance of Victor Hugo, who based both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Les Misérables on Vidocq; and a friend of Balzac, whose character Vautrin is even more closely inspired by and modeled on Vidocq than Hugo’s characters are. Interludes of the Hear: A Play about Marcel Proust, his life and loves, was inspired by my love for that author’s most famous book, In Search of Lost Time. The play goes back and forth in time, as the Student interviews Céleste Albaret, Proust’s housekeeper and general factotum, for his doctoral dissertation. When I read the book, I felt it was as if he were talking directly to me. I am sure many readers have had the same experience. Proust’s penetrating picture of the society of his day in pre-World War One France, and of Paris during the war itself, and his amazing, psychologically insightful portrait of each of his characters, his understanding of psychology that in some ways parallels that of Sigmund Freud, makes his book still relevant in today’s world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369409565

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Copyright © 2023 by Robert Blumenfeld.

Front Cover:

Nicolas-Jean-Baptiste Raguenet, View of Paris from the Pont-Neuf (1763)

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Rev. date: 10/13/2023

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I dedicate this book to my parents Max David Blumenfeld (1911-1994) and Ruth Blumenfeld (1915-2015), deeply and dearly loved, and missed every day. They were the best parents in the world, and did everything to foster and encourage me in all my interests and endeavors. They were the loveliest, kindest, and most wonderful people. I miss them every day.

In addition, I dedicate The Count of Sainte-Hélène to my beloved aunt, my mother’s sister, Bertha Friedman (1913-2001), and to their brother Seymour Korn (1920-2010), both of whom would have appreciated it greatly.

Contents

The Count Of Sainte-Hélène: A Balzacian Melodrama

Act One

Act Two

Interludes Of The Heart: A Play About Marcel Proust

Act One

Act Two

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE COUNT OF SAINTE-HÉLÈNE: A

BALZACIAN MELODRAMA

CAST OF CHARACTERS

(In Order of Appearance)

Monsieur Henry, the Prefect of Police, urbane, elegant, courtly; 40

Actor One: Lacour, a Police Officer, Vidocq’s assistant, rough and ready; Maître Dupin, Sainte-Hélène’s defense attorney; 45

Eugène-François Vidocq: Detective Inspector, Chief of the Sûreté; capable of great courtliness and great roughness; very tall and strong; forthright, honest, principled and cynical; 42

Count Maxime de Breteuil, an intimate friend of the King, sly, courtly and well-mannered, very cynical and a great snob; 34

André-Pierre de Pontis, Count of Sainte-Hélène, Lieutenant-Colonel of the King’s Guards and an intimate friend of the King; a superb cavalier, impeccable manners, an arrogant bearing; 43

Lucien de Beaufort, an aspiring writer, very handsome and a bit naïve; 24

Maria-Rosa de Suera Marcen, Countess of Sainte-Hélène, beautiful, proud and languorous; born in Saragossa; slight Spanish accent; 40

Sylvie Destouches, a courtesan, calculating, very beautiful, very insecure; 22

King Louis XVIII of France, immensely overweight, a great gourmet, more wily than he at first appears; 55

Countess de Breteuil, wife of Maxime de Breteuil; calculating, snobbish, a fading beauty, still in love with her husband, despite his indifference; 33

Advocate General Eugène d’Agier, one of the King’s prosecutors; a young and ambitious lawyer; 26

Alexandre Coignard: A servant at the home of Count de Breteuil; 41

Actor Two: Baron Tricher (a guest at the de Breteuil ball; heavy Alsatian-German accent); President of the Court of Assizes; the Marquis de Chambreuil (Chief of the Tuileries Palace Police Guard and Master of the King’s Horse Farms); 56

Actor Three: A Servant at the King’s court, and later at the Breteuil ball; Monsieur Brun, a handwriting and documents expert; 40

The play takes place in 1817-1818 in Paris,

during the Bourbon Restoration.

Author’s Note: This play is based very loosely on one of the most sensational cases solved by the first great detective in history, Eugène-François Vidocq, the ex-convict who became head of the French Sûreté (the Security Service of the French police). An altogether extraordinary individual, he was an acquaintance of Victor Hugo, who based both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Les Misérables on Vidocq; and a friend of Balzac, whose character Vautrin is even more closely inspired by and modeled on Vidocq than Hugo’s characters are. In a reversal of this historical situation, the novels of Honoré de Balzac are the principal inspiration for my melodrama about Vidocq (with a linguistic nod to Charles Greville’s journals, which cover the reigns of the English monarchs from George III to Queen Victoria). I have put some of Balzac’s character Vautrin’s speeches into Vidocq’s mouth, but both the historical and the Balzacian characters whom I have borrowed as a basis for my own characters bear only a distant resemblance to their historical and novelistic counterparts. This play is the basis of my novel, The Count of Sainte-Hélène; or, The Lure of Infamy.

SETTINGS: Vidocq’s office; the Count of Sainte-Hélène’s office; A salon in the Tuileries Palace in King Louis XVIII’s private apartments; the Count de Breteuil’s reception rooms; Madame de Breteuil’s boudoir; Sylvie Destouches’s boudoir; an antechamber to the Count of Sainte-Hélène’s office; a courtroom; a prison cell; a prison courtyard.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

Late afternoon. In a shabbily appointed office in the Central Police Prefecture. MONSIEUR HENRY, Prefect of Police, every inch a distinguished gentleman, and LACOUR, a police officer, are at work. LACOUR is seated, reading a dossier; HENRY is holding some letters. Suddenly the door bursts open and a tall, disheveled man bursts in and collapses into a chair. It is EUGENE-FRANÇOIS VIDOCQ, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté, disguised as a low-life cutthroat ruffian.

VIDOCQ. (Nearly fainting) Help me…

HENRY. Vidocq! What happened?

LACOUR rushes over to VIDOCQ with a flask of cognac, as VIDOCQ tears off a false beard and proceeds to wipe grimy makeup off his face.

VIDOCQ. I’m hurt… (VIDOCQ opens his coat to reveal a bloodstained shirt.) A stupid tavern brawl… It’s just a slight knife wound, but… (VIDOCQ stanches the wound with a handkerchief after disinfecting it with some of the cognac. LACOUR helps him.) Thanks, Lacour. I’ll be all right… Paper…

LACOUR hands him a piece of paper and a quill pen dipped in ink. VIDOCQ writes quickly and gives the paper to LACOUR.

VIDOCQ. Go to this address… at midnight. Take a squad of men, in disguise, and go singly, or you’ll scare them off. There’s a robbery planned. One of the jewelry stores under the arcades of the Palais Royal. This is the meeting place of those cutthroats… There’s a whole gang of them. Get them all, the filthy scum. I will join you later…

HENRY. No, no! You should take care of yourself, for tonight at least. Rest!

VIDOCQ. (Sips some cognac) My expedition was a failure…

HENRY. What do you mean? You’ve just foiled a…

VIDOCQ. I mean I found out nothing about this series of burglaries of the great houses of Paris that has been plaguing us… There has got to be someone out there with a loose tongue, someone who feels he’s not getting his fair share of the loot… There always is.

A frantic knock at the door. COUNT MAXIME DE BRETEUIL, a crafty and charming aristocrat of impeccable manners and demeanor, now distraught, opens it and enters. The imposing COUNT OF SAINTE-HÉLÈNE, resplendent in his military uniform, accompanies HIM.

HENRY. Count de Breteuil! And the Count of Sainte-Hélène! What an honor…

DE BRETEUIL. I’ve been robbed! My house was broken into!

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. My dear Count de Breteuil! Calm yourself!

HENRY. Another robbery! That’s the fifth in a month! How terrible… I’m so sorry, Monsieur de Breteuil. Sit down, please, both of you…

THEY do so. VIDOCQ rises.

DE BRETEUIL. And in broad daylight, too! (Collapsing into a chair) Oh, God…

VIDOCQ. This may help steady you…

VIDOCQ pours DE BRETEUIL a glass of cognac.

DE BRETEUIL. What’s that?

VIDOCQ. Cognac…

DE BRETEUIL. Cognac!? I can’t stand cognac!

HE drinks it in one gulp.

VIDOCQ. Better?

DE BRETEUIL. Thank you. You do look a sight, Monsieur Vidocq, I must say.

VIDOCQ. Tell me...

DE BRETEUIL. They got everything! I spent the day in my office, seeing an endless stream of visitors and clients, hearing petitions to be presented to the King, and… and… when I emerged I saw that something was wrong… and… and… closets had been opened, drawers, my safe… And upstairs, too, in my wife’s boudoir… Thank God the Count of Sainte-Hélène was with me at that moment! He managed to calm me down a bit…

VIDOCQ. Where were your servants while all this was going on?

DE BRETEUIL. I don’t know where they were! I suppose the grooms were in the stables, the gardeners in the garden, the kitchen staff in the kitchen… Nobody heard anything… Of course, I had several of my people on guard, as I usually do, or at least they were supposed to be on guard, but they were…drunk, I’m afraid. I dismissed them immediately…

VIDOCQ. That was, perhaps, imprudent. I hope you know where we can find them.

DE BRETEUIL. The head of my household staff will be able to help you.

VIDOCQ. Do you ever employ outside staff in the house? A seamstress or a tailor, for instance, who comes to the house to take measurements, and so forth?

DE BRETEUIL. Occasionally. My head of staff can supply you with a list…

VIDOCQ. Good. And I want the names of everyone who visited you today, and for the last few days. You’ll have to make a complete inventory of what was taken.

DE BRETEUIL. A great deal of money from my safe. All of Madame’s jewelry, of course. Her diamond necklaces. The silver, including some very expensive pieces… The strange thing was… there was no broken glass or anything like that. No open windows…

VIDOCQ. Which probably means either that the burglars had keys, or that somebody in the house admitted them. Do not worry, Monsieur. I swear to you on my honor that we will find the perpetrators of this dastardly crime and bring them to justice. And we will recover what has been stolen.

DE BRETEUIL. I would be astonished if you did.

VIDOCQ. I want to interview your servants immediately, while it’s still fresh in their minds. I want to inspect the premises as well.

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. Wait! Monsieur Henry, may I see you alone for a moment? And you, Count…

HENRY. Why, yes, of course… Go and clean yourself up, Vidocq.

VIDOCQ and LACOUR leave.

What is it, Count?

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. I don’t think it a good idea to have Vidocq investigate this case.

HENRY. Why on earth not? If anyone can solve this, he can. God knows, these robberies have baffled all of us…

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. The man is a thief himself, and a confidence trickster, a master forger and…

HENRY. All in the past! He’s been a trusted member of the police force for decades!

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. I don’t trust the man! He is invited everywhere. He knows everybody. Everyone wants him at their soirées because of his celebrity, or should I say notoriety. He is a curiosity. And he has solved every case that ever came his way, except for this series of robberies! Why? Because he is behind them! He may fool some people, Monsieur, but he does not fool me! He is a recidivist! He couldn’t resist this opportunity to enrich himself!

DE BRETEUIL. You may have a point! This is frightening… If we can’t trust the police…

HENRY. Surely you misjudge the man. He has done nothing to warrant the continued suspicions that have dogged his footsteps all his life. These awful accusations. Come, gentlemen, I will be with you, and I will keep an eye on him… I promise you. Just in case.

THEY leave. END OF SCENE.

SCENE TWO

The next day. Early evening. In the COUNT OF SAINTE-HÉLÈNE’s well appointed, sumptuous library and office. SAINTE-HÉLÈNE, imposing and distinguished in his military uniform, as usual, enters and finds LUCIEN DE BEAUFORT, an aspiring writer whose first novel has just been published to critical acclaim; a young, rather shy and very beautiful man, waiting nervously.

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. Apologies for having kept you waiting, dear young man. You have considered my offer?

LUCIEN. Yes, of course. And… and… I have something to ask you… A man of your eminence, of your sagacity… will not be astonished at the question I am about to put to you… who have already done so much for me…

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. You may ask me anything. Do you think I would have wanted to engage you as my secretary if I did not know you to be a man of principles, and entirely trustworthy? You could not ask me anything I would find in the least offensive, I feel quite sure.

LUCIEN. Why… Why are you so interested in me? Why do you want, as you put it, to give me everything?

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. Young man, are you familiar with the Iliad?

LUCIEN. I am, but…

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. You know then of Achilles and Patroclus. Have you not understood the depth of that friendship between one man and another? That is what I feel for you, what you have inspired in me. I am one of the wealthiest men in Paris. My wealth is at your disposal. You are a brilliant, talented writer, and I wish to be a patron of the arts. You cannot write without leisure, yet you must have money. As I knew it would not be in your nature simply to accept charity, I offered you the post of private secretary. You will not find the duties onerous, and you will have time to write. Three afternoons a week you can come and handle my correspondence.

LUCIEN. Then I am the most fortunate of men. I accept the post with the deepest gratitude.

SAINTE-HÉLÈNE. I believe you, although the word is usually found only in