IJulien felt he was at the end of his strength. Confused thoughts were agitating in his mind and states of lucidity alternated with states of almost hallucination. However, during the first or the latter, he was fully determined not to yield to Mégot's threats or blandishments. The man hadn't yet carried out his last threat, but the boy knew it was just a matter of time. Sooner or later, it would start. When? He didn't know, he couldn't foresee it. He lost completely the sense of time, being shut there in the darkness, without even the rhythm of the meals to scan the passing of hours, of days. The unreal silence of that underground cell impended over him and seemed to crush him. The complete darkness took out from him any ability to perceive the space around him. Deaf and blind. At times he hummed just to hear some sounds... Just his touch and smell kept him still partially anchored to reality.
At times he felt the cell was like an immense space, infinite, empty, where the mind feared to be lost. Other times he perceived it as tight and limited and felt as if it enclosed him like a coffin where his mind feared to be suffocated. Keep out for a person space and time, and his mind gets lost. Then Julien discovered a surreal phenomenon -- the rumble of silence.
In those conditions the only safety anchor, the only thing that prevented Julien from becoming crazy, was his love for Snot. Love. A huge, mysterious, immortal force... And sweet.
Suddenly a noise broke the usual silence. Julien shuddered. "Here they are, they are coming," he thought. In a while his body would be at the mercy of strangers. He would be raped. His body. Not him. Not his soul anyway. That was unreachable as it was protected by Snot's love.
Stronger noises. The bolt. The door opening. These noises resounded in Julien's brain like hammers on an anvil, lightning incandescent sparks of pain. Then a lantern, blazing like a thousand suns, wounded his eyes.
Then a voice, strong, rising from nothing, like God's voice on the Doomsday, said, "Julien de Jambville?"
Julien shut his eyes, and shutting his ears with his hands, curled on the plank bed.
The voice pressed, "Citizen Jambville?"
He didn't answer.
Then a second voice, almost muffled, this time human, reached him. "Citizen Teissier, it's over. We came to free you."
Julien heard the words but was not listening to them.
A hand touched his arm and gently shook him, and the second voice added, "Sit up, Marc Teissier. Nobody wants to harm you. We came to free you, you are free, do you understand?" Then, the same voice, murmured, "Poor boy!"
These last words penetrated Julien's brain. He listened to them, he understood them. A rapist would not talk in that way... Slowly, Julien relaxed and barely opened his eyes but shut them at once again, dazzled by that light even though not strong.
The second voice asked, "Are you able to stand up?"
Julien shook his head.
"Do you want us to help you?"
Julien nodded in assent. Strong hands seized his arms and under his armpits and he felt himself being lifted up and put on his feet.
"Take him upstairs," the first voice said.
Bodily, he felt himself being transported up the stairs, then in a corridor, and then being laid on a divan bed. Julien slightly opened again his eyes. Strange faces, glowering, heedful. One of the men, with a tricolour band knotted at his waist like a belt, sat on a chair in front of him. After asking him if he felt like talking, the man started to ask him a set of questions about Mégot. Julien answered. He asked for some water and they gave him it. The questions seemed to never end. They stopped only when a man with a steaming bowl came, and Julien ate very slowly. Then, more questions. Finally they read him a summary of his answers that meanwhile somebody wrote down, and he was asked to sign the sheet, and after that all those present signed also, as witnesses.
Then, a man called Mathieu was summoned and they told him, "The boy is free, we entrust him to you. Take him home."
That man, who was the Blade, said, "Thank you, citizen magistrate, thank you, citizen Sévion. Ah... here be the news I promised you..." Then, addressing the boy, he said: "D' you feel like walkin', Marc?"
"I can try. Where are you taking me?"
"You come with me. Your brother Luc be waiting for you."
"Is he here? Outside?"
"No, he be waitin' for you at my place, he still don't know you be finally free."
They went out. The Blade held him up with an arm around his waist.
As they entered the street, Julien shut his eyes and stopped. "What a light... how strong it is. My head is spinning..."
Julien felt his heart violently beating, a little because of the emotion of the unexpected release, a little because of the confusion that all that light and noise created in him, but above all because he knew that in a short while he would embrace again his Snot. However, after a few steps, he collapsed lifelessly, and only the strong arm of the Blade around his waist prevented him from crashing on the pavement. The man then lifted him up, taking him in his arms, and transported him so to his home. There he opened the door with a kick.
Snot, at the sudden noise of the door opening, jumped up and rushed headlong toward the Blade, but stopped in front of him, a petrified expression on his face.
"He be alive, don't worry. He just fainted for weakness. Take him, he be startin' to be heavy."
Snot took Julien in his arms and took him to his pallet where he carefully lay him down. Then he sat near him and started to gently caress his face. He wanted to call him, to shake him, to wake him up with sweet words, but wasn't able. For sure not because he was ashamed of the Blade or Félicie, but because the emotion and the happiness to have finally at his side his beloved made a knot at his throat.
Félicie wet a towel and handed it to Snot in a silent gesture of sympathy. The boy dabbed it on his lover's forehead, on his cheeks, on his neck in a delicate caress. Then he bent over Julien and planted a light kiss on his lips. After a few seconds, Julien opened his eyes, saw Snot's face and brightened in a wonderful smile.
With a hint of voice he murmured, "Luc... at last!"
Then Félicie nodded to the Blade to go out. The man knitted his forehead and shook his head. Félicie went near him and whispered something with a hard tone. The Blade shrugged his shoulders and followed his woman out of the room.
Meanwhile Snot, holding in his arms his lover, was covering him with tender kisses. "Love, my love! You are here. Again together, you and me..."
"Yes, Luc."
"What did they do to you, Love?"
"Later. Now kiss me."
They united in a tender and passionate kiss.
"Luc, please... undress me. I want to make love with you."
"Aren't you too weak, Love?"
"Yes, Luc, I am, but I need it. Please?"
"Me too, I need you, Love, but..."
"I want you. Later I will rest. I will rest even better. But now I want to feel you inside me, I want to feel I really am alive, and loved..."
"As you wish, my dear love, as you want..."
With delicate moves Snot relieved Julien of his clothes, then feverishly bared himself and lay on top of his lover, embracing and caressing him, covering him with kisses, awakening his excitation. When he felt him shuddering with desire and when Julien offered himself to him, invoking him, Snot took him with a mix of passion and gentleness, worried above all to give him, together with the pleasure, all the warmth and the sweetness of his love. While he was slipping inside him, Julien's suffering face transfigured and became radiant, and his eyes shone. At each slow thrust, Julien joyfully shuddered, welcoming inside himself the strong and hot virility of his lover.
When at last the two young lovers lay down, sated and exhausted, Julien gently drifted to sleep in the warm and safe nest of his beloved's arms. Then Snot, reaching out his arm, took the cover and spread it on their bodies and, always keeping in his arms his Love, caressing him, remained at his side. After a short while he too fell asleep, feeling happy.
When, later, Félicie came back with the Blade, she went near the pallet and gazed for a long while at the two young lovers intertwined in their sleep. "Look at 'em, how beautiful, how sweet they be! You never embrace me, after you d' me!"
The Blade shrugged his shoulders, sat at the table and groaned something unintelligible as an answer. Then he said, "Fix somethin' t' eat, woman! Also for the two love birds. They will be hungry when they wake up, especially the little blonde."
The noise of the pans woke up Snot. Slowly freeing himself from Julien's body, he slipped off the pallet, put on his breeches and in a low voice greeted his hosts.
"Tomorrow we will leave. Now we have the documents and a little money. I want to leave this filthy country and this shit of a revolution as fast as I can!"
Félicie, without leaving her cooking, said, "Will it not be better you wait for your boy t' find back some strength? He be so pale..."
"Yes, but I hope that by tomorrow he will be again on his feet."
The Blade intervened, "You can now not t' worry, I really think that you don't run any more risk."
Snot shook his head. "Only when we will be far from France will I feel safe."
"And where d' you think t' go?"
"For the moment in Belgium. It is the nearest place, and I know they speak the same language as us."
"By foot?"
"Yes, it is slower but safer than in a coach. Moreover, a coach would be too expensive. And then, perhaps, some countryman along the road will let us sit in his cart."
"And once in Belgium, what will you do?"
"We will work."
"You, of course. But him? Aristocrats, you know that, they be not able t' work, they be able t' d' nothin' useful!"
"Then I will be the only one to work."
"An' you will maintain him?"
"Why not?"
At that moment, from the pallet, came Julien's voice, "No, I too will work. I'm young, I can learn doing a job."
Everybody turned toward the boy.
"Welcome back amongst the living people!" Félicie greeted him merrily.
Julien left the pallet and pulled on his breeches, but then he had to sit back again because he still was really weak. Snot went at once to sit near him and girdled his shoulders with his arm.
"Why don't you stay in bed?" Snot asked him.
Julien smiled. "I'm not dying, I'm just a little weak. And then, all those days I was almost always lying, there in the cell. I need to move a while..."
The Blade asked him to tell them what had happened. Julien told them all, including the rape he had to undergo.
"They have t' send 'em t' the guillotine!" Félicie exclaimed indignantly.
The Blade laughed, "I think that Mégot will really end there. Sévion be furious, and also Maximilien. You had just t' see their faces!"
Julien then asked to tell him how it happened that he was freed. The Blade told him, embellishing his story and giving himself a lot of importance, but basically relating in a right way the development of the facts.
At the end, Julien asked, "And Alexandre de Varenne? Do you have his news? How did he end?"
"Sévion and Maximilien freed him as they promised him. If it be not him t' talk, Mégot could still be in the saddle."
Snot, all long Julien and the Blade's tales, kept his friend half embraced by his waist, and gently caressed him.
At the end, he said, "You have no more to worry, my love. We have documents, the official passes, look here. In a few days we will both be safe together and, you'll see, I'll be able to make you forget all the bad things that happened to you."
Julien smiled, turned to give his lover a kiss and said, "Yes, I'm already forgetting them, thanks to you. It has been just thinking of you, of your love, that rescued me, that gave me strength all during those horrible days. Even though I was afraid I could no more be with you, do you know?"
They could not leave on the following day as Snot wanted. Julien needed almost a week to recover his strength sufficiently to face the long journey. The long fast had physically prostrated him. But they finally left the Blade's house and Paris, heading to Lille and to Belgium. At mid morning they already left at their back the Capital, and were walking on the road's edge. Snot, overcoming the embarrassment he was feeling, felt he had to tell Julien what happened to him with Réné. Julien listened to him without interrupting him.
At the end, Snot asked him, "I gave you a pain, didn't I? I didn't have your strength..."
Julien sadly smiled. "Well, I can't say I'm happy, I would lie. But I don't either feel we have to attach too much importance to this episode. It happened, that's all. The only important thing is that you now are here with me, and that you love me."
Snot kept silent for a while, then said, "Yes. But there is one thing that worries me, that causes me to think... If it happened once, could it not happen again? I don't want, I wouldn't want, it to, that's sure. But if I am so weak, it could also be possible I fall again. Do you see that I don't deserve you, that I risk to make you suffer even though I don't want it?"
Julien shook his beautiful blond head and, smiling, looked toward Snot. "I hope it will happen no more, it's natural. But if even it would happen, my love, what is important to me is that you don't abandon me. Without you I would be lost. Nowadays, you are all that remains to me, my family is now just you. I need your love!"
"You too are all my family, you know it. I love you so much, Marc, believe me, please. I don't exist, without you, I have no reason to exist," Snot said in a sorrowful tone.
Julien took his hand. "Certainly, I know it. I believe you. I know you love me. I can feel it. I am lucky I met you, that I fell in love with you, and that you love me. I am the most lucky man in this world. It would not be that a possible little adventure you might have would change all that, right?"
Feeling a very deep joy, they continued their way. Snot, along the journey, showed Julien the precious stones he had sewn in the hems of his trousers, and the gold coins he divided with him.
"The coins will for sure be enough for our trip and for the first period in Belgium. Then, there, we can sell the stones, so we can live until we find a good job. What would you like to do?" Snot asked.
"I don't know. I'm able to read and write. I could work for a notary, or as secretary of a noble man or of a bourgeois. But I would rather like to find a job to carry out together with you. What do you think if we look for a job like stable boys? We both know horses very well."
"No, Marc. I want a nicer job, for you!"
"But I don't want to be parted from you, not even in the working hours!"
"Can't you teach me to read and write properly, and to use numbers? Perhaps I can learn."
"It demands time, but we can try. But, it will be difficult to find somebody looking for two clerks or secretaries. As stable boys, instead, it's more likely they need two of them."
They discussed their future all the journey long. It took them five days to reach Brugge in Belgium, but they passed the border without problems. They were still discussing what they could do as a job while they were strolling in the city's streets, each of them trying to convince the other about the rightness of his thoughts. In Brugge, in those days, there were not few French aristocrats escaped from the Revolution's persecutions. It was easy to recognize them at once, because of their attires and of their behaviour.
A group of noble French crossed the two boys, and suddenly one of them went in front of Snot. "Aren't you Jaquot!"
He stopped, looking stupefied at the man, and answered, "No, Sir, I am Luc Teissier."
The man answered, "No, no, I'm sure. You have not to be ashamed, my good friends here know how much I liked you, Jaquot."
"Sir, I'm afraid you are wrong, I am Luc Teissier," Snot insisted.
Then Julien intervened. "Yes, my Lord, he is my brother Luc. His name is not Jaquot."
The aristocrat looked Julien from head to toe and said, "You don't look at all like his brother!"
"We are half brothers, my Lord, two different mothers and the same father. His mother died giving him birth. Our father married again, and I was born," Julien explained self-assuredly.
The man seemed hesitant, then seizing Snot by his arm, said, "It could be that your real name is Luc, but you are the boy I met as Jaquot, for God's sake! You have a mole on your right butt, I bet!"
The group of aristocrats, who meanwhile had come near them, burst into laughter.
One of them said, "If you really are the Jaquot whose praise the Saint Cyr here was extolling, in bed you must be a kind of half-god! I would like to taste you!"
Julien perceived that Snot was tense, nervous.
"My lord, my brother Marc has no moles at all, I can assure you. And he likes girls. I really don't believe he never did anything with another man, not him. I'm afraid you have made a mistake."
"Well, let's see then. Lower your trousers, young man!" another said amusedly.
"Here on the street? Do you want the guards putting us in jail?" Julien protested.
"We will shelter you with our bodies from prying eyes. It is just a matter to lower for a moment his trousers. It will be a fast thing."
Then Julien said, "My lords, we are two poor young men, orphans, without a home or a job. If you want to amuse yourselves a while with us, in exchange for some coins and not here, it will be possible to do it. I don't think that my brother will be so skilled but I have some... experience in those matters, and I think I would not disappoint you..."
These words were welcomed with amused laughter and one of the men said, "Let's go, let's take them with us to our dwelling place. But I want to taste first the dark-haired boy, be him Jaquot or not. I book him!"
So, the odd group set out, escorting the two youths, who were holding each other's hand. At a certain point Julien squeezed hard Snot's hand in a silent signal of agreement. Snot understood at once and suddenly they both sprang forward in a fast run. As the men became aware of their flight, they too sprang to chase them, but the boys, being younger and with the advantage of surprise, soon left them behind and, turning here and there at each crossroad, escaped that brigade.
When at last they stopped, panting, in a hallway, Snot said, "We have had a narrow squeak!"
"Who was that man who recognized you?"
"One of those that I spied on for Roland."
"But he doesn't know you were, right?"
"No, I really don't think so. But I don't like having such encounters. Let's leave this city, let's go farther."
"Even if he recognized you, we don't run any danger here. He can't force you to go to bed with him here."
"Sure he can't. We are no more in France, where the aristocrats could do as they pleased, scot free. But I don't like the idea of meeting people with whom I had... stories. It belongs to the past. It is over now."
So they left Brugge and went to Bruxelles. Here, Snot looked for a small inn to stay in for the night and, as they had no luggage, he paid with the last coins for one week in advance.
Finally alone and quiet, the two young men could at last give vent to their reciprocal desire. They impetuously threw themselves in each other's arms and tightly embraced.
Julien squeezed in his hands Snot's small and firm butt and kneaded it. "I would like to see your mole..." he jokingly said, starting to open his trousers.
"With one condition -- you have to fuck me then..." Snot answered.
Julien pulled off of him his waistcoat and shirt and bent to suck his beautiful nipples on his wide, bared chest. Snot shuddered, then parted from his lover and crouched in front of him on his heels, and untied his breeches. Slowly, he pushed them to the floor and provokingly caressed his sides and thighs, while with his lips he brushed the tense skin of his flat belly. Julien closed his eyes, and his face lightened in a radiant expression. It was evident he was savouring the attentions of his lover that were bringing him such sweet ecstasy. Snot's hands finally slipped on to the palpitating rod of his lover, and then he started to lick it, to suck it, and then made it slowly slip into his throat, wetting it and preparing it for the desired union.
When Julien felt ready, he had his lover stand up and gently pushed him toward the bed. Snot bent forward, pushing his ass toward his friend, and, spreading his butt with both hands, offered himself to his lover. Julien slipped inside him, moaning his pleasure. When he had completely penetrated him, he seized his chest with both hands, bending over him and holding him tight against him, and started to slip out and in, in an erotic dance. While with his hands he stroked his hard nipples, Julien kissed his neck and gently bit his earlobes and whispered to him sweet words filled with passion.
"Oh, Luc, my Luc, how good it is being inside you..."
"Yes..."
"My sweet love, how beautiful!"
"Yes, Love. Go on, push more!"
"But then, you too will take me?"
"Sure, my love! Oh, how great is it!"
"Do you promise?"
"Yes, Love. I'm all yours, can you feel it?"
"Yes... sure... and I'm yours, Luc!"
"Oh, let me feel it for good!"
"I would like these moments to never end..."
"Oh, yes... in this way, love..."
They continued making love all evening long, taking and giving each other on the wide bed, until they collapsed, tightly embraced, and fell in a deep, blissful sleep.
The next day they started to roam the city looking for an inspiration for some good job, but when one of them seemed interested in something, the other had objections. They toured so for some days, until in a lane close to the cathedral, they saw a small shop for sale, furnished just with some empty shelves. They heard that once it was a fabrics shop. They inquired of the owner how much he asked, and went to see it.
When back on the street, Snot asked Julien, "Would you like to buy it? We can start a business. And upstairs there are those nice quarters where we can live..."
"But, what business can we start? We have no goods to sell, and I don't know if after we pay for it we will have still enough money to..."
"No, we will not start a trade, but open a coffee-shop. In Paris they are very fashionable, but I saw very few of them here. The stones we have would be enough to buy it and to start. Do you see? We put out a nice sign with written on it 'The Good Coffee of the Teissier Brothers'!"
"But we have first to find who will buy the stones."
"But do you like this idea? So we can work together..."
"Sure, my love."
They visited several jewellers asking them to evaluate the stones, until they found one offering them a good price. After just four days, they owned the shop and the small apartment upstairs. They at once settled inside and closed it to start the renovations. They decided to make it an elegant meeting place, on the style of the coffee-shops that Snot had seen in Paris. They sold some more stones so that they could pay a skilled joiner who built all the furniture both for the shop and for their apartment. They bought paint and brushes and together started to clean and repaint the walls and doors and window frames. They bought velvet and silk, papier peint, and lamp shades, and then all they needed to make and to serve coffee.
Snot insisted also that they had to have a fine wardrobe of the latest fashion. "We have to be wonderful. Clients have to come here willingly, even just to look at us!" he said self-assuredly.
Julien agreed, but said jokingly, "You want to make conquests? I already am not enough for you?"
Snot became serious. "No, Marc. I swear that I was not at all thinking of that!"
"I was joking, silly boy! You will see that, before the end of this year, all Bruxelles will talk about the coffee-shop of the brothers Teissier. We will become the most fashionable place of all Belgium!"
Finally, after two months, they were ready for the opening. Julien, meanwhile, had gathered all the names and addresses of all the most influential people of the Capital and had prepared a set of invitations, all hand written with his elegant calligraphy and personalized with the name of the invited person. They personally delivered all the invitations a few days before the opening.
When they opened their shop, wearing their new, elegant clothes, the two young men looked at each other somewhat anxiously.
"Do you think they will come?"
"I think so... at least some of them. We delivered ninety-three invitations...," Julien said.
"If they all arrive, we would not have room for them all to enter..."
Time passed, but still nobody showed up. Some people in the neighbourhood went out to peep and a small crowd gathered. Snot was starting to feel worried. Julien was trying to keep him merry, but he also was worrying.
At mid morning a gig stopped in front of the shop and three gentlemen stepped out and entered with their invitations in their hands. Julien welcomed them and had them sit while Snot prepared the first coffees.
Little by little, other invited people came. Soon the shop was full and the two young men, now happy, twirled from table to table, offering coffees and sweets to everybody. They had guests to after sunset.
When finally they could close, and go upstairs, they were exhausted but in seventh heaven. They embraced and kissed.
"Are you happy, Marc?"
"Happy, Luc? We can finally start again to live!"
"Yes, you and I, my love. Did you see how many people?"
"Well, today it was on us, it was free. We will see the next days..."
"We will have success, be sure! Many gave us their compliments."
They hit the bed continuing to talk, to make plans, but soon their voices become silent, and it was their bodies which started to talk. They started making love with a sweet transport -- neither one of them seemed to feel tired any more.
The following days confirmed the more optimistic prevision. The coffee-shop of the Teissier brothers soon became the meeting point of Bruxelles' fashionable society: aristocrats, high Court officials, high bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia of the Capital.
The two young men had to hire a couple of waiters to be able to serve fast and satisfactorily all the elegant clientele. The refined manners of Julien and the frank likeableness of Snot, besides the elegance of the premises and the good coffee, were the ingredients that granted their success.
And nobody found odd that these two brothers, so physically different but so alike in their character, were inseparable and worked and lived together in perfect harmony.