Les Dieux ont soif. English

by Anatole France

  XI

  In the forenoon of the 7th September the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure, on herway to visit Gamelin, the new juror, whose interest she wished tosolicit on behalf of an acquaintance, who had been denounced as asuspect, encountered on the landing the _ci-devant_ Brotteaux desIlettes, who had been her lover in the old happy days. Brotteaux wasjust starting to deliver a gross of dancing-dolls of his manufacture tothe toy-merchant in the Rue de la Loi; for their more convenientcarriage he had hit on the idea of tying them at the end of a pole, asthe street hawkers do with their commodities. His manners were alwayschivalrous towards women, even to those whose fascination for him hadbeen blunted by long familiarity, as could hardly fail to be the casewith Madame de Rochemaure,--unless indeed he found her appetizing withthe added seasoning of betrayal, absence, unfaithfulness and fat. Bethis as it may, he now greeted her on the sordid stairs with theircracked tiles as courteously as he had ever done on the steps before theentrance-door of Les Ilettes, and begged her to do him the honour ofentering his garret. She climbed the ladder nimbly enough and foundherself under a timbering, the sloping beams of which supported a tiledroof pierced with a skylight. It was impossible to stand upright. Shesat down on the only chair there was in the wretched place; after abrief glance at the broken tiling, she asked in a tone of surprise andsorrow:

  "Is this where you live, Maurice? You need have little fear ofintruders. One must be an imp or a cat to find you here."

  "I am cramped for space," returned the _ci-devant_ millionaire; "and Ido not deny the fact that sometimes it rains on my pallet. It is atrifling inconvenience. And on fine nights I can see the moon, symboland confidant of men's loves. For the moon, Madame, since the worldbegan, has been apostrophized by lovers, and at her full, with her paleround face, she recalls to the fond swain's mind the object of hisdesires."

  "I know," sighed the _citoyenne_.

  "When their time comes the cats make a fine pandemonium in the raingutter yonder. But we must forgive love if it makes them caterwaul andswear on the tiles, seeing how it fills the lives of men with tormentsand villanies."

  Both had had the tact to greet each other as friends who had parted thenight before to take their night's rest, and though grown strangers toeach other, they conversed with a good grace and on a footing offriendliness.

  At the same time Madame de Rochemaure seemed pensive. The Revolution,which had for a long while been pleasant and profitable to her, was nowa source of anxiety and disquietude; her suppers were growing lessbrilliant and less merry. The notes of her harp no longer charmed thecloud from sombre faces. Her play-tables were forsaken by the mostlavish punters. Many of her cronies, now numbered among the suspects,were in hiding; her lover, Morhardt the financier, was under arrest,and it was on his behalf she had come to sound the juror Gamelin. Shewas suspect herself. A posse of National Guards had made a search at herhouse, had turned out the drawers of her cabinets, prised up boards inher floor, thrust their bayonets into her mattresses. They had foundnothing, had made their apologies and drunk her wine. But they had comevery near lighting on her correspondence with an _emigre_, Monsieurd'Expilly. Certain friends he had among the Jacobins had warned her thatHenry, her handsome favourite, was beginning to compromise his party byhis violent language, which was too extravagant to be sincere.

  Elbows on knees and head on fist, she sat buried in thought; thenturning to her old lover sitting on the palliasse, she asked:

  "What do you think of it all, Maurice?"

  "I think these good gentry give a philosopher and an amateur of theshows of life abundant matter for reflection and amusement; but that itwould be better for you, my dear, if you were out of France."

  "Maurice, where will it land us?"

  "That is what you asked me, Louise, one day we were driving on the banksof the Cher, on the road to Les Ilettes; the horse, you remember, hadtaken the bit in his teeth and was galloping off with us at a franticpace. How inquisitive women are! to-day, for the second time, you wantto know where we are going to. Ask the fortune-tellers. I am not awizard, sweetheart. And philosophy, even the soundest, is of small helpfor revealing the future. These things will have an end; everything has.One may foresee divers issues. The triumph of the Coalition and theentry of the allies into Paris. They are not far off; yet I doubt ifthey will get there. These soldiers of the Republic take their beatingswith a zest nothing can extinguish. It may be Robespierre will marryMadame Royale and have himself proclaimed Protector of the Kingdomduring the minority of Louis XVII."

  "You think so!" exclaimed the _citoyenne_, agog to have a hand in sopromising an intrigue.

  "Again it may be," Brotteaux went on, "that La Vendee will win the dayand the rule of the priests be set up again over heaps of ruins andpiles of corpses. You cannot conceive, dear heart, the empire the clergystill wields over the masses of the foolish,... I beg pardon, I meant tosay,--of 'the Faithful'; it was a slip of the tongue. The most likelything, in my poor opinion, is that the Revolutionary Tribunal will bringabout the destruction of the regime it has established; it is a menaceover too many heads. Those it terrifies are without number; they willunite together, and to destroy it they will destroy the whole system ofgovernment. I think you have got our young friend Gamelin posted to thiscourt. He is virtuous; he will be implacable. The more I think of it,fair friend, the more convinced I am that this Tribunal, set up to savethe Republic, will destroy it. The Convention has resolved to have, likeRoyalty, its _Grands Jours_,[5] its _Chambre Ardente_, and to providefor its security by means of magistrates appointed by itself and by itkept in subjection. But how inferior are the Convention's _Grands Jours_to those of the Monarchy, and its _Chambre Ardente_ to that of LouisXIV! The Revolutionary Tribunal is dominated by a sentiment ofmean-spirited justice and common equality that will quickly make itodious and ridiculous and will disgust everybody. Do you know, Louise,that this tribunal, which is about to cite to its bar the Queen ofFrance and twenty-one legislators, yesterday condemned a servant-girlconvicted of crying: 'Vive le Roi!' with malicious intent and in thehope of destroying the Republic? Our judges, with their black hats andplumes, are working on the model of that William Shakespeare, so dear tothe heart of Englishmen, who drags in coarse buffooneries in the middleof his most tragic scenes."

  "Ah, well! Maurice," asked the _citoyenne_, "are you still as fortunateas ever with women?"

  "Alas!" replied Brotteaux, "the doves flock to the bright new dovecoteand light no more on the ruined tower."

  "You have not changed.... Good-bye, dear friend,--till we meet again."

  * * * * *

  The same evening the dragoon Henry, paying a visit uninvited at Madamede Rochemaure's, found her in the act of sealing a letter on which heread the address of the _citoyen_ Rauline at Vernon. The letter, heknew, was for England. Rauline used to receive Madame de Rochemaure'scommunications by a postilion of the posting-service and send them on toDieppe by the hands of a fishwife. The master of a fishing-smackdelivered them under cover of night to a British ship cruising off thecoast; an _emigre_, Monsieur d'Expilly, received them in London andpassed them on, if he thought it advisable, to the Cabinet of SaintJames's.

  Henry was young and good looking; Achilles was not such a paragon ofgrace and vigour when he donned the armour Ulysses offered him. But the_citoyenne_ Rochemaure, once so enraptured by the charms of the younghero of the Commune, now looked askance at him; her mood had changedsince the day she was told how the young soldier had been denounced atthe Jacobins as one whose zeal outran discretion and that he mightcompromise and ruin her. Henry thought it might not break his heartperhaps to leave off loving Madame de Rochemaure; but he was piqued tohave fallen in her good graces. He counted on her to meet sundryexpenses in which the service of the Republic had involved him. Last butnot least, remembering to what extremities women will proceed and howthey go in a flash from the most ardent tenderness to the coldestindifference, and how easy they find it to sacrifice what once they helddear and destro
y what once they adored, he began to suspect that someday his fascinating mistress might have him thrown into prison to getrid of him. Common prudence urged him to regain his lost ascendancy andto this end he had come armed with all his fascinations. He came near,drew away, came near again, hovered round her, ran from her, in theapproved fashion of seduction in the ballet. Then he threw himself in anarmchair and in his irresistible voice, his voice that went straight towomen's hearts, he extolled the charms of nature and solitude and with alovelorn sigh proposed an expedition to Ermenonville.

  Meanwhile she was striking chords on her harp and looking about her withan expression of impatience and boredom. Suddenly Henry got up with agesture of gloomy resolution and informed her that he was starting forthe army and in a few days would be before Maubeuge.

  Without a sign either of scepticism or surprise she nodded her approval.

  "You congratulate me on my decision?"

  "I do indeed."

  She was expecting a new admirer who was infinitely to her taste and fromwhom she hoped to reap great advantages,--a contrast in every way to theold, a Mirabeau come to life again, a Danton rehabilitated and turnedarmy-contractor, a lion who talked of pitching every patriot into theSeine. She was on tenter-hooks, thinking to hear the bell ring at anymoment.

  To hasten Henry's departure, she fell silent, yawned, fingered a score,and yawned again. Seeing he made no move to go, she told him she had togo out and withdrew into her dressing-room.

  He called to her in a broken voice:

  "Farewell, Louise!... Shall I ever see you again?"--and his hands werebusy fumbling in the open writing-desk.

  When he reached the street, he opened the letter addressed to the_citoyen_ Rauline and read it with absorbed attention. Indeed it drew acurious picture of the state of public feeling in France. It spoke ofthe Queen, of the actress Rose Thevenin, of the Revolutionary Tribunaland a host of confidential remarks emanating from that worthy, Brotteauxdes Ilettes, were repeated in it.

  Having read to the end and restored the missive to his pocket, he stoodhesitating a few moments; then, like a man who has made up his mind andsays to himself "the sooner the better," he turned his steps to theTuileries and found his way into the antechamber of the Committee ofGeneral Security.

  * * * * *

  The same day, at three o'clock of the afternoon, Evariste Gamelin wasseated on the jurors' bench along with fourteen colleagues, most of whomhe knew, simple-minded, honest, patriotic folks, savants, artists orartisans,--a painter like himself, an artist in black-and-white, bothmen of talent, a surgeon, a cobbler, a _ci-devant_ marquis, who hadgiven high proofs of patriotism, a printer, two or three smalltradesmen, a sample lot in a word of the inhabitants of Paris. Therethey sat, in the workman's blouse or bourgeois coat, with their hairclose-cropped _a la Titus_ or clubbed _a la catogan_; there werecocked-hats tilted over the eyes, round hats clapped on the back of thehead, red caps of liberty smothering the ears. Some were dressed incoat, flapped waistcoat and breeches, as in olden days, others in the_carmagnole_ and striped trousers of the sansculottes. Wearing top-bootsor buckled shoes or sabots, they offered in their persons every varietyof masculine attire prevalent at that date. Having all of them occupiedtheir places on several previous occasions, they seemed very much attheir ease, and Gamelin envied them their unconcern. His own heart wasthumping, his ears roaring; a mist was before his eyes and everythingabout him took on a livid tinge.

  When the usher announced the opening of the sitting, three judges tooktheir places on a raised platform of no great size in front of a greentable. They wore hats cockaded and crowned with great black plumes andthe official cloak with a tricolour riband from which a heavy silvermedal was suspended on the breast. In front of them at the foot of thedais, sat the deputy of the Public Prosecutor, similarly attired. Theclerk of the court had a seat between the judges' bench and theprisoner's chair, at present unoccupied. To Gamelin's eyes these menwore a different aspect from that of every day; they seemed nobler,graver, more alarming, albeit their bearing was commonplace enough asthey turned over papers, beckoned to an usher or leant back to listen tosome communication from a juryman or an officer of the court.

  Above the judges' heads hung the tables of the Rights of Man; to theirright and left, against the old feudal walls, the busts of Le PeltierSaint-Fargeau and Marat. Facing the jury bench, at the lower end of thehall, rose the public gallery. The first row of seats was filled bywomen, who all, fair, brown and grey-haired alike, wore the high coifwith the pleated tucker shading their cheeks; the breast, whichinvariably, as decreed by the fashion of the day, showed the amplitudeof the nursing mother's bosom, was covered with a crossed white kerchiefor the rounded bib of a blue apron. They sat with folded arms resting onthe rail of the tribune. Behind them, scattered about the rising tiers,could be seen a sprinkling of citizens dressed in the varied garb whichat that date gave every gathering so striking and picturesque acharacter. On the right hand, near the doors, behind a broad barrier, aspace was reserved where the public could stand. On this occasion it wasnearly empty. The business that was to occupy the attention of thisparticular section of the tribunal interested only a few spectators,while doubtless the other sections sitting at the same hour would behearing more exciting cases.

  This fact somewhat reassured Gamelin; his heart was like to fail him asit was, and he could not have endured the heated atmosphere of one ofthe great days. His eyes took in the most trifling details of thescene,--the cotton-wool in the _greffier's_ ear and a blot of ink on theDeputy Prosecutor's papers. He could see, as through a magnifying glass,the capitals of the pillars sculptured at a time when all knowledge ofthe classical orders was forgotten and which crowned the Gothic columnswith wreaths of nettle and holly. But wherever he looked, his gaze cameback again and again to the fatal chair; this was of an antiquated make,covered in red Utrecht velvet, the seat worn and the arms blackened withuse. Armed National Guards stood guarding every door.

  At last the accused appeared, escorted by grenadiers, but with limbsunbound, as the law directed. He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, leanand dry, with a brown face, a very bald head, hollow cheeks and thinlivid lips, dressed in an out-of-date coat of a sanguine red. No doubtit was fever that made his eyes glitter like jewels and gave his cheekstheir shiny, varnished look. He took his seat. His legs, which hecrossed, were extraordinarily spare and his great knotted hands metround the knees they clasped. His name was Marie-Adolphe Guillergues,and he was accused of malversation in the supply of forage to theRepublican troops. The act of indictment laid to his charge numerous andserious offences, of which no single one was positively certain. Underexamination, Guillergues denied the majority of the charges andexplained the rest in a light favourable to himself. He spoke in acold, precise way, with a marked ability and gave the impression ofbeing a dangerous man to have business dealings with. He had an answerfor everything. When the judge asked him an embarrassing question, hisface remained unmoved and his voice confident, but his two hands, foldedon his breast, kept twitching in an agony. Gamelin was struck by thisand whispered to the colleague sitting next him, a painter like himself:

  "Watch his thumbs!"

  The first witness to depose alleged a number of most damaging facts. Hewas the mainstay of the prosecution. Those on the other hand whofollowed showed themselves well disposed to the prisoner. The Deputy ofthe Public Prosecutor spoke strongly, but did not go beyondgeneralities. The advocate for the defence adopted a tone of bluffconviction of his client's innocence that earned the accused a sympathyhe had failed to secure by his own efforts. The sitting was suspendedand the jury assembled in the room set apart for deliberation. There,after a confused and confusing discussion, they found themselves dividedin two groups about equal in number. On the one side were theunemotional, the lukewarm, the men of reason, whom no passion couldstir, on the other the kind who let their feelings guide them, who proveall but inaccessible to argument and only consult their heart. Thesealway
s voted guilty. They were the true metal, pure and unadulterated;their only thought was to save the Republic and they cared not a strawfor anything else. Their attitude made a strong impression on Gamelinwho felt he was of the same kidney himself.

  "This Guillergues," he thought to himself, "is a cunning scamp, avillain who has speculated in the forage supplied to our cavalry. Toacquit him is to let a traitor escape, to be false to the fatherland, todevote the army to defeat." And in a flash Gamelin could see the Hussarsof the Republic, mounted on stumbling horses, sabred by the enemy'scavalry.... "But if Guillergues was innocent...?"

  Suddenly he remembered Jean Blaise, likewise suspected of bad faith inthe matter of supplies. There were bound to be many others acting likeGuillergues and Blaise, contriving disaster, ruining the Republic! Anexample must be made. But if Guillergues was innocent...?

  "There are no proofs," said Gamelin, aloud.

  "There never are," retorted the foreman of the jury, shrugging hisshoulders; he was good metal, pure metal!

  In the end, there proved to be seven votes for condemnation, eight foracquittal.

  The jury re-entered the hall and the sitting was resumed. The jurorswere required to give reasons for their verdict, and each spoke in turnfacing the empty chair. Some were prolix, others confined themselves toa sentence; one or two talked unintelligible gabble.

  When Gamelin's turn came, he rose and said:

  "In presence of a crime so heinous as that of robbing the defenders ofthe fatherland of the sinews of victory, we need formal proofs which wehave not got."

  By a majority of votes the accused was declared not guilty.

  Guillergues was brought in again and stood before his judges amid a humof sympathy from the spectators which conveyed the news of his acquittalto him. He was another man. His features had lost their harshness, hislips were relaxed again. He looked venerable; his face bore theimpression of innocence. The President read out in tones of emotion theverdict releasing the prisoner; the audience broke into applause. Thegendarme who had brought Guillergues in threw himself into his arms. ThePresident called him to the dais and gave him the embrace ofbrotherhood. The jurors kissed him, while Gamelin's eyes rained hottears.

  The courtyard of the Palais, dimly lighted by the last rays of thesetting sun, was filled with a howling, excited crowd. The four sectionsof the Tribunal had the day before pronounced thirty sentences of death,and on the steps of the Great Stairway a throng of _tricoteuses_squatted to see the tumbrils start. But Gamelin, as he descended thesteps among the press of jurors and spectators, saw nothing, heardnothing but his own act of justice and humanity and theself-congratulation he felt at having recognized innocence. In thecourtyard stood Elodie, all in white, smiling through her tears; shethrew herself into his arms and lay there half fainting. When she hadrecovered her voice, she said to him:

  "Evariste, you are noble, you are good, you are generous! In the hallthere, your voice, so gentle and manly, went right through me with itsmagnetic waves. It electrified me. I gazed at you on your bench, I couldsee no one but you. But you, dear heart, you never guessed I was there?Nothing told you I was present? I sat in the gallery in the second rowto the right. By heaven! how sweet it is to do the right! you savedthat unhappy man's life. Without you, it was all over with him; he wasas good as dead. You have given him back to life and the love of hisfriends. At this moment he must bless you. Evariste, how happy I am andhow proud to love you!"

  Arm in arm, pressed close to one another, they went along the streets;their bodies felt so light they seemed to be flying.

  They went to the _Amour peintre_. On reaching the Oratoire:

  "Better not go through the shop," Elodie suggested.

  She made him go in by the main coach-door and mount the stairs with herto the suite of rooms above. On the landing she drew out of her reticulea heavy iron key.

  "It might be the key of a prison," she exclaimed, "Evariste, you aregoing to be my prisoner."

  They crossed the dining-room and were in the girl's bedchamber.

  Evariste felt upon his the ardent freshness of Elodie's lips. He pressedher in his arms; with head thrown back and swooning eyes, her hairflowing loose over her relaxed form, half fainting, she escaped his holdand ran to shoot the bolt....

  The night was far advanced when the _citoyenne_ Blaise opened the outerdoor of the flat for her lover and whispered to him in the darkness.

  "Good-bye, sweetheart! it is the hour my father will be coming home. Ifyou hear a noise on the stairs, go up quick to the higher floor anddon't come down till all danger is over of your being seen. To have thestreet-door opened, give three raps on the _concierge's_ window.Good-bye, my life, good-bye, my soul!"

  When he found himself in the street, he saw the window of Elodie'schamber half unclose and a little hand pluck a red carnation, which fellat his feet like a drop of blood.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [5] _Grands Jours_,--under the ancien regime, an extraordinary assizeheld by judges specially appointed by the King and acting in his name.