Les Dieux ont soif. English

by Anatole France

  XIV

  Rising at dawn, the Pere Longuemare, after sweeping out the room,departed to say his Mass in a chapel in the Rue d'Enfer served by anonjuring priest. There were in Paris thousands of similar retreats,where the refractory clergy gathered together clandestinely littletroops of the faithful. The police of the Sections, vigilant andsuspicious as they were, kept their eyes shut to these hidden folds,from fear of the exasperated flock and moved by some lingeringveneration for holy things. The Barnabite made his farewells to his hostwho had great difficulty in persuading him to come back to dine, andonly succeeded in the end by promising that the cheer would be neitherplentiful nor delicate.

  Brotteaux, when left to himself, kindled a little earthenware stove;then, while he busied himself with preparations for the Monk's and theEpicurean's meal, he read in his Lucretius and meditated on theconditions of human beings.

  As a sage and a philosopher, he was not surprised that these wretchedcreatures, silly playthings of the forces of nature, found themselvesmore often than not in absurd and painful situations; but he was weakand illogical enough to believe that the Revolutionaries were morewicked and more foolish than other men, thereby falling into the errorof the metaphysician. At the same time he was no Pessimist and did nothold that life was altogether bad. He admired Nature in several of herdepartments, especially the celestial mechanism and physical love, andaccommodated himself to the labours of life, pending the arrival of theday, which could not be far off, when he would have nothing more eitherto fear or to desire.

  He coloured some dancing-dolls with painstaking care and made a Zerlinethat was very like Rose Thevenin. He liked the girl and his Epicureanismhighly approved of the arrangement of the atoms of which she wascomposed.

  These tasks occupied him till the Barnabite's return.

  "Father," he announced, as he opened the door to admit him, "I told you,you remember, that our fare would be meagre. We have nothing butchestnuts. The more reason, therefore, they should be well seasoned."

  "Chestnuts!" cried Pere Longuemare, smiling, "there is no more deliciousdish. My father, sir, was a poor gentleman of the Limousin, whose wholeestate consisted of a pigeon-cote in ruins, an orchard run wild and aclump of chestnut-trees. He fed himself, his wife and his twelvechildren on big green chestnuts, and we were all strong and sturdy. Iwas the youngest and the most turbulent; my father used to declare, byway of jesting, he would have to send me to America to be afilibuster.... Ah! sir, how fragrant your chestnut soup smells! It takesme back to the table where my mother sat smiling, surrounded by hertroop of little ones."

  The repast ended, Brotteaux set out for Joly's, the toy-merchant in theRue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, who took the dancing-dolls Caillou hadrefused, and ordered--not another gross of them like the latter, but around twenty-four dozen to begin with.

  On reaching the erstwhile Rue Royale and turning into the Place de laRevolution, Brotteaux caught sight of a steel triangle glitteringbetween two wooden uprights; it was the guillotine. An immense crowd oflight-hearted spectators pressed round the scaffold, waiting the arrivalof the loaded carts. Women were hawking Nanterre cakes on a tray hung infront of them and crying their wares; sellers of cooling drinks weretinkling their little bells; at the foot of the Statue of Liberty an oldman had a peep-show in a small booth surmounted by a swing on which amonkey played its antics. Underneath the scaffold some dogs were lickingyesterday's blood, Brotteaux turned back towards the Rue Honore.

  Regaining his garret, where the Barnabite was reading his breviary, hecarefully wiped the table and arranged his colour-box on it alongsidethe materials and tools of his trade.

  "Father," he said, "if you do not deem the occupation unworthy of thesacred character with which you are invested, I will ask you to help memake my marionettes. A worthy tradesman, Joly by name, has this verymorning given me a pretty heavy order. Whilst I am painting thesefigures already put together, you will do me a great service by cuttingout heads, arms, legs, and bodies from the patterns here. Better youcould not find; they are after Watteau and Boucher."

  "I agree with you, sir," replied Longuemare, "that Watteau and Boucherwere well fitted to create such-like baubles; it had been more to theirglory if they had confined themselves to innocent figures like these. Ishould be delighted to help you, but I fear I may not be clever enoughfor that."

  The Pere Longuemare was right to distrust his own skill; after sundryunsuccessful attempts, the fact was patent that his genius did not liein the direction of cutting out pretty shapes in thin cardboard with thepoint of a penknife. But when, at his suggestion, Brotteaux gave himsome string and a bodkin, he showed himself very apt in endowing withmotion the little creatures he had failed to make and teaching them todance. He had a happy knack, by way of trying them afterwards, of makingthem each execute three or four steps of a gavotte, and when theyrewarded his pains, a smile would flicker on his stern lips.

  One time when he was pulling the string of a Scaramouch to a dance tune:

  "Sir," he observed, "this little travesty reminds me of a quaint story.It was in 1746, when I was completing my noviciate under the care of thePere Magitot, a man well on in years, of deep learning and austeremorals. At that period, you perhaps remember, dancing figures, intendedin the first instance to amuse children, exercised over women and evenover men, both young and old, an extraordinary fascination; they wereall the rage in Paris. The fashionable shops were crammed with them;they were to be found in the houses of people of quality, and it wasnothing out of the way to see a grave and reverend senior dancing hisdoll in the streets and public gardens. The Pere Magitot's age,character, and sacred profession did not avail to guard him againstinfection. Every time he saw anyone busy jumping his cardboard mannikin,his fingers itched with impatience to be at the same game,--animpatience that soon grew well nigh intolerable. One day when he waspaying a visit of importance on a matter involving the interests of thewhole Order to Monsieur Chauvel, advocate in the courts of theParlement, noticing one of these dancers hanging from the chimney-piece,he felt a terrible temptation to pull its string, which he only resistedat the cost of a tremendous effort. But this frivolous ambition pursuedhim everywhere and left him no peace. In his studies, in hismeditations, in his prayers, at church, at chapter, in the confessionaland in the pulpit, he was possessed by it. After some days of dreadfulagony of mind, he laid bare his extraordinary case to the General of theOrder, who happened fortunately to be in Paris at the moment. He was aneminent ecclesiastic of Milan, a Doctor and Prince of the Church. Hiscounsel to the Pere Magitot was to satisfy a craving, innocent in itsinception, importunate in its consequences and inordinate in its excess,which threatened to super induce the gravest disorders in the soul whichwas afflicted with it. On the advice, or more strictly by the order ofthe General, the Pere Magitot returned to Monsieur Chauvel's house,where the advocate received him, as on the first occasion, in hiscabinet. There, finding the dancing figure still fastened in the sameplace, he ran excitedly to the chimney-piece and begged his host to dohim a favour,--to let him pull the string. The lawyer gave him hispermission very readily, and informed him in confidence that sometimeshe set Scaramouch (that was the doll's name) dancing while he wasstudying his briefs, and that, only the night before, he had modulatedon Scaramouch's movements the peroration of his speech in defence of awoman falsely accused of poisoning her husband. The Pere Magitot seizedthe string with trembling fingers and saw Scaramouch throw his limbswildly about under his manipulation like one possessed of devils in theagonies of exorcism."

  "Your tale does not surprise me, father," Brotteaux told him, "We seesuch cases of obsession; but it is not always cardboard figures thatoccasion it."

  The Pere Longuemare, who was religious by profession, never talked aboutreligion, while Brotteaux was for ever harping on the subject. He wasconscious of a bond of sympathy between himself and the Barnabite, andtook a delight in embarrassing and disturbing his peace of mind withobjections against divers articles of the Christian faith.r />
  Once when they were working together making Zerlines and Scaramouches:

  "When I consider," remarked Brotteaux, "the events which have brought usto the point at which we stand, I am in doubt as to which party, in thegeneral madness, has been the most insane; sometimes, I am greatlytempted to believe it was that of the Court."

  "Sir," answered the Monk, "all men lose their wits like Nebuchadnezzar,when God forsakes them; but no man in our days ever plunged so deep inignorance and error as the Abbe Fauchet, no man was so fatal as he tothe kingdom. God must needs have been sorely exasperated against Franceto send her Monsieur l'Abbe Fauchet!"

  "I imagine we have seen other evil-doers besides poor, unhappy Fauchet."

  "The Abbe Gregoire too, was full of malice."

  "And Brissot, and Danton, and Marat, and a hundred others, what of them,Father?"

  "Sir, they are laics; the laity could never incur the sameresponsibilities as the clergy. They do not work evil from so high astandpoint, and their crimes are not of universal bearing."

  "And your God, Father, what say you of His behaviour in the presentRevolution?"

  "I do not understand you, sir."

  "Epicurus said: Either God wishes to hinder evil and cannot, or He canand does not wish to, or He cannot nor does he wish to, or He does wishto and can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is impotent; if He can anddoes not wish to, He is perverse; if He cannot nor does He wish to, Heis impotent and perverse; if He does wish to and can, why does He not,tell me that, Father!"--and Brotteaux cast a look of triumph at hisinterlocutor.

  "Sir," retorted the Monk, "there is nothing more contemptible than thesedifficulties you raise. When I look into the reasoning of infidels, Iseem to see ants piling up a few blades of grass as a dam against thetorrent that sweeps down from the mountains. With your leave, I hadrather not argue with you; I should have too many excellent reasons andtoo few wits to apply them. Besides, you will find your refutation inthe Abbe Guenee and twenty other apologists. I will only say that whatyou quote from Epicurus is foolishness; because God is arraigned in itas if he was a man, with a man's moral code. Well! sir, the sceptics,from Celsus down to Bayle and Voltaire, have cajoled fools withsuch-like paradoxes."

  "See, Father," protested Brotteaux, "to what lengths your faith makesyou go. Not satisfied with finding all truth in your Theology, youlikewise refuse to discover any in the works of so many noble intellectswho thought differently from yourselves."

  "You are entirely mistaken, sir," replied Longuemare. "On the contrary,I believe that nothing could ever be altogether false in a man'sthoughts. The atheists stand on the lowest rung of the ladder ofknowledge; but even there, gleams of sense are to be found and flashesof truth, and even when darkness is thick about him, a man may lift uphis eyes to God, and He will put understanding in his heart; was it notso with Lucifer?"

  "Well, sir," said Brotteaux, "I cannot match your generosity and I ambound to tell you I cannot find in all the works of the Theologians oneatom of good sense."

  At the same time he would repudiate any desire to attack religion, whichhe deemed indispensable for the nations; he could only wish it had forits ministers philosophers instead of controversialists. He deplored thefact that the Jacobins were for replacing it by a newer and morepestilent religion, the cult of liberty, equality, the republic, thefatherland. He had observed this, that it is in the vigour of theiryouth religions are the fiercest and most cruel, and grow milder as theygrow older. He was anxious, therefore, to see Catholicism preserved; ithad devoured many victims in the times of its vigour, but nowadays,burdened by the weight of years and with enfeebled appetite, it wascontent with roasting four or five heretics in a hundred years.

  "As a matter of fact," he concluded, "I have always got on very wellwith your God-eaters and Christ-worshippers. I kept a chaplain at LesIlettes, where Mass was said every Sunday and all my guests attended.The philosophers were the most devout while the opera girls showed themost fervour. I was prosperous then and had crowds of friends."

  "Friends," exclaimed the Pere Longuemare, "friends! Ah! sir, do youreally think they loved you, all these philosophers and all thesecourtesans, who have degraded your soul in such wise that God himselfwould find it hard to know it for one of the temples built by Him forHis glory?"

  * * * * *

  The Pere Longuemare lived for a week longer at the publican's withoutbeing interfered with. As far as possible he observed the discipline ofhis House and every night at the canonical hours would rise from hispalliasse to kneel on the bare boards and recite the offices. Thoughboth were reduced to a diet of wretched scraps, he duly observed fastsand abstinence. A smiling but pitiful spectator of these austerities,Brotteaux one day asked him:

  "Do you really believe that God finds any satisfaction in seeing youendure cold and hunger as you do?"

  "God himself," was the Monk's answer, "has given us the example ofsuffering."

  On the ninth day since the Barnabite had come to share thephilosopher's garret, the latter sallied forth at twilight todeliver his dancing-dolls to Joly, the toy-merchant of the RueNeuve-des-Petits-Champs. He was on his way back overjoyed at having soldthem all, when, as he was crossing the erstwhile Place du Carrousel, agirl in a blue satin pelisse trimmed with ermine, running by with alimping gait, threw herself into his arms and held him fast in the waysuppliants have had since the world began.

  She was trembling and her heart was beating so fast and loud it could beplainly heard. Wondering to see one of her common sort look so pathetic,Brotteaux, a veteran amateur of the stage, thought how MademoiselleRaucourt, if she could have seen her, might have learnt something fromher bearing.

  She spoke in breathless tones, lowering her voice to a whisper for fearof being overheard by the passers-by:

  "Take me with you, _citoyen_, and hide me, for the love of pity!... Theyare in my room in the Rue Fromenteau. While they were coming upstairs, Iran for refuge into Flora's room,--she is my next-door neighbour,--andleapt out of the window into the street, that is how I sprained myankle.... They are coming; they want to put me in prison and kill me....Last week they killed Virginie."

  Brotteaux understood, of course, that the child was speaking of thedelegates of the Revolutionary Committee of the Section or else theCommissaries of the Committee of General Security. At that time theCommune had as _procureur_ a man of virtue, the _citoyen_ Chaumette whoregarded the ladies of pleasure as the direct foes of the Republic andharassed them unmercifully in his efforts to regenerate the Nation'smorals. To tell the truth, the young ladies of the Palais-Egalite wereno great patriots. They regretted the old state of things and did notalways conceal the fact. Several had been guillotined already asconspirators, and their tragic fate had excited no little emulationamong their fellows.

  The _citoyen_ Brotteaux asked the suppliant what offence she had beenguilty of to bring down on herself a warrant of arrest.

  She swore she had no notion, that she had done nothing anyone couldblame her for.

  "Well then, my girl," Brotteaux told her, "you are not suspect; you havenothing to fear. Be off with you to bed and leave me alone."

  At this she confessed everything:

  "I tore out my cockade and shouted: 'Vive le roi!'"

  He walked down to the river-side and she kept by his side along thedeserted _quais_. Clinging to his arm she went on:

  "It is not that I care for him particularly, the King, you know; I neverknew him, and I daresay he wasn't very much different from other men.But they are bad people. They are cruel to poor girls. They torment andvex and abuse me in every kind of way; they want to stop me following mytrade. I have no other trade. You may be sure, if I had, I should not bedoing what I do.... What is it they want? They are so hard on poorhumble folks, the milkman, the charcoalman, the water carrier, thelaundress. They won't rest content till they've set all poor peopleagainst them."

  He looked at her; she seemed a mere child. She was no longer afraid; shewas almost sm
iling, as she limped along lightly at his side. He askedher her name. She said she was called Athenais and was sixteen.

  Brotteaux offered to see her safe to anywhere she wished to go. She didnot know a soul in Paris; but she had an aunt, in service at Palaiseau,who would take her in.

  Brotteaux made up his mind at once.

  "Come with me, my child," he ordered, and led the way home, with herhanging on his arm.

  On his arrival, he found the Pere Longuemare in the garret reading hisbreviary.

  Holding Athenais by the hand, he drew the other's attention to her:

  "Father," he said, "here is a girl from the Rue Fromenteau who has beenshouting: 'Vive le roi!' The revolutionary police are on her track. Shehas nowhere to lay head. Will you allow the girl to pass the nighthere?"

  The Pere Longuemare closed his breviary.

  "If I understand you right," he said, "you ask me, sir, if this younggirl, who is like myself subject to be molested under a warrant ofarrest, may be suffered, for her temporal salvation, to spend the nightin the same room as I?"

  "Yes, Father."

  "By what right should I object? and why must I suppose myself affrontedby her presence? am I so sure that I am any better than she?"

  He established himself for the night in an old broken-down armchair,declaring he should sleep excellently in it. Athenais lay on themattress. Brotteaux stretched himself on the palliasse and blew out thecandle.

  The hours and half-hours sounded one after the other from the churchtowers, but the old man could not sleep; he lay awake listening to themingled breathing of the man of religion and the girl of pleasure. Themoon rose, symbol and witness of his old-time loves, and threw a silveryray into the attic, illuminating the fair hair and golden lashes, thedelicate nose and round, red mouth of Athenais, who lay sound asleep.

  "Truly," he thought to himself, "a terrible enemy for the Republic!"

  When Athenais awoke, the day was breaking. The Monk had disappeared.Brotteaux was reading Lucretius under the skylight, learning from themaxims of the Latin poet to live without fears and without desires; butfor all this he felt himself at the moment devoured with regrets anddisquietudes.

  Opening her eyes, Athenais was dumfounded to see the roof beams of agarret above her head. Then she remembered, smiled at her preserver andextended towards him with a caressing gesture her pretty little dirtyhands.

  Rising on her elbow, she pointed to the dilapidated armchair in whichthe Monk had passed the night.

  "He is not there?... He has not gone to denounce me, has he?"

  "No, no, my child. You could not find a more honest soul than that oldmadman."

  Athenais asked in what the old fellow's madness consisted; and whenBrotteaux informed her it was religion, she gravely reproached him forspeaking so, declaring that men without faith were worse than the beaststhat perish and that for her part she often prayed to God, hoping Hewould forgive her her sins and receive her in His blessed mercy.

  Then, noticing that Brotteaux held a book in his hand, she thought itwas a book of the Mass and said:

  "There you see, you too, you say your prayers! God will reward you forwhat you have done for me."

  Brotteaux having told her that it was not a Mass-book, and that it hadbeen written before ever the Mass had been invented in the world, sheopined it was an _Interpretation of Dreams_, and asked if it did notcontain an explanation of an extraordinary dream she had had. She couldnot read and these were the only two sorts of books she had heard tellof.

  Brotteaux informed her that this book was only by way of explaining thedream of life. Finding this a hard saying, the pretty child did not tryto understand it and dipped the end of her nose in the earthenware crockthat replaced the silver basins Brotteaux had once been accustomed touse. Next, she arranged her hair before her host's shaving-glass withscrupulous care and gravity. Her white arms raised above her head, shelet fall an observation from time to time with long intervals between:

  "You, you were rich once."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "I don't know. But you _were_ rich,--and you are an aristocrat, I amcertain of it."

  She drew from her pocket a little Holy Virgin of silver in a round ivoryshrine, a bit of sugar, thread, scissors, a flint and steel, two orthree cases for needles and the like, and after selecting what sherequired, sat down to mend her skirt, which had got torn in severalplaces.

  "For your own safety, my child, put this in your cap!" Brotteaux badeher, handing her a tricolour cockade.

  "I will do that gladly, sir," she agreed, "but it will be for the loveof you and not for love of the Nation."

  When she was dressed and had made herself look her best, taking herskirt in both hands, she dropped a curtsey as she had been taught to doin her village, and addressing Brotteaux:

  "Sir," she said, "I am your very humble servant."

  She was prepared to oblige her benefactor in all ways he might wish,but she thought it more becoming that he asked for no favour and sheoffered none; it seemed to her a pretty way to part so, and what goodmanners required.

  Brotteaux slipped a few assignats into her hand to pay her coach-hire toPalaiseau. It was the half of his fortune, and, albeit he was notoriousfor his lavishness towards women, it was the first time he had ever madeso equal a partition of his goods with any of the sex.

  She asked him his name.

  "I am called Maurice."

  It was with reluctance he opened the garret door for her:

  "Good-bye, Athenais."

  She kissed him. "Monsieur Maurice," she said, "when you think of me, ifever you do, call me Marthe; that is the name I was christened, the namethey called me by in the village.... Good-bye and thank you.... Yourvery humble servant, Monsieur Maurice."