Les Dieux ont soif. English

by Anatole France

  XV

  The prisons were full to bursting and must be emptied; the work ofjudging, judging, must go on without truce or respite. Seated againstthe tapestried walls with their fasces and red caps of liberty, liketheir fellows of the fleurs-de-lis, the judges preserved the samegravity, the same dreadful calm, as their Royal predecessors. The PublicProsecutor and his Deputies, worn out with fatigue, consumed with thefever of sleeplessness and brandy, could only shake off their exhaustionby a violent effort; their broken health made them tragic figures tolook upon. The jurors, divers in character and origin, some educated,others ignorant, craven or generous, gentle or violent, hypocritical orsincere, but all men who, knowing the fatherland and the Republic indanger, suffered or feigned to suffer the same anguish, to burn with thesame ardour; all alike primed to atrocities of virtue or of fear, theyformed but one living entity, one single head, dull and irritable, onesingle soul, a beast of the apocalypse that by the mere exercise of itsnatural functions produced a teeming brood of death. Kind-hearted orcruel by caprice of sensibility, when shaken momentarily by a suddenpang of pity, they would acquit with streaming eyes a prisoner whom anhour before they would have condemned to the guillotine with taunts. Thefurther they proceeded with their task, the more impetuously did theyfollow the impulses of their heart.

  Judge and jury toiled, fevered and half asleep with overwork, distractedby the excitement outside and the orders of the sovereign people,menaced by the threats of the _sansculottes_ and _tricoteuses_ whocrowded the galleries and the public enclosure, relying on insaneevidence, acting on the denunciations of madmen, in a poisonousatmosphere that stupefied the brain, set ears hammering and templesbeating and darkened the eyes with a veil of blood. Vague rumours werecurrent among the public of jurors bought by the gold of the accused.But to these the jury as a body replied with indignant protest andmerciless condemnations. In truth they were men neither worse nor betterthan their fellows. Innocence more often than not is a piece of goodfortune rather than a virtue; any other who should have consented to puthimself in their place would have acted as they did and accomplished tothe best of his commonplace soul these appalling tasks.

  Antoinette, so long expected, sat at last in the fatal chair, in a blackgown, the centre of such a concentration of hate that only the certaintyof what the sentence would be made the court observe the forms of law.To the deadly questions the accused replied sometimes with the instinctof self-preservation, sometimes with her wonted haughtiness, and once,thanks to the hideous suggestion of one of her accusers, with the nobledignity of a mother. The witnesses were confined to outrage and calumny;the defence was frozen with terror. The tribunal, forcing itself torespect the rules of procedure, was only waiting till all formalitieswere completed to hurl the head of _the Austrian_ in the face ofEurope.

  Three days after the execution of Marie Antoinette Gamelin was called tothe bedside of the _citoyen_ Fortune Trubert, who lay dying, withinthirty paces of the Military Bureau where he had worn out his life, on apallet of sacking, in the cell of some expelled Barnabite father. Hislivid face was sunk in the pillow. His eyes, which already were almostsightless, turned their glassy pupils upon his visitor; his parched handgrasped Evariste's and pressed it with unexpected vigour. Three times hehad vomited blood in two days. He tried to speak; his voice, at firsthoarse and feeble as a whisper, grew louder, deeper:

  "Wattignies! Wattignies!... Jourdan has forced the enemy into their camp... raised the blockade at Maubeuge.... We have retaken Marchiennes, _caira_ ... _ca ira_ ..." and he smiled.

  These were no dreams of a sick man, but a clear vision of the truth thatflashed through the brain so soon to be shrouded in eternal darkness.Hereafter the invasion seemed arrested; the Generals were terrorized andsaw that the one best thing for them to do was to be victorious. Wherevoluntary recruiting had failed to produce what was needed, a strong anddisciplined army, compulsion was succeeding. One effort more, and theRepublic would be saved.

  After a half hour of semi-consciousness, Fortune Trubert's face,hollow-cheeked and worn by disease, lit up again and his hands moved.

  He lifted his finger and pointed to the only piece of furniture in theroom, a little walnut-wood writing-desk. The voice was weak andbreathless, but the mind quite unclouded:

  "Like Eudamidas," he said, "I bequeath my debts to my friend,--threehundred and twenty livres, of which you will find the account ... inthat red book yonder ... good-bye, Gamelin. Never rest; wake and watchover the defence of the Republic. _Ca ira._"

  The shades of night were deepening in the cell. The difficult breathingof the dying man was the only sound, and his hands scratching on thesheet.

  At midnight he uttered some disconnected phrases:

  "More saltpetre.... See the muskets are delivered. Health? Oh!excellent.... Get down the church-bells...."

  He breathed his last at five in the morning.

  By order of the Section his body lay in state in the nave of theerstwhile church of the Barnabites, at the foot of the Altar of theFatherland, on a camp bed, covered with a tricolour flag and the browwreathed with an oak crown.

  Twelve old men clad in the Roman toga, with palms in their hands, twelveyoung girls wearing long veils and carrying flowers, surrounded thefuneral couch. At the dead man's feet stood two children, each holdingan inverted torch. One of them Evariste recognized as his _concierge's_little daughter Josephine, who in her childish gravity and beautyreminded him of those charming genii of Love and Death the Romans usedto sculpture on their tombs.

  The funeral procession made its way to the Cemetery ofSaint-Andre-des-Arts to the strains of the _Marseillaise_ and the_Ca-ira_.

  As he laid the kiss of farewell on Fortune Trubert's brow, Evaristewept. His tears flowed in self-pity, for he envied his friend who wasresting there, his task accomplished.

  On reaching home, he received notice that he was posted a member of theCouncil General of the Commune. After standing as candidate for fourmonths, he had been elected unopposed, after several ballots, by somethirty suffrages. No one voted nowadays; the Sections were deserted;rich and poor alike only sought to shirk the performance of publicduties. The most momentous events had ceased to rouse either enthusiasmor curiosity; the newspapers were left unread. Out of the seven hundredthousand inhabitants of the capital Evariste doubted if as many as threeor four thousand still preserved the old Republican spirit.

  The same day the Twenty-one came up for trial. Innocent or guilty of thecalamities and crimes of the Republic, vain, incautious, ambitious andimpetuous, at once moderate and violent, feeble in their fear as intheir clemency, quick to declare war, slow to carry it out, haled beforethe Tribunal to answer for the example they had given, they were not theless the first and the most brilliant children of the Revolution, whosedelight and glory they had been. The judge who will question them withartful bias; the pallid accuser yonder who, where he sits behind hislittle table, is planning their death and dishonour; the jurors who willpresently try to stifle their defence; the public in the galleries whichoverwhelms them with howls of insult and abuse,--all, judge, jury,people, have applauded their eloquence in other days, extolled theirtalents and their virtues. But judge, jury, people have short memoriesnow.

  Once Evariste had made Vergniaud his god, Brissot his oracle. But hehad forgotten; if any vestige of his old wonder still lingered in hismemory, it was to think that these monsters had seduced the noblestcitizens.

  Returning to his lodging after the sitting, Gamelin heard heart-breakingcries as he entered the house. It was little Josephine; her mother waswhipping her for playing in the Place with good-for-nothing boys anddirtying the fine white frock she had worn for the obsequies of the_citoyen_ Trubert.