Les Dieux ont soif. English
Page 21
XXI
Meantime Julie Gamelin, in her bottle-green box-coat, went every day tothe Luxembourg Gardens and there, on a bench at the end of one of theavenues, sat waiting for the moment when her lover should show his faceat one of the dormers of the Palace. Then they would beckon to eachother and talk together in a language of signs they had invented. Inthis way she learned that the prisoner occupied a fairly good room andhad pleasant companions, that he wanted a blanket for his bed and akettle and loved his mistress fondly.
She was not the only one to watch for the sight of a dear face at awindow of the Palace now turned into a prison. A young mother not farfrom her kept her eyes fixed on a closed casement; then directly she sawit open, she would lift her little one in her arms above her head. Anold lady in a lace veil sat for long hours on a folding-chair, vainlyhoping to catch a momentary glimpse of her son, who, for fear ofbreaking down, never left his game of quoits in the courtyard of theprison till the hour when the gardens were closed.
During these long hours of waiting, whether the sky were blue orovercast, a man of middle age, rather stout and very neatly dressed, wasconstantly to be seen on a neighbouring bench, playing with hissnuff-box and the charms on his watch-guard or unfolding a newspaper,which he never read. He was dressed like a bourgeois of the old schoolin a gold-laced cocked hat, a plum-coloured coat and blue waistcoatembroidered in silver. He looked well-meaning enough, and was somethingof a musician to judge by a flute, one end of which peeped from hispocket. Never for a moment did his eyes wander from the supposedstripling, on whom he bestowed continual smiles, and when he saw himleave his seat, he would get up himself and follow him at a distance.Julie, in her misery and loneliness, was touched by the discreetsympathy the good man manifested.
One day, as she was leaving the gardens, it began to rain; the oldfellow stepped up to her and, opening his vast red umbrella, askedpermission to offer her its shelter. She answered sweetly, in her cleartreble, that she would be very glad. But at the sound of her voice andwarned perhaps by a subtle scent of womanhood, he strode rapidly away,leaving the girl exposed to the rain-storm; she took in the situation,and, despite her gnawing anxieties, could not restrain a smile.
Julie lived in an attic in the Rue du Cherche-Midi and representedherself as a draper's shop-boy in search of employment; the widowGamelin, at last convinced that the girl was running smaller risksanywhere else than at her home, had got her away from the Place deThionville and the Section du Pont-Neuf, and was giving her all the helpshe could in the way of food and linen. Julie did her trifle of cooking,went to the Luxembourg to see her beloved prisoner and back again to hergarret; the monotony of the life was a balm to her grief, and, beingyoung and strong, she slept well and soundly the night through. She wasof a fearless temper and broken in to an adventurous life; the costumeshe wore added perhaps a further spice of excitement, and she wouldsometimes sally out at night to visit a restaurateur's in the Rue duFour, at the sign of the Red Cross, a place frequented by men of allsorts and conditions and women of gallantry. There she read the papersor played backgammon with some tradesman's clerk or citizen-soldier, whosmoked his pipe in her face. Drinking, gambling, love-making were theorder of the day, and scuffles were not unfrequent. One evening acustomer, hearing a trampling of hoofs on the paved roadway outside,lifted the curtain, and recognizing the Commandant-in-Chief of theNational Guard, the _citoyen_ Hanriot, who was riding past with hisStaff, muttered between his teeth:
"There goes Robespierre's jackass!"
Julie overheard and burst into a loud guffaw.
But a moustachioed patriot took up the challenge roundly:
"Whoever says that," he shouted, "is a bl--sted aristocrat, and I shouldlike to see the fellow sneeze into Samson's basket. I tell you GeneralHanriot is a good patriot who'll know how to defend Paris and theConvention at a pinch. That's why the Royalists can't forgive him."
Glaring at Julie, who was still laughing, the patriot added:
"You there, greenhorn, have a care I don't land you a kick in thebackside to learn you to respect good patriots."
But other voices were joining in:
"Hanriot's a drunken sot and a fool!"
"Hanriot's a good Jacobin! Vive Hanriot!"
Sides were taken, and the fray began. Blows were exchanged, hatsbattered in, tables overturned, and glasses shivered; the lights wentout and the women began to scream. Two or three patriots fell uponJulie, who seized hold of a settle in self-defence; she was brought tothe ground, where she scratched and bit her assailants. Her coat flewopen and her neckerchief was torn, revealing her panting bosom. A patrolcame running up at the noise, and the girl aristocrat escaped betweenthe gendarmes' legs.
Every day the carts were full of victims for the guillotine.
"But I cannot, I cannot let my lover die!" Julie would tell her mother.
She resolved to beg his life, to take what steps were possible, to go tothe Committees and Public Departments, to canvas Representatives,Magistrates, to visit anyone who could be of help. She had no woman'sdress to wear. Her mother borrowed a striped gown, a kerchief, a lacecoif from the _citoyenne_ Blaise, and Julie, attired as a woman and apatriot, set out for the abode of one of the judges, Renaudin, a damp,dismal house in the Rue Mazarine.
With trembling steps she climbed the wooden, tiled stairs and wasreceived by the judge in his squalid cabinet, furnished with a dealtable and two straw-bottomed chairs. The wall-paper hung in strips.Renaudin, with black hair plastered on his forehead, a lowering eye,tucked-in lips, and a protuberant chin, signed to her to speak andlistened in silence.
She told him she was the sister of the _citoyen_ Chassagne, a prisonerat the Luxembourg, explained as speciously as she could thecircumstances under which he had been arrested, represented him as aninnocent man, the victim of mischance, pleaded more and more urgently;but he remained callous and unsympathetic.
She fell at his feet in supplication and burst into tears.
No sooner did he see her tears than his face changed; his darkblood-shot eyes lit up, and his heavy blue jowl worked as if pumping upthe saliva in his dry throat.
"_Citoyenne_, we will do what is necessary. You need have noanxiety,"--and opening a door, he pushed the petitioner into a littlesitting-room, with rose-pink hangings, painted panels, Dresden chinafigures, a time-piece and gilt candelabra; for furniture it containedsettees, and a sofa covered in tapestry and adorned with a pastoralgroup after Boucher. Julie was ready for anything to save her lover.
Renaudin had his way,--rapidly and brutally. When she got up,readjusting the _citoyenne's_ pretty frock, she met the man's cruelmocking eye; instantly she knew she had made her sacrifice in vain.
"You promised me my brother's freedom," she said.
He chuckled.
"I told you, _citoyenne_, we would do what was necessary,--that is tosay, we should apply the law, neither more nor less. I told you to haveno anxiety,--and why should you be anxious? The Revolutionary Tribunalis always just."
She thought of throwing herself upon the man, biting him, tearing outhis eyes. But, realizing she would only be consummating FortuneChassagne's ruin, she rushed from the house, and fled to her garret totake off Elodie's soiled and desecrated frock. All night she lay,screaming with grief and rage.
Next day, on returning to the Luxembourg, she found the gardens occupiedby gendarmes, who were turning out the women and children. Sentinelswere posted in the avenues to prevent the passers-by from communicatingwith the prisoners. The young mother, who used to come every day,carrying her child in her arms, told Julie that there was talk ofplotting in the prisons and that the women were blamed for gathering inthe gardens in order to rouse the people's pity in favour of aristocratsand traitors.