Les Dieux ont soif. English

by Anatole France

  XXIX

  It was Nivose. Masses of floating ice encumbered the Seine; the basinsin the Tuileries garden, the kennels, the public fountains were frozen.The North wind swept clouds of hoar frost before it in the streets. Awhite steam breathed from the horses' noses, and the city folk wouldglance in passing at the thermometer at the opticians' doors. A shop-boywas wiping the fog from the window-panes of the _Amour peintre_, whilecurious passers-by threw a look at the prints in vogue,--Robespierresqueezing into a cup a heart like a pumpkin to drink the blood, andambitious allegorical designs with such titles as the Tigrocracy ofRobespierre; it was all hydras, serpents, horrid monsters let loose onFrance by the tyrant. Other pictures represented the Horrible Conspiracyof Robespierre, Robespierre's Arrest, The Death of Robespierre.

  That day, after the midday dinner, Philippe Desmahis walked into the_Amour peintre_, his portfolio under his arm, and brought the _citoyen_Jean Blaise a plate he had just finished, a stippled engraving of theSuicide of Robespierre. The artist's picaresque burin had madeRobespierre as hideous as possible. The French people were not yetsatiated with all the memorials which enshrined the horror andopprobrium felt for the man who was made scapegoat of all the crimes ofthe Revolution. For all that, the printseller, who knew his public,informed Desmahis that henceforward he was going to give him militarysubjects to engrave.

  "We shall all be wanting victories and conquests,--swords, wavingplumes, triumphant generals. Glory is to be the word. I feel it in me;my heart beats high to hear the exploits of our valiant armies. And whenI have a feeling, it is seldom all the world doesn't have the samefeeling at the same time. What we want is warriors and women, Mars andVenus."

  "_Citoyen_ Blaise, I have still two or three drawings of Gamelin's byme, which you gave me to engrave. Is it urgent?"

  "Not a bit."

  "By-the-bye, about Gamelin; yesterday, strolling in the Boulevard duTemple, I saw at a dealer's, who keeps a second-hand stall opposite theHouse of Beaumarchais, all that poor devil's canvases, amongst the resthis _Orestes and Electra_. The head of Orestes, who's like Gamelin, isreally fine, I assure you.... The head and arm are superb.... The mantold me he found no difficulty in getting rid of these canvases toartists who want to paint over them.... Poor Gamelin! He might have beena genius of the first order, perhaps, if he hadn't taken to politics."

  "He had the soul of a criminal!" replied the _citoyen_ Blaise. "Iunmasked him, on this very spot, when his sanguinary instincts werestill held in check. He never forgave me.... Oh! he was a choiceblackguard."

  "Poor fellow! he was sincere enough. It was the fanatics were hisruin."

  "You don't defend him, I presume, Desmahis!... There's no defendinghim."

  "No, _citoyen_ Blaise, there's no defending him."

  The _citoyen_ Blaise tapped the gallant Desmahis' shoulder amicably, andobserved:

  "Times are changed. We can call you _Barbaroux_ now the Convention isrecalling the proscribed.... Now I think of it, Desmahis, engrave me aportrait of Charlotte Corday, will you?"

  A woman, a tall, handsome brunette, enveloped in furs, entered the shopand bestowed on the _citoyen_ Blaise a little discreet nod that impliedintimacy. It was Julie Gamelin; but she no longer bore that dishonouredname, she preferred to be called the _citoyenne_ widow Chassagne, andwore, under her mantle, a red tunic in honour of the red shirts of theterror. Julie had at first felt a certain repulsion towards Evariste'smistress; anything that had come near her brother was odious to her. Butthe _citoyenne_ Blaise, after Evariste's death, had found an asylum forthe unhappy mother in the attics of the _Amour peintre_. Julie had alsotaken refuge there; then she had got employment again at the fashionablemilliner's in the Rue des Lombards. Her short hair _a la victime_, heraristocratic looks, her mourning weeds had won the sympathies of thegilded youth. Jean Blaise, whom Rose Thevenin had pretty well thrownover, offered her his homage, which she accepted. Still Julie was fondof wearing men's clothes, as in the old tragic days; she had a fine_Muscadin_ costume made for her and often went, huge baton and allcomplete, to sup at some tavern at Sevres or Meudon with a girl friend,a little assistant in a fashion shop. Inconsolable for the loss of theyoung noble whose name she bore, this masculine-minded Julie found theonly solace to her melancholy in a savage rancour; every time sheencountered Jacobins, she would set the passers-by on them, crying"Death, death!" She had small leisure left to give to her mother, whoalone in her room told her beads all day, too deeply shocked at herboy's tragic death to feel the grief that might have been expected. Rosewas now the constant companion of Elodie who certainly got on amicablywith her step-mothers.

  "Where is Elodie?" asked the _citoyenne_ Chassagne.

  Jean Blaise shook his head; he did not know. He never did know; he madeit a point of honour not to.

  Julie had come to take her friend with her to see Rose Thevenin atMonceaux, where the actress lived in a little house with an Englishgarden.

  At the Conciergerie Rose Thevenin had made the acquaintance of a bigarmy-contractor, the _citoyen_ Montfort. She had been released first, byJean Blaise's intervention, and had then procured the _citoyen_Montfort's pardon, who was no sooner at liberty than he started his oldtrade of provisioning the troops, to which he added speculation inbuilding-lots in the Pepiniere quarter. The architects Ledoux, Olivierand Wailly were erecting pretty houses in that district, and in threemonths the land had trebled in value. Montfort, since their imprisonmenttogether in the Luxembourg, had been Rose Thevenin's lover; he now gaveher a little house in the neighbourhood of Tivoli and the Rue du Rocher,which was very expensive,--and cost him nothing, the sale of theadjacent properties having already repaid him several times over. JeanBlaise was a man of the world, so he deemed it best to put up with whathe could not hinder; he gave up Mademoiselle Thevenin to Montfortwithout ceasing to be on friendly terms with her.

  Julie had not been long at the _Amour peintre_ before Elodie came downto her in the shop, looking like a fashion plate. Under her mantle,despite the rigours of the season, she wore nothing but her white frock;her face was even paler than of old, and her figure thinner; her lookswere languishing, and her whole person breathed voluptuous invitation.

  The two women set off for Rose Thevenin's, who was expecting them.Desmahis accompanied them; the actress was consulting him about thedecoration of her new house and he was in love with Elodie, who had bythis time half made up her mind to let him sigh no more in vain. Whenthe party came near Monceaux, where the victims of the Place de laRevolution lay buried under a layer of lime:

  "It is all very well in the cold weather," remarked Julie; "but in thespring the exhalations from the ground there will poison half the town."

  Rose Thevenin received her two friends in a drawing-room furnished _al'antique_, the sofas and armchairs of which were designed by David.Roman bas-reliefs, copied in monochrome, adorned the walls abovestatues, busts and candelabra of imitation bronze. She wore a curled wigof a straw colour. At that date wigs were all the rage; it was quitecommon to include half a dozen, a dozen, a dozen and a half in a bride'strousseau. A gown _a la Cyprienne_ moulded her body like a sheath.Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she led her two friends and theengraver into the garden, which Ledoux was laying out for her, but whichas yet was a chaos of leafless trees and plaster. She showed them,however, Fingal's grotto, a gothic chapel with a bell, a temple, atorrent.

  "There," she said, pointing to a clump of firs, "I should like to raisea cenotaph to the memory of the unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. I wasnot indifferent to him; he was a lovable man. The monsters slaughteredhim; I bewailed his fate. Desmahis, you shall design me an urn on acolumn."

  Then she added almost without a pause:

  "It is heart-breaking.... I wanted to give a ball this week; but all thefiddles are engaged three weeks in advance. There is dancing every nightat the _citoyenne_ Tallien's."

  After dinner Mademoiselle Thevenin's carriage took the three friends andDesmahis to the Theatre Feydeau. All that was most elegant in
Paris wasgathered in the house--the women with hair dressed _a l'antique_ or _ala victime_, in very low dresses, purple or white and spangled withgold, the men wearing very tall black collars and the chin disappearingin enormous white cravats.

  The bill announced _Phedre_ and the _Chien du Jardinier_,--TheGardener's Dog. With one voice the audience demanded the hymn dear tothe _muscadins_ and the gilded youth, the _Reveil du peuple_,--TheAwakening of the People.

  The curtain rose and a little man, short and fat, took the stage; it wasthe celebrated Lays. He sang in his fine tenor voice:

  _Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

  Such storms of applause broke out as set the lustres of the chandelierjingling. Then some murmurs made themselves heard, and the voice of acitizen in a round hat answered from the pit with the hymn of theMarseillaise:

  _Allons, enfants de la patrie...._

  The voice was drowned by howls, and shouts were raised:

  "Down with the Terrorists! Death to the Jacobins!"

  Lays was recalled and sang a second time over the hymn of theThermidorians.

  _Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

  In every play-house was to be seen the bust of Marat, surmounting acolumn or raised on a pedestal; at the Theatre Feydeau this bust stoodon a dwarf pillar on the "prompt" side, against the masonry-framing inthe stage.

  While the orchestra was playing the Overture of _Phedre et Hippolyte_, ayoung _Muscadin_, pointing his cane at the bust, shouted:

  "Down with Marat!"--and the whole house took up the cry: "Down withMarat! Down with Marat!"

  Urgent voices rose above the uproar:

  "It is a black shame that bust should still be there!"

  "The infamous Marat lords it everywhere, to our dishonour! His busts areas many as the heads he wanted to cut off."

  "Venomous toad!"

  "Tiger!"

  "Vile serpent!"

  Suddenly an elegantly dressed spectator clambers on to the edge of hisbox, pushes the bust, oversets it. The plaster head falls in shivers onthe musicians' heads amid the cheers of the audience, who spring totheir feet and strike up the _Reveil du Peuple_:

  _Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

  Among the most enthusiastic singers Elodie recognized the handsomedragoon, the little lawyer's clerk, Henry, her first love.

  After the performance the gallant Desmahis called a cabriolet andescorted the _citoyenne_ Blaise back to the _Amour peintre_.

  In the carriage the artist took Elodie's hand between his:

  "You know, Elodie, I love you?"

  "I know it, because you love all women."

  "I love them in you."

  She smiled:

  "I should be assuming a heavy task, spite of the wigs black, blonde andred, that are the rage, if I undertook to be all women, all sorts ofwomen, for you."

  "Elodie, I swear...."

  "What! oaths, _citoyen_ Desmahis? Either you have a deal of simplicity,or you credit me with overmuch."

  Desmahis had not a word to say, and she hugged herself over the triumphof having reduced her witty admirer to silence.

  At the corner of the Rue de la Loi they heard singing and shouting andsaw shadows flitting round a brazier of live coals. It was a band ofyoung bloods who had just come out of the Theatre Francais and wereburning a guy representing the Friend of the People.

  In the Rue Honore the coachman struck his cocked hat against a burlesqueeffigy of Marat swinging from the cord of a street lantern.

  The fellow, heartened by the incident, turned round to his fares andtold them how, only last night, the tripe-seller in the Rue Montorgueilhad smeared blood over Marat's head, declaring: "That's the stuff heliked," and how some little scamps of ten had thrown the bust into thesewer, and how the spectators had hit the nail on the head, shouting:

  "That's the Pantheon for him!"

  Meanwhile, from every eating-house and restaurateur's voices could beheard singing:

  _Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

  "Good-bye," said Elodie, jumping out of the cabriolet.

  But Desmahis begged so hard, he was so tenderly urgent and spoke sosweetly, that she had not the heart to leave him at the door.

  "It is late," she said; "you must only stay an instant."

  In the blue chamber she threw off her mantle and appeared in her whitegown _a l'antique_, which displayed all the warm fulness of her shape.

  "You are cold, perhaps," she said, "I will light the fire; it is alreadylaid."

  She struck the flint and put a lighted match to the fire.

  Philippe took her in his arms with the gentleness that bespeaksstrength, and she felt a strange, delicious thrill. She was alreadyyielding beneath his kisses when she snatched herself from his arms,crying:

  "Let me be."

  Slowly she uncoiled her hair before the chimney-glass; then she lookedmournfully at the ring she wore on the ring-finger of her left hand, alittle silver ring on which the face of Marat, all worn and battered,could no longer be made out. She looked at it till the tears confusedher sight, took it off softly and tossed it into the flames.

  Then, her face shining with tears and smiles, transfigured withtenderness and passion, she threw herself into Philippe's arms.

  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!"

  The last dying embers were glowing on the hearth when Elodie, tired andhappy, dropped her head on the pillow.

  THE END