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The Gods are Athirst

by Anatole France · English · Gutenberg #24010 · 457,056 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Gods are Athirst

Author: Anatole France

Translator: Emilie Jackson


        
Release date: December 24, 2007 [eBook #24010]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24010

Credits: Produced by R. Cedron, Camille François, Henry Craig and
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GODS ARE ATHIRST ***




Produced by R. Cedron, Camille François, Henry Craig and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)











THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

[Illustration]




THE GODS ARE
ATHIRST

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

A TRANSLATION BY
MRS. WILFRID JACKSON

[Illustration]

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV




Copyright, 1913 by
JOHN LANE COMPANY




THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

I


Évariste Gamelin, painter, pupil of David, member of the Section du
Pont-Neuf, formerly Section Henri IV, had betaken himself at an early
hour in the morning to the old church of the Barnabites, which for three
years, since 21st May 1790, had served as meeting-place for the General
Assembly of the Section. The church stood in a narrow, gloomy square,
not far from the gates of the Palais de Justice. On the façade, which
consisted of two of the Classical orders superimposed and was decorated
with inverted brackets and flaming urns, blackened by the weather and
disfigured by the hand of man, the religious emblems had been battered
to pieces, while above the doorway had been inscribed in black letters
the Republican catchword of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death."
Évariste Gamelin made his way into the nave; the same vaults which had
heard the surpliced clerks of the Congregation of St. Paul sing the
divine offices, now looked down on red-capped patriots assembled to
elect the Municipal magistrates and deliberate on the affairs of the
Section. The Saints had been dragged from their niches and replaced by
the busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Peltier. The altar had been
stripped bare and was surmounted by the Table of the Rights of Man.

It was here in the nave that twice a week, from five in the evening to
eleven, were held the public assemblies. The pulpit, decorated with the
colours of the Nation, served as tribune for the speakers who harangued
the meeting. Opposite, on the Epistle side, rose a platform of rough
planks, for the accommodation of the women and children, who attended
these gatherings in considerable numbers.

On this particular morning, facing a desk planted underneath the pulpit,
sat in red cap and _carmagnole_ complete the joiner from the Place
Thionville, the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, one of the twelve forming the
Committee of Surveillance. On the desk stood a bottle and glasses, an
ink-horn, and a folio containing the text of the petition urging the
Convention to expel from its bosom the twenty-two members deemed
unworthy.

Évariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.

"I was sure," said the carpenter and magistrate, "I was sure you would
come and give in your name, _citoyen_ Gamelin. You are the real thing.
But the Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have proposed to
the Committee of Surveillance to deliver no certificate of citizenship
to any one who has failed to sign the petition."

"I am ready to sign with my blood," said Gamelin, "for the proscription
of these federalists, these traitors. They have desired the death of
Marat: let them perish."

"What ruins us," replied Dupont senior, "is indifferentism. In a Section
which contains nine hundred citizens with the right to vote there are
not fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were eight and twenty."

"Well then," said Gamelin, "citizens must be obliged to come under
penalty of a fine."

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the joiner frowning, "but if they all came, the
patriots would be in a minority.... _Citoyen_ Gamelin, will you drink a
glass of wine to the health of all good sansculottes?..."

On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side, could be read the words,
accompanied by a black hand, the forefinger pointing to the passage
leading to the cloisters: "_Comité civil, Comité de surveillance, Comité
de bienfaisance._" A few yards further on, you came to the door of the
erstwhile sacristy, over which was inscribed: _Comité militaire_.

Gamelin pushed this door open and found the Secretary of the Committee
within; he was writing at a large table loaded with books, papers, steel
ingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing soils.

"Greeting, _citoyen_ Trubert. How are you?"

"I?... I am perfectly well."

The Secretary of the Military Committee, Fortuné Trubert, invariably
made this same reply to all who troubled about his health, less by way
of informing them of his welfare than to cut short any discussion on the
subject. At twenty-eight, he had a parched skin, thin hair, hectic
cheeks and bent shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des Orfèvres,
and owned a very old house which he had given up in '91 to a
superannuated clerk in order to devote his energies to the discharge of
his municipal duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose memory a few
old men of the neighbourhood still cherished fondly, had died at twenty;
she had left him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, her
pallor and timidity. From his father, optician and mathematical
instrument maker to the King, carried off by the same complaint before
his thirtieth year, he inherited an upright character and an industrious
temperament.

Without stopping his writing:

"And you, _citoyen_," he asked, "how are you?"

"Very well. Anything new?"

"Nothing, nothing. You can see,--we are all quiet here."

"And the situation?"

"The situation is just the same."

The situation was appalling. The finest army of the Republic blockaded
in Mayence; Valenciennes besieged; Fontenay taken by the Vendéens; Lyons
rebellious; the Cévennes in insurrection, the frontier open to the
Spaniards; two-thirds of the Departments invaded or revolted; Paris
helpless before the Austrian cannon, without money, without bread!

Fortuné Trubert wrote on calmly. The Sections being instructed by
resolution of the Commune to carry out the levy of twelve thousand men
for La Vendée, he was drawing up directions relating to the enrolment
and arming of the contingent which the "Pont-Neuf," erstwhile "Henri
IV," was to supply. All the muskets in store were to be handed over to
the men requisitioned for the front; the National Guard of the Section
would be armed with fowling-pieces and pikes.

"I have brought you here," said Gamelin, "the schedule of the
church-bells to be sent to the Luxembourg to be converted into cannon."

Évariste Gamelin, albeit he had not a penny, was inscribed among the
active members of the Section; the law accorded this privilege only to
such citizens as were rich enough to pay a contribution equivalent in
amount to three days' work, and demanded a ten days' contribution to
qualify an elector for office. But the Section du Pont-Neuf, enamoured
of equality and jealous of its independence, regarded as qualified both
for the vote and for office every citizen who had paid out of his own
pocket for his National Guard's uniform. This was Gamelin's case, who
was an _active_ citizen of his Section and member of the Military
Committee.

Fortuné Trubert laid down his pen:

"_Citoyen_ Évariste," he said, "I beg you to go to the Convention and
ask them to send us orders to dig up the floor of cellars, to wash the
soil and flag-stones and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything to
have guns, we must have gunpowder too."

A little hunchback, a pen behind his ear and a bundle of papers in his
hand, entered the erstwhile sacristy. It was the _citoyen_ Beauvisage,
of the Committee of Surveillance.

"_Citoyens_," he announced, "we have bad news: Custine has evacuated
Landau."

"Custine is a traitor!" cried Gamelin.

"He shall be guillotined," said Beauvisage.

Trubert, in his rather breathless voice, expressed himself with his
habitual calmness:

"The Convention has not instituted a Committee of Public Safety for fun.
It will enquire into Custine's conduct. Incompetent or traitor, he will
be superseded by a General resolved to win the victory,--and _ça ira!_"

He turned over a heap of papers, scrutinizing them with his tired eyes:

"That our soldiers may do their duty with a quiet mind and stout heart,
they must be assured that the lot of those they leave behind at home is
safeguarded. If you are of the same opinion, _citoyen_ Gamelin, you will
join me in demanding, at the next assembly, that the Committee of
Benevolence concert measures with the Military Committee to succour the
families that are in indigence and have a relative at the front."

He smiled and hummed to himself: "_Ça ira! ça ira!..._"

Working twelve and fourteen hours a day at his table of unpainted deal
for the defence of the fatherland in peril, this humble Secretary of the
Sectional Committee could see no disproportion between the immensity of
the task and the meagreness of his means for performing it, so filled
was he with a sense of the unity in a common effort between himself and
all other patriots, so intimately did he feel himself one with the
Nation at large, so merged was his individual life in the life of a
great People. He was of the sort who combine enthusiasm with
long-suffering, who, after each check, set about organizing the victory
that is impossible, but is bound to come. And verily they _must_ win the
day. These men of no account, who had destroyed Royalty and upset the
old order of things, this Trubert, a penniless optician, this Évariste
Gamelin, an unknown dauber, could expect no mercy from their enemies.
They had no choice save between victory and death. Hence both their
fervour and their serenity.




II


Quitting the Barnabites, Évariste Gamelin set off in the direction of
the Place Dauphine, now renamed the Place de Thionville in honour of a
city that had shown itself impregnable.

Situated in the busiest quarter of Paris, the _Place_ had long lost the
fine stateliness it had worn a hundred years ago; the mansions forming
its three sides, built in the days of Henri IV in one uniform style, of
red brick with white stone dressings, to lodge splendour-loving
magistrates, had had their imposing roofs of slate removed to make way
for two or three wretched storeys of lath and plaster or had even been
demolished altogether and replaced by shabby whitewashed houses, and now
displayed only a series of irregular, poverty-stricken, squalid fronts,
pierced with countless narrow, unevenly spaced windows enlivened with
flowers in pots, birdcages, and rags hanging out to dry. These were
occupied by a swarm of artisans, jewellers, metal-workers, clockmakers,
opticians, printers, laundresses, sempstresses, milliners, and a few
grey-beard lawyers who had not been swept away in the storm of
revolution along with the King's courts.

It was morning and springtime. Golden sunbeams, intoxicating as new
wine, played on the walls and flashed gaily in at garret casements.
Every sash of every window was thrown open, showing the housewives'
frowsy heads peeping out. The Clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who
had just left his house on his way to Court, distributed amicable taps
on the cheeks of the children playing under the trees. From the
Pont-Neuf came the crier's voice denouncing the treason of the infamous
Dumouriez.

Évariste Gamelin lived in a house on the side towards the Quai de
l'Horloge, a house that dated from Henri IV and would still have
preserved a not unhandsome appearance but for a mean tiled attic that
had been added on to heighten the building under the last but one of the
_tyrants_. To adapt the lodging of some erstwhile dignitary of the
_Parlement_ to the exigencies of the bourgeois and artisan households
that formed its present denizens, endless partitions and false floors
had been run up. This was why the _citoyen_ Remacle, concierge and
jobbing tailor, perched in a sort of 'tween-decks, as low ceilinged as
it was confined in area. Here he could be seen through the glass door
sitting cross-legged on his work-bench, his bowed back within an inch of
the floor above, stitching away at a National Guard's uniform, while the
_citoyenne_ Remacle, whose cooking stove boasted no chimney but the well
of the staircase, poisoned the other tenants with the fumes of her
stew-pots and frying-pans, and their little girl Joséphine, her face
smudged with treacle and looking as pretty as an angel, played on the
threshold with Mouton, the joiner's dog. The _citoyenne_, whose heart
was as capacious as her ample bosom and broad back, was reputed to
bestow her favours on her neighbour the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, who was
one of the twelve constituting the Committee of Surveillance. At any
rate her husband had his strong suspicions, and from morning to night
the house resounded with the racket of the alternate squabbles and
reconciliations of the pair. The upper floors were occupied by the
_citoyen_ Chaperon, gold and silver-smith, who had his shop on the Quai
de l'Horloge, by a health officer, an attorney, a goldbeater, and
several employés at the Palais de Justice.

Évariste Gamelin climbed the old-fashioned staircase as far as the
fourth and last storey, where he had his studio together with a bedroom
for his mother. At this point ended the wooden stairs laid with tiles
that took the place of the grand stairway of the more important floors.
A ladder clamped to the wall led to a cock-loft, from which at that
moment emerged a stout man with a handsome, florid, rosy-cheeked face,
climbing painfully down with an enormous package clasped in his arms,
yet humming gaily to himself: _J'ai perdu mon serviteur_.

Breaking off his song, he wished a polite good-day to Gamelin, who
returned him a fraternal greeting and helped him down with his parcel,
for which the old man thanked him.

"There," said he, shouldering his burden again, "you have a batch of
dancing-dolls which I am going to deliver straight away to a
toy-merchant in the Rue de la Loi. There is a whole tribe of them
inside; I am their creator; they have received of me a perishable body,
exempt from joys and sufferings. I have not given them the gift of
thought, for I am a benevolent God."

It was the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, once farmer of taxes and _ci-devant_
noble; his father, having made a fortune in these transactions, had
bought himself an office conferring a title on the possessor. In the
good old times Maurice Brotteaux had called himself Monsieur des Ilettes
and used to give elegant suppers which the fair Madame de Rochemaure,
wife of a King's _procureur_, enlivened with her bright glances,--a
finished gentlewoman whose loyal fidelity was never impugned so long as
the Revolution left Maurice Brotteaux in possession of his offices and
emoluments, his hôtel, his estates and his noble name. The Revolution
swept them all away. He made his living by painting portraits under the
archways of doors, making pancakes and fritters on the Quai de la
Mégisserie, composing speeches for the representatives of the people and
giving dancing lessons to the young _citoyennes_. At the present time,
in his garret into which you climbed by a ladder and where a man could
not stand upright, Maurice Brotteaux, the proud owner of a glue-pot, a
ball of twine, a box of water-colours and sundry clippings of paper,
manufactured dancing-dolls which he sold to wholesale toy-dealers, who
resold them to the pedlars who hawked them up and down the
Champs-Élysées at the end of a pole,--glittering magnets to draw the
little ones' eyes. Amidst the calamities of the State and the disaster
that overwhelmed himself, he preserved an unruffled spirit, reading for
the refreshment of his mind in his Lucretius, which he carried with him
wherever he went in the gaping pocket of his plum-coloured surtout.

Évariste Gamelin pushed open the door of his lodging. It offered no
resistance, for his poverty spared him any trouble about lock and key;
when his mother from force of habit shot the bolt, he would tell her:
"Why, what's the good? Folks don't steal spiders'-webs,--nor my
pictures, neither." In his workroom were piled, under a thick layer of
dust or with faces turned to the wall, the canvases of his student
years,--when, as the fashion of the day was, he limned scenes of
gallantry, depicting with a sleek, timorous brush emptied quivers and
birds put to flight, risky pastimes and reveries of bliss, high-kilted
goose-girls and shepherdesses with rose-wreathed bosoms.

But it was not a genre that suited his temperament. His cold treatment
of such like scenes proved the painter's incurable purity of heart.
Amateurs were right: Gamelin had no gifts as an erotic artist. Nowadays,
though he was still short of thirty, these subjects struck him as dating
from an immemorial antiquity. He saw in them the degradation wrought by
Monarchy, the shameful effects of the corruption of Courts. He blamed
himself for having practised so contemptible a style and prostituted his
genius to the vile arts of slavery. Now, citizen of a free people, he
occupied his hand with bold charcoal sketches of Liberties, Rights of
Man, French Constitutions, Republican Virtues, the People as Hercules
felling the Hydra of Tyranny, throwing into each and all his
compositions all the fire of his patriotism. Alas! he could not make a
living by it. The times were hard for artists. No doubt the fault did
not lie with the Convention, which was hurling its armies against the
kings gathered on every frontier, which, proud, unmoved, determined in
the face of the coalesced powers of Europe, false and ruthless to
itself, was rending its own bosom with its own hands, which was setting
up terror as the order of the day, establishing for the punishment of
plotters a pitiless tribunal to whose devouring maw it was soon to
deliver up its own members; but which through it all, with calm and
thoughtful brow, the patroness of science and friend of all things
beautiful, was reforming the calendar, instituting technical schools,
decreeing competitions in painting and sculpture, founding prizes to
encourage artists, organizing annual exhibitions, opening the Museum of
the Louvre, and, on the model of Athens and Rome, endowing with a
stately sublimity the celebration of National festivals and public
obsequies. But French Art, once so widely appreciated in England, and
Germany, in Russia, in Poland, now found every outlet to foreign lands
closed. Amateurs of painting, dilettanti of the fine arts, great
noblemen and financiers, were ruined, had emigrated or were in hiding.
The men the Revolution had enriched, peasants who had bought up National
properties, speculators, army-contractors, gamesters of the
Palais-Royal, durst not at present show their wealth, and did not care a
fig for pictures, either. It needed Regnault's fame or the youthful
Gérard's cleverness to sell a canvas. Greuze, Fragonard, Houin were
reduced to indigence. Prud'hon could barely earn bread for his wife and
children by drawing subjects which Copia reproduced in stippled
engravings. The patriot painters Hennequin, Wicar, Topino-Lebrun were
starving. Gamelin, without means to meet the expenses of a picture, to
hire a model or buy colours, abandoned his vast canvas of _The Tyrant
pursued in the Infernal Regions by the Furies_, after barely sketching
in the main outlines. It blocked up half the studio with its
half-finished, threatening shapes, greater than life-size, and its vast
brood of green snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues. In
the foreground, to the left, could be discerned Charon in his boat, a
haggard, wild-looking figure,--a powerful and well conceived design, but
of the schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and less of
artificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions, also unfinished, that
hung in the best lighted corner of the studio. It was an Orestes whom
his sister Electra was raising in her arms on his bed of pain. The
maiden was putting back with a moving tenderness the matted hair that
hung over her brother's eyes. The head of the hero was tragic and fine,
and you could see a likeness in it to the painter's own countenance.

Gamelin cast many a mournful look at this composition; sometimes his
fingers itched with the craving to be at work on it, and his arms would
be stretched longingly towards the boldly sketched figure of Electra, to
fall back again helpless to his sides. The artist was burning with
enthusiasm, his soul aspired to great achievements. But he had to
exhaust his energy on pot-boilers which he executed indifferently,
because he was bound to please the taste of the vulgar and also because
he had no skill to impress trivial things with the seal of genius. He
drew little allegorical compositions which his comrade Desmahis engraved
cleverly enough in black or in colours and which were bought at a low
figure by a print-dealer in the Rue Honoré, the _citoyen_ Blaise. But
the trade was going from bad to worse, declared Blaise, who for some
time now had declined to purchase anything.

This time, however, made inventive by necessity, Gamelin had conceived a
new and happy thought, as _he_ at any rate believed,--an idea that was
to make the print-seller's fortune, and the engraver's and his own to
boot. This was a "patriotic" pack of cards, where for the kings and
queens and knaves of the old style he meant to substitute figures of
Genius, of Liberty, of Equality and the like. He had already sketched
out all his designs, had finished several and was eager to pass on to
Desmahis such as were in a state to be engraved. The one he deemed the
most successful represented a soldier dressed in the three-cornered hat,
blue coat with red facings, yellow breeches and black gaiters of the
Volunteer, seated on a big drum, his feet on a pile of cannon-balls and
his musket between his knees. It was the _citizen of hearts_ replacing
the _ci-devant_ knave of hearts. For six months and more Gamelin had
been drawing soldiers with never-failing gusto. He had sold some of
these while the fit of martial enthusiasm lasted, while others hung on
the walls of the room, and five or six, water-colours, colour-washes and
chalks in two tints, lay about on the table and chairs. In the days of
July, '92, when in every open space rose platforms for enrolling
recruits, when all the taverns were gay with green leaves and resounded
to the shouts of "Vive la Nation! freedom or death!" Gamelin could not
cross the Pont-Neuf or pass the Hôtel de Ville without his heart beating
high at sight of the beflagged marquee in which magistrates in tricolour
scarves were inscribing the names of volunteers to the sound of the
_Marseillaise_. But for him to join the Republic's armies would have
meant leaving his mother to starve.

Heralded by a grievous sound of puffing and panting the old _citoyenne_,
Gamelin's widowed mother, entered the studio, hot, red and out of
breath, the National cockade hanging half unpinned in her cap and on the
point of falling out. She deposited her basket on a chair and still
standing, the better to get her breath, began to groan over the high
price of victuals.

A shopkeeper's wife till the death of her husband, a cutler in the Rue
de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, at the sign of the Ville de Châtellerault,
now reduced to poverty, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin lived in seclusion,
keeping house for her son the painter. He was the elder of her two
children. As for her daughter Julie, at one time employed at a
fashionable milliner's in the Rue Honoré, the best thing was not to know
what had become of her, for it was ill saying the truth, that she had
emigrated with an aristocrat.

"Lord God!" sighed the _citoyenne_, showing her son a loaf baked of
heavy dun-coloured dough, "bread is too dear for anything; the more
reason it should be made of pure wheat! At market neither eggs nor
green-stuff nor cheese to be had. By dint of eating chestnuts, we're
like to grow into chestnuts."

After a long pause, she began again:

"Why, I've seen women in the streets who had nothing to feed their
little ones with. The distress is sore among poor folks. And it will go
on the same till things are put back on a proper footing."

"Mother," broke in Gamelin with a frown, "the scarcity we suffer from is
due to the unprincipled buyers and speculators who starve the people and
connive with our foes over the border to render the Republic odious to
the citizens and to destroy liberty. This comes of the Brissotins' plots
and the traitorous dealings of your Pétions and Rolands. It is well if
the federalists in arms do not march on Paris and massacre the patriot
remnant whom famine is too slow in killing! There is no time to lose;
we must tax the price of flour and guillotine every man who speculates
in the food of the people, foments insurrection or palters with the
foreigner. The Convention has set up an extraordinary tribunal to try
conspirators. Patriots form the court; but will its members have energy
enough to defend the fatherland against our foes? There is hope in
Robespierre; he is virtuous. There is hope above all in Marat. He loves
the people, discerns its true interests and promotes them. He was ever
the first to unmask traitors, to baffle plots. He is incorruptible and
fearless. He, and he alone, can save the imperilled Republic."

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin shook her head, paying no heed to the cockade
that fell out of her cap at the gesture.

"Have done, Évariste; your Marat is a man like another and no better
than the rest. You are young and your head is full of fancies. What you
say to-day of Marat, you said before of Mirabeau, of La Fayette, of
Pétion, of Brissot."

"Never!" cried Gamelin, who was genuinely oblivious.

After clearing one end of the deal table of the papers and books,
brushes and chalks that littered it, the _citoyenne_ laid out on it the
earthenware soup-bowl, two tin porringers, two iron forks, the loaf of
brown bread and a jug of thin wine.

Mother and son ate the soup in silence and finished their meal with a
small scrap of bacon. The _citoyenne_, putting _her_ titbit on her
bread, used the point of her pocket knife to convey the pieces one by
one slowly and solemnly to her toothless jaws and masticated with a
proper reverence the victuals that had cost so dear.

She had left the best part on the dish for her son, who sat lost in a
brown study.

"Eat, Évariste," she repeated at regular intervals, "eat,"--and on her
lips the word had all the solemnity of a religious commandment.

She began again with her lamentations on the dearness of provisions, and
again Gamelin demanded taxation as the only remedy for these evils.

But she shrilled:

"There is no money left in the country. The _émigrés_ have carried it
all off with them. There is no confidence left either. Everything is
desperate."

"Hush, mother, hush!" protested Gamelin. "What matter our privations,
our hardships of a moment? The Revolution will win for all time the
happiness of the human race."

The good dame sopped her bread in her wine; her mood grew more cheerful
and she smiled as her thoughts returned to her young days, when she used
to dance on the green in honour of the King's birthday. She well
remembered too the day when Joseph Gamelin, cutler by trade, had asked
her hand in marriage. And she told over, detail by detail, how things
had gone,--how her mother had bidden her: "Go dress. We are going to the
Place de Grève, to Monsieur Bienassis' shop, to see Damiens drawn and
quartered," and what difficulty they had to force their way through the
press of eager spectators. Presently, in Monsieur Bienassis' shop, she
had seen Joseph Gamelin, wearing his fine rose-pink coat and had known
in an instant what he would be at. All the time she sat at the window to
see the regicide torn with red-hot pincers, drenched with molten lead,
dragged at the tail of four horses and thrown into the flames, Joseph
Gamelin had stood behind her chair and had never once left off
complimenting her on her complexion, her hair and her figure.

She drained the last drop in her cup and continued her reminiscences of
other days:

"I brought you into the world, Évariste, sooner than I had expected, by
reason of a fright I had when I was big. It was on the Pont-Neuf, where
I came near being knocked down by a crowd of sightseers hurrying to
Monsieur de Lally's execution. You were so little at your birth the
surgeon thought you would not live. But I felt sure God would be
gracious to me and preserve your life. I reared you to the best of my
powers, grudging neither pains nor expense. It is fair to say, my
Évariste, that you showed me you were grateful and that, from childhood
up, you tried your best to recompense me for what I had done. You were
naturally affectionate and tender-hearted. Your sister was not bad at
heart; but she was selfish and of unbridled temper. Your compassion was
greater than ever was hers for the unfortunate. When the little
ragamuffins of the neighbourhood robbed birds' nests in the trees, you
always fought hard to rescue the nestlings from their hands and restore
them to the mother, and many a time you did not give in till after you
had been kicked and cuffed cruelly. At seven years of age, instead of
wrangling with bad boys, you would pace soberly along the street saying
over your catechism; and all the poor people you came across you
insisted on bringing home with you to relieve their needs, till I was
forced to whip you to break you of the habit. You could not see a living
creature suffer without tears. When you had done growing, you turned out
a very handsome lad. To my great surprise, you appeared not to know
it,--how different from most pretty boys, who are full of conceit and
vain of their good looks!"

His old mother spoke the truth. Évariste at twenty had had a grave and
charming cast of countenance, a beauty at once austere and feminine, the
countenance of a Minerva. Now his sombre eyes and pale cheeks revealed a
melancholy and passionate soul. But his gaze, when it fell on his
mother, recovered for a brief moment its childish softness.

She went on:

"You might have profited by your advantages to run after the girls, but
you preferred to stay with me in the shop, and I had sometimes to tell
you not to hang on always to my apron-strings, but to go and amuse
yourself with your young companions. To my dying day I shall always
testify that you have been a good son, Évariste. After your father's
death, you bravely took me and provided for me; though your work barely
pays you, you have never let me want for anything, and if we are at this
moment destitute and miserable, I cannot blame you for it. The fault
lies with the Revolution."

He raised his hand to protest; but she only shrugged and continued:

"I am no aristocrat. I have seen the great in the full tide of their
power, and I can bear witness that they abused their privileges. I have
seen your father cudgelled by the Duc de Canaleilles' lackeys because he
did not make way quick enough for their master. I could never abide _the
Austrian_--she was too haughty and too extravagant. As for the King, I
thought him good-hearted, and it needed his trial and condemnation to
alter my opinion. In fact, I do not regret the old régime,--though I
have had some agreeable times under it. But never tell me the Revolution
is going to establish equality, because men will never be equal; it is
an impossibility, and, let them turn the country upside down to their
heart's content, there will still be great and small, fat and lean in
it."

As she talked, she was busy putting away the plates and dishes. The
painter had left off listening. He was thinking out a design,--for a
sansculotte, in red cap and _carmagnole_, who was to supersede the
discredited knave of spades in his pack of cards.

There was a sound of scratching on the door, and a girl appeared,--a
country wench, as broad as she was long, red-haired and bandy-legged, a
wen hiding the left eye, the right so pale a blue it looked white, with
monstrous thick lips and teeth protruding beyond them.

She asked Gamelin if he was Gamelin the painter and if he could do her a
portrait of her betrothed, Ferrand (Jules), a volunteer serving with the
Army of the Ardennes.

Gamelin replied that he would be glad to execute the portrait on the
gallant warrior's return.

But the girl insisted gently but firmly that it must be done at once.

The painter protested, smiling in spite of himself as he pointed out
that he could do nothing without the original.

The poor creature was dumfounded; she had not foreseen the difficulty.
Her head drooping over the left shoulder, her hands clasped in front of
her, she stood still and silent as if overwhelmed by her disappointment.
Touched and diverted by so much simplicity, and by way of distracting
the poor, lovesick creature's grief, the painter handed her one of the
soldiers he had drawn in water-colours and asked her if he was like
that, her sweetheart in the Ardennes.

She bent her doleful look on the sketch, and little by little her eye
brightened, sparkled, flashed, and her moon face beamed out in a radiant
smile.

"It is his very likeness," she cried at last. "It is the very spit of
Jules Ferrand, it is Jules Ferrand to the life."

Before it occurred to the artist to take the sheet of paper out of her
hands, she folded it carefully with her coarse red fingers into a tiny
square, slipped it over her heart between her stays and her shift,
handed the painter an _assignat_ for five livres, and wishing the
company a very good day, hobbled light-heartedly to the door and so out
of the room.




III


On the afternoon of the same day Évariste set out to see the _citoyen_
Jean Blaise, printseller, as well as dealer in ornamental boxes, fancy
goods and games of all sorts, in the Rue Honoré, opposite the Oratoire
and near the office of the Messageries, at the sign of the _Amour
peintre_. The shop was on the ground floor of a house sixty years old,
and opened on the street by a vaulted arch the keystone of which bore a
grotesque head with horns. The semicircle beneath the arch was occupied
by an oil-painting representing "the Sicilian or Cupid the Painter,"
after a composition by Boucher, which Jean Blaise's father had put up in
1770 and which sun and rain had been doing their best to obliterate ever
since. On either side of the door a similar arched opening, with a
nymph's head on the keystone arch glazed with the largest panes to be
got, exhibited for the benefit of the public the prints in vogue at the
time and the latest novelties in coloured engravings. To-day's display
included a series of scenes of gallantry by Boilly, treated in his
graceful, rather stiff way, _Leçons d'amour conjugal_, _Douces
résistances_ and the like, which scandalized the Jacobins and which the
rigid moralists denounced to the Society of Arts, Debucourt's _Promenade
publique_, with a dandy in canary-coloured breeches lounging on three
chairs, a group of horses by the young Carle Vernet, pictures of air
balloons, the _Bain de Virginie_ and figures after the antique.

Amid the stream of citizens that flowed past the shop it was the
raggedest figures that loitered longest before the two fascinating
windows. Easily amused, delighting in pictures and bent on getting their
share, if only through the eyes, of the good things of this world, they
stood in open-mouthed admiration, whereas the aristocrats merely glanced
in, frowned and passed on.

The instant he came within sight of the house, Évariste fixed his eyes
on one of the row of windows above the shop, the one on the left hand,
where there was a red carnation in a flower-pot behind a balcony of
twisted ironwork. It was the window of Élodie's chamber, Jean Blaise's
daughter. The print-dealer lived with his only child on the first floor
of the house.

Évariste, after halting a moment as if to get his breath in front of the
_Amour peintre_, turned the hasp of the shop-door. He found the
_citoyenne_ Élodie within; she had just sold a couple of engravings by
Fragonard _fils_ and Naigeon, carefully selected from a number of
others, and before locking up the _assignats_ received in payment in the
strong-box, was holding them one after the other between her fine eyes
and the light, to scrutinize the delicate lines and intricate curves of
engraving and the watermark. She was naturally suspicious, for as much
forged paper was in circulation as true, which was a great hindrance to
commerce. As in former days, in the case of such as copied the King's
signature, forgers of the national currency were punished by death; yet
plates for printing _assignats_ were to be found in every cellar, the
Swiss smuggled in counterfeits by the million, whole packets were put in
circulation in the inns, the English landed bales of them every day on
our coasts, to ruin the Republic's credit and bring good patriots to
destitution. Élodie was in terror of accepting bad paper, and still more
in terror of passing it and being treated as an accomplice of Pitt,
though she had a firm belief in her own good luck and felt pretty sure
of coming off best in any emergency.

Évariste looked at her with the sombre gaze that speaks more movingly of
love than the most smiling face. She returned his gaze with a mocking
curl of the lips and an arch gleam in the dark eyes,--an expression she
wore because she knew he loved her and liked to know it and because such
a look provokes a lover, makes him complain of ill-usage, brings him to
the speaking point, if he has not spoken already, which was Évariste's
case.

Before depositing the _assignats_ in the strong-box, she produced from
her work-basket a white scarf, which she had begun to embroider, and set
to work on it. At once industrious and a coquette, she knew
instinctively how to ply her needle so as to fascinate an admirer and
make a pretty thing for her wearing at one and the same time; she had
quite different ways of working according to the person watching her,--a
nonchalant way for those she would lull into a gentle languor, a
capricious way for those she was fain to see in a more or less
despairing mood. For Évariste, she bent with an air of painstaking
absorption over her scarf, for she wanted to stir a sentiment of serious
affection in his heart.

Élodie was neither very young nor very pretty. She might have been
deemed plain at the first glance. She was a brunette, with an olive
complexion; under the broad white kerchief knotted carelessly about her
head, from which the dark lustrous ringlets escaped, her eyes of fire
gleamed as if they would burn their orbits. Her round face with its
prominent cheek-bones, laughing lips and rather broad nose, that gave it
a wild-wood, voluptuous expression, reminded the painter of the faun of
the Borghese, a cast of which he had seen and been struck with
admiration for its freakish charm. A faint down of moustache accentuated
the curve of the full lips. A bosom that seemed big with love was
confined by a crossed kerchief in the fashion of the year. Her supple
waist, her active limbs, her whole vigorous body expressed in every
movement a wild, delicious freedom. Every glance, every breath, every
quiver of the warm flesh called for love and promised passion. There,
behind the tradesman's counter, she seemed rather a dancing nymph, a
bacchante of the opera, stripped of her lynx skin and thyrsus,
imprisoned, and travestied by a magician's spell under the modest
trappings of a housewife by Chardin.

"My father is not at home," she told the painter; "wait a little, he
will not be long."

In the small brown hands the needle travelled swiftly over the fine
lawn.

"Is the pattern to your taste, Monsieur Gamelin?"

It was not in Gamelin's nature to pretend. And love, exaggerating his
confidence, encouraged him to speak quite frankly.

"You embroider cleverly, _citoyenne_; but, if I am to say what I think,
the pattern you have traced is not simple enough or bold enough, and
smacks of the affected taste that in France governed too long the
ornamentation of dress and furniture and woodwork; all those rosettes
and wreaths recall the pretty, finikin style that was in favour under
the tyrant. There is a new birth of taste. Alas! we have much leeway to
make up. In the days of the infamous Louis XV the art of decoration had
something Chinese about it. They made pot-bellied cabinets with drawer
handles grotesque in their contortions, good for nothing but to be
thrown on the fire to warm good patriots. Simplicity alone is beautiful.
We must hark back to the antique. David designs beds and chairs from the
Etruscan vases and the wall-paintings of Herculaneum."

"Yes, I have seen those beds and chairs," said Élodie, "they are lovely.
Soon we shall want no other sort. I am like you, I adore the antique."

"Well, then, _citoyenne_," returned Évariste, "if you had limited your
pattern to a Greek border, with ivy leaves, serpents or crossed arrows,
it would have been worthy of a Spartan maiden ... and of you. But you
can still keep this design by simplifying it, reducing it to the plain
lines of beauty."

She asked her preceptor what should be picked out.

He bent over the work, and the girl's ringlets swept lightly over his
cheek. Their hands met and their breaths mingled. For an instant
Évariste tasted an ecstatic bliss, but to feel Élodie's lips so close to
his own filled him with fear, and dreading to alarm her modesty, he drew
back quickly.

The _citoyenne_ Blaise was in love with Évariste Gamelin; she thought
his great ardent eyes superb no less than the fine oval of his pale
face, and his abundant black locks, parted above the brow and falling
in showers about his shoulders; his gravity of demeanour, his cold
reserve, his severe manner and uncompromising speech which never
condescended to flattery, were equally to her liking. She was in love,
and therefore believed him possessed of supreme artistic genius that
would one day blossom forth in incomparable masterpieces and make his
name world-famous,--and she loved him the better for the belief. The
_citoyenne_ Blaise was no prude on the score of masculine purity and her
scruples were not offended because a man should satisfy his passions and
follow his own tastes and caprices; she loved Évariste, who was
virtuous; she did not love him because he was virtuous, albeit she
appreciated the advantage of his being so in that she had no cause for
jealousy or suspicion or any fear of rivals in his affections.

Nevertheless, for the time being, she deemed his reserve a little
overdone. If Racine's "Aricie," who loved "Hippolyte," admired the
youthful hero's untameable virtue, it was with the hope of winning a
victory over it, and she would quickly have bewailed a sternness of
moral fibre that had refused to be softened for her sake. At the first
opportunity she more than half declared her passion to constrain him to
speak out himself. Like her prototype the tender-hearted "Aricie," the
_citoyenne_ Blaise was much inclined to think that in love the woman is
bound to make the advances. "The fondest hearts," she told herself, "are
the most fearful; they need help and encouragement. Besides, they are so
simple a woman can go half way and even further without their even
knowing it, if only she lets them fancy the credit is theirs of the bold
attack and the glorious victory." What made her more confident of
success was the fact that she knew for a certainty (and indeed there was
no doubt about it) that Évariste, before ever the Revolution had made
him a hero, had loved a mistress like any ordinary mortal, a very
unheroic creature, no other than the _concierge_ at the Academy of
Painting. Élodie, who was a girl of some experience, quite realised that
there are different sorts of love. The sentiment Évariste inspired in
her heart was profound enough for her to dream of making him the partner
of her life. She was very ready to marry him, but hardly expected her
father would approve the union of his only daughter with a poor and
unknown artist. Gamelin had nothing, while the printseller turned over
large sums of money. The _Amour peintre_ brought him in large profits,
the share market larger still, and he was in partnership with an army
contractor who supplied the cavalry of the Republic with rushes in place
of hay and mildewed oats. In a word, the cutler's son of the Rue
Saint-Dominique was a very insignificant personage beside the publisher
of engravings, a man known throughout Europe, related to the Blaizots,
Basans and Didots, and an honoured guest at the houses of the _citoyens_
Saint-Pierre and Florian. Not that, as an obedient daughter should, she
held her father's consent to be an indispensable preliminary to her
settlement in life. The latter, early left a widower, and a man of a
self-indulgent, volatile temper, as enterprising with women as he was in
business, had never paid much heed to her and had left her to develop at
her own sweet will, untrammelled whether by parental advice or parental
affection, more careful to ignore than to safeguard the girl's
behaviour, whose passionate temperament he appreciated as a connoisseur
of the sex and in whom he recognized charms far and away more seductive
than a pretty face. Too generous-hearted to be circumspect, too clever
to come to harm, cautious even in her caprices, passion had never made
her forget the social proprieties. Her father was infinitely grateful
for this prudent behaviour, and as she had inherited from him a good
head for business and a taste for money-making, he never troubled
himself as to the mysterious reasons that deterred a girl so eminently
marriageable from entering that estate and kept her at home, where she
was as good as a housekeeper and four clerks to him. At twenty-seven she
felt old enough and experienced enough to manage her own concerns and
had no need to ask the advice or consult the wishes of a father still a
young man, and one of so easy-going and careless a temper. But for her
to marry Gamelin, Monsieur Blaise must needs contrive a future for a
son-in-law with such poor prospects, give him an interest in the
business, guarantee him regular work as he did to several artists
already--in fact, one way or another, provide him with a livelihood; and
such a favour was out of the question, she considered, whether for the
one to offer or the other to accept, so small was the bond of sympathy
between the two men.

The difficulty troubled the girl's tender heart and wise brain. She saw
nothing to alarm her in a secret union with her lover and in taking the
author of nature for sole witness of their mutual troth. Her creed found
nothing blameworthy in such a union, which the independence of her mode
of life made possible and which Évariste's honourable and virtuous
character gave her good hopes of forming without apprehension as to the
result. But Gamelin was hard put to it to live and provide his old
mother with the barest necessaries, and it did not seem as though in so
straitened an existence room could well be found for an amour even when
reduced to the simplicity of nature. Moreover, Évariste had not yet
spoken and declared his intentions, though certainly the _citoyenne_
Blaise hoped to bring him to this before long.

She broke off her meditations, and the needle stopped at the same
moment.

"_Citoyen_ Évariste," she said, "I shall not care for the scarf, unless
you like it too. Draw me a pattern, please. Meanwhile, I will copy
Penelope and unravel what I have done in your absence."

He answered in a tone of sombre enthusiasm:

"I promise you I will, _citoyenne_. I will draw you the brand of the
tyrannicide Harmodius,--a sword in a wreath,"--and pulling out his
pencil, he sketched in a design of swords and flowers in the sober,
unadorned style he admired. And as he drew, he expounded his views of
art:

"A regenerated People," he declared, "must repudiate all the legacies of
servitude, bad taste, bad outline, bad drawing. Watteau, Boucher,
Fragonard worked for tyrants and for slaves. Their works show no feeling
for good style or purity of line, no love of nature or truth. Masks,
dolls, fripperies, monkey-tricks,--nothing else! Posterity will despise
their frivolous productions. In a hundred years all Watteau's pictures
will be banished to the garrets and falling to pieces from neglect; in
1893 struggling painters will be daubing their studies over Boucher's
canvases. David has opened the way; he approaches the Antique, but he
has not yet reached true simplicity, true grandeur, bare and unadorned.
Our artists have many secrets still to learn from the friezes of
Herculaneum, the Roman bas-reliefs, the Etruscan vases."

He dilated at length on antique beauty, then came back to Fragonard,
whom he abused with inexhaustible venom:

"Do you know him, _citoyenne_?"

Élodie nodded.

"You likewise know good old Greuze, who is ridiculous enough, to be
sure, with his scarlet coat and his sword. But he looks like a wise man
of Greece beside Fragonard. I met him, a while ago, the miserable old
man, trotting by under the arcades of the Palais-Égalité, powdered,
genteel, sprightly, spruce, hideous. At sight of him, I longed that,
failing Apollo, some sturdy friend of the arts might hang him up to a
tree and flay him alive like Marsyas as an everlasting warning to bad
painters."

Élodie gave him a long look out of her dancing, wanton eyes.

"You know how to hate, Monsieur Gamelin, are we to conclude you know
also how to lo...?"

"Is that you, Gamelin?" broke in a tenor voice; it was the _citoyen_
Blaise just come back to his shop. He advanced, boots creaking, charms
rattling, coat-skirts flying, an enormous black cocked hat on his head,
the corners of which touched his shoulders.

Élodie, picking up her work-basket, retreated to her chamber.

"Well, Gamelin!" inquired the _citoyen_ Blaise, "have you brought me
anything new?"

"May be," declared the painter,--and proceeded to expound his ideas.

"Our playing cards present a grievous and startling contrast with our
present ways of thinking. The names of knave and king offend the ears of
a patriot. I have designed and executed a reformed, Revolutionary pack
in which for kings, queens, and knaves are substituted Liberties,
Equalities, Fraternities; the aces in a border of fasces, are called
Laws.... You call Liberty of clubs, Equality of spades, Fraternity of
diamonds, Law of hearts. I venture to think my cards are drawn with some
spirit; I propose to have them engraved on copper by Desmahis, and to
take out letters of patent."

So saying and extracting from his portfolio some finished designs in
water-colour, the artist handed them to the printseller.

The _citoyen_ Blaise declined to take them, and turning away:

"My lad," he sneered, "take 'em to the Convention; they will perhaps
accord you a vote of thanks. But never think to make a _sol_ by your new
invention which is not new at all. You're a day behind the fair. Your
Revolutionary pack of cards is the third I've had brought me. Your
comrade Dugourc offered me last week a picquet set with four Geniuses of
the People, four Liberties, four Equalities. Another was suggested, with
Sages and Heroes, Cato, Rousseau, Hannibal,--I don't know what all!...
And these cards had the advantage over yours, my friend, in being
coarsely drawn and cut on wood blocks--with a penknife. How little you
know the world to dream that players will use cards designed in the
taste of David and engraved à la Bartolozzi! And then again, what a
strange mistake to think it needs all this to-do to suit the old packs
to the new ideas. Out of their own heads, the good sansculottes can find
a corrective for what offends them, saying, instead of 'king'--'The
Tyrant!' or just 'The fat pig!' They go on using the same old filthy
cards and never buy new ones. The great market for playing-cards is the
gaming-hells of the Palais-Égalité; well, I advise you to go there and
offer the croupiers and punters there your Liberties, your Equalities,
your ... what d'ye call 'em?... Laws of hearts ... and come back and
tell me what sort of a reception they gave you!"

The _citoyen_ Blaise sat down on the counter, filliped away sundry
grains of snuff from his nankeen breeches and looking at Gamelin with an
air of gentle pity:

"Let me give you a bit of advice, _citoyen_; if you want to make your
living, drop your patriotic packs of cards, leave your revolutionary
symbols alone, have done with your Hercules, your hydras, your Furies
pursuing guilt, your Geniuses of Liberty, and paint me pretty girls. The
people's ardour for regeneration grows lukewarm with time, but men will
always love women. Paint me women, all pink and white, with little feet
and tiny hands. And get this into your thick skull that nobody cares a
fig about the Revolution or wants to hear another word about it."

But Évariste drew himself up in indignant protest:

"What! not hear another word of the Revolution!... But, why surely, the
restoration of liberty, the victories of our armies, the chastisement of
tyrants are events that will startle the most remote posterity. How
could we not be struck by such portents?... What! the sect of the
_sansculotte_ Jesus has lasted well-nigh eighteen centuries, and the
religion of Liberty is to be abolished after barely four years of
existence!"

But Jean Blaise resumed in a tone of superiority:

"You walk in a dream; _I_ see life as it is. Believe me, friend, the
Revolution is a bore; it lasts over long. Five years of enthusiasm, five
years of fraternal embraces, of massacres, of fine speeches, of
_Marseillaises_, of tocsins, of 'hang up the aristocrats,' of heads
promenaded on pikes, of women mounted astride of cannon, of trees of
Liberty crowned with the red cap, of white-robed maidens and old men
drawn about the streets in flower-wreathed cars; of imprisonments and
guillotinings, of proclamations, and short commons, of cockades and
plumes, swords and _carmagnoles_--it grows tedious! And then folk are
beginning to lose the hang of it all. We have gone through too much, we
have seen too many of the great men and noble patriots whom you have led
in triumph to the Capitol only to hurl them afterwards from the Tarpeian
rock,--Necker, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly, Pétion, Manuel, and how
many others! How can we be sure you are not preparing the same fate for
your new heroes?... Men have lost all count."

"Their names, _citoyen_ Blaise; name them, these heroes we are making
ready to sacrifice!" cried Gamelin in a tone that recalled the
print-dealer to a sense of prudence.

"I am a Republican and a patriot," he replied, clapping his hand on his
heart. "I am as good a Republican as you, as ardent a patriot as you,
_citoyen_ Gamelin. I do not suspect your zeal nor accuse you of any
backsliding. But remember that my zeal and my devotion to the State are
attested by numerous acts. Here you have my principles: I give my
confidence to every individual competent to serve the Nation. Before the
men whom the general voice elects to the perilous honour of the
Legislative office, such as Marat, such as Robespierre, I bow my head; I
am ready to support them to the measure of my poor ability and offer
them the humble co-operation of a good citizen. The Committees can bear
witness to my ardour and self-sacrifice. In conjunction with true
patriots, I have furnished oats and fodder to our gallant cavalry, boots
for our soldiers. This very day I am despatching from Vernon a convoy of
sixty oxen to the Army of the South through a country infested with
brigands and patrolled by the emissaries of Pitt and Condé. I do not
talk; I act."

Gamelin calmly put back his sketches in his portfolio, the strings of
which he tied and then slipped it under his arm.

"It is a strange contradiction," he said through his clenched teeth, "to
see men help our soldiers to carry through the world the liberty they
betray in their own homes by sowing discontent and alarm in the soul of
its defenders.... Greeting and farewell, _citoyen_ Blaise."

Before turning down the alley that runs alongside the Oratoire, Gamelin,
his heart big with love and anger, wheeled round for a last look at the
red carnations blossoming on a certain window-sill.

He did not despair; the fatherland would yet be saved. Against Jean
Blaise's unpatriotic speeches he set his faith in the Revolution. Still
he was bound to recognize that the tradesman had some show of reason
when he asserted that the people of Paris had lost its old interest in
public events. Alas! it was but too manifest that to the enthusiasm of
the early days had little by little succeeded a widespread indifference,
that never again would be seen the mighty crowds, unanimous in their
ardour, of '89, never again the millions, one in heart and soul, that in
'90 thronged round the altar of the _fédérés_. Well, good citizens must
show double zeal and courage, must rouse the people from its apathy,
bidding it choose between liberty and death.

Such were Gamelin's thoughts, and the memory of Élodie was a spur to his
confidence.

Coming to the Quais, he saw the sun setting in the distant west behind
lowering clouds that were like mountains of glowing lava; the roofs of
the city were bathed in a golden light; the windows flashed back a
thousand dazzling reflections. And Gamelin pictured the Titans forging
out of the molten fragments of by-gone worlds Diké, the city of brass.

Not having a morsel of bread for his mother or himself, he was dreaming
of a place at the limitless board that should have all the world for
guests and welcome regenerated humanity to the feast. Meantime, he tried
to persuade himself that the fatherland, as a good mother should, would
feed her faithful child. Shutting his mind against the gibes of the
printseller, he forced himself to believe that his notion of a
Revolutionary pack of cards was a novel one and a good one, and that
with these happily conceived sketches of his he held a fortune in the
portfolio under his arm. "Desmahis," he told himself, "shall engrave
them. We will publish for ourselves the new patriotic toy and we are
sure to sell ten thousand packs in a month, at twenty _sols_ apiece."

In his impatience to realize the project, he strode off at once for the
Quai de la Ferraille, where Desmahis lived over a glazier's shop.

The entrance was through the shop. The glazier's wife informed Gamelin
that the _citoyen_ Desmahis was not in, a fact that in no wise surprised
the painter, who knew his friend was of a vagabond and dissipated humour
and who marvelled that a man could engrave so much and so well as he did
while showing so little perseverance. Gamelin made up his mind to wait a
while for his return and the woman offered him a chair. She was in a
black mood and began to grumble at the badness of trade, though she had
always been told that the Revolution, by breaking windows, was making
the glaziers' fortunes.

Night was falling; so abandoning his idea of waiting for his comrade,
Gamelin took his leave of his hostess of the moment. As he was crossing
the Pont-Neuf, he saw a detachment of National Guards debouch from the
Quai des Morfondus. They were mounted and carried torches. They were
driving back the crowd, and amid a mighty clatter of sabres escorting a
cart driving slowly on its way to the guillotine with a man whose name
no one knew, a _ci-devant_ noble, the first prisoner condemned by the
newly constituted Revolutionary Tribunal. He could be seen by glimpses
between the guardsmen's hats, sitting with hands tied behind his back,
his head bared and swaying from side to side, his face to the cart's
tail. The headsman stood beside him lolling against the rail. The
passers-by had stopped to look and were telling each other it was likely
one of the fellows who starved the people, and staring with eyes of
indifference. Gamelin, coming closer, caught sight of Desmahis among the
spectators; he was struggling to push a way through the press and cut
across the line of march. He called out to him and clapped a hand on his
shoulder,--and Desmahis turned his head. He was a young man with a
handsome face and a stalwart person. In former days, at the Academy,
they used to say he had the head of Bacchus on the torso of Hercules.
His friends nicknamed him "Barbaroux" because of his likeness to that
representative of the people.

"Come here," Gamelin said to him, "I have something of importance to say
to you, Desmahis."

"Leave me alone," the latter answered peevishly, muttering some
half-heard explanation, looking out as he spoke for a chance of darting
across:

"I was following a divine creature, in a straw hat, a milliner's wench,
with her flaxen hair down her back; that cursed cart has blocked my
way.... She has gone on ahead, she is at the other end of the bridge by
now!"

Gamelin endeavoured to hold him back by his coat skirts, swearing his
business was urgent.

But Desmahis had already slipped away between horses, guards, swords and
torches, and was in hot pursuit of the milliner's girl.




IV


It was ten o'clock in the forenoon. The April sun bathed the tender
leafage of the trees in light. A storm had cleared the air during the
night and it was deliciously fresh and sweet. At long intervals a
horseman passing along the Allée des Veuves broke the silence and
solitude. On the outskirts of the shady avenue, over against a rustic
cottage known as _La Belle Lilloise_, Évariste sat on a wooden bench
waiting for Élodie. Since the day their fingers had met over the
embroidery and their breaths had mingled, he had never been back to the
_Amour peintre_. For a whole week his proud stoicism and his timidity,
which grew more extreme every day, had kept him away from Élodie. He had
written her a letter conceived in a key of gravity, at once sombre and
ardent, in which, explaining the grievance he had against the _citoyen_
Blaise, but saying no word of his love and concealing his chagrin, he
announced his intention of never returning to her father's shop, and was
now showing greater steadfastness in keeping this resolution than a
woman in love was quite likely to approve.

A born fighter whose bent was to defend her property under all
circumstances, Élodie instantly turned her mind to the task of winning
back her lover. At first she thought of going to see him at the studio
in the Place de Thionville. But knowing his touchy temper and judging
from his letter that he was sick and sore, she feared he might come to
regard daughter and father with the same angry displeasure and make a
point of never seeing her again; so she deemed it wiser to invite him to
a sentimental, romantic rendezvous which he could not well decline,
where she would have ample time to cajole and charm him and where
solitude would be her ally to fascinate his senses and overcome his
scruples.

At this period, in all the English gardens and all the fashionable
promenades, rustic cottages were to be found, built by clever
architects, whose aim it was to flatter the taste of the city folk for a
country life. The _Belle Lilloise_ was occupied as a house of light
refreshment; its exterior bore a look of poverty that was part of the
_mise en scène_ and it stood on the fragments, artistically imitated, of
a fallen tower, so as to unite with the charm of rusticity the
melancholy appeal of a ruined castle. Moreover, as though a peasant's
cot and a shattered donjon were not enough to stir the sensibilities of
his customers, the owner had raised a tomb beneath a weeping-willow,--a
column surmounted by a funeral urn and bearing the inscription:
"Cléonice to her faithful Azor." Rustic cots, ruined keeps, imitation
tombs,--on the eve of being swept away, the aristocracy had erected in
its ancestral parks these symbols of poverty, of decadence and of death.
And now the patriot citizen found his delight in drinking, dancing,
making love in sham hovels, under the broken vaults, a sham in their
very ruin, of sham cloisters and surrounded by a sham graveyard; for was
not he too, like his betters, a lover of nature, a disciple of
Jean-Jacques? was not his heart stuffed as full as theirs with
sensibility and the philosophy of humanity?

Reaching the rendezvous before the appointed time, Évariste waited,
measuring the minutes by the beating of his heart as by the pendulum of
a clock. A patrol passed, guarding a convoy of prisoners. Ten minutes
after a woman dressed all in pink, carrying a bouquet as the fashion
was, escorted by a gentleman in a three-cornered hat, red coat, striped
waistcoat and breeches, slipped into the cottage, both so very like the
gallants and dames of the ancien régime one was bound to think with the
_citoyen_ Blaise that mankind possesses characteristics Revolutions
cannot change.

A few minutes later, coming from Rueil or Saint-Cloud, an old woman
carrying a cylindrical box, painted in brilliant colours, arrived and
sat down beside Gamelin, on his bench. She put down her box in front of
her, and he saw that the lid had a turning needle fixed on it; the poor
woman's trade was to hold a lottery in the public gardens for the
children to try their luck at. She also dealt in "ladies' pleasures," an
old-fashioned sweetmeat which she sold under a new name; whether because
the time-honoured title of "forget-me-nots" called up inappropriate
ideas of unhappiness and retribution or that folks had just got tired of
it in course of time, "forget-me-nots" were now yclept "ladies'
pleasures."

The old dame wiped the sweat from her forehead with a corner of her
apron and broke out into railings against heaven, upbraiding God for
injustice when he made life so hard for his creatures. Her husband kept
a tavern on the river-bank at Saint-Cloud, while she came in every day
to the Champs Élysées, sounding her rattle and crying: "_Ladies'
pleasures_, come buy, come buy!" And with all this toil the old couple
could not scrape enough together to end their days in comfort.

Seeing the young man beside her disposed to commiserate with her, she
expounded at great length the origin of her misfortunes. It was all the
Republic; by robbing the rich, it was taking the bread out of poor
people's mouths. And there was no hoping for a better state of affairs.
Things would only go from bad to worse,--she knew that from many tokens.
At Nanterre a woman had had a baby born with a serpent's head; the
lightning had struck the church at Rueil and melted the cross on the
steeple; a were-wolf had been seen in the woods of Chaville. Masked men
were poisoning the springs and throwing plague powders in the air to
cause diseases....

Évariste saw Élodie spring from a carriage and run forward. The girl's
eyes flashed in the clear shadow cast by her straw hat; her lips, as red
as the carnations she held in her hand, were wreathed in smiles. A scarf
of black silk, crossed over the bosom, was knotted behind the back. Her
yellow gown displayed the quick movements of the knees and showed a pair
of low-heeled shoes below the hem. The hips were almost entirely
unconfined; the Revolution had enfranchised the waists of its
_citoyennes_. For all that, the skirts, still puffed out below the
loins, marked the curves by exaggerating them and veiled the reality
beneath an artificial amplitude of outline.

He tried to speak but could not find his voice, and was chagrined at his
failure, which Élodie preferred to the most eloquent greeting. She
noticed also and looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his
cravat with more than usual pains.

She gave him her hand.

"I wanted to see you," she began, "and talk to you. I did not answer
your letter; I did not like it and I did not think it worthy of you. It
would have been more to my taste if it had been more outspoken. It would
be to malign your character and common sense to suppose you do not mean
to return to the _Amour peintre_ because you had a trifling altercation
there about politics with a man many years your senior. Rest assured you
have no cause to fear my father will receive you ill whenever you come
to see us again. You do not know him; he has forgotten both what he said
to you and what you said in reply. I do not say there is any great bond
of sympathy between you two; but he bears no malice; I tell you frankly
he pays no great heed to you ... nor to me. He thinks only of his own
affairs and his own pleasures."

She stepped towards the shrubberies surrounding the _Belle Lilloise_,
and he followed her with something of repugnance, knowing it to be the
trysting-place of mercenary lovers and amours of a day. She selected the
table furthest out of sight.

"How many things I have to tell you, Évariste. Friendship has its
rights; you do not forbid me to exercise them? I have much to say about
you ... and something about myself, if you will let me."

The landlord having brought a carafe of lemonade, she filled their
glasses herself with the air of a careful housewife; then she began to
tell him about her childhood, described her mother's beauty, which she
loved to dilate upon both as a tribute to the latter's memory and as
the source of her own good looks, and boasted of her grandparents'
sturdy vigour, for she was proud of her bourgeois blood. She related how
at sixteen she had lost this mother she adored and had entered on a life
without anyone to love or rely upon. She painted herself as she was, a
vehement, passionate nature, full of sensibility and courage, and
concluded:

"Oh, Évariste, my girlhood was so sad and lonely I cannot but know what
a prize is a heart like yours, and I will not surrender, I give you fair
warning, of my own free will and without an effort to retain it, a
sympathy on which I trusted I might count and which I held dear."

Évariste gazed at her tenderly.

"Can it be, Élodie, that I am not indifferent to you? Can I really
think...?"

He broke off, fearing to say too much and thereby betray so trusting a
friendliness.

She gave him a little confiding hand that half-peeped out of the long
narrow sleeve with its lace frillings. Her bosom rose and fell in
long-drawn sighs.

"Credit me, Évariste, with all the sentiments you would have me feel for
you, and you will not be mistaken in the dispositions of my heart."

"Élodie, Élodie, you say that? will you still say it when you know
..."--he hesitated.

She dropped her eyes; and he finished the sentence in a whisper:

"... when you know I love you?"

As she heard the declaration, she blushed,--with pleasure. Yet, while
her eyes still spoke of a tender ecstasy, a quizzical smile flickered in
spite of herself about one corner of her lips. She was thinking:

"And he imagines he proposed first!... and he is afraid perhaps of
offending me!..."

Then she said to him fondly:

"So you had never seen, dear heart, that I loved you?"

They seemed to themselves to be alone, the only two beings in the
universe. In his exaltation, Évariste raised his eyes to the firmament
flashing with blue and gold:

"See, the sky is looking down at us! It is benign; it is adorable, as
you are, beloved; it has your brightness, your gentleness, your smile."

He felt himself one with all nature, it formed part and parcel of his
joy and triumph. To his eyes, it was to celebrate his betrothal that the
chestnut blossoms lit their flaming candles, the poplars burned aloft
like giant torches.

He exulted in his strength and stature. She, with her softer as well as
finer nature, more pliable and more malleable, rejoiced in her very
weakness and, his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his
ascendancy; now she had brought him under her slavery, she acknowledged
him for the master, the hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, to
offer her homage. In the shade of the shrubbery he gave her a long,
ardent kiss, which she received with head thrown back and, clasped in
Évariste's arms, felt all her flesh melt like wax.

They went on talking a long time of themselves, forgetful of the
universe. Évariste abounded mainly in vague, high thoughts, which filled
Élodie with ecstasy. She spoke sweetly of things of practical utility
and personal interest. Then, presently, when she felt she could stay no
longer, she rose with a decided air, gave her lover the three red
carnations from the flower in her balcony and sprang lightly into the
cabriolet in which she had driven there. It was a hired carriage,
painted yellow, hung on very high wheels and certainly had nothing out
of the common about it, or the coachman either. But Gamelin was not in
the habit of hiring carriages and his friends were hardly more used to
such an indulgence. To see the great wheels whirling her away gave him a
strange pang and a painful presentiment assailed him; by a sort of
hallucination of the mind, the hack horse seemed to be carrying Élodie
away from him beyond the bounds of the actual world and present time
towards a city of wealth and pleasure, towards abodes of luxury and
enjoyment, which he would never be able to enter.

The carriage disappeared. Évariste recovered his calm by degrees; but a
dull anguish remained and he felt that the hours of tender abandonment
he had just lived would never be his again.

He returned by the Champs Élysées, where women in light summer dresses
were sitting on wooden chairs, talking or sewing, while their children
played under the trees. A woman selling "ladies' pleasures,"--_her_ box
was shaped like a drum--reminded him of the one he had spoken to in the
Allée des Veuves, and it seemed as if a whole epoch of his life had
elapsed between the two encounters. He crossed the Place de la
Révolution. In the Tuileries gardens he caught the distant roar of a
host of men, a sound of many voices shouting in accord, so familiar in
those great days of popular enthusiasm which the enemies of the
Revolution declared would never dawn again. He quickened his pace as the
noise grew louder and louder, reached the Rue Honoré and found it
thronged with a crowd of men and women yelling: "Vive la République!
Vive la Liberté!" The walls of the gardens, the windows, the balconies,
the very roofs were black with lookers-on waving hats and handkerchiefs.
Preceded by a sapper, who cleared a way for the procession, surrounded
by Municipal Officers, National Guards, gunners, gendarmes, huzzars,
advanced slowly, high above the backs of the citizens, a man of a
bilious complexion, a wreath of oak-leaves about his brow, his body
wrapped in an old green surtout with an ermine collar. The women threw
him flowers, while he cast about him the piercing glance of his
jaundiced eyes, as though, in this enthusiastic multitude he was still
searching out enemies of the people to denounce, traitors to punish. As
he went by, Gamelin bent his head and joining his voice to a hundred
thousand others, shouted his:

"Vive Marat!"

The triumphant hero entered the Hall of the Convention like Fate
personified. While the crowd slowly dispersed Gamelin sat on a stone
post in the Rue Honoré and pressed his hand over his heart to check its
wild beating. What he had seen filled him with high emotion and burning
enthusiasm.

He loved and worshipped Marat, who, sick and fevered, his veins on fire,
eaten up by ulcers, was wearing out the last remnants of his strength in
the service of the Republic, and in his own poor house, closed to no
man, welcomed him with open arms, conversed eagerly with him of public
affairs, questioned him sometimes on the machinations of evil-doers. He
rejoiced that the enemies of _the Just_, conspiring for his ruin, had
prepared his triumph; he blessed the Revolutionary Tribunal, which
acquitting the Friend of the People had given back to the Convention
the most zealous and most immaculate of its legislators. Again his eyes
could see the head racked with fever, garlanded with the civic crown,
the features instinct with virtuous pride and pitiless love, the worn,
ravaged, powerful face, the close-pressed lips, the broad chest, the
strong man dying by inches who, raised aloft in the living chariot of
his triumph, seemed to exhort his fellow-citizens: "Be ye like
me,--patriots to the death!"

The street was empty, darkening with the shadows of approaching night;
the lamplighter went by with his cresset, and Gamelin muttered to
himself:

"Yes, to the death!"




V


By nine in the morning Évariste reached the gardens of the Luxembourg,
to find Élodie already there seated on a bench waiting for him.

It was a month ago they had exchanged their vows and since then they had
seen each other every day, either at the _Amour peintre_ or at the
studio in the Place de Thionville. Their meetings had been very tender,
but at the same time characterized by a certain reserve that checked
their expansiveness,--a reserve due to the staid and virtuous temper of
the lover, a theist and a good citizen, who, while ready to make his
beloved mistress his own before the law or with God alone for witness
according as circumstances demanded, would do nothing save publicly and
in the light of day. Élodie knew the resolution to be right and
honourable; but, despairing of a marriage that seemed impossible from
every point of view and loath to outrage the prejudices of society, she
contemplated in her inmost heart a liaison that could be kept a secret
till the lapse of time gave it sanction. She hoped one day to overcome
the scruples of a lover she could have wished less scrupulous, and
meantime, unwilling to postpone some necessary confidences as to the
past, she had asked him to meet her for a lover's talk in a lonely
corner of the gardens near the Carthusian Priory.

She threw him a tender look, took his hand frankly, invited him to share
the bench and speaking slowly and thoughtfully:

"I esteem you too well, Évariste, to hide anything from you. I believe
myself worthy of you; I should not be so were I not to tell you
everything. Hear me and be my judge. I have no act to reproach myself
with that is degrading or base, or even merely selfish. I have only been
weak and credulous.... Do not forget, dear Évariste, the difficult
circumstances in which I found myself. You know how it was with me; I
had lost my mother, my father, still a young man, thought only of his
own amusement and neglected me. I had a feeling heart, nature has
dowered me with a loving temper and a generous soul; it was true she had
not denied me a firm will and a sound judgment, but in those days what
ruled my conduct was passion, not reason. Alas! it would be the same
again to-day, if the two were not in harmony; I should be driven to give
myself to you, beloved, heart and soul, and for ever!"

She expressed herself in firm, well-balanced phrases. She had well
thought over what she would say, having long ago made up her mind to
this confession for several reasons--because she was naturally candid,
because she found pleasure in following Rousseau's example, and because,
as she told herself reasonably enough:

"One day Évariste must fathom a secret which is known to others as well
as myself. A frank avowal is best. It is unforced and therefore to my
credit, and only tells him what some time or other he would discover to
my shame."

Soft-hearted as she was and amenable to nature's promptings, she did
not feel herself to be very much to blame, and this made her confession
the easier; besides which, she had no intention of telling more than was
absolutely requisite.

"Ah!" she sighed, "why did I not know you, Évariste, in the days when I
was alone and forsaken?"

Gamelin had taken her request quite literally when Élodie asked him to
be her judge. Primed at once by nature and the education of books for
the exercise of domestic justice, he sat ready to receive Élodie's
admissions.

As she still hesitated, he motioned to her to proceed. Then she began
speaking very simply:

"A young man, who with many defects of character combined some good
qualities, and only showed the latter, found me to his taste and courted
me with a perseverance that was surprising in such a case; he was in the
flower of his youth, full of charm and the idol of a bevy of charming
women who made no attempt to hide their adoration. It was not his good
looks nor even his brilliance that appealed to me.... He touched my
heart by the tokens of true love he gave me, and I do think he loved me
truly. He was tender, impassioned. I asked no pledge save of his heart,
and alas! his heart was fickle.... I blame no one but myself; it is my
confession I am making, not his. I lay nothing to his charge, for indeed
he is become a stranger to me. Ah! believe me, Évariste, I swear it, he
is no more to me than if he had never existed."

She had finished, but Gamelin vouchsafed no answer. He folded his arms,
a steadfast, sombre look settling in his eyes. His mistress and his
sister Julie were running together in his thoughts. Julie too had
hearkened to a lover; but, unlike, altogether unlike, he thought, the
unhappy Élodie, _she_ had let him have his will and carry her off, not
misled by the promptings of a tender heart, but to enjoy, far from her
home and friends, the sweets of luxury and pleasure. He was a stern
moralist; he had condemned his sister and he was half inclined to
condemn his mistress.

Élodie resumed in a very pleading voice:

"I was full of Jean-Jacques' philosophy; I believed men were naturally
honest and honourable. My misfortune was to have encountered a lover who
was not formed in the school of nature and natural morality, and whom
social prejudice, ambition, self-love, a false point of honour had made
selfish and treacherous."

The words produced the effect she had calculated on. Gamelin's eyes
softened. He asked:

"Who was your seducer? Is he a man I know?"

"You do not know him."

"Tell me his name."

She had foreseen the question and was firmly resolved not to answer it.

She gave her reasons:

"Spare me, I beseech you. For your peace of mind as for my own, I have
already said too much."

Then, as he still pressed her:

"In the sacred name of our love, I refuse to tell you anything to give
you a definite notion of this stranger. I will not give your jealousy a
shape to feed on; I will not bring a harassing shadow between you and
me. I have not forgotten the man's name, but I will never let you know
it."

Gamelin insisted on knowing the name of the seducer,--that was the word
he employed all through, for he felt no doubt Élodie had been seduced,
cajoled, trifled with. He could not so much as conceive any other
possibility,--that she had obeyed an overmastering desire, an
irresistible craving, listened to the tempter's voice in the shape of
her own flesh and blood; he could not find it credible that the fair
victim, a creature of hot passion and a fond heart, had offered herself
a willing sacrifice; to satisfy his ideal, she must needs have been
overborne by force or fraud, constrained by sheer violence, caught in
snares spread about her steps on every side. He questioned her in
guarded terms, but with a close, searching, embarrassing persistency. He
asked her how the liaison began, if it was long or short, tranquil or
troubled, under what circumstances it was broken off. And his enquiries
came back again and again to the means the fellow had used to cajole
her, as if these must surely have been extraordinary and unheard of. But
all his cross-examination was in vain. She kept her own counsel with a
gentle, deprecatory obstinacy, her lips tightly pressed together and
tears welling in her eyes.

Presently, however, Évariste having asked where the man was now, she
told him:

"He has left the Kingdom--France, I mean," she corrected herself in an
instant.

"An _émigré_!" ejaculated Gamelin.

She looked at him, speechless, at once reassured and disheartened to see
him create in his own mind a truth in accordance with his political
passions and of his own motion give his jealousy a Jacobin complexion.

In actual fact Élodie's lover was a little lawyer's clerk, a very pretty
lad, half Adonis, half guttersnipe, whom she had adored and the thought
of whom, though three years had gone by since, still thrilled her
nerves. Rich old women were his particular game, and he deserted Élodie
for a woman of the world of a certain age who could and did recompense
his merits. Having, after the abolition of offices, attained a post in
the Mairie of Paris, he was now a _sansculotte_ dragoon and the
hanger-on of a _ci-devant_ Countess.

"A noble! an _émigré_!" muttered Gamelin, whom she took good care not to
undeceive, never having been desirous he should know the whole truth.
"And he deserted you like a dastard?"

She nodded in answer. He clasped her to his heart:

"Dear victim of the vile corruption of monarchies, my love shall avenge
his villainy! Heaven grant, I may meet the scoundrel! I shall not fail
to know him!"

She turned away, at one and the same time saddened and smiling,--and
disappointed. She would fain have had him wiser in the lore of love,
with more of the natural man about him, more perhaps even of the brute.
She felt he forgave so readily only because his imagination was cold and
the secret she had revealed awoke in him none of the mental pictures
that torture sensuous natures,--in a word, that he saw her seduction
solely under a moral and social aspect.

They had risen, and while they walked up and down the shady avenues of
the gardens, he informed her that he only esteemed her the more because
she had suffered wrong, Élodie entertained no such high claims; however,
take him as he was, she loved him, and admired the brilliant artistic
genius she divined in him.

As they left the Luxembourg, they came upon crowds thronging the Rue de
l'Égalité and the whole neighbourhood of the Théâtre de la Nation. There
was nothing to surprise them in this; for several days great excitement
had prevailed in the most patriotic Sections; denunciations were rife
against the Orleans faction and the Brissotin plotters, who were
conspiring, it was said, to bring about the ruin of Paris and the
massacre of good Republicans. Gamelin himself a short time back had
signed a petition from the Commune demanding the expulsion of the
Twenty-one.

Just before passing under the arcade, joining the theatre to the
neighbouring house, they had to find their way through a group of
citizens _en carmagnole_ who were listening to a harangue from a young
soldier mounted on the top of the gallery. He looked as beautiful as the
Eros of Praxiteles in his helmet of panther-skin. This fascinating
warrior was charging the People's Friend with indolence:

"Marat, you are asleep," he was crying, "and the federalists are forging
fetters to bind us."

Hardly had Élodie cast eyes on the orator before she turned rapidly to
Évariste and begged him to get her away. The crowd, she declared,
frightened her and she was afraid of fainting in the crush.

They parted in the Place de la Nation, swearing an oath of eternal
fidelity.

       *       *       *       *       *

That same morning early the _citoyen_ Brotteaux had made the _citoyenne_
Gamelin the magnificent present of a capon. It would have been an act of
indiscretion for him to mention how he had come by it; as a fact, he had
it of a _Dame de la Halle_ at the Pointe Eustache for whom he sometimes
acted as amanuensis, and as everybody knows, these "Ladies of the
Market" cherished Royalist sympathies and were in correspondence with
the _émigrés_. The _citoyenne_ Gamelin had received the gift with
heartfelt gratitude. Such dainties were scarce ever seen then; victuals
grew dearer every day. The people feared a famine; the aristocrats, they
said, wished it, and the "corner" makers were at work to bring it about.

The _citoyen_ Brotteaux, being invited to eat his share of the capon at
the midday dinner, appeared in due course and congratulated his hostess
on the rich aroma of cooking that assailed his nostrils. Indeed a noble
smell of rich, savoury broth filled the painter's studio.

"You are very obliging, sir," replied the good dame. "To prepare the
digestion for your capon, I have made a vegetable soup with a slice of
fat bacon and a big beef bone. There's nothing like a marrowbone, sir,
to give soup a flavour."

"The maxim does you honour, _citoyenne_," returned the old man. "And you
will be doing wisely to put back again to-morrow and the day after, all
the week, in fact, to put back again, I say, this precious bone in the
pot, which it will continue to flavour. The wise woman of Panzoust
always did so; she used to make a soup of green cabbages with a rind of
rusty bacon and an old _savorados_. That is what in her country, which
is also mine, they call the medullary bone, the most tasty and most
succulent of all bones."

"This lady you speak of, sir," remarked the _citoyenne_ Gamelin, "was
she not rather a saving soul, to make the same bone serve so many times
over?"

"Oh! she lived in a small way," explained Brotteaux, "she was poor,
albeit a prophetess."

At that moment, Évariste Gamelin returned, agitated by the confession he
had heard and determined to know who was Élodie's betrayer, to avenge at
one and the same time the Republic's wrong and his own on the miscreant.

After the usual greetings had been exchanged, the _citoyen_ Brotteaux
resumed the thread of his discourse:

"It is seldom those who make a trade of foretelling the future grow
rich. Their impostures are too soon found out and their trickery renders
them odious. But indeed we should be bound to detest them much worse if
they prophesied truly. A man's life would be intolerable if he knew what
is to befall him. He would be aware of calamities to come and suffer
their pains in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings
whose end he would foresee. Ignorance is a necessary condition of human
happiness, and it must be owned that in most cases we fulfil it well. We
know almost nothing about ourselves; absolutely nothing about our
neighbours. Ignorance constitutes our peace of mind; self-deception our
felicity."

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin set the soup on the table, said the Benedicite
and seated her son and her guest at the board. She stood up herself to
eat, declining the chair the _citoyen_ Brotteaux offered her beside him;
she said she knew what good manners required of a woman.




VI


Ten o'clock in the forenoon. Not a breath of wind. It was the hottest
July ever known. In the narrow Rue de Jérusalem a hundred or so citizens
of the Section were waiting in queue at the baker's door, under the eye
of four National Guards who stood at ease smoking their pipes.

The National Convention had decreed the _maximum_,--and instantly corn
and flour had disappeared. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the
Parisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished to eat. The crowd
was lined up, men, women and children tightly packed together, under a
sky of molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting foulness of the
kennels and exaggerated the stench of unwashed, sweating humanity. All
were pushing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks fraught with
every sort of emotion one human being can feel for another,--dislike,
disgust, interest, attraction, indifference. Painful experience had
taught them there was not bread enough for everybody; so the late comers
were always trying to push forward, while those who lost ground
complained bitterly and indignantly and vainly claimed their rights.
Women shoved and elbowed savagely to keep their place or squeeze into a
better. When the press grew too intolerable, cries rose of "Stop pushing
there!" while each and all protested they could not help it--it was
someone else pushing them.

To obviate these daily scenes of disorder, the officials appointed by
the Section had conceived the notion of fastening a rope to the
shop-door which each applicant held in his proper order; but hands at
such close quarters _would_ come in contact on the rope and a struggle
would result. Whoever lost hold could never recover it, while the
disappointed and the mischievously inclined sometimes cut the cord. In
the end the plan had to be abandoned.

On this occasion there was the usual suffocation and confusion. While
some swore they were dying, others indulged in jokes or loose remarks;
all abused the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the misery.
When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast as Pitt. More than once a loud
slap showed that some _citoyenne_ in the line had resented with a
vigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed close
against her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut and
mouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or
gesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of the
coarse-minded populace, a knot of young libertines would strike up the
_Ça-ira_ in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly
indignant to see a dirty meaning attached to a refrain expressive of the
Republican faith in a future of justice and happiness.

His ladder under his arm, a billsticker appeared to post up on a blank
wall facing the baker's a proclamation by the Commune apportioning the
rations of butcher's-meat. Passers-by halted to read the notice, still
sticky with paste. A cabbage vendor going by, basket on back, began
calling out in her loud cracked voice:

"They'm all gone, the purty oxen! best rake up the guts!"

Suddenly such an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer near
by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and
handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who
carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, and
fell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each more ghastly
and alarming than the last. What was it? a dead animal buried
thereabouts, a dead fish, perhaps, put in for mischief's sake, or more
likely a victim of the September massacres, some noble or priest, left
to rot in a cellar.

"They buried them in cellars, eh?"

"They got rid of 'em anywhere and anyhow."

"It will be one of the Châtelet prisoners. On the 2nd I saw three
hundred in a heap on the Port au Change."

The Parisians dreaded the vengeance of these aristocrats who were like
to poison them with their dead bodies.

Évariste Gamelin joined the line; he was resolved to spare his old
mother the fatigues of the long wait. His neighbour, the _citoyen_
Brotteaux, went with him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the baggy
pocket of his plum-coloured coat.

The good old fellow enjoyed the scene, calling it a bit of low life
worthy the brush of a modern Teniers.

"These street-porters and goodwives," he declared, "are more amusing
than the Greeks and Romans our painters are so fond of nowadays. For my
part, I have always admired the Flemish style."

One fact he was too sensible and tactful to mention--that he had
himself owned a gallery of Dutch masters rivalled only by Monsieur de
Choiseul's in the number and excellence of the examples.

"Nothing is beautiful save the Antique," returned the painter, "and what
is inspired by it. Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers,
Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows of
Watteau, Boucher, or Van Loo; humanity is shown in an ugly light, but it
is not degraded as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard."

A hawker went by bawling:

"_Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!_... list of the condemned!"

"One Revolutionary Tribunal is not enough," said Gamelin, "there should
be one in every town ... in every town, do I say?--nay, in every
village, in every hamlet. Fathers of families, citizens, one and all,
should constitute themselves judges. At a time when the enemy's cannon
is at her gates and the assassin's dagger at her throat, the Nation must
hold mercy to be parricide. What! Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux in
insurrection, Corsica in revolt, La Vendée on fire, Mayence and
Valenciennes in the hands of the Coalition, treason in the country, town
and camp, treason sitting on the very benches of the National
Convention, treason assisting, map in hand, at the council board of our
Commanders in the field!... The fatherland is in danger--and the
guillotine must save her!"

"I have no objection on principle to make to the guillotine," replied
Brotteaux. "Nature, my only mistress and my only instructress, certainly
offers me no suggestion to the effect that a man's life is of any value;
on the contrary, she teaches in all kinds of ways that it is of none.
The sole end and object of living beings seems to be to serve as food
for other beings destined to the same end. Murder is of natural right;
therefore, the penalty of death is lawful, on condition it is exercised
from no motives either of virtue or of justice, but by necessity or to
gain some profit thereby. However, I must have perverse instincts, for I
sicken to see blood flow, and this defect of character all my philosophy
has failed so far to correct."

"Republicans," answered Évariste, "are humane and full of feeling. It is
only despots hold the death penalty to be a necessary attribute of
authority. The sovereign people will do away with it one day.
Robespierre fought against it, and all good patriots were with him; the
law abolishing it cannot be too soon promulgated. But it will not have
to be applied till the last foe of the Republic has perished beneath the
sword of law and order."

Gamelin and Brotteaux had by this time a number of late comers behind
them and amongst these several women of the Section, including a
stalwart, handsome _tricoteuse_, in head-kerchief and sabots, wearing a
sword in a shoulder belt, a pretty girl with a mop of golden hair and a
very tumbled neckerchief, and a young mother, pale and thin, giving the
breast to a sickly infant.

The child, which could get no milk, was screaming, but its voice was
weak and stifled by its sobs. Pitifully small, with a pallid, unhealthy
skin and inflamed eyes, the mother gazed at it with mingled anxiety and
grief.

"He is very young," observed Gamelin, turning to look at the unhappy
infant groaning just at his back, half stifled amid the crowd of new
arrivals.

"He is six months, poor love!... His father is with the army; he is one
of the men who drove back the Austrians at Condé. His name is Dumonteil
(Michel), a draper's assistant by trade. He enlisted at a booth they had
established in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Poor lad, he was all for
defending his country and seeing the world.... He writes telling me to
be patient. But pray, how am I to feed Paul (he's called Paul, you know)
when I can't feed myself?"

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the pretty girl with the flaxen hair, "we've got
another hour before us yet, and to-night we shall have to repeat the
same ceremony over again at the grocer's. You risk your life to get
three eggs and a quarter of a pound of butter."

"Butter!" sighed the _citoyenne_ Dumonteil, "why, it's three months
since I've seen a scrap!"

And a chorus of female voices rose, bewailing the scarcity and dearness
of provisions, cursing the _émigrés_ and devoting to the guillotine the
Commissaries of Sections who were ready to give good-for-nothing minxes,
in return for unmentionable services, fat hens and four-pound loaves.
Alarming stories passed round of cattle drowned in the Seine, sacks of
flour emptied in the sewers, loaves of bread thrown into the
latrines.... It was all those Royalists, and Rolandists, and Brissotins,
who were starving the people, bent on exterminating every living thing
in Paris!

All of a sudden the pretty, fair-haired girl with the rumpled
neckerchief broke into shrieks as if her petticoats were afire. She was
shaking these violently and turning out her pockets, vociferating that
somebody had stolen her purse.

At news of the petty theft, a flood of indignation swept over this crowd
of poor folks, the same who had sacked the mansions of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain and invaded the Tuileries without appropriating the
smallest thing, artisans and housewives, who would have burned down the
Palace of Versailles with a light heart, but would have thought it a
dire disgrace if they had stolen the value of a pin. The young rakes
greeted the pretty girl's loss with some ribald jokes, that were
immediately drowned under a burst of public indignation. There was some
talk of instant execution--hanging the thief to the nearest lamp-post,
and an investigation was begun, where everyone spoke at once and nobody
would listen to a word of reason. The tall _tricoteuse_, pointing her
finger at an old man, strongly suspected of being an unfrocked monk,
swore it was the "Capuchin" yonder who was the cut-purse. The crowd
believed her without further evidence and raised a shout of "Death!
death!"

The old man so unexpectedly exposed to the public vengeance was standing
very quietly and soberly just in front of the _citoyen_ Brotteaux. He
had all the look, there was no denying it, of a _ci-devant_ cleric. His
aspect was venerable, though the face was changed and drawn by the
terrors the poor man had suffered from the violence of the crowd and the
recollection of the September days that were still vivid in his
imagination. The fear depicted on his features stirred the suspicion of
the populace, which is always ready to believe that only the guilty
dread its judgments, as if the haste and recklessness with which it
pronounces them were not enough to terrify even the most innocent.

Brotteaux had made it a standing rule never to go against the popular
feeling of the moment, above all when it was manifestly illogical and
cruel, "because in that case," he would say, "the voice of the people
was the voice of God." But Brotteaux proved himself untrue to his
principles; he asseverated that the old man, whether he was a Capuchin
or not, could not have robbed the _citoyenne_, having never gone near
her for one moment.

The crowd drew its own conclusion,--the individual who spoke up for the
thief was of course his accomplice, and stern measures were proposed to
deal with the two malefactors, and when Gamelin offered to guarantee
Brotteaux' honesty, the wisest heads suggested sending _him_ along with
the two others to the Sectional headquarters.

But the pretty girl gave a cry of delight; she had found her purse
again. The statement was received with a storm of hisses, and she was
threatened with a public whipping,--like a Nun.

"Sir," said the ex-monk, addressing Brotteaux, "I thank you for having
spoken in my defence. My name is of no concern, but I had better tell
you what it is; I am called Louis de Longuemare. I am in truth a
Regular; but not a Capuchin, as those women would have it. There is the
widest difference; I am a monk of the Order of the Barnabites, which has
given Doctors and Saints without number to the Church. It is only a
half-truth to refer its origin to St. Charles Borromeo; we must account
as the true founder the Apostle St. Paul, whose cipher it bears on its
arms. I have been compelled to quit my cloister, now headquarters of the
Section du Pont-Neuf, and adopt a secular habit.

"Nay, Father," said Brotteaux, scrutinizing Monsieur de Longuemare's
frock, "your dress is token enough that you have not forsworn your
profession; to look at it, one might think you had reformed your Order
rather than forsaken it. It is your good heart makes you expose yourself
in these austere habiliments to the insults of a godless populace."

"Yet I cannot very well," replied the ex-monk, "wear a blue coat, like a
roisterer at a dance!"

"What I mention, Father, about your dress is by way of paying homage to
your character and putting you on your guard against the risks you run."

"On the contrary, sir, it would be much better to inspirit me to confess
my faith. For indeed, I am only too prone to fear danger. I have
abandoned my habit, sir, which is a sort of apostasy; I would fain not
have deserted, had it been possible, the House where God granted me for
so many years the grace of a peaceable and retired life. I got leave to
stay there, and I still continued to occupy my cell, while they turned
the church and cloister into a sort of petty _hôtel de ville_ they
called the Section. I saw, sir, I saw them hack away the emblems of the
Holy Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convicted
felon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations of
the Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quitted
this place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundred
pistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, the
horses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There I
sing Mass for a few of the faithful, who come to the office to bear
witness to the eternity of the Church of Jesus Christ."

"For my part, Father," replied the other, "if you care to know my name,
I am called Brotteaux, and I was a publican in former days."

"Sir," returned the Père Longuemare, "I was aware by St. Matthew's
example that one may look for good counsel from a publican."

"Father, you are too obliging."

"_Citoyen_ Brotteaux," remarked Gamelin, "pray admire the virtues of the
people, more hungry for justice than for bread; consider how everyone
here is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These men and
women, victims of such poverty and privation, are of so stern a probity
they cannot tolerate a dishonest act."

"It must indeed be owned," replied Brotteaux, "that in their hearty
desire to hang the pilferer, these folks were like to do a mischief to
this good cleric, to his champion and to his champion's champion. Their
avarice itself and their selfish eagerness to safeguard their own
welfare were motives enough; the thief in attacking one of them
threatened all; self-preservation urged them to punish him.... At the
same time, it is like enough the most part of these workmen and
goodwives are honest and keep their hands off other folk's goods. From
the cradle these sentiments have been instilled in them by their father
and mother, who have whipped them well and soundly and inculcated the
virtues through their backside."

Gamelin did not conceal the fact from his old neighbour that he deemed
such language unworthy of a philosopher.

"Virtue," said he, "is natural to mankind; God has planted the seed of
it in the heart of mortals."

Old Brotteaux was a sceptic and found in his atheism an abundant source
of self-satisfaction.

"I see this much, _citoyen_ Gamelin, that, while a Revolutionary for
what is of this world, you are, where Heaven is concerned, of a
conservative, or even a reactionary temper. Robespierre and Marat are
the same to you. For me, I find it strange that Frenchmen, who will not
put up with a mortal king any longer, insist on retaining an immortal
tyrant, far more despotic and ferocious. For what is the Bastille, or
even the _Chambre Ardente_[1] beside Hellfire? Humanity models its gods
on its tyrants, and you, who reject the original, preserve the copy!"

"Oh! _citoyen!_" protested Gamelin, "are you not ashamed to hold such
language? how can you confound the dark divinities born of ignorance and
fear with the Author of Nature? Belief in a benevolent God is necessary
for morality. The Supreme Being is the source of all the virtues and a
man cannot be a Republican if he does not believe in God. Robespierre
knew this, who, as we all remember, had the bust of the philosopher
Helvétius removed from the Hall of the Jacobins, because he had taught
Frenchmen the lessons of slavery by preaching atheism.... I hope, at
least, _citoyen_ Brotteaux, that, as soon as the Republic has
established the worship of Reason, you will not refuse your adhesion to
so wise a religion!"

"I love reason, but I am no fanatic in my love," was Brotteaux's answer.
"Reason is our guide and beacon-light; but when you have made a divinity
of it, it will blind you and instigate you to crime,"--and he proceeded
to develop his thesis, standing both feet in the kennel, as he had once
been used to perorate, seated in one of Baron d'Holbach's gilt
armchairs, which, as he was fond of saying, formed the basis of natural
philosophy.

"Jean Jacques Rousseau," he proceeded, "who was not without talents,
particularly in music, was a scampish fellow who professed to derive his
morality from Nature while all the time he got it from the dogmas of
Calvin. Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example
of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or
conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is
simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to
live comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperate
enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to
reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind
interplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and the more I think
of things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologians
and philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect of
the universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. They
declare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they are
forced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignity
to him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they get
human beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavish
worship on just and benevolent deities from which they would have
nothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for their
benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mighty
poor creature."

"Sir," said the Père Longuemare, "do not talk of Nature; you do not know
what Nature is."

"Egad, I know it as well as you do, Father."

"You cannot know it, because you have not religion, and religion alone
teaches us what Nature is, wherein it is good, and how it has been made
evil. However, you must not expect me to answer you; God has vouchsafed
me, to refute your errors, neither eloquence nor force of intellect. I
should only be afraid, by my inadequate replies, of giving you occasion
to blaspheme and further reasons for hardening your heart. I feel a
strong desire to help you; yet the sole fruit of my importunate efforts
would be to...."

The discussion was cut short by a tremendous shout coming from the head
of the column to warn the whole regiment of famished citizens that the
baker was opening his doors. The line began to push forward, but very,
very slowly. A National Guard on duty admitted the purchasers one by
one. The baker, his wife and boy presided over the sale, assisted by two
Civil Commissaries. These, wearing a tricoloured riband round the left
arm, saw that the customers belonged to the Section and were given their
proper share in proportion to the number of mouths to be filled.

The _citoyen_ Brotteaux made the quest of pleasure the one and only aim
of life, holding that the reason and the senses, the sole judges when
gods there were none, were unable to conceive any other. Accordingly,
finding the painter's remarks somewhat overfull of fanaticism, and the
Monk's of simplicity, to please his taste, this wise man, bent on
squaring his behaviour with his views and relieving the tedium of
waiting, drew from the bulging pocket of his plum-coloured coat his
Lucretius, now as always his chiefest solace and faithful comforter. The
binding of red morocco was chafed by hard wear, and the _citoyen_
Brotteaux had judiciously erased the coat of arms that once embellished
it,--three islets or, which his father the financier had bought for
good money down. He opened the book at the passage where the poet
philosopher, who is for curing men of the futile and mischievous passion
of love, surprises a woman in the arms of her serving-women in a state
bound to offend all a lover's susceptibilities. The _citoyen_ Brotteaux
read the lines, though not without casting a surreptitious glance at the
golden pate of the pretty girl in front of him and enjoying a sniff of
the heady perfume of the little slut's hot skin. The poet Lucretius was
a wise man, but he had only one string to his bow; his disciple
Brotteaux had several.

So he read on, taking two steps forward every quarter of an hour. His
ear, soothed by the grave and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, was
deaf to the women's scolding about the monstrous prices of bread and
sugar and coffee, candles and soap. In this calm and unruffled mood he
reached the threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Évariste Gamelin
could see over his head the gilt cornsheaf surmounting the iron grating
that filled the fanlight over the door.

When his turn came to enter the shop, he found the hampers and lockers
already emptied; the baker handed him the only scrap of bread left,
which did not weigh two pounds. Évariste paid his money, and the gate
was slammed on his heels, for fear of a riot and the people carrying the
place by storm.

But there was no need to fear; these poor folks, trained to obedience
alike by their old-time oppressors and by their liberators of to-day,
slunk off with drooping heads and dragging feet.

As he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin caught sight of the
_citoyenne_ Dumonteil, seated on a stone post, her nursling in her
arms. She sat there quite still; her face was colourless and her
tearless eyes seemed to see nothing. The infant was sucking her finger
voraciously. Gamelin stood a while in front of her, abashed and
uncertain what to do. She did not appear to see him.

He stammered something, then pulled out his pocket-knife, a clasp-knife
with a horn handle, cut his loaf in two and laid half on the young
mother's knee. She looked up at him in wonder; but he had already turned
the corner of the street.

On reaching home, Évariste found his mother sitting at the window
darning stockings. With a light laugh he put his half of the bread in
her hand.

"You must forgive me, mother dear; I was tired out with standing about
and exhausted by the heat, and out in the street there as I trudged
home, mouthful by mouthful I have gobbled up half of our allowance.
There's barely your share left,"--and as he spoke, he made a pretence of
shaking the crumbs off his jacket.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Chambre Ardente_,--under the ancien régime, a tribunal charged with
the investigation of heinous crimes and having power to burn those found
guilty.




VII


Employing a very old-fashioned locution, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin had
declared: "that by dint of eating chestnuts they would be turning into
chestnuts." As a matter of fact, on that day, the 13th July, she and her
son had made their midday dinner on a basin of chestnut porridge. As
they were finishing this austere repast, a lady pushed open the door and
the room was flooded in an instant with the splendour of her presence
and the fragrance of her perfumes. Évariste recognised the _citoyenne_
Rochemaure. Thinking she had mistaken the door and meant her visit for
the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, her friend of other days, he was already
preparing to point her out the _ci-devant_ aristocrat's garret or
perhaps summon Brotteaux and so spare an elegant woman the task of
scrambling up a mill-ladder; but she made it clear at once that the
_citoyen_ Évariste Gamelin and no other was the person she had come to
see by announcing that she was happy to find him at home and was his
servant to command.

They were not entirely strangers to each other, having met more than
once in David's studio, in a box at the Assembly Hall, at the Jacobins,
at Venua's restaurant. On these occasions she had been struck by his
good looks and youth and interesting air.

Wearing a hat beribboned like a fairing and plumed like the head-piece
of a Representative on mission, the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure was wigged,
painted, patched and scented. But her complexion was young and fresh
behind all these disguises; these extravagant artificialities of fashion
only betokened a frantic haste to enjoy life and the feverishness of
these dreadful days when the morrow was so uncertain. Her corsage, with
wide facings and enormous basques and all ablaze with huge steel
buttons, was blood-red, and it was hard to tell, so aristocratic and so
revolutionary at one and the same time was her array, whether it was the
colours of the victims or of the headsman that she sported. A young
officer, a dragoon, accompanied her.

Dandling her long cane by its handle of mother-o'-pearl, a tall, fine
woman, of generous proportions and ample bosom, she made the circuit of
the studio, and putting up to her grey eyes her double quizzing-glasses
of gold, examined the painter's canvases with many smiles and
exclamations of delight, admiring the handsome artist and flattering him
in hopes of a return in kind.

"What," asked the _citoyenne_, "is that picture--it is so nobly
conceived, so touching--of a gentle, beautiful woman standing by a young
man lying sick?"

Gamelin told her it was meant to represent _Orestes tended by his sister
Electra_, and that, had he been able to finish it, it might perhaps have
been the least unsatisfactory of his works.

"The subject," he went on to say, "is taken from the _Orestes_ of
Euripides. I had read, in a translation of this tragedy made years ago,
a scene that filled me with admiration,--the one where the young
Electra, raising her brother on his bed of pain, wipes away the froth
that gathers on his lips, puts aside the locks that blind his eyes and
beseeches the brother she loves to hearken to what she will tell him
while the Furies are at peace for the moment.... As I read and re-read
this translation, I seemed to be aware of a kind of fog that shrouded
the forms of Greek perfection, a fog I could not drive away. I pictured
the original text to myself as more nervous and pitched in a different
accent. Feeling a keen desire to get a precise idea of the thing, I went
to Monsieur Gail, who was the Professor of Greek at the Collège de
France (this was in '91), and begged him to expound the scene to me word
by word. He did what I asked, and I then saw that the Ancients are much
more simple and homely than people think. Thus, for instance, Electra
says to Orestes: 'Dear brother, what joy it gave me to see thee sleep!
Shall I help thee to rise?' And Orestes answers: 'Yes, help me, take me
in thy arms, and wipe away the spume that still clings about my mouth
and eyes. Put thy bosom against mine and part from my brow my tangled
hair, for it blinds my eyes....' My mind still full of this poetry, so
young and vivid, ringing with these simple, strong phrases, I sketched
the picture you see there, _citoyenne_."

The painter, who, as a rule, spoke so sparingly of his works, waxed
eloquent on the subject of this one. At an encouraging gesture from the
_citoyenne_ Rochemaure, who lifted her quizzing-glasses in token of
attention, he continued:

"Hennequin has depicted the madness of Orestes in masterly fashion. But
Orestes appeals to us still more poignantly in his sorrow than when he
is distraught. What a fate was his! It was filial piety, obedience to a
sacred obligation, drove him to commit his dreadful deed,--a sin the
gods cannot but pardon, but which men will never condone. To avenge
outraged justice, he has repudiated Nature, has made himself a monster,
has torn out his own heart. But his spirit remains unbroken under the
weight of his horrible, yet innocent crime.... That is what I would fain
have exhibited in my group of brother and sister." He stepped up to the
canvas and looked at it not without satisfaction.

"Parts of the picture," he said, "are pretty nearly finished; the head
and arm of Orestes, for instance."

"It is an admirable composition.... And Orestes reminds me of you,
_citoyen_ Gamelin."

"You think he is like me?" exclaimed the painter, with a grave smile.

She took the chair Gamelin offered her. The young dragoon stood beside
her, his hand on the back of the chair on which she sat. Which showed
plainly that the Revolution was an accomplished fact, for under the
ancien régime, no man would ever, in company, have touched so much as
with the tip of a finger, the seat occupied by a lady. In those days a
gentleman was trained and broken in to the laws of politeness, sometimes
pretty hard laws, and taught to understand that a scrupulous
self-restraint in public places gives a peculiar zest to the sweet
familiarity of the boudoir, and that to lose your respectful awe of a
woman, you must first have that feeling.

Louise Masché de Rochemaure, daughter of a Lieutenant of the King's
Hunt, widow of a Procureur and, for twenty years, the faithful mistress
of the financier Brotteaux des Ilettes, had fallen in with the new
ideas. She was to be seen, in July, 1790, digging the soil of the Champ
de Mars. Her strong inclination to side with the powers that be had
carried her readily enough along a political path that started with the
Feuillants and led by way of the Girondins to end on the summit of _the
Mountain_, while at the same time a spirit of compromise, a passion for
conversion and a certain aptitude for intrigue still attached her to the
aristocratic and anti-revolutionary party. She was to be met
everywhere,--at coffee houses and theatres, fashionable restaurants,
gaming-saloons, drawing-rooms, newspaper offices and ante-chambers of
Committees. The Revolution yielded her a hundred satisfactions,--novelty
and amusement, smiles and pleasures, business ventures and profitable
speculations. Combining political with amorous intrigue, playing the
harp, drawing landscapes, singing ballads, dancing Greek dances, giving
supper parties, entertaining pretty women, such as the Comtesse de
Beaufort and the actress Mademoiselle Descoings, presiding all night
long over a _trente-et-un_ or _biribi_ table and an adept at _rouge et
noir_, she still found time to be charitable to her friends. Inquisitive
and interfering, giddy-pated and frivolous, she understood men but knew
nothing of the masses; as indifferent to the creed she professed as to
the opinions she felt bound to repudiate, understanding nothing whatever
of all that was happening in the country, she was enterprising,
intrepid, and full of audacity from sheer ignorance of danger and an
unbounded confidence in the efficacy of her charms.

The soldier who escorted her was in the heyday of youth. A brazen helmet
decorated with a panther skin and the crest set off with a crimson
cock's-comb shaded his fresh young face and displayed a long and
terrific mane that swept his back. His red jacket was cut short and
square, barely reaching to the waist, the better to show off his elegant
figure. In his girdle he carried an enormous sabre, the hilt of which
was a glittering eagle's beak. A pair of flapped breeches of sky blue
moulded the fine muscles of his legs and was braided in rich arabesques
of a darker blue on the thighs. He might have been a dancer dressed for
some warlike and dashing rôle, in _Achilles at Scyros_ or _Alexander's
Wedding-feast_, in a costume designed by a pupil of David with the one
idea of accentuating every line of the shape.

Gamelin had a vague recollection of having seen him before. He was, in
fact, the same young soldier he had come upon a fortnight previously
haranguing the people from the arcades of the Théâtre de la Nation.

The _citoyenne_ Rochemaure introduced him by name:

"The _citoyen_ Henry, Member of the Revolutionary Committee of the
Section of the Rights of Man."

She had him always at her heels,--a mirror of gallantry and a living and
walking guarantee of patriotism.

The _citoyenne_ complimented Gamelin on his talents and asked him if he
would be willing to design a card for a protégée of hers, a fashionable
milliner. He would, of course, choose an appropriate _motif_,--a woman
trying on a scarf before a cheval glass, for instance, or a young
workwoman carrying a band-box on her arm.

She had heard several artists mentioned as competent to execute a little
matter of the sort,--Fragonard _fils_, young Ducis, as well as a certain
Prudhomme; but she would rather apply to the _citoyen_ Évariste
Gamelin. However, she made no definite proposal on this head and it was
evident she had mentioned the commission merely by way of starting the
conversation. In truth she had come for something quite different. She
wanted the _citoyen_ Gamelin to do her a favour; knowing he was a friend
of the _citoyen_ Marat, she had come to ask him to introduce her to the
Friend of the People, with whom she desired an interview.

Gamelin replied that he was too insignificant an individual to present
her to Marat, besides which, she had no need of anyone to be her
sponsor; Marat, albeit overwhelmed with business, was not the
inaccessible person he was said to be,--and, added Gamelin:

"He will receive you, _citoyenne_, if you are in distress; his great
heart makes him compassionate to all who suffer. He will likewise
receive you if you have any revelation to make concerning the public
weal; he has vowed his days to the unmasking of traitors."

The _citoyenne_ Rochemaure answered that she would be happy to greet in
Marat an illustrious citizen, who had rendered great services to his
country, who was capable of rendering greater still, and that she was
anxious to bring the legislator in question into relation with friends
of hers of good repute and good will, philanthropists favoured by
fortune and competent to provide him with new means of satisfying his
ardent affection for humanity.

"It is very desirable," she concluded, "to make the rich co-operate in
securing public prosperity."

In actual fact, the _citoyenne_ had promised the banker Morhardt to
arrange a dinner where he and Marat should meet.

Morhardt, a Swiss like the Friend of the People, had entered into a
combination with several deputies of the Convention, Julien (of
Toulouse), Delaunay (of Angers) and the ex-Capuchin Chabot, to speculate
in the shares of the _Compagnie des Indes_. The game was very
simple,--to bring down the price of these shares to 650 livres by
proposing motions pointing in the direction of confiscation, in order to
buy up the greatest possible number at this figure and then push them up
to 4,000 or 5,000 livres by dint of proposals of a reassuring nature.
But for Chabot, Julien, Delaunay, their little ways were too notorious,
while suspicions were rife of Lacroix, Fabre d'Églantine, and even
Danton. The arch-speculator, the Baron de Batz, was looking for new
confederates in the Convention and had advised Morhardt to sound Marat.

This idea of the anti-revolutionary speculators was not so extravagant
as might have been supposed at the first blush. It was always the way of
these gentry to form alliance with those in power at the moment, and by
virtue of his popularity, his pen, his character, Marat was a power to
be reckoned with. The Girondists were near shipwreck; the Dantonists,
battered by the hurricane, had lost their hold on the helm. Robespierre,
the idol of the people, was a man jealous of his scrupulous honesty,
full of suspicion, impossible to approach. The great thing was to get
round Marat, to secure his good will against the day when he should be
dictator--and everything pointed to this consummation,--his popularity,
his ambition, his eagerness to recommend heroic measures. And it might
be, after all, Marat would re-establish order, the finances, the
prosperity of the country. More than once he had risen in revolt
against the zealots who were for outbidding him in fanaticism; for some
time past he had been denouncing the demagogues as vehemently as the
moderates. After inciting the people to sack the "cornerers'" shops and
hang them over their own counters, he was now exhorting the citizens to
be calm and prudent. He was growing into an administrator.

In spite of certain rumours disseminated against him as against all the
other chiefs of the Revolution, these pirates of the money-market did
not believe he could be corrupted, but they did know him to be vain and
credulous, and they hoped to win him over by flattery and still more by
a condescending friendliness which they looked upon as the most
seductive form of flattery from men like themselves. They counted,
thanks to him, on blowing hot and cold on all the securities they might
wish to buy and sell, and making him serve their interests while
supposing himself to be acting solely for the public good.

Great as a go-between, albeit she was still of an age for amours on her
own account, the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure had made it her mission to bring
together the legislator-journalist and the banker, and in her
extravagant imagination she already saw the man of the underworld, the
man whose hands were yet red with the blood of the September massacres,
a partner in the game of the financiers whose agent she was; she
pictured him drawn by his very warmth of feeling and unsophisticated
candour into the whirlpool of speculation, a recruit to the côterie she
loved of "corner" makers, contractors, foreign emissaries, gamblers, and
women of gallantry.

She insisted on the _citoyen_ Gamelin taking her to see the Friend of
the People, who lived quite near, in the Rue des Cordeliers, near the
church. After some little show of reluctance, the painter acceded to the
_citoyenne's_ wishes.

The dragoon Henry was invited to join them in the visit, but declined,
declaring he meant to keep his liberty of action, even towards the
_citoyen_ Marat, who, he felt no doubt, had rendered services to the
Republic, but was weakening nowadays; had he not, in his news sheet,
counselled resignation as the proper thing for the people of Paris?

And the young man, in a sweet voice, broken by long-drawn sighs,
deplored the fate of the Republic, betrayed by the men in whom she had
put her trust,--Danton rejecting the notion of a tax on the rich,
Robespierre opposing the permanence of the Sections, Marat, whose
pusillanimous counsels were paralyzing the enthusiasm of the citizens.

"Ah!" he cried, "how feeble such men appear beside Leclerc and Jacques
Roux!... Roux! Leclerc! _ye_ are the true friends of the people!"

Gamelin did not hear these remarks, which would have angered him; he had
gone into the next room to don his blue coat.

"You may well be proud of your son," observed the _citoyenne_
Rochemaure, addressing the _citoyenne_ Gamelin. "He is a great man;
talent and character both make him so."

In answer, the widow Gamelin gave a good account of her son, yet without
making much boast of him before a lady of high station, for she had been
taught in her childhood that the first duty of the lowly is humility
towards the great. She was of a complaining bent, having indeed only too
good cause and finding in such jeremiads a salve for her griefs. She was
garrulous in her revelations of all the hardships she had to bear to
any whom she supposed in a position to relieve them, and Madame de
Rochemaure seemed to belong to that class. She made the most, therefore,
of this favourable opportunity and told a long and breathless story of
their distresses,--how mother and son were both dying of slow
starvation. Pictures could not be sold any more; the Revolution had
killed business dead. Victuals were scarce and too dear for words....

The good dame poured out her lamentations with all the loose-lipped
volubility her halting tongue was capable of, so as to get them all
finished by the time her son, whose pride would not brook such whining,
should reappear. She was bent on attaining her object in the shortest
possible time,--that of touching a lady whom she deemed rich and
influential, and enlisting her sympathy in her boy's future. She felt
sure that Évariste's good looks were an asset on her side to move the
heart of a well-born lady. And so they were; the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure
proved tender-hearted and was melted to think of Évariste's and his
mother's sufferings. She made plans to alleviate them; she had rich men
amongst her friends and would get them to buy the artist's pictures.

"The truth is," she added, with a smile, "there is still money in
France, but it keeps in hiding."

Better still, now Art was ruined, she would obtain Évariste a post in
Morhardt's bank or with the Brothers Perregaux, or a place as clerk in
the office of an army contractor.

Then she reflected that this was not what a man of his character needed;
and, after a moment's thought, she nodded in sign that she had hit the
nail on the head:

"There are still several jurymen left to be appointed on the
Revolutionary Tribunal. Juryman, magistrate, that is the thing to suit
your son. I have friendly relations with the Committee of Public Safety.
I know Robespierre the elder personally; his brother frequently sups at
my house. I will speak to them. I will get a word said to Montané,
Dumas, Fouquier."

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin, bursting with excitement and gratitude, put a
finger to her lip; Évariste was coming back into the studio.

He escorted the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure down the gloomy staircase, the
steps of which, whether of wood or tiled, were coated with an ancient
layer of dirt.

On the Pont-Neuf, where the sun, now near its setting, threw a
lengthened shadow from the pedestal that had borne the Bronze Horse and
was now gay with the National colours, a crowd of men and women of the
people gathered in little groups were listening to some tale that was
being told them. Consternation reigned and a heavy silence, broken at
intervals by groans and fierce cries. Many were making off at a rapid
pace in the direction of the Rue de Thionville, erstwhile Rue Dauphine;
Gamelin joined one of these groups and heard the news--that Marat had
just been assassinated.

Little by little the tidings were confirmed and particulars became
known; he had been murdered in his bath by a woman who had come
expressly from Caen to commit the crime.

Some thought she had escaped; but the majority declared she had been
arrested.

There they stood like sheep without a shepherd, thinking sadly:

"Marat, the tender-hearted, the humane, Marat our benefactor, is no
longer there to guide us, Marat who was never deceived, who saw through
every subterfuge and never feared to reveal the truth!... What can we
do, what is to become of us? We have lost our adviser, our champion, our
friend." They knew very well whence the blow had come, and who had
directed the woman's arm. They groaned aloud:

"Marat has been struck down by the same criminal hands that are bent on
our extermination. His death is the signal for the slaughter of all good
patriots."

Different reports were current, as to the circumstances of the tragic
event and the last words of the victim; endless questions were asked
concerning the assassin, all that anyone knew was that it was a young
woman sent by those traitors, the federalists. Baring teeth and nails,
the _citoyennes_ devoted the culprit to condign punishment; deeming the
guillotine too merciful a death, they demanded this monster of iniquity
should be scourged, broken on the wheel, torn limb from limb, and racked
their brains to invent new tortures.

An armed body of National Guards was haling to the Section headquarters
a man of determined mien. His clothes were in tatters, and streams of
blood trickled down his white face. He had been overheard saying that
Marat had earned his fate by his constant incitements to pillage and
massacre, and it was only with great difficulty that the Guards had
saved him from the fury of the populace. A hundred fingers pointed him
out as the accomplice of the assassin, and threats of death followed him
as he was led away.

Gamelin was stunned by the blow. A few hot tears blistered his burning
eyes. With the grief he felt as a disciple mingled solicitude for the
popular idol, and these combined feelings tore at his heart-strings. He
thought to himself:

"After Le Peltier, after Bourdon, Marat!... I foresee the fate of the
patriots; massacred on the Champ de Mars, at Nancy, at Paris, they will
perish one and all." And he thought of Wimpfen, the traitor, who only a
while before was marching on Paris, and who, had he not been stopped at
Vernon, by the gallant patriots, would have devoted the heroic city to
fire and slaughter.

And how many perils still remained, how many criminal designs, how many
treasonable plots, which only Marat's perspicacity and vigilance could
unravel and foil! Now he was dead, who was there to denounce Custine
loitering in idleness in the Camp of Cæsar and refusing to relieve
Valenciennes, Biron tarrying inactive in the Lower Vendée letting Saumur
be taken and Nantes blockaded, Dillon betraying the Fatherland in the
Argonne?...

Meantime, all about him, rose momentarily higher the sinister cry:

"Marat is dead; the aristocrats have killed him!"

As he was on his way, his heart bursting with grief and hate and love,
to pay a last mark of respect to the martyr of liberty, an old
countrywoman, wearing the coif of the Limousin peasantry, accosted him
to ask if the Monsieur Marat who had been murdered was not Monsieur le
Curé Mara, of Saint-Pierre-de-Queyroix.




VIII


It was the eve of the Festival, a calm, bright evening, and Élodie
hanging on Évariste's arm, was strolling with him about the _Champ de la
Fédération_. Workmen were hastily completing their task of erecting
columns, statues, temples, a "mountain," an altar of the Fatherland.
Huge symbolic figures, Hercules (representing the people) brandishing
his club, Nature suckling the Universe from her inexhaustible breasts,
were rising at a moment's notice in the capital that, tortured by famine
and fear, was listening for the dreaded sound of the Austrian cannon on
the road from Meaux. La Vendée was making good its check before Nantes
by a series of startling victories. A ring of fire and flame and hate
was drawn about the great revolutionary city.

And meantime, she was preparing a superb welcome, like the sovereign
state of a vast empire, for the deputies of the primary Assemblies which
had accepted the Constitution. Federalism was on its knees; the
Republic, one and indivisible, would surely vanquish all its enemies.

Waving his arm towards the thronged expanse:

"There it was," cried Évariste, "that on the 17th July, '91, the
infamous Bailly ordered the people to be shot down at the foot of the
altar of the fatherland. Passavant, the grenadier, who witnessed the
massacre, returned to his house, tore his coat from his back and cried:
'I have sworn to die with Liberty; Liberty is no more, and I fulfil my
oath,'--and blew out his brains."

All this time artists and peaceful citizens were examining the
preparations for the festival, their faces showing as joyless a joy in
life as their lives were dull and joyless; to their minds the mightiest
events shrank into insignificance and grew as insipid as they were
themselves. Couple by couple they went, carrying in their arms or
holding by the hand or letting them run on in front children as
unprepossessing as their parents and promising to grow up no whit
happier, who in due course would give birth to children of their own as
poor in spirit and looks as they. Yet now and again a young girl would
pass, tall and fair and desirable, rousing in young men a not ignoble
passion to possess, and in the old regret for the bliss they had missed.

Near the _École Militaire_ Évariste pointed out to his companion the
Egyptian statues designed by David on Roman models of the age of
Augustus, and they overheard a Parisian, an old man with powdered hair,
ejaculate to himself:

"Egad! you might think yourself on the banks of the Nile!"

It was three days since Élodie had seen her lover, and serious events
had befallen meantime at the _Amour peintre_. The _citoyen_ Blaise had
been denounced to the Committee of General Security for fraudulent
dealings in the matter of supplies to the armies. Fortunately for
himself, the print-dealer was well known in his Section; the Committee
of Surveillance of the _Section des Piques_ had stood guarantee of his
patriotism with the general committee and had completely justified his
conduct.

This alarming incident Élodie now recounted in trembling accents,
concluding:

"We are quiet now, but the alarm was a hot one. A little more and my
father would have been clapped in prison. If the danger had lasted a few
hours more, I should have come to you, Évariste, to make interest for
him among your influential friends."

Évariste vouchsafed no reply to this, but Élodie was very far from
realizing all his silence portended.

They went on hand in hand along the banks of the river, discoursing of
their mutual fondness in the phrases of Julie and Saint-Preux; the good
Jean-Jacques gave them the colours to paint and prank their love withal.

The Municipality of Paris had wrought a miracle,--abundance reigned for
a day in the famished city. A fair was installed on the _Place des
Invalides_, beside the Seine, where hucksters in booths sold sausages,
saveloys, chitterlings, hams decked with laurels, Nanterre cakes,
gingerbreads, pancakes, four-pound loaves, lemonade and wine. There were
stalls also for the sale of patriotic songs, cockades, tricolour
ribands, purses, pinchbeck watch-chains and all sorts of cheap gewgaws.
Stopping before the display of a petty jeweller, Évariste selected a
silver ring having a head of Marat in relief with a silk handkerchief
wound about the brows, and put it on Élodie's finger.

       *       *       *       *       *

The same evening Gamelin proceeded to the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec to call on
the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure, who had sent for him on pressing business.
She received him in her bedchamber, reclining on a couch in a seductive
dishabille.

While the _citoyenne's_ attitude expressed a voluptuous languor,
everything about her spoke of her accomplishments, her diversions, her
talents,--a harp beside an open harpsichord, a guitar on a chair, an
embroidering frame with a square of satin stretched on it, a
half-finished miniature on a table among papers and books, a bookcase in
dire disorder as if rifled by the hand of a fair reader as eager to know
as to feel.

She gave him her hand to kiss, and addressed him:

"Greeting, sir juryman!... This very day Robespierre the elder gave me a
letter in your favour to be handed to the President Herman, a very well
turned letter, pretty much to this effect:

"I bring to your notice the _citoyen_ Gamelin, commendable alike for his
talents and for his patriotism. I have made it my duty to make known to
you a patriot whose principles are good and his conduct steadfast in the
right line of revolution. You will not let slip the opportunity of being
useful to a Republican.... This letter I carried there and then to the
President Herman, who received me with an exquisite politeness and
signed your appointment on the spot. The thing is done."

After a moment's pause:

"_Citoyenne_," said Gamelin, "though I have not a morsel of bread to
give my mother, I swear on my honour I accept the duties of a juror only
to serve the Republic and avenge her on her foes."

The _citoyenne_ thought this but a cold way of expressing gratitude and
considered the sentiment high-flown. The young man was no adept, she
suspected, at graceful courtesies. But she was too great an admirer of
youth not to excuse some little lack of polish. Gamelin was a handsome
fellow, and that was merit enough in her eyes. "We will form him," she
said to herself. So she invited him to her suppers to which she welcomed
her friends every evening after the theatre.

"You will meet at my house men of wit and talent,--Elleviou, Talma, the
_citoyen_ Vigée, who turns bouts-rimés with a marvellous aptitude. The
_citoyen_ François read us his 'Paméla' the other day, the piece
rehearsing at the present moment at the _Théâtre de la Nation_. The
style is elegant and chaste, as everything is that comes from the
_citoyen_ François' pen. The plot is touching; it brought tears to all
our eyes. It is the young _citoyenne_ Lange who is to take the part of
'Paméla.'"

"I believe it if you say so, _citoyenne_," answered Gamelin, "but the
_Théâtre de la Nation_ is scarcely National and it is hard on the
_citoyen_ François that his works should be produced on the boards
degraded by the contemptible verses of a Laya; the people has not
forgotten the scandal of the _Ami des Lois_...."

"Nay, _citoyen_ Gamelin, say what you will of Laya; he is none of my
friends."

It was not purely out of kindness that the _citoyenne_ had employed her
credit to get Gamelin appointed to a much envied post; after what she
had done for him and what peradventure she might come to do for him in
the future, she counted on binding him closely to her interests and in
that way securing for herself a protector connected with a tribunal she
might one day or another have to reckon with; for the fact is, she was
in constant correspondence with the French provinces and foreign
countries, and at that date such a circumstance was ground enough for
suspicion.

"Do you often go to the theatre, _citoyen_?"

As she asked the question, Henry, the dragoon, entered the room, looking
more charming than the youthful Bathyllus. A brace of enormous pistols
was passed through his belt.

He kissed the fair _citoyenne's_ hand. Turning to him:

"There stands the _citoyen_ Évariste Gamelin," she said, "for whose sake
I have spent the day at the Committee of General Security, and who is an
ungrateful wretch. Scold him for me."

"Ah! _citoyenne_," cried the young soldier, "you have seen our
Legislators at the Tuileries. What an afflicting sight! Is it seemly the
Representatives of a free people should sit beneath the roof of a
despot? The same lustres that once shone on the plots of Capet and the
orgies of Antoinette now illumine the deliberations of our law-makers.
'Tis enough to make Nature shudder."

"Pray, congratulate the _citoyen_ Gamelin," was all her answer, "he is
appointed juryman on the Revolutionary Tribunal."

"My compliments, _citoyen_!" said Henry. "I am rejoiced to see a man of
your character invested with these functions. But, to speak truth, I
have small confidence in this systematic justice, set up by the
moderates of the Convention, in this complaisant Nemesis that is
considerate to conspirators and merciful to traitors, that hardly dares
strike a blow at the Federalists and fears to summon _the Austrian_ to
the bar. No, it is not the Revolutionary Tribunal will save the
Republic. They are very culpable, the men who, in the desperate
situation we are in, have arrested the flowing torrent of popular
justice!"

"Henry," interrupted the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure, "pass me that scent
bottle, please...."

On reaching home, Gamelin found his mother and old Brotteaux playing a
game of piquet by the light of a smoky tallow-candle. At the moment the
old woman was calling "sequence of kings" without the smallest scruple.

When she heard her son was appointed juryman, she kissed him in a
transport of triumph, thinking what an honour it was for both of them
and that henceforth they would have plenty to eat every day.

"I am proud and happy," she declared, "to be the mother of a juryman.
Justice is a fine thing, and of all the most necessary; without justice
the weak would be harassed every moment of their lives. And I think you
will give right judgment, Évariste, my own boy; for from a child I have
found you just and kind-hearted in all concerns. You could never endure
wrong-doing and always tried what you could to hinder violence. You
compassionated the unfortunate and that is the finest jewel in a juror's
crown.... But tell me, Évariste, how are you dressed in your grand
tribunal?"

Gamelin informed her that the judges wore a hat with black plumes, but
that the jury had no special costume, that they were dressed in their
every-day attire.

"It would be better," returned the good woman, "if they wore wig and
gown; it would inspire more respect. Though you are mostly dressed
carelessly, you are a handsome man and you set off your clothes; but the
majority of men need some fine feathers to make them look imposing; yes,
the jury should have wigs and gowns."

The _citoyenne_ had heard say that the duties of a juror of the Tribunal
carried a salary; and she had no hesitation in asking the question
whether the emoluments were enough to live respectably on, for a
juryman, she opined, ought to cut a good figure in the world.

She was pleased to hear that each juror received an allowance of
eighteen livres for every sitting and that the multiplicity of crimes
against the security of the State obliged the court to sit very
frequently.

Old Brotteaux gathered up the cards, rose from the table and addressing
Gamelin:

"_Citoyen_," he said, "you are invested with an august and redoubtable
office. I congratulate you on lending the light of your integrity to a
tribunal more trustworthy and less fallible perhaps than any other,
because it searches out good and evil, not in themselves and in their
essence, but solely in relation to tangible interests and plain and
obvious sentiments. You will have to determine betwixt hate and love,
which is done spontaneously, not betwixt truth and falsehood, to
discriminate which is impossible for the feeble mind of man. Giving
judgment after the impulses of your heart, you will run no risk of
mistake, inasmuch as the verdict will be good provided it satisfy the
passions that are your sacred law. But, all the same, if I was your
President, I should imitate Bridoie, I should appeal to the arbitrament
of the dice. In matters of justice it is still the surest plan."




IX


Évariste Gamelin was to enter on his duties on the 14th September, when
the reorganization of the Tribunal was complete, according to which it
was henceforth subdivided into four sections with fifteen jurors for
each. The prisons were full to overflowing; the Public Prosecutor was
working eighteen hours a day. Defeats in the field, revolts in the
provinces, conspiracies, plots, betrayals, the Convention had one
panacea for them all,--terror. The Gods were athirst.

The first act of the new juror was to pay a visit of ceremony to the
President Herman, who charmed him by the amiability of his conversation
and the courtesy of his bearing. A compatriot and friend of
Robespierre's, whose sentiments he shared, he showed every sign of a
feeling and virtuous temper. He was deeply attached to those humane
sentiments, too long foreign to the heart of our judges, that redound to
the everlasting glory of a Dupaty and a Beccaria. He looked with
complacency on the greater mildness of modern manners as evidenced, in
judicial matters, by the abolition of torture and of ignominious or
cruel forms of punishment. He was rejoiced to see the death penalty,
once so recklessly inflicted and employed till quite lately for the
repression of the most trifling offences, applied less frequently and
reserved for heinous crimes. For his own part, he agreed with
Robespierre and would gladly have seen it abolished altogether, except
only in cases touching the public safety. At the same time, he would
have deemed it treason to the State not to adjudge the punishment of
death for crimes against the National Sovereignty.

All his colleagues were of like mind; the old Monarchical idea of
reasons of State still inspired the Revolutionary Tribunal. Eight
centuries of absolute power had moulded the magisterial conscience, and
it was by the principles of Divine Right that the Court even now tried
and sentenced the enemies of Liberty.

The same day Évariste Gamelin sought an interview with the Public
Prosecutor, the _citoyen_ Fouquier, who received him in the Cabinet
where he used to work with his clerk of the court. He was a sturdily
built man, with a rough voice, catlike eyes, bearing in his pock-marked
face and leaden complexion marks of the mischief wrought by a sedentary
and indoor life on a vigorous constitution adapted to the open air and
violent exercise. Towering piles of papers shut him in like the walls of
a tomb, and it was plain to see he was in his element amid all these
dreadful documents that seemed like to bury him alive. His conversation
was that of a hard-working magistrate, a man devoted to his task and
whose mind never left the narrow groove of his official duties. His
fiery breath reeked of the brandy he took to keep up his strength; but
the liquor seemed never to fly to his brain, so clear-headed, albeit
entirely commonplace, was every word he uttered.

He lived in a small suite of rooms in the Palais de Justice with his
young wife, who had given him twin boys. His wife, an aunt Henriette and
the maid-servant Pélagie made up the whole household. He was good and
kind to these women. In a word, he was an excellent person in his family
and professional relations, with a scarcity of ideas and a total lack of
imagination.

Gamelin could not help being struck unpleasantly by the close
resemblance in temper and ways of thought between the new magistrates
and their predecessors under the old régime. In fact, they were of the
old régime; Herman had held the office of Advocate General to the
Council of Artois; Fouquier was a former Procureur at the Châtelet. They
had preserved their character, whereas Gamelin believed in a
Revolutionary palingenesis.

Quitting the precincts of the court, he passed along the great gallery
of the Palace and halted in front of the shops where articles of every
sort and kind were exposed for sale in the most attractive fashion.
Standing before the _citoyenne_ Ténot's stall, he turned over sundry
historical, political, and philosophical works:--"The Chains of
Slavery," "An Essay on Despotism," "The Crimes of Queens." "Very good!"
he thought, "here is Republican stuff!" and he asked the woman if she
sold a great many of these books. She shook her head:

"The only things that sell are songs and romances,"--and pulling a
duodecimo volume out of a drawer:

"Here," she told him, "here we have something good."

Évariste read the title: "La Religieuse en chemise," "The Nun in
dishabille!"

Before the next shop he came upon Philippe Desmahis, who, with a tender,
conquering-hero air, among the _citoyenne_ Saint-Jorre's perfumes and
powders and sachets, was assuring the fair tradeswoman of his undying
love, promising to paint her portrait and begging her to vouchsafe him a
moment's talk that evening in the Tuileries gardens. There was no
resisting him; persuasion sat on his lips and beamed from his eye. The
_citoyenne_ Saint-Jorre was listening without a word, her eyes on the
ground, only too ready to believe him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wishing to familiarize himself with the awful duties imposed on him, the
new juror resolved to mingle with the throng and look on at a case
before the Tribunal as a member of the general public. He climbed the
great stairs on which a vast crowd was seated as in an amphitheatre and
pushed his way into the ancient Hall of the Parlement of Paris.

This was crammed to suffocation; some General or other was taking his
trial. For in those days, as old Brotteaux put it, "the Convention,
copying the example of His Britannic Majesty's Government, made a point
of arraigning beaten Generals, in default of traitorous Generals, the
latter taking good care not to stand their trial. Not that a beaten
General," Brotteaux would add, "is necessarily criminal, for in the
nature of things there must be one in every battle. But there's nothing
like condemning a General to death for giving encouragement to others."

Several had already appeared before the Tribunal; they were all alike,
these empty-headed, opinionated soldiers with the brains of a sparrow in
an ox's skull. This particular commander was pretty nearly as ignorant
of the sieges and battles of his own campaign as the magistrates who
were questioning him; both sides, prosecution and defence, were lost in
a fog of effectives, objectives, munitions and ammunitions, marches and
counter-marches. But the mass of citizens listening to these obscure and
never-ending details could see behind the half-witted soldier the bare
and bleeding breast of the fatherland enduring a thousand deaths; and by
look and voice urged the jurymen, sitting quietly on their bench, to use
their verdict as a club to fell the foes of the Republic.

Évariste was firmly convinced of one thing,--what they had to strike at
in the pitiful creature was the two dread monsters that were battening
on the fatherland, revolt and defeat. What a to-do to discover if this
particular soldier was innocent or guilty! When La Vendée was recovering
heart, when Toulon was surrendering to the enemy, when the army of the
Rhine was recoiling before the victors of Mayence, when the Army of the
North, cowering in Cæsar's Camp, might be taken at a blow by the
Imperialists, the English, the Dutch, now masters of Valenciennes, the
one important thing was to teach the Generals of the Republic to conquer
or to die. To see yonder feeble-witted muddle-pated veteran losing
himself under cross-examination among his maps as he had done before in
the plains of Northern France, Gamelin longed to yell "death! death!"
with the rest, and fled from the Hall of Audience to escape the
temptation.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the meeting of the Section, the newly appointed juryman received the
congratulations of the President Olivier, who made him swear on the old
high altar of the Barnabites, now altar of the fatherland, to stifle in
his heart, in the sacred name of humanity, every human weakness.

Gamelin, with uplifted right hand, invoked as witness of his oath the
august shade of Marat, martyr of Liberty, whose bust had lately been set
up against a pillar of the erstwhile church, facing that of Le Peltier.

There was some applause, interrupted by cries of protest. The meeting
was a stormy one; at the entrance of the nave stood a group of members
of the Section, armed with pikes and shouting clamorously:

"It is anti-republican," declared the President, "to carry arms at a
meeting of free citizens,"--and he ordered the muskets and pikes to be
deposited there and then in the erstwhile sacristy.

A hunchback, with blazing eyes and lips drawn back so as to show the
teeth, the _citoyen_ Beauvisage, of the Committee of Vigilance, mounted
to the pulpit, now become the speakers' tribune and surmounted by a red
cap of liberty.

"The Generals are betraying us," he vociferated, "and surrendering our
armies to the enemy. The Imperialists are pushing forward their cavalry
around Péronne and Saint-Quentin. Toulon has been given up to the
English, who are landing fourteen thousand men there. The foes of the
Republic are busy with plots in the very bosom of the Convention. In the
capital conspiracies without number are afoot to deliver _the Austrian_.
At this very moment while I speak there runs a rumour that the Capet
brat has escaped from the Temple and is being borne in triumph to
Saint-Cloud by those who would fain re-erect the tyrant's throne in his
favour. The dearness of food, the depreciation of the _assignats_ are
the direct result of manoeuvres carried out in our own homes, beneath
our very eyes, by the agents of the foreigners. In the name of public
safety I call upon the new juryman, our fellow-citizen, to show no pity
to conspirators and traitors."

As he left the tribune, cries rose among the audience: "Down with the
Revolutionary Tribunal! Down with the Moderates!"

A stout, rosy-faced man, the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, a joiner living in
the Place de Thionville, mounted the Tribune, announcing that he wished
to ask a question of the new juror. Then he demanded of Gamelin what
attitude he meant to take up in the matter of the Brissotins and of the
widow Capet.

Évariste was timid and unpractised in public speaking. But indignation
gave him eloquence. He rose with a pale face and said in a voice of
suppressed emotion:

"I am a magistrate. I am responsible to my conscience only. Any promise
I might make you would be against my duty, which is to speak in the
Court and hold my peace elsewhere. I have ceased to know you. It is mine
to give judgment; I know neither friends nor enemies."

The meeting, made up like all meetings of divers elements and subject to
sudden and incalculable moods, approved these sentiments. But the
_citoyen_ Dupont returned to the charge; he could not forgive Gamelin
for having secured a post he had coveted himself.

"I understand," he said, "I even approve the juror's scruples. They say
he is a patriot; it is for him to examine his conscience and see if it
permits him to sit on a tribunal intended to destroy the enemies of the
Republic and resolved to spare them. There are circumstances in which a
good citizen is bound to repudiate all complicity. Is it not averred
that more than one juror of this tribunal has let himself be corrupted
by the gold of the accused, and that the President Montané falsified the
procedure to save the head of the woman Corday?"

At the words the hall resounded with vehement applause. The vaults were
still reverberating with the uproar when Fortuné Trubert mounted the
tribune. He had grown thinner than ever in the last few months. His face
was pale and the cheek-bones seemed ready to pierce the reddened skin;
his eyes had a glassy look under the inflamed lids.

"_Citoyens_," he began, in a weak, breathless voice that yet had a
strangely penetrating quality, "we cannot suspect the Revolutionary
Tribunal without at the same time suspecting the Convention and the
Committee of Public Safety from which it derives its powers. The
_citoyen_ Beauvisage has alarmed us, showing us the President Montané
tampering with the course of justice in favour of a culprit. Why did he
not add, to relieve our fears, that on the denunciation of the Public
Prosecutor, Montané has been dismissed his office and thrown into
prison?... Is it impossible to watch over the public safety without
casting suspicion on all and sundry? Is there no talent, no virtue left
in the Convention? Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, are not these
honest men? It is a notable thing that the most violent language is held
by individuals who have never been known to fight for the Republic. They
could speak no otherwise if they wish to render her hateful. _Citoyens_,
less talk, say I, and more work! It is with shot and shell and not with
shouting that France will be saved. One-half the cellars of the Section
have not been dug up. Not a few citizens still hold considerable
quantities of bronze. We would remind the rich that patriotic gifts are
for them the most potent guarantees. I recommend to your generosity the
wives and daughters of our soldiers who are covering themselves with
glory on the frontiers and on the Loire. One of these, the hussar
Pommier (Augustin), formerly a cellarman's lad in the Rue de Jérusalem,
on the 10th of last month, before Condé, when watering the troop horses,
was set upon by six Austrian cavalrymen; he killed two of them and
brought in the others prisoners. I ask the Section to declare that
Pommier (Augustin) has done his duty."

This speech was applauded and the Sectionaries dispersed with cries of
"Vive la République!"

Left alone in the nave with Trubert, Gamelin pressed the latter's hand.

"Thank you. How are you?"

"I? Oh! Very well, very well!" replied Trubert, coughing and spitting
blood into his handkerchief. "The Republic has many enemies without and
within, and our own Section counts a not inconsiderable number of them.
It is not with loud talk but with iron and laws that empires are founded
... good night, Gamelin; I have letters to write."

And he disappeared, his handkerchief pressed to his lips, into the
old-time sacristy.

       *       *       *       *       *

The widow Gamelin, her cockade now and henceforth fastened more
carefully in her hood, had from one day to the next assumed a fine,
consequential air, a Republican haughtiness and the dignified carriage
suitable to the mother of a juror of the State.

The veneration for the law in which she had been brought up, the
admiration with which the magistrate's gown and cassock had from a child
inspired her, the holy terror she had always experienced at sight of
those to whom God had delegated on earth His divine right of life and
death, these feelings made her regard as an august and worshipful and
holy being the son whom till yesterday she had thought of as little more
than a child. To her simple mind the conviction of the continuity of
justice through all the changes of the Revolution was as strong as was
that of the legislators of the Convention regarding the continuity of
the State under varying systems of government, and the Revolutionary
Tribunal appeared to her every whit as majestic as any of the
time-honoured jurisdictions she had been taught to revere.

The _citoyen_ Brotteaux showed the young magistrate an interest mingled
with surprise and a reluctant deference. His views were the same as the
widow Gamelin's as to the continuity of justice under successive
governments; but, in flat contradiction to that good lady's attitude,
his scorn for the Revolutionary Tribunals was on a par with his contempt
for the courts of the ancien régime. Not daring to express his opinions
openly and unable to make up his mind to say nothing, he indulged in a
string of paradoxes which Gamelin understood just well enough to suspect
the anti-patriotism that underlay them.

"The august tribunal whereon you are soon to take your seat," he told
him on one occasion, "was instituted by the French Senate for the
security of the Republic; and it was for certain a magnanimous thought
on the part of our legislators to set up a court to try our enemies. I
appreciate its generosity, but I doubt its wisdom. It would have shown
greater astuteness, it seems to me, if they had struck down in the dark
the more irreconcilable of their adversaries and won over the rest by
gifts and promises. A tribunal strikes slowly and effects more harm than
it inspires fear; its first duty is to make an example. The mischief
yours does is to unite together all whom it terrifies and make out of a
mass of contradictory interests and passions a great party capable of
common and effective action. You sow fear broadcast, and it is terror
more than courage that produces heroes; I pray, _citoyen_, you may not
one day see prodigies of terror arrayed against you!"

The engraver Desmahis, in love that week with a light o' love of the
Palais-Égalité named Flora, a brown-locked giantess, had nevertheless
found five minutes to congratulate his comrade and tell him that such an
appointment was a great compliment to the fine arts.

Élodie herself, though without knowing it she detested everything
revolutionary and who dreaded official functions as the most dangerous
of rivals, the most likely to estrange her lover's affections, the
tender Élodie was impressed by the glamour attaching to a magistrate
called upon to pronounce judgment in matters of life and death. Besides
which, Évariste's promotion as a juryman was followed by other fortunate
results that filled her loving heart with satisfaction; the _citoyen_
Jean Blaise made a point of calling at the studio in the Place de
Thionville and embraced the young juror affectionately in a burst of
manly sympathy.

Like all the anti-revolutionaries, he had a great respect for the
authorities established by the Republic, and ever since he had been
denounced for fraud in connection with his supplies for the army, the
Revolutionary Tribunal had inspired him with a wholesome dread. He felt
himself to be a person too much in the public eye and mixed up in too
many transactions to enjoy perfect security; so the _citoyen_ Gamelin
struck him as a friend worth cultivating. When all was said, one was a
good citizen and on the side of justice.

He gave the painter magistrate his hand, declaring himself his true
friend and a true patriot, a well-wisher of the arts and of liberty.
Gamelin forgot his injuries and pressed the hand so generously offered.

"_Citoyen_ Évariste Gamelin," said Jean Blaise, "I appeal to you as a
friend and as a man of talent. I am going to take you to-morrow for two
days' jaunt in the country; you can do some drawing and we can enjoy a
talk."

Several times every year the print-dealer was in the habit of making a
two or three days' expedition of this sort in the company of artists who
made drawings, according to his suggestions, of landscapes and ruins. He
was quick to see what would please the public and these little journeys
always resulted in some picturesque bits which were then finished at
home and cleverly engraved; prints in red or colours were struck off
from these, and brought in a good profit to the _citoyen_ Blaise. From
the same sketches he had over-doors and panels executed, which sold as
well or better than the decorative works of Hubert Robert.

On this occasion he had invited the _citoyen_ Gamelin to accompany him
to sketch buildings after nature, so much had the juror's office
increased the painter's importance in his eyes. Two other artists were
of the party, the engraver Desmahis, who drew well, and an almost
unknown man, Philippe Dubois, an excellent designer in the style of
Robert. According to custom, the _citoyenne_ Élodie with her friend the
_citoyenne_ Hasard accompanied the artists. Jean Blaise, an adept at
combining pleasure with profit, had also extended an invitation to the
_citoyenne_ Thévenin, an actress at the Vaudeville, who was reputed to
be on the best of terms with him.




X


On Saturday at seven in the morning the _citoyen_ Blaise, in a black
cocked-hat, scarlet waistcoat, doe-skin breeches, and boots with yellow
tops, rapped with the handle of his riding-whip at the studio door. The
_citoyenne_ Gamelin was in the room in polite conversation with the
_citoyen_ Brotteaux, while Évariste stood before a bit of looking-glass
knotting his high white cravat.

"A pleasant journey, Monsieur Blaise!" the _citoyenne_ greeted him.
"But, as you are going to paint landscapes, why don't you take Monsieur
Brotteaux, who is a painter?"

"Well, well," said Jean Blaise, "will you come with us, _citoyen_
Brotteaux?"

On being assured he would not be intruding, Brotteaux, a man of a
sociable temper and fond of all amusements, accepted the invitation.

The _citoyenne_ Élodie had climbed the four storeys to embrace the widow
Gamelin, whom she called her good mother. She was in white from head to
foot, and smelt of lavender.

An old two-horsed travelling _berline_ stood waiting in the Place, with
the hood down. Rose Thévenin occupied the back seat with Julienne
Hasard. Élodie made the actress sit on the right, took the left-hand
place herself and put the slim Julienne between the two of them.
Brotteaux settled himself, back to the horses, facing the _citoyenne_
Thévenin; Philippe Dubois, opposite the _citoyenne_ Hasard; Évariste
opposite Élodie. As for Philippe Desmahis, he planted his athletic
figure on the box, on the coachman's left, and proceeded to amaze that
worthy with a traveller's tale about a country in America where the
trees bore chitterlings and saveloys by way of fruit.

The _citoyen_ Blaise, who was a capital rider, took the road on
horseback, going on in front to escape the dust from the _berline_.

As the wheels rattled merrily over the suburban roads the travellers
began to forget their cares, and at sight of the green fields and trees
and sky, their minds turned to gay and pleasant thoughts. Élodie dreamed
she was surely born to rear poultry with Évariste, a country justice, to
help her, in some village on a river bank beside a wood. The roadside
elms whirled by as they sped along. Outside the villages the peasants'
mastiffs dashed out to intercept the carriage and barked at the horses,
while a fat spaniel, lying in the roadway, struggled reluctantly to its
feet; the fowls scattered and fled; the geese in a close-packed band
waddled slowly out of the way. The children, with their fresh morning
faces, watched the company go by. It was a hot day and a cloudless sky.
The parched earth was thirsting for rain. They alighted just outside
Villejuif. On their way through the little town, Desmahis went into a
fruiterer's to buy cherries for the overheated _citoyennes_. The
shop-keeper was a pretty woman, and Desmahis showed no signs of
reappearing. Philippe Dubois shouted to him, using the nickname his
friends constantly gave him:

"Ho there! Barbaroux!... Barbaroux!"

At this hated name the passers-by pricked up their ears and faces
appeared at every window. Then, when they saw a young and handsome man
emerge from the shop, his jacket thrown open, his neckerchief flying
loose over a muscular chest, and carrying over his shoulder a basket of
cherries and his coat at the end of a stick, taking him for the
proscribed girondist, a posse of _sansculottes_ laid violent hands on
him. Regardless of his indignant protests, they would have haled him to
the town-hall, had not old Brotteaux, Gamelin, and the three young women
borne testimony that the _citoyen_ was named Philippe Desmahis, a
copper-plate engraver and a good Jacobin. Even then the suspect had to
show his _carte de civisme_, which he had in his pocket by great good
luck, for he was very heedless in such matters. At this price he escaped
from the hands of these patriotic villagers without worse loss than one
of his lace ruffles, which had been torn off; but this was a trifle
after all. He even received the apologies of the National Guards who had
hustled him the most savagely and who now spoke of carrying him in
triumph to the Hôtel de Ville.

A free man again and with the _citoyennes_ Élodie, Rose, and Julienne
crowding round him, Desmahis looked at Philippe Dubois--he did not like
the man and suspected him of having played him a practical joke--with a
wry smile, and towering above him by a whole head:

"Dubois," he told him, "if you call me Barbaroux again, I shall call you
Brissot; he is a little fat man with a silly face, greasy hair, an oily
skin and damp hands. They'll be perfectly sure you are the infamous
Brissot, the people's enemy; and the good Republicans, filled with
horror and loathing at sight of you, will hang you from the nearest
lamp-post. You hear me?"

The _citoyen_ Blaise, who had been watering his horse, announced that he
had arranged the affair, though it was quite plain to everybody that it
had been arranged without him.

The company got in again, and as they drove on, Desmahis informed the
coachman that in this same plain of Longjumeau several inhabitants of
the Moon had once come down, in shape and colour much like frogs, only
very much bigger. Philippe Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art.
Dubois, a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome, where he had seen
Raphael's tapestries, which he set above all the masterpieces of the
world. He admired Correggio's colouring, Annibale Caracci's invention,
Domenichino's drawing, but thought nothing comparable in point of style
with the pictures of Pompeio Battoni. He had been in touch at Rome with
Monsieur Ménageot and Madame Lebrun, who had both pronounced against the
Revolution; so the less said of them the better. But he spoke highly of
Angelica Kauffmann, who had a pure taste and a fine knowledge of the
Antique.

Gamelin deplored that the apogee of French painting, belated as it was,
for it only dated from Lesueur, Claude and Poussin and corresponded with
the decadence of the Italian and Flemish schools, had been succeeded by
so rapid and profound a decline. This he attributed to the degraded
state of manners and to the Academy, which was the expression of that
state. But the Academy had been happily abolished, and under the
influence of new canons, David and his school were creating an art
worthy of a free people. Among the young painters, Gamelin, without a
trace of envy, gave the first place to Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun.
Philippe Dubois preferred his own master Regnault to David, and founded
his hopes for the future of painting on that rising artist Gérard.

Meantime Élodie complimented the _citoyenne_ Thévenin on her red velvet
toque and white gown. The actress repaid the compliment by
congratulating her two companions on their toilets and advising them how
to do better still; the thing, she said, was to be more sparing in
ornaments and trimmings.

"A woman can never be dressed too simply," was her dictum. "We see this
on the stage, where the costume should allow every pose to be
appreciated. That is its true beauty and it needs no other."

"You are right, my dear," replied Élodie. "Only there is nothing more
expensive in dress than simplicity. It is not always out of bad taste we
add frills and furbelows; sometimes it is to save our pockets."

They discussed eagerly the autumn fashions,--frocks entirely plain and
short-waisted.

"So many women disfigure themselves through following the fashion!"
declared Rose Thévenin. "In dressing every woman should study her own
figure."

"There is nothing beautiful save draperies that follow the lines of the
figure and fall in folds," put in Gamelin. "Everything that is cut out
and sewn is hideous."

These sentiments, more appropriate in a treatise of Winckelmann's than
in the mouth of a man talking to Parisiennes, met with the scorn they
deserved, being entirely disregarded.

"For the winter," observed Élodie, "they are making quilted gowns in
Lapland style of taffeta and muslin, and coats _à la Zulime_,
round-waisted and opening over a stomacher _à la Turque_."

"Nasty cheap things," declared the actress, "you can buy them ready
made. Now I have a little seamstress who works like an angel and is not
dear; I'll send her to see you, my dear."

So they prattled on trippingly, eagerly discussing and appraising
different fine fabrics--striped taffeta, self-coloured china silk,
muslin, gauze, nankeen.

And old Brotteaux, as he listened to them, thought with a pensive
pleasure of these veils that hide women's charms and change
incessantly,--how they last for a few years to be renewed eternally like
the flowers of the field. And his eyes, as they wandered from the three
pretty women to the cornflowers and the poppies in the wheat, were wet
with smiling tears.

They reached Orangis about nine o'clock and stopped before the inn, the
_Auberge de la Cloche_, where the Poitrines, husband and wife, offered
accommodation for man and beast. The _citoyen_ Blaise, who had repaired
any disorder in his dress, helped the _citoyennes_ to alight. After
ordering dinner for midday, they all set off, preceded by their
paintboxes, drawing-boards, easels, and parasols, which were carried by
a village lad, for the meadows near the confluence of the Orge and the
Yvette, a charming bit of country giving a view over the verdant plain
of Longjumeau and bounded by the Seine and the woods of
Sainte-Geneviève.

Jean Blaise, the leader of the troop of artists, was bandying funny
stories with the _ci-devant_ financier, tales that brought in without
rhyme or reason Verboquet the Open-handed, Catherine Cuissot the pedlar,
the demoiselles Chaudron, the fortune-teller Galichet, as well as
characters of a later time like Cadet-Rousselle and Madame Angot.

Évariste, inspired with a sudden love of nature, as he saw a troop of
harvesters binding their sheaves, felt the tears rise to his eyes, while
visions of concord and affection filled his heart. For his part,
Desmahis was blowing the light down of the seeding dandelions into the
_citoyennes'_ hair. All three loved posies, as town-bred girls always
do, and were busy in the meadows plucking the mullein, whose blossoms
grow in spikes close round the stem, the campanula, with its little
blue-bells hanging in rows one above another, the slender twigs of the
scented vervain, wallwort, mint, dyer's weed, milfoil--all the wild
flowers of late summer. Jean-Jacques had made botany the fashion among
townswomen, so all three knew the name and symbolism of every flower. As
the delicate petals, drooping for want of moisture, wilted in her hands
and fell in a shower about her feet, the _citoyenne_ Élodie sighed:

"They are dying already, the poor flowers!"

All set to work and strove to express nature as they saw her; but each
saw her through the eyes of a master. In a short time Philippe Dubois
had knocked off in the style of Hubert Robert a deserted farm, a clump
of storm-riven trees, a dried-up torrent. Évariste Gamelin found a
landscape by Poussin ready made on the banks of the Yvette. Philippe
Desmahis was at work before a pigeon-cote in the picaresque manner of
Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux who piqued himself on imitating the
Flemings, was drawing a cow with infinite care. Élodie was sketching a
peasant's hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourman's
daughter, set her palette. A swarm of children pressed about her,
watching her paint, whom she would scold out of her light at intervals,
calling them pestering gnats and giving them lollipops. The _citoyenne_
Thévenin, picking out the pretty ones, would wash their faces, kiss them
and put flowers in their hair. She fondled them with a gentle air of
melancholy, because she had missed the joy of motherhood,--as well as to
heighten her fascinations by a show of tender sentiment and to practise
herself in the art of pose and grouping.

She was the only member of the party neither drawing nor painting. She
devoted her attention to learning a part and still more to charming her
companions, flitting from one to another, book in hand, a bright,
entrancing creature.

"No complexion, no figure, no voice, no nothing," declared the
women,--and she filled the earth with movement, colour and harmony.
Faded, pretty, tired, indefatigable, she was the joy of the expedition.
A woman of ever-varying moods, but always gay, sensitive, quick-tempered
and yet easy-going and accommodating, a sharp tongue with the most
polished utterance, vain, modest, true, false, delightful; if Rose
Thévenin enjoyed no triumphant success, if she was not worshipped as a
goddess, it was because the times were out of joint and Paris had no
more incense, no more altars for the Graces. The _citoyenne_ Blaise
herself, who made a face when she spoke of her and used to call her "my
step-mother," could not see her and not be subjugated by such an array
of charms.

They were rehearsing _Les Visitandines_ at the Théâtre Feydeau, and Rose
was full of self-congratulation at having a part full of "naturalness."
It was this quality she strove after, this she sought and this she
found.

"Then we shall not see 'Paméla'?" asked Desmahis.

The Théâtre de la Nation was closed and the actors packed off to the
Madelonnettes and to Pélagie.

"Do you call that liberty?" cried Rose Thévenin, raising her beautiful
eyes to heaven in indignant protest.

"The players of the Théâtre de la Nation are aristocrats, and the
_citoyen_ François' piece tends to make men regret the privileges of the
noblesse."

"Gentlemen," said Rose Thévenin, "have you patience to listen only to
those who flatter you?"

As midday approached everybody began to feel pangs of hunger and the
little band marched back to the inn.

Évariste walked beside Élodie, smilingly recalling memories of their
first meetings:

"Two young birds had fallen out of their nests on the roof on to the
sill of your window. You brought the little creatures up by hand; one of
them lived and in due time flew away. The other died in the nest of
cotton-wool you had made him. 'It was the one I loved best,' I remember
you said. That day, Élodie, you were wearing a red bow in your hair."

Philippe Dubois and Brotteaux, a little behind the rest, were talking of
Rome, where they had both been, the latter in '72, the other towards the
last days of the Academy. Brotteaux indeed had never forgotten the
Princess Mondragone, to whom he would most certainly have poured out
his plaints but for the Count Altieri, who always followed her like her
shadow. Nor did Philippe Dubois fail to mention that he had been invited
to dine with Cardinal de Bernis and that he was the most obliging host
in the world.

"I knew him," said Brotteaux, "and I may add without boasting that I was
for some while one of his most intimate friends; he had a taste for low
society. He was an amiable man, and for all his affectation of telling
fairy tales, there was more sound philosophy in his little finger than
in the heads of all you Jacobins, who are for making us virtuous and
God-fearing by Act of Parliament. Upon my word I prefer our
simple-minded theophagists who know not what they say nor yet what they
do, to these mad law-menders, who make it their business to guillotine
us in order to render us wise and virtuous and adorers of the Supreme
Being who has created them in His likeness. In former days I used to
have Mass said in the Chapel at Les Ilettes by a poor devil of a Curé
who used to say in his cups: 'Don't let's speak ill of sinners; we live
by 'em, we priests, unworthy as we are!' You must agree, sir, this
prayer-monger held sound maxims of government. We should adopt his
principles, and govern men as being what they are and not what we should
like them to be."

Rose Thévenin had meantime drawn closer to the old man. She knew he had
lived on a grand scale, and the thought of this gilded the _ci-devant_
financier's present poverty, which she deemed less humiliating as being
due to general causes, the result of the public bankruptcy. She saw in
him, with curiosity not unmixed with respect, the survival of one of
those open-handed millionaires of whom her elder comrades of the stage
spoke with sighs of unfeigned regret. Besides, the old fellow in his
plum-coloured coat, so threadbare and so well brushed, pleased her by
his agreeable address.

"Monsieur Brotteaux," she said to him, "we know how once upon a time, in
a noble park, on moonlight nights, you would slip into the shade of
myrtle groves with actresses and dancing-girls to the far-off shrilling
of flutes and fiddles.... Alas! they were more lovely, were they not,
your goddesses of the Opera and the Comédie-Française, than we of
to-day, we poor little National actresses?"

"Never think it, Mademoiselle," returned Brotteaux, "but believe me, if
one like you had been known in those days, she would have moved alone,
as sovereign queen without a rival (little as she would have desired
such solitude), in the park you are obliging enough to form so
flattering a picture of...."

It was quite a rustic inn, this Hôtel de la Cloche. A branch of holly
hung over the great waggon doors that opened on a courtyard where fowls
were always pecking about in the damp soil. On the far side of this
stood the house itself, consisting of a ground floor and one storey
above, crowned by a high-pitched tiled roof and with walls almost hidden
under old climbing rose-trees covered with blossom. To the right,
trimmed fruit-trees showed their tops above the low garden wall. To the
left was the stable, with an outside manger and a barn supported by
wooden pillars. A ladder leaned against the wall. Here again, under a
shed crowded with agricultural implements and stumps of trees, a white
cock was keeping an eye on his hens from the top of a broken-down
cabriolet. The courtyard was enclosed on this side by cow-sheds, in
front of which rose in mountainous grandeur a dunghill which at this
moment a girl as broad as she was long, with straw-coloured hair, was
turning over with a pitchfork. The liquid manure filled her sabots and
bathed her bare feet, and you could see the heels rise out of her shoes
every now and then as yellow as saffron. Her petticoats were kilted and
revealed the filth on her enormous calves and thick ankles. While
Philippe Desmahis was staring at her, surprised and tickled by the
whimsicalities of nature in framing this odd example of breadth without
length, the landlord shouted:

"Ho, there! Tronche, my girl! go fetch some water!"

She turned her head, showing a scarlet face and a vast mouth in which
one huge front tooth was missing. It had needed nothing less than a
bull's horn to effect a breach in that powerful jaw. She stood there
grinning, pitchfork on shoulder. Her sleeves were rolled up and her
arms, as thick as another woman's thighs, gleamed in the sun.

The table was laid in the farm kitchen, where a brace of fowls was
roasting,--they were almost done to a turn,--under the hood of the open
fireplace, above which hung two or three old fowling-pieces by way of
ornament. The bare whitewashed room, twenty feet long, was lighted only
through the panes of greenish glass let into the door and by a single
window, framed in roses, near which the grandmother sat turning her
spinning-wheel. She wore a coif and a lace frilling in the fashion of
the Regency. Her gnarled, earth-stained fingers held the distaff. Flies
clustered about her lids without her trying to drive them away. As a
child in her mother's arms, she had seen Louis XIV go by in his coach.

Sixty years ago she had made the journey to Paris. In a weak sing-song
voice she told the tale to the three young women, standing in front of
her, how she had seen the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries and the
Samaritaine, and how, when she was crossing the Pont-Royal, a barge
loaded with apples for the Marché du Mail had broken up, the apples had
floated down the current and the river was all red with the rosy-cheeked
fruit.

She had been told of the changes that had occurred of late in the
kingdom, and in particular of the coil there was betwixt the curés who
had taken the oath and the nonjuring curés. She knew likewise there had
been wars and famines and portents in the sky. She did not believe the
King was dead. They had contrived his escape, she _would_ have it, by a
subterranean passage, and had handed over to the headsman in his stead a
man of the common people.

At the old woman's feet, in his wicker cradle, Jeannot, the last born of
the Poitrines, was cutting his teeth. The _citoyenne_ Thévenin lifted
the cradle and smiled at the child, which moaned feebly, worn out with
feverishness and convulsions. It must have been very ill, for they had
sent for the doctor, the _citoyen_ Pelleport, who, it is true, being a
deputy-substitute to the Convention, asked no payment for his visits.

The _citoyenne_ Thévenin, an innkeeper's daughter herself, was in her
element; not satisfied with the way the farm-girl had washed the plates
and dishes, she gave an extra wipe to the crockery and glass, an extra
polish to the knives and forks. While the _citoyenne_ Poitrine was
attending to the soup, which she tasted from time to time as a good cook
should, Élodie was cutting up into slices a four-pound loaf hot from the
oven. Gamelin, when he saw what she was doing, addressed her:

"A few days ago I read a book written by a young German whose name I
have forgotten, and which has been very well translated into French. In
it you have a beautiful young girl named Charlotte, who, like you,
Élodie, was cutting bread and butter, and like you, cutting it
gracefully, and so prettily that at the sight the young Werther fell in
love with her."

"And it ended in their marrying?" asked Élodie.

"No," replied Évariste; "it ended in Werther's death by violence."

They dined well, they were all very hungry; but the fare was
indifferent. Jean Blaise complained bitterly; he was a great trencherman
and made it a rule of conduct to feed well; and no doubt what urged him
to elaborate his gluttony into a system was the general scarcity. In
every household the Revolution had overturned the cooking pot. The
common run of citizens had nothing to chew upon. Clever folks like Jean
Blaise, who made big profits amid the general wretchedness, went to the
cookshop where they showed their astuteness by stuffing themselves to
repletion. As for Brotteaux who, in this year II of liberty, was living
on chestnuts and bread-crusts, he could remember having supped at Grimod
de la Reynière's at the near end of the Champs Élysées. Eager to win the
repute of an accomplished gourmand he reeled off, sitting there before
Dame Poitrine's bacon and cabbages, a string of artful kitchen recipes
and wise gastronomic maxims. Presently, when Gamelin protested that a
Republican scorns the pleasures of the table, the old financier, always
a lover of antiquity, gave the young Spartan the true recipe for the
famous black broth.

After dinner, Jean Blaise, who never forgot business, set his itinerant
academy to make studies and sketches of the inn, which struck him as
quite romantic in its dilapidation. While Philippe Desmahis and Philippe
Dubois were drawing the cow-houses the girl Tronche came out to feed the
pigs. The _citoyen_ Pelleport, officer of health, who at the same moment
appeared at the door of the farm kitchen where he had been bestowing his
professional services on the Poitrine baby, stepped up to the artists
and after complimenting them on their talents, which were an honour to
the whole nation, pointed to the Tronche girl in the middle of her
porkers:

"You see that creature," he said, "it is not one girl, it is two girls.
I speak by the letter, understand that. I was amazed at the
extraordinary massiveness of her bony framework and I examined her, to
discover she had most of the bones in duplicate--in each thigh two
femurs welded together, in each shoulder a double humerus. Some of her
muscles are likewise in duplicate. It is a case, in my view, of a pair
of twins associated or rather confounded together. It is an interesting
phenomenon. I notified Monsieur Saint-Hilaire of the facts, and he
thanked me. It is a monster you see before you, _citoyens_. The people
here call her 'the girl Tronche'; they should say 'the girls Tronches,'
for there are two of them. Nature has these freaks.... Good evening,
_citoyens_; we shall have a storm to-night...."

After supper by candle-light, the Academy Blaise adjourned to the
courtyard where they were joined by a son and daughter of the house in
a game of blindman's-buff, in which the young folks, both men and women,
displayed a feverish energy sufficiently accounted for by the high
spirits proper to their age without seeking an explanation in the wild
and precarious times in which they lived. When it was quite dark, Jean
Blaise proposed children's games in the farm kitchen. Élodie suggested
the game of "hunt my heart," and this was agreed to unanimously. Under
the girl's direction Philippe Desmahis traced in chalk, on different
pieces of furniture, on doors and walls, seven hearts, that is to say
one less than there were players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly
joined the rest. They danced round in a ring singing "La Tour, prends
garde!" and at a signal from Élodie, each ran to put a hand on a heart.
Gamelin in his absent-minded clumsiness was too late to find one vacant,
and had to pay a forfeit, the little knife he had bought for six sous at
the fair of Saint-Germain and with which he had cut the loaf for his
mother in her poverty. The game went on, and one after the other Blaise,
Élodie, Brotteaux and Rose Thévenin failed to touch a heart; each paid a
forfeit in turn--a ring, a reticule, a little morocco-bound book, a
bracelet. Then the forfeits were raffled on Élodie's lap, and each
player had to redeem his property by showing his society
accomplishments--singing a song or reciting a poem. Brotteaux chose the
speech of the patron saint of France in the first canto of the
_Pucelle_:

    "Je suis Denis et saint de mon métier,
    J'aime la Gaule,..."[2]


The _citoyen_ Blaise, though a far less well-read man, replied without
hesitation with Richemond's ripost:

    "Monsieur le Saint, ce n'était pas la peine
    D'abandonner le céleste domaine...."[3]


At that time everybody was reading and re-reading with delight the
masterpiece of the French Ariosto; the most serious of men smiled over
the loves of Jeanne and Dunois, the adventures of Agnès and Monrose and
the exploits of the winged ass. Every man of cultivation knew by heart
the choice passages of this diverting and philosophical poem. Évariste
Gamelin himself, stern-tempered as he was, when he recovered his
twopenny knife from Élodie's lap, recited the going down of Grisbourdon
into hell, with a good deal of spirit. The _citoyenne_ Thévenin sang
without accompaniment Nina's ballad:

"_Quand le bien-aimé reviendra._"

Desmahis sang to the tune of _La Faridondaine_:

    "Quelques-uns prirent le cochon
      De ce bon saint Antoine,
    Et lui mettant un capuchon,
      Ils en firent un moine.
    Il n'en coûtait que la façon...."[4]

All the same Desmahis was in a pensive mood. For the moment he was
ardently in love with all the three women with whom he was playing
forfeits, and was casting burning looks of soft appeal at each in turn.
He loved Rose Thévenin for her grace, her supple figure, her clever
acting, her roving glances, and her voice that went straight to a man's
heart; he loved Élodie, because he recognized instinctively her rich
endowment of temperament and her kind, complaisant humour; he loved
Julienne Hasard, despite her colourless hair, her pale eyelashes, her
freckles and her thin bust, because, like Dunois in Voltaire's
_Pucelle_, he was always ready, in his generosity, to give the least
engaging a token of love--and the more so in this instance because she
appeared to be for the moment the most neglected, and therefore the most
amenable to his attentions. Without a trace of vanity, he was never sure
of these being agreeable; nor yet was he ever sure of their not being.
So he never omitted to offer them on the chance. Taking advantage of the
opportunities offered by the game of forfeits, he made some tender
speeches to Rose Thévenin, who showed no displeasure, but could hardly
say much in return under the jealous eyes of the _citoyen_ Jean Blaise.
He spoke more warmly still to the _citoyenne_ Élodie, whom he knew to be
pledged to Gamelin, but he was not so exacting as to want a heart all to
himself. Élodie could never care for him; but she thought him a handsome
fellow and did not altogether succeed in hiding the fact from him.
Finally, he whispered his most ardent vows in the ear of the _citoyenne_
Hasard, which she received with an air of bewildered stupefaction that
might equally express abject submission or chill indifference. And
Desmahis did not believe she was indifferent to him.

The inn contained only two bedrooms, both on the first floor and opening
on the same landing. That to the left, the better of the two, boasted a
flowered paper and a looking-glass the size of a man's hand, the gilt
frame of which had been blackened by generations of flies since the days
when Louis XIV was a child. In it, under sprigged muslin curtains, stood
two beds with down pillows, coverlets and counterpanes. This room was
reserved for the three _citoyennes_.

When the time came to reti

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