Les Dieux ont soif. English
Page 28
XXVIII
On the 10th, when Evariste, after a fevered night passed on thepallet-bed of a dungeon, awoke with a start of indescribable horror,Paris was smiling in the sunshine in all her beauty and immensity;new-born hope filled the prisoners' hearts; tradesmen were blithelyopening their shops, citizens felt themselves richer, young men happier,women more beautiful, for the fall of Robespierre. Only a handful ofJacobins, a few _Constitutional_ priests and a few old women trembled tosee the Government pass into the hands of the evil-minded and corrupt.Delegates from the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Public Prosecutor and twojudges, were on their way to the Convention to congratulate it on havingput an end to the plots. By decree of the Assembly the scaffold wasagain to be set up in the Place de la Revolution. They wanted thewealthy, the fashionable, the pretty women to see, without puttingthemselves about, the execution of Robespierre, which was to take placethat same day. The Dictator and his accomplices were outlawed; it onlyneeded their identity to be verified by two municipal officers for theTribunal to hand them over immediately to the executioner. But adifficulty arose; the verifications could not be made in legal form, theCommune as a body having been put outside the pale of law. The Assemblyauthorized identification by ordinary witnesses.
The triumvirs were haled to death, with their chief accomplices, amidstshouts of joy and fury, imprecations, laughter and dances.
The next day Evariste, who had recovered some strength and could almoststand on his legs, was taken from his cell, brought before the Tribunal,and placed on the platform where so many victims, illustrious orobscure, had sat in succession. Now it groaned under the weight ofseventy individuals, the majority members of the Commune, some jurors,like Gamelin, outlawed like him. Again he saw the jury-bench, the seatwhere he had been accustomed to loll, the place where he had terrorizedunhappy prisoners, where he had affronted the scornful eyes of JacquesMaubel and Maurice Brotteaux, the appealing glances of the _citoyenne_Rochemaure, who had got him his post as juryman and whom he hadrecompensed with a sentence of death. Again he saw, looking down on thedais where the judges sat in three mahogany armchairs, covered in redUtrecht velvet, the busts of Chalier and Marat and that bust of Brutuswhich he had one day apostrophized. Nothing was altered, neither theaxes, the fasces, the red caps of Liberty on the wall-paper, nor theinsults shouted by the _tricoteuses_ in the galleries to those about todie, nor yet the soul of Fouquier-Tinville, hard-headed, painstaking,zealously turning over his murderous papers, and, in his character ofperfect magistrate, sending his friends of yesterday to the scaffold.
The _citoyens_ Remacle, tailor and door-keeper, and Dupont senior,joiner, of the Place de Thionville, member of the Committee ofSurveillance of the Section du Pont-Neuf, identified Gamelin (Evariste),painter, ex-juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, ex-member of theCouncil General of the Commune. For their services they received anassignat of a hundred _sols_ from the funds of the Section; but, havingbeen neighbours and friends of the outlaw, they found it embarrassing tomeet his eye. Anyhow, it was a hot day; they were thirsty and in a hurryto be off and drink a glass of wine.
Gamelin found difficulty in mounting the tumbril; he had lost a greatdeal of blood and his wounds pained him cruelly. The driver whipped uphis jade and the procession got under way amid a storm of hooting.
Some women recognized Gamelin and yelled:
"Go your ways, drinker of blood! murderer at eighteen francs a day!...He doesn't laugh now; look how pale he is, the coward!"
They were the same women who used in other days to insult conspiratorsand aristocrats, extremists and moderates, all the victims sent byGamelin and his colleagues to the guillotine.
The cart turned into the Quai des Morfondus, made slowly for thePont-Neuf and the Rue de la Monnaie; its destination was the Place de laRevolution and Robespierre's scaffold. The horse was lame; every otherminute the driver's whip whistled about its ears. The crowd ofspectators, a merry, excited crowd, delayed the progress of the escort,fraternizing with the gendarmes, who pulled in their horses to a walk.At the corner of the Rue Honore, the insults were redoubled. Parties ofyoung men, at table in the fashionable restaurateurs' rooms on themezzanine floor, ran to the windows, napkin in hand, and howled:
"Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires!"
The cart having plunged into a heap of refuse that had not been removedduring the two days of civil disorder, the gilded youth screamed withdelight:
"The waggon's mired.... Hurrah! The Jacobins in the jakes!"
Gamelin was thinking, and truth seemed to dawn on him.
"I die justly," he reflected. "It is just we should receive theseoutrages cast at the Republic, for we should have safeguarded heragainst them. We have been weak; we have been guilty of supineness. Wehave betrayed the Republic. We have earned our fate. Robespierrehimself, the immaculate, the saint, has sinned from mildness,mercifulness; his faults are wiped out by his martyrdom. He was myexemplar, and I, too, have betrayed the Republic; the Republic perishes;it is just and fair that I die with her. I have been over sparing ofblood; let my blood flow! Let me perish! I have deserved ..."
Such were his reflections when suddenly he caught sight of the signboardof the _Amour peintre_, and a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swepttumultuously over his heart.
The shop was shut, the sun-blinds of the three windows on the mezzaninefloor were drawn right down. As the cart passed in front of the windowof the blue chamber, a woman's hand, wearing a silver ring on thering-finger, pushed aside the edge of the blind and threw towardsGamelin a red carnation which his bound hands prevented him fromcatching, but which he adored as the token and likeness of those red andfragrant lips that had refreshed his mouth. His eyes filled withbursting tears, and his whole being was still entranced with the glamourof this farewell when he saw the blood-stained knife rise into view inthe Place de la Revolution.