So he read on, taking a couple of steps forward every quarter of an hour. His ear, soothed by the grave cadences of the Latin poet, was deaf to the women’s strident complaints about the price of bread, sugar, coffee, and candles and soup. In this calm and composed mood, he reached the threshold of the baker’s shop. Behind him, Évariste Gamelin could see over his head the gilt cornsheaf attached to the iron grating that filled the fanlight above the door.
When Gamelin’s turn came to enter the shop, he found the hampers and baskets all empty; the baker handed him the last scrap of bread left, a piece which did not weigh two pounds. Évariste paid his money and the gate was slammed behind him, for fear the people would riot and take the place by storm.
But such a fear was baseless: these poor people, trained to obey both by their former oppressors and by their new liberators, slunk away with downcast heads and dragging feet.
When he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin saw the Citizeness Dumonteil seated on a stone post, her little baby in her arms. She was sitting quite still; her face was empty of all colour and her tearless eyes seemed to see nothing. The baby was sucking its mother’s finger greedily. Gamelin stood for a while in front of her, ashamed and hesitant. She appeared not to see him.
He stammered something, and then, pulling out his pocket knife, a clasp-knife with a horn handle, he cut his loaf in two and put half of it on the young mother’s knees. She looked up at him in astonishment; but he had quickly turned the corner of the street.
Arriving home, Évariste found his mother sitting by the window darning socks. With a little laugh he put what was left of the bread into her hand.
‘Dear mother, you’ll have to forgive me. I was so tired standing waiting in the heat, and as I hobbled back here I began taking a bite every now and then. So I’m afraid there’s scarcely even your half left.’ And as he spoke, he pretended to brush crumbs from his coat.
VII
THE Citizeness Gamelin, using a very old-fashioned expression, had declared that by eating chestnuts they would become chestnuts. As a matter of fact, on that day, 13th July, she and her son made their midday meal of a basinful of chestnut porridge. As they were finishing this austere repast, the door was pushed open and immediately the room was full of the presence and the perfume of the lady who entered. Évariste recognized her: she was Citizeness Rochemaure. Assuming she had mistaken the door and was intending to visit the Citizen Brotteaux, her friend from former days, he was about to direct her to the ci-devant aristocrat’s garret, or perhaps summon Brotteaux and so spare such an elegant lady the trouble of climbing a mill-ladder; but she at once made it clear that it was the Citizen Gamelin and none other whom she had come to see by announcing she was pleased to find him at home and was his servant to command.
They were not entirely strangers, having met occasionally in David’s studio, at the Assembly Hall, at the Jacobin’s at Venua’s restaurant. She had been struck by his good looks, his youth and his interesting ambience.
Wearing a hat beribboned like a toy trumpet adorned with strips of paper and beplumed like the cockade of an ambassadorial deputy, the Citizeness Rochemaure was wigged, rouged, love-patched, musk-scented, yet beneath it all the flesh was still young and firm: these extreme artifices of fashion served only to reveal frantic efforts to seize every moment of pleasure from life, the feverish intensity of these terrible days whose tomorrows were forever uncertain. Her close-fitting bodice, with wide facings and large basques all glittering with steel buttons, was blood-red, and it was hard to say whether she sported the colours of the victim or of the executioner, so aristocratic, and at the same time so revolutionary, was her attire. She was accompanied by a young officer, a dragoon.
With a long, mother-of-pearl cane in her hand, she made a tour of the studio; a tall, beautiful woman, full bosomed and generously proportioned, she kept lifting her gold lorgnette to her grey eyes to examine more closely the artist’s canvases, smiling, exclaiming, reacting effusively to the artist’s handsome looks, flattering him in order to be flattered.
‘What is that most moving and beautiful painting, the one showing a lovely, kind-faced lady bending over a sick young man?’ asked the citizeness.
Gamelin told her it was meant to represent Orestes being tended by his sister Electra, and that, if he had been able to finish it, it might have proved the least unsatisfactory of his works.
He went on to explain:
‘The subject is taken from the Orestes of Euripides. I read a translation made many years ago and there was a scene in it that filled me with admiration – the scene where the young Electra, supporting her brother’s head on his bed of pain, wipes his face and mouth, holds back his long hair and entreats the brother she loves to hear what she has to tell him while the Furies are silent… As I read and re-read this translation, I felt as though something, some mist or fog, were coming between me and the true Greek meaning. It seemed to me as though the style of the original Greek must be different, more taut, more nervous. I was so keen to discover the precise meaning, I went to Professor Gail, who was Professor of Greek at the Collège de France (this was in 1791) and begged him to translate the scene for me word by word. He did so, and I realized that the ancient Greeks were much more simple and homely than people believe. For instance, Electra says to Orestes: “Dear brother, how glad I was to see you were sleeping! Shall I help you up?” And Orestes answers: “Yes, help me, take me in your arms, wipe my mouth and face, hold back the hair from over my eyes for it blinds me”… My mind full of the simple strength of these clear, vivid words, I sketched the picture you see there, citizeness.’
The artist, who usually spoke little of his works, became eloquent over this one. Encouraged by the obvious interest of the Citizeness Rochemaure, who continued lifting her lorgnette as an indication of her attention, he went on:
‘Hennequin painted the madness of Orestes in a masterly manner. But surely it is the grief of Orestes that appeals to us even more poignantly than his madness. His devotion as a son, his obedience to a sacred obligation, drove him to commit his terrible deed – a crime which the gods found it possible to pardon, but which men could never forgive. In order that he might revenge outraged justice, he had repudiated Nature, made himself into a monster, torn from his heart all mercy and pity. Yet his spirit remained unbroken beneath the burden of his dreadful, yet innocent, crime… That is what I wanted to show in my painting of brother and sister.’ He walked over to the canvas, and the look he gave it was one not lacking in satisfaction.
‘Parts of it,’ he said, ‘are almost complete; the head and arms of Orestes, for instance…’
‘Its composition is admirable… And Orestes makes me think of you, Citizen Gamelin.’
‘You think there is a resemblance?’ asked the artist, smiling his grave smile.
She took the chair Gamelin offered her. The young dragoon stood beside her, his hand on the back of her chair. That was something which revealed clearly the Revolution was an accomplished fact, for under the ancien régime no man would ever in company have touched the seat occupied by a lady, not even with so much as the tip of his finger. In those days a gentleman had been severely trained in the rules of politeness, sometimes quite difficult rules, and had been taught that a scrupulous restraint in public adds a peculiar zest and sweetness to the familiarities of the privacy of the boudoir, and that it is first necessary to experience that zest and sweetness before one is able to lose one’s awe and respect for a woman.
Louise Masche 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 taken enthusiastically to the new ideas. She had been seen, in July 1790, digging the soil of the Champ de Mars. Her inclination to be on the winning side had carried her smoothly from the Feuillant to the Girondins and to the Mountain, though at the same time a spirit of compromise, a passion to be liked, and a certain genius for intrigue kept her still in touch
with the aristocrats and the counter-revolutionaries. She was a very gregarious person, frequenting coffee-houses, theatres, fashionable cafés, gaming-rooms, salons, newspaper offices and the antechambers of the Committees. The Revolution afforded her novelties, diversions, smiles, pleasures, business ventures, profitable speculations. Combining political intrigue with amorous adventure, playing the harp, drawing landscapes, singing love songs, dancing Greek dances, giving suppers, entertaining smart women such as the Comtesse de Beaufort and the actress Descoings, sitting up all night at trente et un and biribi or playing la rouge et la noire, she still found time for kindnesses to old friends. Inquisitive, tireless, empty-headed, frivolous, knowing man but nothing of men, as indifferent to the opinions she supported as to those she felt she should repudiate, understanding absolutely nothing of what was happening in France, yet showing herself enterprising, tough and brimful of an audacity based on ignorance of danger and an unlimited confidence in the power of her charms.
The soldier accompanying her was in the flower of his youth. A brass helmet, bordered with panther skin and flaming red chenille, shaded the face of a young cherubim and from its tip there streamed down his back a long and aweinspiring mane of hair. His red jacket, in the form of a waistcoat, scarcely reached to his waist, so not to hide the elegant curve of his back. To his belt was attached an enormous sabre, the hilt the beak of a splendid eagle. His flapped breeches of sky blue moulded the fine muscles of his legs and were braided on the things with rich arabesques of a darker blue. He had the appearance of a dancer dressed for some daring, warlike role, in Achilles at Scyros or Alexander’s Wedding Feast in a costume designed by some pupil of David intent on accentuating every line of the human body.
Gamelin vaguely remembered meeting him somewhere. It was indeed the soldier he had seen a fortnight before haranguing the crowd from the arcades of the Théâtre de la Nation.
The Citizeness Rochemaure introduced him:
‘The Citizen Henry, member of the Revolutionary Committee for the Section of the Rights of Man.’
She kept him always at her heels, a mirror of gallantry and a living certificate of her patriotism.
The citizeness congratulated Gamelin on his talents and asked if he would be willing to design a card for a fashionable milliner, a protégée of hers. He would, of course, choose an appropriate subject, a woman trying on a scarf in front of a cheval-glass for instance, a young workwoman carrying a hat-box under her arm.
She had heard Fragonard fils, young Ducis, as well as a certain Prudhomme mentioned as competent to execute a small matter of this sort; but she preferred to address herself to the Citizen Évariste Gamelin. All the same, she made no definite offer and it was obvious she had mentioned the commission merely to start the conversation. She had in fact come for something very different. She wanted the Citizen Gamelin to do her a favour: knowing he was acquainted with the Citizen Marat, she had come to ask him to introduce her to the Citizen Marat, with whom she wished to have a chat.
Gamelin replied that he was far too insignificant a person to present her to Marat, not that there was any need for anyone to introduce her; Marat, though overwhelmed with affairs, was not the inaccessible man he was said to be.
And Gamelin added:
‘He will receive you, citizeness, if you are in distress: for his great heart makes him available to the unfortunate, and compassionate to all who suffer. He will receive you if you have some revelation to make him concerning the public safety: he has consecrated his life to unmasking traitors.’
The Citizeness Rochemaure replied that she would be happy to salute in Marat an illustrious citizen, who had rendered great services to his country, who was capable of rendering even greater, and that she wished to put this great legislator in touch with some well-meaning men, some philanthropists, favoured by fortune and capable of furnishing him with new means of satisfying his ardent love for humanity.
‘It is desirable,’ she added, ‘to make the wealthy contribute to the public prosperity.’
The citizeness had, in fact, promised the banker Morhardt to arrange for him to dine with Marat.
Morhardt, a Swiss, like the Friend of the People, had joined 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, very simple, was to bring down their price to 650 livres by proposing confiscatory motions in the Convention, buy the greatest possible number at this figure, and then, by proposing motions of a reassuring nature, push the price up again and unload the shares at 4000 or 5000 livres. But Chabot, Julien, Delaunay had become too well-known at this little game. People were suspecting the same game of Lacroix, Fabre d’Églantine, and even Danton. The man behind it all, the Baron de Batz, was on the look-out for new accomplices in the Convention and had advised the banker Morhardt to see Marat.
This idea of the counter-revolutionary speculators was not so strange as it might at first seem. Such people always try to ally themselves with those in power at the moment, and the power of Marat through his popularity, his pen and his character, was formidable. The Girondists were on the wane; the Dantonists, tempest-battered, no longer had the power to govern. Robespierre, the idol of the people, was jealously careful of his image of incorruptibility, suspicious and unapproachable. Marat was the man to get around, the man whose goodwill needed securing against the day when he would be dictator; and this was what everything – his popularity, his ambition, his eagerness to use extreme measures – indicated he would become. And after all, perhaps Marat might re-establish order, finance, prosperity. Several times he had risen to oppose the frenzied agitators who tried to outdo him in their fanaticism; for some time now he had been denouncing the demagogues almost as much as the moderates.
Having incited the people to pillage the monopolists and hang them in their own shops, he was now exhorting the citizens to show calm and prudence. He was becoming a man capable of governing.
Despite certain rumours spread about him, as they were against all the other leaders of the Revolution, these financial sharks did not believe he could be corrupted, but they knew him to be vain and credulous, and they hoped to win him over by flattery, and still more by their condescending friendship which they considered the most seductive form of flattery when offered by men such as themselves. They counted, thanks to him, on manipulating all the securities they wished to buy and sell, and making him serve their interests whilst believing himself to be acting solely for the public good.
A great fixer of assignations, although she was still young enough for love-affairs of her own, the Citizeness Rochemaure had now given herself the commission of bringing together the legislator-journalist and the banker, and in her extravagant imagination she already had the man of the cellars, his hands still red with the blood of the September massacres, taking part in the game of the financiers whose agent she was, flung by his own naïve temperament into this world she so loved of speculators, monopolists, contractors, foreign emissaries, gamblers and light women.
She insisted that Citizen Gamelin took her to the Friend of the People, who lived nearby, in the Rue des Cordeliers near the church. After making some little resistance, the artist yielded to the citizeness’s wishes.
The dragoon, Henry, was invited to accompany them, but refused, pleading his wish to remain uninvolved, even with the Citizen Marat, who, no doubt, had rendered services to the Republic, but who was now weakening: had he not, in his newsheet, counselled the people of Paris to practise resignation?
And young Henry, in a melodious voice, with long sighs, deplored the fate of the Republic, betrayed by the men in whom she had put her trust: Danton rejecting the idea of a tax on the rich, Robespierre opposing the permanence of the Sections, Marat whose pusillanimous counsels were paralysing the enthusiasm of the citizens.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. ‘How weak such men seem besides Leclerc and Jacques Roux!… Roux! Leclercl They are the true friends of the peop
le!’
Gamelin heard nothing of these remarks, which would have roused his indignation: he had gone into the next room to put on his blue coat.
‘How proud you must be of your son,’ the Citizeness Rochemaure said to the Citizeness Gamelin. ‘His talents and his character are outstanding.’
The Citizeness Gamelin seized the opportunity to give a good account of her son, without boasting of him too much before such a high-born lady, as she had been taught since childhood that the first duty the lowly born owe to the great is humility. She was prone to self-pity, not without cause, and found relief in any opportunity to air her grievances. She would dwell at length on the hardship of her life to any whom she thought capable of relieving them, and Madame de Rochemaure appeared to her to be such a person. She therefore made the most of such a propitious moment and, hardly stopping to take breath, related the distressful story of a mother and son dying of starvation. Nobody bought paintings any more: the Revolution had killed business completely. Food was scarce and beyond their means…
And the good woman poured out her lamentations with all the garrulity her thick lips and her halting tongue were capable of, to get them all out before her son, whose pride would not approve such complaints, should reappear. She was intent on arousing as quickly as she could the concern of a lady whom she judged to be rich and influential in her son’s future. And she felt that Évariste’s handsome looks would help her in that they would touch the heart of any well-born lady.
The Gods Will Have Blood Page 9