Sixty years ago she had made the journey to Paris. In a quavering sing-song voice she told the tale to the three young women standing before her, how she had seen the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries and the Samaritaine, and how, as she was crossing the Pont-Royal, a barge laden with apples for the Marché du Mail had broken apart, how the apples had floated with the current and how the river had become red with rosy-cheeked fruit.
She had heard of the changes that had taken place lately in the kingdom, and in particular of the bickering there was between the priests who had taken the oath and those who refused to. She knew also there had been wars and famines and signs in the sky. She did not believe the King was dead. His escape had been arranged, she was convinced, by way of a subterranean passage, and they had substituted a man of the common people to be given to the executioner.
In his wicker cradle at the old woman’s feet, Jeannot, the latest of the Poitrines, was cutting his teeth. The Citizeness Thévenin lifted up the cradle and smiled at the baby, who moaned feebly, exhausted by feverish convulsions. The child must have been very ill, because they had sent for the doctor, the Citizen Pelleport, who, being a deputy-substitute to the Convention, naturally would require no payment.
An innkeeper’s daughter herself, the Citizeness Thévenin was inher element; not satisfied with the farm girl’s washing of the plates and dishes, she gave them an extra wipe, and an extra polish to the knives and forks. Whilst the Citizeness Poitrine was busy attending to the soup, which, as a good cook should, she tasted occasionally, Élodie busied herself slicing a four-pound loaf, hot from the oven. When he saw what she was doing, Gamelin said to her:
‘I read a book a few days ago by some young German whose name I’ve forgotten. There was a beautiful young girl in it called Charlotte, who was busy cutting the bread like you are, Élodie, and she was doing it so gracefully and charmingly that when he saw her the young Werther fell in love with her.’
‘Did they get married?’ asked Élodie.
‘No,’ Évariste answered. ‘It all ended with the violent death of Werther.’
As they were hungry they ate well, but the food was indifferent. Jean Blaise complained bitterly. He was a great man for his food and always insisted upon eating well; his gluttony no doubt arising from the general scarcity. In every household the Revolution had emptied the cooking-pot. Ordinary citizens had to go without. Clever ones such as Jean Blaise, who made huge profits amidst the wretched poverty around him, were able to go to the food shops where they stuffed themselves as full as they could. Brotteaux, on the other hand, who was living on chestnuts and bread-crusts in this year II of liberty, was able to remember the days when he had dined at Grimod de la Reynière’s at the end of the Champs-Élysées. Eager to win the reputation of an accomplished gourmet he reeled off, as he sat there eating Citizeness Poitrine’s bacon and cabbage, a list of exotic kitchen recipes and a string of wide gastronomic maxims. When Gamelin protested that a good Republican scorns the pleasures of the table, the old aristocrat, always the lover of antiquity, made the young spartan a present of the true recipe for the famous old black broth.
After dinner, Jean Blaise, who never forgot business, set his group of artists making studies and sketches of the inn, whose dilapidated condition appeared to him quite romantic. Whilst Desmahis and Dubois were sketching the cowsheds, the girl Tronche came out to feed the pigs. At that moment, the doctor, the Citizen Pelleport, who had been giving his professional services to the Poitrine baby, appeared at the farmhouse door. He walked over to the artists, and, after complimenting them on their talents which he said were an honour to the entire nation, he pointed to Tronche in the midst of her pigs.
‘You see that creature,’ he said. ‘Well, she’s not one girl, she’s two girls. I speak professionally, you understand. I was so amazed at the extraordinary size of her bone structure that I examined her, and I discovered she had most of her bones in duplicate: in both thighs she’s got two femurs welded together, in each shoulder she has a double humerus. Some of her muscles are also duplicated. In my opinion, it’s a case of a pair of twins associated or rather mixed-up together. An interesting phenomenon. I informed Monsieur Saint-Hilaire of the facts and he thanked me. That, citizens, is a monster which you see before you. They call her here “the girl Tronche”. They should call her “the girls Tronches”. For there are two of them. Nature produces these freaks… Well, good evening, citizens; we shall be having a storm tonight…’
After supper by candlelight, the Blaise Academy moved out into the courtyard where they were joined by a son and daughter of the house in a game of blindman’s bluff, which all the younger people played with the hectic energy proper to the high spirits of youth and not on account of the uncertain, precarious times in which they were living. When it had become quite dark, Jean Blaise proposed they played children’s games in the farm kitchen. Élodie suggested the game of ‘Hunt the heart’ and everybody agreed. Under Élodie’s instructions, Philippe Desmahis sketched seven hearts in chalk on pieces of furniture, on the doors and on the walls, one less than the number of players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly joined in. They then danced round in a ring singing ‘La Tour, prends garde!’ and at a sign from Élodie each ran to put their hand on a heart. Gamelin, in his awkward absent-mindedness, was too late to find one not taken and had to pay a forfeit, the little knife he had bought for six sous at the fair at St Germain and with which he had cut the loaf for the starving mother. The game continued and one after the other Blaise, Élodie, Brotteaux and Rose Thévenin failed in turn – a ring, a reticule, a little morocco-bound book, a bracelet. The forfeits were then raffled on Élodie’s lap, and each had to redeem their property by showing their social accomplishments – by 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,…’
The Citizen Blaise, though far less well-read, replied spontaneously with Richemond’s riposte:
‘Monsieur le Saint, ce n’était pas la peine
D’abandonner le celeste domaine.’
Everybody at that time was reading and re-reading with delight the masterpiece of the French Ariosto; the most grave of men smiled over the’ loves of Jeanne and Dunois, at the adventures of Agnes and Monrose and the exploits of the winged ass. Every man of culture knew by heart the best parts of this amusing yet philosophical poem. Évariste Gamelin himself, austere as he was, recited the descent of Grisbourdon into hell quite fervently, when he recovered his knife from Élodie’s lap. Without any accompaniment, the Citizeness Thévenin sang 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…’
Notwithstanding this, Desmahis was in a thoughtful mood. He was, for the moment, ardently in love with the three women he had been playing forfeits with, and was throwing at each in turn burning glances of vibrant appeal. He was in love with Rose Thévenin for the graceful movement of her supple body, her clever acting, her teasing eyes, and her voice that went straight to a man’s heart; he was in love with Élodie because he recognized instincively her strong personality and kind sense of humour; he was in love with Julienne Hasard, in spite of her colourless hair, pale eyelashes, freckles and flat chest, because, like Dunois in Voltaire’s Pucelle, he was always generously prepared to give a token of love to the least attractive – the more so, in this instance, because she appeared at the moment to be the most neglected, and so the most amenable to his advances. Being without any trace of vanity, he was never certain these would be found acceptable; equally he was never certain they would not be found so. He never missed the opportunity, therefore, of making them and taking a chan
ce. Seizing the opportunities offered during the game of forfeits, he had made some tender speeches to Rose Thévenin, who did not appear displeased but who could hardly say much in return under the jealous eyes of the Citizen Jean Blaise. He spoke more warmly still to the Citizeness Élodie, whom he knew to be in love with Gamelin, but he was not so demanding as to require one woman all for himself. Élodie could never care for him; but she was obviously not being successful in her attempts to hide the fact that she considered him quite a handsome fellow. Finally, he whispered his most ardent words into the ear of the Citizeness Hasard, who received them with a look of bewildered stupefaction, which could have meant either abject submission or chill indifference. Desmahis, however, did not conclude she was indifferent.
The inn possessed only two bedrooms, both on the first floor and opening on to the same passage. The one on the left, the better of the two, boasted a flowered wallpaper and a mirror the size of a man’s hand, whose gilt frame had been tarnished by generations of flies ever since the days when Louis XIV had been a child. In it, beneath sprigged muslin curtains, stood two beds with down pillows, sheets and counterpanes. This room was allotted to the three citizenesses.
When the hour came to retire, Desmahis and the Citizeness Hasard, each with a bedroom candlestick in their hand, bade each other good-night in the passage. A note quickly passed from the amorous engraver to the painter’s daughter, begging her when everybody was asleep to come to him in the garret above the citizenesses’ room.
During the day, he had shown judicious foresight and made a careful study of the lie of the land, exploring the garret which he had found full of old chests and trunks, together with strings of onions and apples and pears left there to ripen with swarms of wasps crawling over them. He had happened even to notice an old trestle-bed, now unused as far as he could see, with a palliasse all ripped and flea-infested.
Across the passage, facing the citizenesses’ room was another of much more modest dimensions where the men of the party were to sleep, in what comfort they could. The sybarite, Brotteaux, however, took himself off to sleep in the hay in the barn. Jean Blaise somehow simply disappeared. Dubois and Gamelin were quickly asleep and as soon as silence, like a stagnant pool, had enveloped the house, the engraver arose and crept up the wooden staircase, which creaked under his bare feet. The garret door stood half open. From inside there came the warm, acrid, stifling smell of rotting fruit. On the rickety trestle-bed, fast asleep, with her mouth wide open, her shift drawn up, and her legs wide apart, lay the girl Tronche. She was enormous. Through the garret window, the moonlight bathed her skin with silver and azure: skin which between flecks of dirt and slivers of manure, shone with the freshness of youth. Desmahis threw himself upon her; she woke with a start, crying out with fright. But, as soon as she understood what he wanted of her, she lay back reassured, and, showing no sign of surprise or unwillingness, paetended to be still plunged in a half-sleep, which, relieving her of any scruples in the matter, allowed her a certain pleasure…
Desmahis returned to his room, where he fell into a deep, peaceful sleep until daybreak.
Late the next day, after a final spell of work, the itinerant Academy took the road back to Paris. When Jean Blaise paid their host in assignats, the Citizen Poitrine complained bitterly at the absence nowadays of what he called ‘square-money’, and said he’d light a fine candle for any rogue who’d bring the ‘yellow boys’ back again.
He offered the citizenesses all the flowers they wished, and at his command the girl Tronche climbed a ladder in her sabots and kilted skirts, thus revealing a fine view of her noble, mud-bespattered legs, and effortlessly began to cut blossoms from the climbing roses on the wall. From her huge hands showers, torrents, avalanches of flowers fell into the laps of Élodie, Julienne, and Rose Thévenin. The entire party, when they reached Paris at nightfall, carried armfuls home, and their sleeping and their awakening were filled with the perfume of their fragrance.
XI
ON the morning of September 7th the Citizeness Rochemaure went to visit Gamelin, the new magistrate, in order to solicit his help on behalf of a friend who had been denounced as a suspect. On the stairs she met the ci-devant Brotteaux des Ilettes who had, in the happy days now past, been her lover. Brotteaux was on his way to deliver a gross of his dancing dolls to the toy merchant in the Rue de la Loi, and, to carry them more easily, he had tied them to the end of a pole, as street-hawkers do. His manners to women were always courteous, even to those towards whom long familiarity had made him indifferent, as could hardly fail to be the case with Madame de Rochemaure – unless indeed the added seasoning of betrayal, absence, unfaithfulness and obeseness proved an added appetizer to the fascination she had formerly held for him. Whether that was so or no, he greeted her now, on those sordid stairs with their cracked tiles, as chivalrously as he had ever done on the entrance steps at Les Ilettes, and begged her to do him the honour of entering his garret. She climbed the ladder quite nimbly and found herself under the sloping, wooden beams which supported the tiled roof pierced by one skylight. It was impossible to stand upright and she sat down on the only chair in the wretched place. After a brief glance around, she asked in a tone of surprise and sorrow:
‘Is this where you live, Maurice? You must have little fear of anyone intruding on you. Only a devilish imp or a cat could find you here.’
‘I am somewhat cramped,’ the ci-devant wealthy aristocrat replied, ‘and I do not deny that occasionally it rains on my bed. A trifling inconvenience. On fine nights I am able to see the moon, that symbol and confidant of lovers. For the moon, madame, ever since the world began has been invoked by lovers, and when full, with her pale, round face, she recalls to lovers the object of their desires.’
‘I know,’ the citizeness sighed.
‘Of course, the same thing makes the cat create a fine row outside there in the gutter. But we must forgive love if it makes cats caterwaul on the tiles, considering how it fills the lives of men and women with betrayal and torment.’
Both of them had had the tact to speak as if they were friends who had parted only the night before, and though they had now become strangers to each other, their conversation was gracious and friendly.
Even so, Madame Rochemaure’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere. The Revolution had for a long time been a source of pleasure and profit to her. Lately, however, it had begun to cause her anxiety and disquietude. Her suppers were growing less joyous and brilliant; her music no longer charmed the clouds from sad faces; her tables were being forsaken by the most avid of punters. Many of her acquaintances, now under suspicion, had gone into hiding; her lover, the financier Morhardt, was under arrest, and it was on his behalf she had come to see the Magistrate Gamelin. She was a suspect herself. A posse of National Guards had searched her house, riffled the drawers of her cabinet, pulled up the floorboards, thrust bayonets into her mattresses. When they had found nothing, they had apologized and drunk her wine. But they had come dangerously close to finding her correspondence with Monsieur d’Expilby, an émigré. And certain friends her handsome protégé, Henry, had among the Jacobins, had warned her that he was beginning to endanger her own party by his violent language, which appeared too extravagent to be sincere.
With her elbows on her knees and her head resting on her cupped hands, she sat deep in thought. Then she turned to her old lover who was sitting on the palliasse and said:
‘What do you think of it all, Maurice?’
‘I think our new masters give a philosopher and an observer of life’s passing show much to reflect upon and to laugh at. I also think it would be better for you, my dear, if you were out of France.’
‘Maurice, what is going to happen to us?’
‘You asked me that, Louise, one day when we were driving on the banks of the Cher, along the road to Les Ilettes. The horse had got out of control, do you remember, and was galloping off with us at a dangerous pace. But women were born inquisitive! And now today, for a second time, yo
u want to know what is going to happen to us. Ask the fortune-tellers. I cannot see into the future, my dear. Even the soundest philosopher is little good at that. All things have an end. One can foresee only the possibilities. The victory of the Coalition and the allies entering Paris. They are not far off; but I doubt if they will get here. These soldiers of the Republic take their defeats with an invincible zest. Or it may be that Robespierre will marry Madame Royale* and make himself Protector of the Kingdom during the minority of Louis XVII.’
‘Do you think so!’ exclaimed the citizeness, overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of being privy to such a promising intrigue.
‘Or again it may be,’ Brotteaux continued, ‘that the Vendée will triumph and restore the rule of the priests over a country heaped with ruins and piled with corpses. You cannot conceive, my dear, the iron influence the clergy still has over the masses of the foolish – I beg your pardon, I meant to say “of the faithful”. A slip of the tongue. But, in my poor opinion, the most likely conclusion will be that the Revolutionary Tribunal will bring about its own destruction; it is making too many enemies. Its policy of Terror threatens too many, and they will unite and destroy it, and with it the whole idea of Republican government. I believe it was you who involved our young friend Gamelin in this Tribunal by obtaining him the position of a magistrate. He has a lively conscience; he will be implacable. The more I think of it, dear friend, the more I’m convinced that this Revolutionary Tribunal, set up to save the Republic, will end by destroying it. Like the King, the Convention has decided to have its Grands Jours, and to provide for its security by magistrates appointed by itself and dependent upon it. But how inferior are the Convention’s Grand Jours to those of the monarchy! The determination of the Revolutionary Tribunal to make everybody equal will quickly make it hateful and ridiculous. Did you know, Louise, that this Tribunal, which is about to put the Queen of France on trial, yesterday condemned to death a young servant girl for shouting “Long live the Queen!” She was convicted of malicious intent to destroy the Republic! Our judges, with their black hats and plumes, are modelling themselves on that William Shakespeare, so admired by Englishmen, who introduces crude buffoonery in the midst of his most tragic scenes.’
The Gods Will Have Blood Page 13