The Gods Will Have Blood

by Anatole France

  Sometimes, too, he acted as amanuensis for the market women, but this meant involving himself in Royalist plots and the risks were great. He recalled that another toy merchant, named Joly, lived in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, near the former Place Vendôme and he decided to go and offer him the following day the merchandise which the frightened Caillon had rejected.

  A drizzling rain began to fall. Fearing its effect on his marionettes, Brotteaux quickened his step. After he had crossed the Pont-Neuf and was turning the corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the light of a street lamp a thin old man sitting on a stone post, apparently exhausted with hunger and fatigue yet still preserving a certain venerable air. He wore a tattered overcoat, had no hat and appeared to be about sixty years of age. As he approached the poor wretch, Brotteaux recognized the Father Longuemare whom he had saved from hanging six months ago while they were both waiting in the queue at the baker’s shop in the Rue de Jérusalem. Feeling himself responsible for the man as a result of the service he had done him, Brotteaux walked over to him and introduced himself as that Publican who had stood with him among the crowd on a day of great scarcity, and asked if he could be of some further use to him.

  ‘You seem tired, Father. Try some of this cordial.’ And Brotteaux took out a flask of brandy, from alongside his Lucretius in the pocket of his puce-coloured coat.

  ‘Drink some, and I will assist you back to your house.’

  Father Longuemare pushed away the flask and tried to get up, only to fall back again.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he said, weakly but firmly, ‘for the last three months I’ve been living at Picpus. At five o’clock yesterday afternoon I was warned they were waiting at my lodgings to arrest me, so I did not return home. I have nowhere to go. I have been wandering the streets and am a little tired.’

  ‘In that case, Father,’ Brotteaux suggested, ‘please do me the honour of sharing my garret.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ the Barnabite replied, ‘you understand that I am a suspect.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Brotteaux, ‘and, what is worse, my marionettes are, as well. There they lie, under that flimsy cloth, exposed to this fine rain that is chilling our bones. Yes, Father, I have to tell you that after being a Publican I now earn my living by making dancing dolls.’

  Father Longuemare took hold of the hand which the ci-devant aristocrae extended to him and accepted his hospitality. Back in his garret, Brotteaux gave him a meal of bread, cheese and wine, the wine having been put out in the rain-gutter to keep cool – for was he not a sybarite?

  His hunger appeased, Father Longuemare said:

  ‘I ought to tell you of the circumstances that led me to flee from my home and left me where you found me on the point of death. When I was turned out from my cloister, I lived on the meagre allowance the Assembly permitted me. I gave lessons in Latin and Mathematics and wrote pamphlets on the present persecution of the Church in France. I even wrote a work of some length to prove that the Constitutional oath required of priests is subversive to ecclesiastical discipline. The increasingly severe measures of the Revolution deprived me of all my pupils, and I could no longer draw my pension because I did not possess the necessary certificate of citizenship. I went to claim it at the Hôtel de Ville, convinced that I was well entitled to it. Being a member of an order founded by the Apostle Paul himself, I have always prided myself on following his example, and on being a good French citizen and an upholder of all man-made laws which do not oppose the Divine laws. I presented my application for my certificate of citizenship to Monsieur Colin, the pork-butcher who is the municipal officer responsible for the issue of such certificates. He asked me my profession, I said I was a priest. He asked me if I was married, and when I said I was not, he told me that that was the worse for me. Finally, after numerous other questions, he asked if I had proved my citizenship on the 10th August, the 2nd September and the 31st May. He said that no certificate could be issued except to those who had given proof of their patriotism by registering on those three dates. Since I naturally could not give him a satisfactory answer, he said all that he could do was to take my name and address and promise a prompt inquiry into my case. He kept his word. As a result of his inquiry, two Commissioners of the Committee of General Safety of Picpus, with a band or armed men, arrived at my lodging during my absence to take me to prison. I do not even know of what crime I am accused. But you will agree that one can only have pity for Monsieur Colin, who must be sadly lacking in intelligence to hold it against a priest for not having displayed his patriotism on the 10th August, the 2nd September, and the 31st May. A man capable of such a thing is surely worthy of our pity.’

  ‘I am in the same position. I have no certificate,’ Brotteaux said. ‘We both are suspects. But you are tired, Father. To bed, and we will discuss plans for your safety tomorrow.’

  He gave the mattress to his guest and took the palliasse for himself; but in his humility the monk so pressingly demanded the latter, his wish had to be complied with; otherwise he would have slept on the bare floor.

  Having completed these arrangements, Brotteaux blew out the candle to save tallow and as a wise precaution.

  In the darkness the monk said, ‘Monsieur, I thank you for what you are doing for me, though I realize it matters little to you whether I am grateful or not. Let God record it to your merit. That is what should be a matter of immediate consequence to you. But God sees no difference between what is simply the outcome of natural goodness and what is done for His glory. So I beg you, monsieur, to do for Him what you have been ready to do for me.’

  ‘Father,’ Brotteaux replied, ‘do not concern yourself over such a matter nor feel yourself under any obligation to me whatever. What I am doing at this moment and the merit of which you exaggerate, I am not doing out of love: for though you may well be a lovable man, Father, I do not know you well enough to have any feelings for you. Nor is what I am doing out of humanity, for I am not as simple as Don Juan, to believe, like him, that humanity has certain rights, and such a prejudice, in a mind so free as his, grieves me. I do it simply out of that egoism which inspires all men’s acts of generosity and self-sacrifice, by making us see ourselves in all who dwell in misery, by causing us to count our blessings, and by inciting us to help one who shares our common humanity, deluding us into believing that in helping him we are also helping ourselves. I do it also simply because I’ve nothing better to do: for life is so completely pointless, we have to seek desperately for distractions, and benevolence adds a certain flavour, of an insipid sort, for want of anything more savoury. Finally, I do it out of pride to make myself feel superior to you. Briefly, I do it calculatedly to show you what an atheist can do.’

  ‘Do not slander yourself, monsieur,’ said Father Longuemare. ‘God has revealed to me, more than He has yet to you, the power of His grace, yet I am not as good a man as you, and am far your inferior in natural loving kindness. However, you must allow me one advantage over you. You say you cannot love me, because you do not know me. Yet, I, monsieur, not knowing you, love you better than myself: God demands that of me.’

  Having spoke thus, Father Longuemare knelt on the floor, and, having said his prayers, lay down on his palliasse and fell peacefully asleep.

  XIII

  ÉVARISTE GAMELIN took his seat at the Tribunal for the second time. Before the sitting opened, he had discussed with his colleagues the news that had arrived that morning. Some of it was uncertain and some false; but what could be relied on as true was appalling. The armies of the Coalition, commanding all the roads had joined forces, La Vendée continued to gain victories, Lyons was in revolt, Toulon had surrendered to the English, who at that moment were landing fourteen thousand troops there.

  For Gamelin and his colleagues these events were as much matters of domestic concern as events of world-wide interest. Their own fates were bound irrevocably with that of their country and its salvation meant their salvation. Their own interests and the nation’s were so entwined that the latt
er dictated their opinions, emotions and conduct.

  Seated on his bench, Gamelin was given a letter from Trubert, Secretary of the Committee of Defence; it informed him of his appointment as Commissioner of Supplies of Powder and Saltpetre:

  You will excavate all the cellars in the Section in order to extract the substances necessary for the manufacture of gunpowder. The enemy may reach Paris tomorrow: it is essential that the soil of our country provides us with the means to repel our aggressors. I send you herewith instructions from the Convention regarding the treatment for saltpetre. Fraternal greetings.

  At that moment the accused was brought in. He was one of the last of the defeated generals whom the Convention was handing over to the Tribunal, and the most insignificant. Gamelin shuddered at the sight of him: it seemed as if he were seeing again the same soldier whom, as a spectator, he had seen sentenced and sent to the guillotine three weeks ago. The man was the same, with his obstinate, self-opiniated air: the procedure was the same. His answers were given in a cunning brutal way, which robbed them of all conviction. His double-faced double-dealing and the accusation he brought against his subordinates made it difficult to remember he was attempting the honourable task of defending his good name and his life. Everything he said was questionable, every statement disputable, position of armies, total forces involved, munitions received, orders given or received, troops engaged: nothing could be known for certain. Nobody could make any sense of these confused, aimless, ridiculous manoeuvres which had ended in disaster, nobody, not even the advocate for the defence, for the prosecution, the accused himself, the judges or the magistrates; and the strange thing was that nobody would admit, even to himself, that all this was so. The judges amused themselves drawing plans and discussing problems of tactics and strategy; the accused continued to reveal his natural predilection for double-dealing.

  The argument dragged on and on. And as it did, Gamelin kept seeing on the shattered roads of the North ammunition wagons stuck in the mud, cannons capsized in the ruts, and mile upon mile of broken defeated troops flying in disorder and continuously under attack on all sides from the enemy’s cavalry. And he kept hearing from the vast host of betrayed men a mighty roar of accusation arising against this general. Darkness was falling when the hearing ended, and the sculptured head of Marat could be half-seen like a phantom above the President’s head. Called upon to pronounce their verdict, the magistrates could not agree. Gamelin rose, and in a dull voice, as if the words were being forced from his throat, yet with deadly incisiveness, declared the accused guilty of treason against the Republic. A roar of approval arose from the crowd and caressed his youthful zeal. The sentence was read by the light of torches which shed a wavering pallid light on the accused’s bony forehead which could be seen to be wet with sweat. Outside, on the steps thronged with the usual mob of cockaded harridans, Gamelin could hear his name, now becoming known to the habitual members of the crowd, being passed from mouth to mouth, and he was surrounded by a group of tricoteuses who, shaking their fists, demanded he obtain the head of the Queen.

  The following day Évariste was called on to decide the fate of a poor woman, the Widow Meyrion. She used to go from house to house delivering bread, pushing a little handcart along the streets and carrying a wooden tally around her waist on which she cut notches with her knife to represent the number of loaves she delivered. She had earned eight sous a day. The Deputy Public Prosecutor appeared unusually vindictive towards this unfortunate creature, who, it appeared, had shouted ‘Vive le Roi’ on several occasions, had been heard to make anti-revolutionary remarks in the houses at which she called, and was accused of being involved in a plot to engineer the escape of the Queen. When questioned by the judge, she admitted the allegations against her; whether a simpleton or a fanatic, she professed the most extreme Royalist sentiments and counted herself lost.

  The Revolutionary Tribunal, dedicated to Equality, prided itself on its impartiality and made a point of being as severe with porters and servant-girls as with aristocrats and financiers. Gamelin himself could not conceive a people’s government acting otherwise. He would have judged it contemptible, an insult to the people, to exclude the people themselves from punishment; that would have appeared as if the people, so to speak, were unworthy of punishment. If reserved only for the aristocrats, the guillotine would have appeared to him as a sort of iniquitous privilege. Gamelin was beginning to turn punishment into a religious and mystical ideal, to give it a virtue and merit of its own. He was beginning to believe that society owes criminals their punishment and that to cheat them of it is to do them an injustice in depriving them of their rights. He declared the woman Meyrion guilty and worthy of the supreme penalty, regretting only that the fanatics, more guilty than her, who had been her accomplices, were not there to share her fate.

  Almost every evening Évariste attended the Jacobin Club which met in the former chapel of the Dominicans, vulgarly known as the Jacobins, in the Rue Honoré. In a courtyard, where stood a tree of liberty, a poplar whose leaves rustled ceaselessly, the chapel, built in an inferior, clumsy style and surmounted by a heavy roof of tiles, had a bare gable pierced by a round window and an arched doorway, above which the National colours were flown on a flagstaff crowned with a cap of liberty. The Jacobins had appropriated the premises and taken the name given to the dispossessed monks, in the same way as had the Cordeliers and the Feuillants. Gamelin had once regularly attended the Cordeliers and at the Jacobins he missed the familiar sabots, carmagnoles and rallying cries of the Dantonists. At the Jacobins, Robespierre’s club, an official reserve and bourgeois gravity were the accepted form. Marat, the Friend of the People, was no more, and since his death Évariste had followed the doctrines of Robespierre whose opinions ruled the Jacobins, and through them a thousand affiliated Jacobin clubs scattered all over France. During the reading of the minutes, his eyes wandered over the bare, gloomy walls, which, after having sheltered the spiritual sons of the arch-inquisitors.

  There, without pomp or ceremony, sat the most powerful men in the country: men who ruled by the power of the spoken word. They ruled the city of Paris and dictated to the Convention itself the laws it made. These builders of the new order – so respectful of the rule of law that they continued to be Royalists in 1791 and would have wished to remain Royalists even after the King had been brought back, after his flight, from Varennes – so obstinate in their attachment to the Constitution, so determined to be friends of the old order even after the massacres of the Champ de Mars and never to become revolutionaries against the revolution, so contemptuous of popular feelings – these builders of the new order cherished in their dark and powerful souls a love of their country which had made them bring forth fourteen armies to defend it and to use the guillotine as the instrument of their reign of terror. Évariste sat lost in admiration of their singleness of mind, their vigilance, their reasoned dogmatism, their unsleeping suspicion, their meticulous administration, their supreme gifts in the art of governing, their remorseless sanity.

  The public which formed the audience that day gave little sign of its presence, save a long-drawn low murmur, like the rustlings of the leaves of the tree of liberty outside.

  For that day, the II Vendémiaire,* a young man with a receding forehead, piercing eyes, prominent nose, pointed chin, pock-marked face, and an air of cold self-possession, had slowly mounted the tribune. His hair was powdered white and he wore a blue coat that accentuated his slim figure. He carried himself with a precise distinction and walked with a light rhythmic movement that made some compare him derisively to a dancing-master and had caused others to nickname him the French Orpheus. Speaking in a clear voice, Robespierre delivered an eloquent, logical attack upon the enemies of the Republic. He dealt forcibly by means of uncompromising and metaphysical arguments with Brissot and his accomplices. He spoke at great length, his sentences flowing smoothly and harmoniously. Soaring into rarer spheres of philosophy, he hurled his thunderbolts at the base conspirators craw
ling on the ground.

  Évariste listened and understood. Until now he had accused the Girondists of working for the restoration of the monarchy or the triumph of the Orléans faction and of planning the destruction of Paris, that heroic city which had freed France and would one day free the world. Now, through the voice of this wise man, he was discovering lighter and purer truths; he was comprehending a philosophy, a metaphysic, of revolution which raised his thoughts far above gross material happenings into a world of absolute certainties safe from all the subjective errors of the senses. In themselves things are involved and confused; facts are so complex it is difficult not to lose one’s way amongst them. Robespierre simplified everything for him, revealing the good and the evil to him in simple, clear terms. Either Federalism or Centralization; Centralization meant unity and safety; Federalism meant chaos and damnation. Gamelin tasted the mystical joy of a believer who has come to know the word that saves and the word that destroys. Henceforth the Revolutionary Tribunal, like the ecclesiastical tribunals of former times, would recognize crime as an absolute, definable in one word. And because he was by nature religious, Évariste received these revelations with an awed enthusiasm, his heart expanded and rejoiced at the thought that henceforth he possessed a symbolic means to discern between guilt and innocence. Oh, treasures of faith! Those who have faith, have need of nothing else!

  The wise Robespierre enlightened him further regarding the perfidious intentions of those who favoured equality of property and partition of land, who were demanding the abolition of wealth and poverty and the establishment of a happy mediocrity for all. Misled by their specious arguments, Gamelin had originally approved of their aims, which he had considered to be in accordance with the principles of a true Republican. But Robespierre unmasked their machinations and convinced him that these men, ostensibly so disinterested, were working to undermine the Republic, that they were alarming the wealthy in order to arouse powerful and implacable enemies against the Republic. Once private property was threatened, the whole population would suddenly turn against the Republic, since those who possessed least, valued it the most. To alarm vested interests was to conspire against the Republic. These men, who were proposing a system of equality and common ownership of all goods, as being a worthy aim for all good citizens to secure universal happiness and justice, were in reality traitors more dangerous even than the Federalists.