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) brandishin
g 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.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 246