by Guy Endore
“Yes,” he continued, “the mistake we made was to abolish the guillotine. We threw away there the most valuable tool revolutionaries have ever had at their disposal.”
He was not particularly concerned about Aymar’s interest in the madman who was to be tried that afternoon. Perhaps his mind was full of other matters. The hundreds of confiscated sheets, pillow cases, etc., all of the finest linen damask, and the fine furniture, etc., which he had had transported to London, to be there a kind of nest egg in case the Commune should fail. Or else he was wondering about his speculation in garlic, of which there was serious shortage. Or are these tales mere anti-Communard inventions? Who can say? Certain it is that his closest friends had little respect for anything pertaining to him except his throat, which was capable of accepting without a murmur as much live brandy as he cared to throw down it, and that was by no means little.
Absent-mindedly he fussed about his papers and finally furnished Aymar with a pass to see the madman. “Il estpermisau citoyen Galliez de communiquer avec le Bertrand Chaillet détenu pour la cour martiale à la prison du Cherche-Midi,” signed it and passed it over to Aymar who, seeing the name, was now certain of the matter.
“Just the addition of an h after the c was enough to hide him from me,” he thought. Aloud he said: “There’s a good deal I can tell you about this man. I should like to write out a little report for you.”
“It will be welcome,” said Gois. “But I’m not sure that there will be time to go into the matter very deeply. In cases of that kind I like to show clemency to balance my severity in more important matters.”
Aymar hurried off to see Bertrand. A National Guardsman brought him to a small room, not originally intended for a cell. Inside, seated on a cot, was Bertrand, his features almost unrecognizable behind purple blotches. A strait-jacket immobilized his arms. He did not raise his head from its sunken position.
“Bertrand,” said Aymar softly.
“You, uncle?” Bertrand asked without moving.
“Bertrand,” Aymar repeated with compassion. “You, here? What has happened?”
“Nothing. Leave me here. I want to die.”
“Where is Mlle de Blumenberg?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I must never see her again. I have done enough harm in my life.”
“Is she safe?”
“I hope so. But I know that I ruined her life. Do you recall when you used to give me raw bloody meat and said it was for my anemia? Well, I know now that it was just a ruse. But it didn’t work.”
“What are you implying?” Aymar urged. Under his interrogation, Bertrand rapidly explained Sophie’s sacrifice for him. He concluded:
“Don’t try to save me any more and don’t let Sophie know I’m here, for I cannot trust myself. It is best that I die.”
“I have long had no intention of saving you. Bien au contraire. If you had not assured me, at Piepus that time, that you were cured, I can tell you I would have had you then where you now are. And I shall do my best to see that you do not escape this time. Good-bye, Bertrand.”
“Good-bye, uncle,” the boy
Aymar’s heart was wrung. Could he really leave the lad thus? He was not only sacrificing Bertrand, but all those hours of instruction, all those long years of training. Could one forget such things utterly, and separate thus with so few words?
“Isn’t there something I can do for you?”
No answer.
“Take a message to Sophie?”
Bertrand shook his head vigorously. Then he said: “Say goodbye to Françoise, she was always good to me, and to my mother, if you ever see her.”
Aymar, his eyes misted with tears, limped out and took a cab home. “Yes, let this be the end of it,” he thought, and set to work at once to prepare a damnatory report.
He had purposed, at first, to confine himself to a rapid sketch of the implicating crimes. He had intended no more than an outline. But he was carried aw subject and allowed his personal feelings a sha brief. It was a ridiculous thing to do and he was ashamed of it. But these matters had fermented in him too long. They burst through the cold phrases in which would have liked to set down the plain narrative of a criminal career. Willy-nilly, he was swept away by a flood of emotion that translated itself into a heated harangue, full of misplaced rhetoric, but a natural rhetoric nevertheless, for it flowed from his pen-point as if it were born there and not in his brain.
And as he went on he warmed to his subject. He permitted himself remarks that were blasphemous to the minds of the Commune, he developed arguments that at this point in history were plain heresy. Then he cast aside all fear and launched himself into his subject with all the fire and vigor he could command.
After all, there was a point to be gained. Colonel Gois had said: “In cases of that kind I like to show clemency to balance my severity in more important matters.” This must on no account be permitted. Bertrand must be sentenced to death. To this end Aymar made a display of all his research, attempted to show that the punishment of burning at the stake which the Church had meted out was not to be rejected as mere medieval cruelty, but to be examined on its own merits.
“The vast strides of our generation in the conquest of the material world must not mislead us into thinking that when we have plumbed the physical world to its depths we shall thereby have explained all there is to explain. The scientists of a former day strove mightily to fathom the depth of the spiritual world and their successes and conquests are all but forgotten.
“Who can estimate what thanks we owe to those courageous priests of old who went into the forbidding Druidic forests and with bell and book and swinging censer, exorcised the sylvan spirits, banished the familiars, expelled the elementals, cast out the monsters and the devils of old Gaul? Who can estimate the debt we owe to them for helping to slay all the strange and unnatural beasts that formerly cowered in every dark cranny and recess, under ferns and moss-covered rocks, waiting to leap out at the unwary passer-by who did not cross himself in time? Not all of these monsters were equally evil, but all constituted unwelcome interferences in the destiny of man.
“If today the lonely traveler can walk fearlessly through the midnight shadows of the silent forests of France, is it because of the vigilance of our police? Is it because science has taught us to be unbelievers in ghosts and monsters? Or is not some thanks due the Church, which after a millennium of warfare succeeded at long last in clearing the atmosphere of its charge of hidden terror and thus allowed for the completer unfolding of the human ego? We who have profited thereby should not allow pride to blind us to our debt. Future clearer thinkers will support my contention.
“Yes, if today we feel safe from the diabolic terrors that afflicted the benighted folk of former days, let us not take pride as if we had merely outgrown a childish fear. Let us examine the matter without bias.
“Evil exists. And evil breeds evil. The horrors and cruelties of history link hands down the ages. One deed engenders another, nay, multiplies itself. One perpetrator of crime infects another. Their kind increases like flies. If nothing resists this plague, it will terminate with the world a seething mass of corruption.
“Let us beware of judging hastily. The Catholic Church is said to have burnt 300,000 witches, until the world exclaimed in horror: ‘What gross superstition! There are no witches.’ And truly there were none. At any rate there were no more.
“But now the bars have been let down, the doors are opening wide and monsters of old, in new disguises, will soon throng the world. The new terror will not lurk in the forest but go abroad in the marketplace; it will not attack lonely wayfarers but will seize the throat of nations. There will be wars such as the world has never seen, and inhumanities such as no one has dreamt of. And the dark blood of life will flow in cataracts, and the cries of those 300,000 witches will be only as the twitter of birds to the massed groans of dying mankind.”
Flushed with labor, for he had written in great hurry in order to finis
h before the trial, and flushed too with the embarrassment that comes of having uncovered secret places in his heart, he ran off to the building set aside for the councils of war, at the corner of the rue du Cherche-Midi and the rue du Regard.
Colonel Gois was visible, but busy. It was past seven o’clock and the session of the court-martial was to begin at nine in the evening. Colonel Gois took Aymar’s brief, asked a few questions which Aymar parried as best he could, saying, “You’ll find everything in there,” and having received the colonel’s assurance that the document would be read, he left.
Well, that was over and done with. If it was a mistake, it was now irreparable. And in that fact there was more consolation than in debating whether to do or no. Relieved, Aymar took a seat in the large uninteresting hall in which the trials would soon take place. For the moment the room was empty. A few lamps suspended from the ceiling attacked the gloom. The shadows retreated slightly and massed themselves in the corners as if to gather their strength and return a swarm of bats, to strangle the feeble lights.
A few National Guardsmen, bayonets fixed, saw to the orderly seating of the public which began to fill the benches. Ladies, expensively gowned, took the first row.
Finally Gois entered and immediately the cases were brought up. Minor matters: theft, lack of respect, brawls. Then came the meat of the evening. Jean-Nicolas Girot, Captain of the 74th, accused of insubordination by the chef d’escadron, Gandin. The lawyers argued. Then Girot spoke.
He admitted the facts. His company had been on duty at the Porte Maillot under fire from the enemy for three days. It had been promised them that they were to be relieved. The men were weak from constant exertion and from lack of food. But no sooner had they been relieved and marched off than they were ordered back. “In my conscience,” Girot concluded his defense, “I found the right to disobey. As chief of my company, I arrogate all responsibility.”
President Gois suspended the audience for a moment and deliberated with his associate judges. They soon produced a verdict which Gois read aloud. It was a succession of Attendu que… attendu que, that is to say “inasmuch as the accused admits the charge; inasmuch as the Porte Maillot is where the enemy is now concentrated; inasmuch as the political past of the accused, no matter how glorious (Girot was an old Republican), cannot excuse him from fulfilling the military duties he has accepted to perform, etc., etc. We declare the accused guilty of having refused to march against the armed rebels of Versailles.
“Wherefore the court, after due deliberation, condemns Citizen Girot, Jean-Nicolas, to the punishment of death, which shall take place—”
In a loud voice the condemned man cut across Gois’ readings with a sharp, impertinent, “Thank you, gentlemen.”
Another case was rapidly called up lest the public demonstrate. And a public once invited to demonstrate takes to that weapon all too readily.
It was past midnight before Bertrand was brought up. The room by that time had become infernally hot. The lamps smoked. The air was stifling. The spectators squirmed a little impatiently. The sight of Bertrand did not move them. There was nothing unusual about him, neither his hangdog expression nor his hands tied behind his back, the strait-jacket having been reinoved.
The case was rapidly reviewed. The single witness, his arms in bandages, his face badly slashed by tooth and nail, was invited to recount his story. Then Bertrand was asked for a statement, but refused to make any. By agreement both sides had dispensed with lawyers, so that matter was soon concluded.
After a moment’s deliberation, President Gois rose to speak. Aymar’s heart began to pound for the president was holding up Aymar’s script as if he were about to read from it, and indeed he did read from it, but in a way that altered Aymar’s intention at every point.
“Here,” he concluded after a rapid and attenuated summary of the facts given by Aymar, “is a case that would have been led to the stake in former days. The Catholic Church, ladies and gentlemen, burnt three hundred thousand of these. Think of it! Three hundred thousand people whose only crime was that they were afflicted with a disease, people, therefore, who should have been handed over to competent doctors, not to the executioner. The Commune, enlightened and guided by science, does not propose to confuse physical or mental illness with deliberate violation of social laws. Indeed, it is the aim of the Commune eventually to treat all criminals as if they were sick people and cure them by the application of medicine and hygiene. And that fortunate day will come, once the rebels of Versailles and their allies, the priests and monks, have been exterminated.
“It is that brood that for centuries has fostered the belief that only their crosses and prayers, their torture chambers and their flaming fagots and stake, could hold the devil in check. And this young man, deluded by I know not what disease into thinking himself a mad dog, would have been an example for them to exhibit as proof of the existence of the devil and of the need of priest and aristocrat to hold the Evil One in cheek.
“We deal differently. Here is no self-interest seeking to oppress a people and hold it in subjection by means of enforced and cunningly inculcated ignorance and superstition. Here is progress, freedom and intelligence. This court therefore agrees that inasmuch as the accused is suffering from an illness which leads him to go mad at times; that inasmuch as he shows by his present demeanor that his violence is only temporary; that inasmuch as this court tries only crimes and does not propose to cure disease by jail or execution, that this court therefore decrees that the accused be turned over to the infirmary at the prison of La Santé for treatment, and there be guarded until cured.
“Read in public audience of the court-martial…” etc.
“Talk! Talk! Talk!” Aymar muttered in disgust at seeing his own words quoted against him. “Talk one way and talk another. All words, words, fighting words, and none of us knowing anything.”
There was in truth a great deal of talking that day. That same evening in the Hotel de Ville the “American” Cluseret, formerly head of military affairs, was being tried for high treason. The trial seemed never to want to come to the point. The committee, formed for the purpose of judging this professional revolutionist who had brought his sword to the support of a dozen wars in as many countries of the old and new world, was in the majority for freeing the general, but even more anxious to employ this occasion to attack the minority that had framed the charge against him.
There were endless speakers, there was endless bickering. Every detail of the events of the last few weeks had to be gone over and gone over again.
It was late at night. Vermorel was speaking. The inquest, he declared, had shown the falseness of the charge against Cluseret, but “the ease with which we can arrest a military chief when he seems to be doing our cause harm, that is the important point of this trial. That, it seems to me, is one of the best symptoms of the soundness of the Commune, the best proof of its strength!”
A pale, agitated man had come into the hall. He held a telegram in his hand and waited impatiently for Vermorel to cease, but as the latter showed every sign of launching out into a long address, he cried out, annoyed:
“Make it quick!”
Everyone turned to look at the rude interrupter. It was Billioray, member of the Central Committee. In the silence that followed he ordered all unimportant officers out and all doors closed. Then he read the telegram. It was from General Dombrowski and announced that the Versailles troops had forced an entrance into the city and were pouring in.
The trial was resumed, but the speakers had their minds elsewhere. No more flowing orations. In short phrases the matter was concluded and brought to a vote. Twenty-eight to seven voted for immediate release. Cluseret was now admitted to hear the decision.
He thought it incumbent to say a few words, but no one listened. The hall emptied itself. The days of talk, talk, talk were over.
The members of the Central Committee departed into the night. Some were thinking of their families or of themselves, and these hastened
to find safer quarters. But others, heroic to the end, went to superintend the throwing up of barricades, and sought in a last desperate resistance to die for their cause.
Chapter Seventeen
At a later period Aymar added several postscripts to his defense of Bertrand Caillet, known as Bertrand Chaillet of the 204th battalion of the National Guard. We have quoted elsewhere part of one to the effect that the uprising of the Commune was due to a kind of infectious disease. The following paragraphs, too, are of interest:
“After the trial and conviction of Bertrand, Colonel Gois returned my manuscript.
“‘Mon cher M Galliez,’ he said, ‘there are ideas in this thesis of yours which you would have done better not to express, and that is why I am returning this to you. Destroy it. Such things are dangerous.’
“I replied stiffly, for his plagiarism of my work had annoyed me not a little and his present schoolmasterish reprimand struck me in a sensitive spot: ‘They seem to have been good enough for you to have used,’ I said; ‘but you are right. I have noticed myself that the Commune is afraid of ideas. However, I have never allowed timidity to restrain me from exercising that freedom of thought and expression which an earlier, and more successful, Commune once procured for us.’
“To my surprise, for I knew his intransigence, he smiled and put his arm around me. ‘Come, Aymar, you really don’t seriously believe all the things you wrote there, do you?,
“As a matter of fact, I didn’t and yet I did, so I answered evasively: ‘And what if I do?’
“‘Hm,’ he said. ‘And are you going to be a priest?’
“‘Perhaps,’ I answered.
“‘You? Aymar Galliez? You in a soutane with a cross hanging over your belly? No, I can’t believe it!’ He laughed.