JEAN AND ESPÉRANCE
Much of the city must have slept at night. But so much of it waked, so
much of it roamed the streets, pressed with business, or watching and
hearkening to others pressed with business, so much of it, all night
through, burned candles in rooms great and small, so much of it talked,
harangued and chanted that a visitor, suddenly in presence from afar,
might have asked, “Have you conquered sleep?” Presumably children and
the very old slept. Most others seemed in the streets or in the lighted
rooms, or upon the floors or in the galleries of the red-capped, and
tri-coloured, the haranguing, the fierce and red-hot, the immensely
Patriot, the double-distilled revolutionary clubs. The city was fevered,
fevered! Voices never stopped, footfalls never stopped, small surging,
rushing sound of many patriot feet together never stopped. Lights never
went out. At the deadest hour, when the night side of earth has almost
forgotten the sun, yet rose in the streets voices of proclamation, yet
some speaker found a group to address, yet somewhere beat a drum, yet
somewhere, gusts of wind in leaves, Paris whirled in _Ronde
patriotique_, later to be called _Carmagnole_.
Jacobins’ Club. They sat, they stood, they harangued, they applauded,
they dissented, they stayed late in the Club of the Jacobins. At times
they stayed all night, gods denouncing the old Titans. The gods, an
unnamed Titan in their own element, had all the nave of the Jacobins’
church. Up from pavement to hollow roof, tier on tier, climbed the
benches, narrow stairs and galleries giving access. Thus was made circle
above circle for patriot Paris, for patriot provinces come up to Paris,
for forward-looking, revolutionary-minded units drawn to Paris from the
elsewhere world, come to observe France and Paris and the cradle
turnings of a mighty Change. Circle above circle sat full, even crowded.
The topmost circle, putting up its hand, might touch the groined roof.
The lowermost circle, shuffling feet on pavement, must look up a little
to the platform and the seated officers of the Society.
The platform was built against a pyramidal, tall shape of black marble,
a sepulchral monument left in the Church of the Jacobins. Back of
officers were ranged, each in white plaster, each on his pedestal, busts
of Patriots whom men must honour. Here were Mirabeau, American Franklin,
and others. The lower throng of the amphitheatre faced these and the
platform. But midway from floor to roof the circles drew level with the
tribune. The tribune was built high, built very high, and midmost of the
nave. A light stair climbed to it. Up here, as from a Simeon’s Pillar,
as from a fount, hill-top high, came the voices addressing the Jacobins’
Society, Paris, France, Europe, and America, Mankind, Reason, and
Unreason.
The autumn it was of 1791. In the Tuileries, guarded by red Swiss, still
waked or slept as the case might be, a King and his family. The old
Constituent Assembly had passed away; a new Assembly was beginning what
work it might do. In the prisons waked or slept Suspects, but the
prisons were not filled as they would come to be filled. Hope of a world
that must change, changing temperately--it was still possible to indulge
that hope! Even in nightly meetings of the Society of the Jacobins it
might be indulged. The gods had not yet loosed the mad god. They were
going to war to the end with the Titans, but there seemed room for hope
that these might be vanquished without calling in the ghastly allies,
the monsters of the gods’ own deeps. There was room for pure natures to
believe that. Why should victory be a Pyrrhic victory?
The Club of the Jacobins on an autumn night, and a fever of thought,
crescent thought and senescent thought; concepts, rulers to come, hardly
out of swaddling bands, and concepts tottering, failing, old men
fiercely loth to come to the grave. Thought in a fever, and emotion a
boiling deep....
The circles, red-capped, glowed like poppy beds. But the poppies stood
not for sleep, nor for languorous “let the world go daffing by!” Noise
ran and leaped through all the circles, fierce outbursts of “Yes!” and
“No!”--fierce, exultant laughter, fierce muttering and growling of
dissent. At times the myriad-brained produced from the heights of itself
clearness, intelligence, and nobility. These were halcyon times, clear
intelligence in the tribune, clear intelligence in the circles! The next
hour, intelligence might weaken and doze away, and all the past rise in
murk and storm.
From the tribune many and many had spoken, tongues eloquent and tongues
stumbling, heavy-laden, minds of varying scope. Darkness and cold had
spoken, and darkness and heat. Glowing heat had often spoken. Now and
then light spoke. Hunger spoke, hunger of the body, hunger of the mind,
hunger of the spirit, hunger and longing and all in varying degrees.
The night was September. Above Paris the cauldron hung a tranquil sky,
a great full moon. The cauldron boiled and bubbled, it sent forth
restless particles, rising steam-mist, colours, blue and green and
wine-red, scintillating. Where rose the ancient Church of the Jacobins,
where debated the Revolutionary Society, called of the Jacobins, the
cauldron boiled intensest.
The circles swept crowded from pavement to roof with patriots,
_citoyens_, _citoyennes_, Parisians, provincials, citizens of elsewhere
in the world, dreamers, hopers, and builders, sometimes with clouds,
dwellers in Idea-land. Back of the platform, of the gleaming busts of
Patriots, flags were draped. There were old Ideas made visible! Why
should not other and greater Ideas get their incarnation?
Upon the president’s platform, beside the president and lesser officers
of the Jacobins’ Society, sat, tricolor-cockaded, three or four who
might speak this night, mounting the tribune high-raised between
pavement and dome. One speaker was there now, a bulky Patriot,
dark-visaged, black-headed, with a great voice that boomed and
reverberated in the nave of the Jacobins. And he was a favourite, and
the circles applauded. Passionate he waxed, sublime upon the Rights of
Man!
At last he made an end, though still he spoke, coming down the stair,
and while he made his way across the crowded pavement. The Jacobins
applauded like a roaring wind, up and down the poppies shook!
The president rang his bell. He was speaking of the next speaker--a
Patriot from the South. The Patriot from the South, nimble and dark,
climbed the tribune stair and from the space atop saluted every quarter
of the Jacobins, then fell to speaking, fierily and well. He had for
subject kings in their palaces, aristocrats entrenched, and National
Assemblies too fondly dandling the past. The Jacobins roared assent, by
acclamation gave him more than his set time. When he was done the
circles were like a red sea in storm.
The president rang his bell thrice.... Here in the tribune stood an
Englishman, slow but weighty, member of the London Corresponding
Society, friend of Revolutions. He spoke of Independence, of the Power
of the Mind, of the decaying foundations of Oppressions, of fair play
and equal way, of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, lastly of the
call to action very fully provided by this moment in the World-Epic....
The Jacobins applauded because they felt friendly toward English friends
of Liberty, and because, indeed, many sat there who could listen
absorbed to speech of abstractions. The Englishman ended, went with his
cool deliberateness back to the platform. The president’s bell rang....
In the circles were very many women; in all Paris and France women were
afoot while men rode. Women as spectators, as consolers, encouragers,
applauders, inciters, women as mænad participants, priestesses of the
marching god, furies when there was need for furies--France and Paris
understood these! In the circles sat _citoyennes_ enough. Often enough,
passionate and fluent enough, _citoyennes_ sprang to their feet and
harangued, urging bread for their young, freedom _du peuple_,
bread--bread! Women, to-night, had place in all the circles, the higher,
the midmost and the lower,--attendants’ place, sympathizers’,
encouragers’ place, under due orders, participants’ place....
Upon the platform, on the bench behind the president, sat, with those
who had earlier spoken, a man and a woman. Behind them gleamed the
flags and the Patriots’ busts and the great monument of black marble.
The man and woman seemed about of an age, just this side perhaps of
thirty-five. They were well-made, fair to look upon, light and strong,
dressed, needfully, with simplicity, but here, where that was not
required, with a clean simplicity. They sat looking into the hollow of
the Jacobins, into the resounding shell.
The president’s bell rang. Standing, he was speaking of these two whom
he himself had brought here to-night, of Jean and Espérance Merlin. It
seemed that they had come from Brittany, from the sea, drawn to Paris,
as others were drawn, because it announced itself soil for the sowing of
Ideas. It seemed that Jean Merlin was a teacher who taught in a way that
was not usual--a way that he and his wife had worked out
together--Espérance Merlin no less than Jean. It seemed also that they
were good, if quiet, lovers of France and that they had long and
heroically relieved misery in their town by the sea. It seemed that once
they had done the speaker a kindness--a kindness that he had never
forgotten. If their ideas should ring strange to some.... Still, in that
beautiful future that all might plainly see, many ideas that once rang
strange.... “_Citoyens_, _citoyennes_, the Society of the Jacobins is
hospitable to Ideas! They come to us upon the clouds, from east and west
and north and south. And some we will take to heart and some we will
not, but we will give to all a hearing. We shall not be afraid of
strangeness.... Jean and Espérance Merlin!”
Speakers to-night to the Jacobins had each but short time. When the
tribune was done, the floor, the galleries, the circles must speak. Now
the red caps moved about, the voices strongly murmured like a turbulent
sea. Then the sea settled to hear Jean and Espérance Merlin.
The two mounted together the tribune stair. The man stood first in the
speaker’s place, the woman sat down upon the topmost stair, awaiting her
turn. A few in the hall of the Jacobins knew them, or knew of them, of
what they did and thought in their country by the sea. These applauded.
Jean Merlin began to speak.
Presently he motioned to the seated woman. She rose and stood beside
him. She spoke, he resting from speech. Her voice was a deep bell,
carrying through the Jacobins’ amphitheatre. She spoke of the Freeing of
Women. The sweet and deep bell sound of her voice ceased; she stood
silent while the man took the word. Again, the Freeing of Women. Freedom
of Man and Freedom of Woman. The two speakers had simplicity, largeness,
and strength; they had holding power. Deep and wide by now was their
wisdom-garden, and beautiful, at times, the light that played there.
What they had come to say was said. They quitted the tribune, descended
the tribune stair. In the hall of the Jacobins those travellers abreast
with them, or close behind them, gave them applauding recognition. But
very many disagreed, and some gave fierce expression to that
disagreement. The two reached the floor, stood there among the throng.
The president’s bell rang and rang again.... Here was a Patriot, urging
from the tribune Fêtes and Demonstrations. The poppy circles were giving
ear. On went the night in the Society of the Jacobins.
Continuously persons entered or quitted the amphitheater. The coming and
going received no especial attention. On went the voices, the emotional
heat, rapturous agreements, sudden and violent disagreements.... Jean
and Espérance Merlin rose at last from a bench in the shadow of that
monument of black marble and, unobserved by most, went out of the Church
of the Jacobins. Near the door stood together a woman and a man. As
Espérance approached, the woman stepped forward; she put out her hand
and touched the hand of Espérance. “I am an Englishwoman,” she said.
“Mary Wollstonecraft. I cry ‘yea’ to what you said!”
Forth from the Society of the Jacobins, in the street, the two looked up
to the heavens and the round moon. After heat and noise within here
seemed infinite stillness and balm. The next moment the fevered heart
beats, the fevered breathing of the city made themselves felt; the
outward stillness and balm were gone. The fancy of each turned to their
house by the sea, the cliffs and the sand and the sea and the world
behind the sea. “Shall we go back soon?”
“Shall we?... This sea also calls for sailors.”
They had rented a clean, topmost floor in a house by the Seine. Now they
made their way thither through the unsolitary, the still sounding
streets. Up many steps they climbed, past doors of other occupants of
the house. They unlocked and went in at their own door. Only the roof
stood now between them and the sky of night. Moreover, there stretched a
lower and jutting bit of roof, parapetted, and reached by a door opening
from one of their two rooms. They lighted a candle; seated at a clean,
bare table they ate a little bread, drank a little wine, then, rising,
put out the candle and stepped from that other door out upon the guarded
bit of roof. Here they had placed a bench. Now they sat down upon this,
their arms upon the parapet, above and around them the splendour of the
night. They were up so high that the sound of the streets came muted,
coalesced, like an ever running, even running stream. For a time they
kept silence, then they talked, though with silences between their
words.
“Put what will come on the top of the moment away.... The moonlight ...
and thou and I.”
“Thou and I.”
“The long, the terrible, entrancing, ugly, and beautiful past!”
“And now all welcome. Rich ground for the fruit tree!”
“The without comes within ... and is made lovely.”
“And makes in time a without lovelier than the first.... And it goes
on.... To dwell in the wondrous centre!”
They sat quiet. The sunlight poured upon the moon, the foam and spray
back springing gave light to night-time earth. “Thou and I.... It is a
night for memory!”
“I hear a voice singing in the street. Do you remember--”
“... Fiery death.... Do you remember a Greek town?”
“Yes, painfully.... Oh, the much that I remember!”
“The detail sunken, but the touch and the taste and the odour still.
When we wronged each the other--”
“Long past that--long past!”
“And when we loved and helped each the other--and the amount and the
bliss of that grows!”
“The old wronging was in ignorance.”
“In ignorance.”
The moon shone, the night wind breathed, the murmur of the streets
lessened as the night grew old. The two went in from the roof, lay soon
in deep sleep. In the morning they waked, then dressed and breakfasted,
then stepped again upon the parapetted bit of roof. Paris lay in an
early, a rosy light. They stood and gazed, and they saw round and round
beyond Paris. Presently, leaving the roof and the two high-built rooms,
they went down into the streets.
Autumn waned and with it hope of temperate change. Change was no less
needed, no less inevitable, but change, it was seen, still wore a red
garment. The time for her white garments delayed, delayed. Still
blood-red....
Winter waxed and waned; spring was here and summer, summer of France.
Here in the human heart of France was winter, and here it was torrid
heat. September breathed over the land, but here in the heart of France
the winter deepened, and here the heat encreased, encreased. Flame and
murk in this heart of France, and the angel Alteration, red without as a
demon....
Jean and Espérance Merlin did not go back to the house by the sea. It
held them--Paris. Even in this to-day of the world children must have
schooling. The two from the sea made a school in the storey beneath the
storey of the two rooms and the parapetted roof. Here, each forenoon,
they taught children of Paris, ten in all. They taught after the method
the two had worked out, long years by the sea. Here as there it
answered, making happy children, learning happily.
That half of the day gone, the children gone, the two in the rooms up
under the roof ate their frugal, wholesome meal, rested, then when the
sun was in the western quarter, went down into Paris.
They never mistook that there was an angel underneath the red demon
garb. They had been far in the world....
But in the autumn of 1792 Alteration stood fearful to look upon.
Strongly, strongly was the angel imprisoned and straitened in the demon.
In August the prisons were choked. In September Paris grew blood-red.
Still Jean and Espérance Merlin kept their school together; still,
before they slept, they sat upon the guarded roof with the stars above,
the earth beneath; still through the free half of the day they went out
into Paris. They saw the angel and the demon; knew that they could only
know both because they were formed of both--and strove with incessancy
to sublime the demon.
At last they could keep school no longer....
They came down into the street and heard the tocsin, as they had heard
it for days before. A multitude was in the street. Hoof sound and wheel
sound, and here was a carriage going heavily over the paving-stones.
Behind it laboured a second and a third, “Non-jurant priests and
Aristocrats going to prison--” One in the multitude flung a stone;
others ran before the horses, made a wall that stopped them. The
coachman flung down the reins, got from the boxes. Overhead the bells
were making a wild and rapid sound. Red everywhere--and a sudden
sprouting, like March points above the earth, of pike and sabre.
Those who had been crowded into the carriages came forth and stood in
the street with blanched faces and a trembling of the limbs. There were
men and there were women. “_Citoyens_, we, like you, have wished in our
hearts to do right--”
“The liars!” cried a small man with a cutlass, and leaped upon one of
the slighter prisoners. Frenzy loosened, shrieked.
The traces had been cut, the horses taken away. The threatened men and
women pressed close to the carriage bodies, the wheels, finding here a
momentary wall to stand against. The first, the second wall were dragged
away, the prisoners massacred.
Jean and Espérance Merlin, coming into the street from their house,
faced the third carriage and the miserable ones pressed against it....
The two made way through the shouting throng, stood before the
prisoners. In the opposing and threatening mass, drawn from these
by-streets, they saw more than one or two whose children they had
taught. “_Citoyens!_ Shall we be tyrants, slaying because it is not hard
to slay? What value in the New if it be not more blissful-fearless than
the Old! Wisdom in our hearts--mercy for these folk!”
A woman living in that street cried out: “It is as those two say! I’ll
follow the Merlins who taught the children so well!”
Espérance stretched out her arms. “O friends, we have had enough of
smiting! They are as helpless as are children!”
Paris gathered here in this street let those endangered go; let them
enter the house where the Merlins lived. There, at the top of the house,
during that week’s madness, they stayed obscure, unharmed; at the end of
it got somehow from Paris, to the frontier, over the frontier.
Jean and Espérance Merlin dosed their school. In Paris lay Freedom,
wounded in her own house....
The two were of the months that followed and not of them. They were of
the Revolution, but not of the anger, revenge, and fear that wove the
ugly garment. Long since they had themselves worn the ugly garment.
Shreds and patches of it might yet cling, and in times of inner
weakness burn like the Nessus weave it was. But as a whole they wore it
not; their being had discarded it.
In this time and place they were not Jacobin, they hardly seemed
Girondin. To the unaided eye they did not plot nor plan. They went
about, and it seemed that they were concerned only with helping
individual wretchedness. Perhaps they themselves saw something further
and wider than the immediate and individual....
A power that was simple and strong, direct and friendly, became a raft
to sustain them in the boiling sea of the here and now. Infuriated men
and women, men and women gnawed by suspicion of all neighbours and
things, even, it might seem, of picture and statue and of the moving
air, yet trusted them and let them pass. Mad Paris that tore its own
flesh tore not them. They stayed many months in this trebly-fevered
world. All that might be perceived was that a few minds caught from them
calm and reflection, followed them into insight.
Winter, and the red robe showed redder yet, and the black shadows
blacker yet. Now the guillotine took toll, took toll, took toll. Spring
with her bright laughter, but the earth more maddened, more
terror-struck; summer, and the wild pace heightened....
Jean and Espérance sat in a starlight night upon that bit of level roof
just without their attic door. They leaned against the parapet, they
looked afar and downward.
“Fear and hate and love and courage--all in the alembic! See the red,
the green, the blue--the lion, the rose, the lily.... Salamander, sylph,
undine and gnome--the beast and the human one and the god walking
free....”
Their hands touched upon the parapet, they looked afar over the city.
“Babylon--”
“Rome and an amphitheatre there--O the children down below!”
They sat there long, watching as from a tower head. A meteor gleamed. “I
think that soon we shall leave this house that we have loved. The city
maddens more and more. We shall not escape accusation.”
“No.... Prison--death--life again!”
The suns wheeled in space. The invisible centres indrew and outflung.
Three nights after this they were taken. Accused of plots--known to have
succoured Foes. They came before judges who once had had some knowledge
of them, but in delirium old knowledges pass, and it made no difference.
But the essential unity of the two so impressed itself that none seemed
to think of parting them. Together they came into prison.
Choked were the prisons of Paris. Space once unused was brought into
requisition, corridors and vacant guardrooms, rooms not meant for
prisoners, rooms looking through fair-sized windows upon courtyards.
Prisoners went every day from prison to death, but immediately more
prisoners filled their places. Jean and Espérance looked with others out
of fair-sized windows; with others were let to move about in a small
courtyard, Patriot-guarded.
One great tree stood in this yard and underneath had been placed heavy
benches. Here, through much of the day, might sit the prisoners.
None knew, in the unreason of the time, why some scarce touched prison
before the tumbrils came for them, taking them away to the place of
death, and why some were left so long in prison. Some were left so long
that in a strange and piteous way the place grew homelike. In this
prison a duster of persons were so kept from week to week, from month to
month.
There was a group.... None knew why after long crowding this prison
should now by degrees be emptied, leaving at last a handful. None knew
why it did not at once fill again, nor why these few were left like
shades or prophecies, in the comfortless rooms, in the sombre courtyard,
under the sombre tree.
All was not sombre. This group had become friends. Ripe autumn light lay
at times upon the stones and made the tree aerial. Sitting on the steps
before Death’s great door the hearts of men and women were unbound,
their minds enlarged. More than twice or thrice a day the grey walls
threw back laughter. Those there were who thought, imagined, visioned.
Underneath the pall the good-as-dead smiled and planned the dawn.
Jean and Espérance Merlin sat, part of this handful, beneath the tree.
This individual earth-summer was turning toward brown autumn, toward
winter icy-fingered. The leaves of the tree were drifting down. But
ever, behind the winter, might be seen another spring.
In this cluster of prisoners were men and women, the young, those at
prime and the old. Many grades of opinion were there, various lives and
sorrows and joys. But all now were friends, and as friends sat and
talked.
They talked of Freedom....
It seemed that it was the Unimprisonable.
Fell a bright evening, soft and bright and sweet in the courtyard,
beneath the tree from which the leaves were falling. Toward sunset came
a visitation, a gaoler and men with tri-colour sashes, officers of the
Terror, of that bloody excrescence upon Revolution. “To-morrow other
folk here, but none here who are now here!”
“Unless it be their ghosts--”
They turned and went, leaving the gold light in the courtyard.
“Imperishably here, too!” said Espérance Merlin. “How many prisons, and
how many leave-takings of prisons! Let it pass into a mood, grave and
lifted!”
The rooms darkened, the courtyard darkened. This cluster of prisoners
sat quietly, talked quietly until the stars shone like fruit in the
tree. They parted, to sleep, or to lie straight and still upon their
pallets, or to rise and measuredly pace, through the night, their prison
room. The night passed. In the faintest dawn, by candlelight, they were
brought together in the courtyard. Food and drink were given them, and
they waited here for the wagons of death.
Among the distinguishing characteristics of this time must be placed
courage before the death of the body. None of this especial cluster
lacked that courage. It had been long a cluster, thought and feeling
running swiftly from globe to globe. The eastern sky, behind the
building line, began to glow.
Said an old man, “When I was ten years old I knew part of a lane that
led from our farm. It ran a long way, and then it seemed to end in a
rock wall. I thought that it ended there. When I made up stories to
myself about it, I always said ‘the end’! One day I hid from my mother
and went fearfully up that long way just to see the end. And when I got
there the lane bent around the rock wall, and there was a road, a wider
road.... It astonished me and pleased me....”
Jean Merlin spoke. “There is a network of roads--and one passing out of
the net....”
Said a woman: “Shall we have Freedom here--here on earth? O my country!
O my world!”
Espérance turned to her, took her hand. “Oh, widened the country, and
transformed the world! And here a haven of rest and here again long
adventure. But ever a richer rest and ever a higher adventure! And ever
more worth while--ever a stronger and sweeter taste. Ever more real, and
ever better choice of what shall be real--”
They heard the tumbrils, the wagons of death. These stopped, the barred
gate of the courtyard opened. The sky was coral red behind the tree. A
still dawn, and the leaves falling gently from the boughs....
The streets and houses of the city, the moving people, indifferent now,
so often had they seen them, to these wagons, the sky above the city....
Jean and Espérance sat side by side. “When this day, too, shall be one
of many past days--and we strike the note again and recall it, and say,
‘Even then the bitter bore the sweet....’”
“Together.... The widening ring of the together. Fused--the this and
that, the we and they fused.... Then is born the immortal being of all
the memories! Then begins the deep adventure of that That!”
“Are you woman--am I man? We are one!”
“Are these who go with us others? Are these others in the streets, and
these in the square to which we come?--O action within and upon One’s
self! O moulding hand moulding One’s self! And then, far beyond and
overhead, again the huge, the sweet adventure!... Out of One’s self to
make again the Child, to make again the Comrade--”
* * * * *
All around shone the bright morning--
THE END