VI

Ten o'clock in the forenoon. Not a breath of wind. It was the hottest

July ever known. In the narrow Rue de Jérusalem a hundred or so citizens

of the Section were waiting in queue at the baker's door, under the eye

of four National Guards who stood at ease smoking their pipes.

The National Convention had decreed the _maximum_,--and instantly corn

and flour had disappeared. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the

Parisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished to eat. The crowd

was lined up, men, women and children tightly packed together, under a

sky of molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting foulness of the

kennels and exaggerated the stench of unwashed, sweating humanity. All

were pushing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks fraught with

every sort of emotion one human being can feel for another,--dislike,

disgust, interest, attraction, indifference. Painful experience had

taught them there was not bread enough for everybody; so the late comers

were always trying to push forward, while those who lost ground

complained bitterly and indignantly and vainly claimed their rights.

Women shoved and elbowed savagely to keep their place or squeeze into a

better. When the press grew too intolerable, cries rose of "Stop pushing

there!" while each and all protested they could not help it--it was

someone else pushing them.

To obviate these daily scenes of disorder, the officials appointed by

the Section had conceived the notion of fastening a rope to the

shop-door which each applicant held in his proper order; but hands at

such close quarters _would_ come in contact on the rope and a struggle

would result. Whoever lost hold could never recover it, while the

disappointed and the mischievously inclined sometimes cut the cord. In

the end the plan had to be abandoned.

On this occasion there was the usual suffocation and confusion. While

some swore they were dying, others indulged in jokes or loose remarks;

all abused the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the misery.

When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast as Pitt. More than once a loud

slap showed that some _citoyenne_ in the line had resented with a

vigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed close

against her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut and

mouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or

gesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of the

coarse-minded populace, a knot of young libertines would strike up the

_Ça-ira_ in chorus, regardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly

indignant to see a dirty meaning attached to a refrain expressive of the

Republican faith in a future of justice and happiness.

His ladder under his arm, a billsticker appeared to post up on a blank

wall facing the baker's a proclamation by the Commune apportioning the

rations of butcher's-meat. Passers-by halted to read the notice, still

sticky with paste. A cabbage vendor going by, basket on back, began

calling out in her loud cracked voice:

"They'm all gone, the purty oxen! best rake up the guts!"

Suddenly such an appalling stench of putrefaction rose from a sewer near

by that several people were turned sick; a woman was taken ill and

handed over in a fainting condition to a couple of National Guards, who

carried her off to a pump a few yards away. All held their noses, and

fell to growling and grumbling, exchanging conjectures each more ghastly

and alarming than the last. What was it? a dead animal buried

thereabouts, a dead fish, perhaps, put in for mischief's sake, or more

likely a victim of the September massacres, some noble or priest, left

to rot in a cellar.

"They buried them in cellars, eh?"

"They got rid of 'em anywhere and anyhow."

"It will be one of the Châtelet prisoners. On the 2nd I saw three

hundred in a heap on the Port au Change."

The Parisians dreaded the vengeance of these aristocrats who were like

to poison them with their dead bodies.

Évariste Gamelin joined the line; he was resolved to spare his old

mother the fatigues of the long wait. His neighbour, the _citoyen_

Brotteaux, went with him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the baggy

pocket of his plum-coloured coat.

The good old fellow enjoyed the scene, calling it a bit of low life

worthy the brush of a modern Teniers.

"These street-porters and goodwives," he declared, "are more amusing

than the Greeks and Romans our painters are so fond of nowadays. For my

part, I have always admired the Flemish style."

One fact he was too sensible and tactful to mention--that he had

himself owned a gallery of Dutch masters rivalled only by Monsieur de

Choiseul's in the number and excellence of the examples.

"Nothing is beautiful save the Antique," returned the painter, "and what

is inspired by it. Still, I grant you these low-life scenes by Teniers,

Jan Steen or Ostade are better stuff than the frills and furbelows of

Watteau, Boucher, or Van Loo; humanity is shown in an ugly light, but it

is not degraded as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard."

A hawker went by bawling:

"_Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!_... list of the condemned!"

"One Revolutionary Tribunal is not enough," said Gamelin, "there should

be one in every town ... in every town, do I say?--nay, in every

village, in every hamlet. Fathers of families, citizens, one and all,

should constitute themselves judges. At a time when the enemy's cannon

is at her gates and the assassin's dagger at her throat, the Nation must

hold mercy to be parricide. What! Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux in

insurrection, Corsica in revolt, La Vendée on fire, Mayence and

Valenciennes in the hands of the Coalition, treason in the country, town

and camp, treason sitting on the very benches of the National

Convention, treason assisting, map in hand, at the council board of our

Commanders in the field!... The fatherland is in danger--and the

guillotine must save her!"

"I have no objection on principle to make to the guillotine," replied

Brotteaux. "Nature, my only mistress and my only instructress, certainly

offers me no suggestion to the effect that a man's life is of any value;

on the contrary, she teaches in all kinds of ways that it is of none.

The sole end and object of living beings seems to be to serve as food

for other beings destined to the same end. Murder is of natural right;

therefore, the penalty of death is lawful, on condition it is exercised

from no motives either of virtue or of justice, but by necessity or to

gain some profit thereby. However, I must have perverse instincts, for I

sicken to see blood flow, and this defect of character all my philosophy

has failed so far to correct."

"Republicans," answered Évariste, "are humane and full of feeling. It is

only despots hold the death penalty to be a necessary attribute of

authority. The sovereign people will do away with it one day.

Robespierre fought against it, and all good patriots were with him; the

law abolishing it cannot be too soon promulgated. But it will not have

to be applied till the last foe of the Republic has perished beneath the

sword of law and order."

Gamelin and Brotteaux had by this time a number of late comers behind

them and amongst these several women of the Section, including a

stalwart, handsome _tricoteuse_, in head-kerchief and sabots, wearing a

sword in a shoulder belt, a pretty girl with a mop of golden hair and a

very tumbled neckerchief, and a young mother, pale and thin, giving the

breast to a sickly infant.

The child, which could get no milk, was screaming, but its voice was

weak and stifled by its sobs. Pitifully small, with a pallid, unhealthy

skin and inflamed eyes, the mother gazed at it with mingled anxiety and

grief.

"He is very young," observed Gamelin, turning to look at the unhappy

infant groaning just at his back, half stifled amid the crowd of new

arrivals.

"He is six months, poor love!... His father is with the army; he is one

of the men who drove back the Austrians at Condé. His name is Dumonteil

(Michel), a draper's assistant by trade. He enlisted at a booth they had

established in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Poor lad, he was all for

defending his country and seeing the world.... He writes telling me to

be patient. But pray, how am I to feed Paul (he's called Paul, you know)

when I can't feed myself?"

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the pretty girl with the flaxen hair, "we've got

another hour before us yet, and to-night we shall have to repeat the

same ceremony over again at the grocer's. You risk your life to get

three eggs and a quarter of a pound of butter."

"Butter!" sighed the _citoyenne_ Dumonteil, "why, it's three months

since I've seen a scrap!"

And a chorus of female voices rose, bewailing the scarcity and dearness

of provisions, cursing the _émigrés_ and devoting to the guillotine the

Commissaries of Sections who were ready to give good-for-nothing minxes,

in return for unmentionable services, fat hens and four-pound loaves.

Alarming stories passed round of cattle drowned in the Seine, sacks of

flour emptied in the sewers, loaves of bread thrown into the

latrines.... It was all those Royalists, and Rolandists, and Brissotins,

who were starving the people, bent on exterminating every living thing

in Paris!

All of a sudden the pretty, fair-haired girl with the rumpled

neckerchief broke into shrieks as if her petticoats were afire. She was

shaking these violently and turning out her pockets, vociferating that

somebody had stolen her purse.

At news of the petty theft, a flood of indignation swept over this crowd

of poor folks, the same who had sacked the mansions of the Faubourg

Saint-Germain and invaded the Tuileries without appropriating the

smallest thing, artisans and housewives, who would have burned down the

Palace of Versailles with a light heart, but would have thought it a

dire disgrace if they had stolen the value of a pin. The young rakes

greeted the pretty girl's loss with some ribald jokes, that were

immediately drowned under a burst of public indignation. There was some

talk of instant execution--hanging the thief to the nearest lamp-post,

and an investigation was begun, where everyone spoke at once and nobody

would listen to a word of reason. The tall _tricoteuse_, pointing her

finger at an old man, strongly suspected of being an unfrocked monk,

swore it was the "Capuchin" yonder who was the cut-purse. The crowd

believed her without further evidence and raised a shout of "Death!

death!"

The old man so unexpectedly exposed to the public vengeance was standing

very quietly and soberly just in front of the _citoyen_ Brotteaux. He

had all the look, there was no denying it, of a _ci-devant_ cleric. His

aspect was venerable, though the face was changed and drawn by the

terrors the poor man had suffered from the violence of the crowd and the

recollection of the September days that were still vivid in his

imagination. The fear depicted on his features stirred the suspicion of

the populace, which is always ready to believe that only the guilty

dread its judgments, as if the haste and recklessness with which it

pronounces them were not enough to terrify even the most innocent.

Brotteaux had made it a standing rule never to go against the popular

feeling of the moment, above all when it was manifestly illogical and

cruel, "because in that case," he would say, "the voice of the people

was the voice of God." But Brotteaux proved himself untrue to his

principles; he asseverated that the old man, whether he was a Capuchin

or not, could not have robbed the _citoyenne_, having never gone near

her for one moment.

The crowd drew its own conclusion,--the individual who spoke up for the

thief was of course his accomplice, and stern measures were proposed to

deal with the two malefactors, and when Gamelin offered to guarantee

Brotteaux' honesty, the wisest heads suggested sending _him_ along with

the two others to the Sectional headquarters.

But the pretty girl gave a cry of delight; she had found her purse

again. The statement was received with a storm of hisses, and she was

threatened with a public whipping,--like a Nun.

"Sir," said the ex-monk, addressing Brotteaux, "I thank you for having

spoken in my defence. My name is of no concern, but I had better tell

you what it is; I am called Louis de Longuemare. I am in truth a

Regular; but not a Capuchin, as those women would have it. There is the

widest difference; I am a monk of the Order of the Barnabites, which has

given Doctors and Saints without number to the Church. It is only a

half-truth to refer its origin to St. Charles Borromeo; we must account

as the true founder the Apostle St. Paul, whose cipher it bears on its

arms. I have been compelled to quit my cloister, now headquarters of the

Section du Pont-Neuf, and adopt a secular habit.

"Nay, Father," said Brotteaux, scrutinizing Monsieur de Longuemare's

frock, "your dress is token enough that you have not forsworn your

profession; to look at it, one might think you had reformed your Order

rather than forsaken it. It is your good heart makes you expose yourself

in these austere habiliments to the insults of a godless populace."

"Yet I cannot very well," replied the ex-monk, "wear a blue coat, like a

roisterer at a dance!"

"What I mention, Father, about your dress is by way of paying homage to

your character and putting you on your guard against the risks you run."

"On the contrary, sir, it would be much better to inspirit me to confess

my faith. For indeed, I am only too prone to fear danger. I have

abandoned my habit, sir, which is a sort of apostasy; I would fain not

have deserted, had it been possible, the House where God granted me for

so many years the grace of a peaceable and retired life. I got leave to

stay there, and I still continued to occupy my cell, while they turned

the church and cloister into a sort of petty _hôtel de ville_ they

called the Section. I saw, sir, I saw them hack away the emblems of the

Holy Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convicted

felon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations of

the Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quitted

this place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundred

pistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, the

horses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There I

sing Mass for a few of the faithful, who come to the office to bear

witness to the eternity of the Church of Jesus Christ."

"For my part, Father," replied the other, "if you care to know my name,

I am called Brotteaux, and I was a publican in former days."

"Sir," returned the Père Longuemare, "I was aware by St. Matthew's

example that one may look for good counsel from a publican."

"Father, you are too obliging."

"_Citoyen_ Brotteaux," remarked Gamelin, "pray admire the virtues of the

people, more hungry for justice than for bread; consider how everyone

here is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These men and

women, victims of such poverty and privation, are of so stern a probity

they cannot tolerate a dishonest act."

"It must indeed be owned," replied Brotteaux, "that in their hearty

desire to hang the pilferer, these folks were like to do a mischief to

this good cleric, to his champion and to his champion's champion. Their

avarice itself and their selfish eagerness to safeguard their own

welfare were motives enough; the thief in attacking one of them

threatened all; self-preservation urged them to punish him.... At the

same time, it is like enough the most part of these workmen and

goodwives are honest and keep their hands off other folk's goods. From

the cradle these sentiments have been instilled in them by their father

and mother, who have whipped them well and soundly and inculcated the

virtues through their backside."

Gamelin did not conceal the fact from his old neighbour that he deemed

such language unworthy of a philosopher.

"Virtue," said he, "is natural to mankind; God has planted the seed of

it in the heart of mortals."

Old Brotteaux was a sceptic and found in his atheism an abundant source

of self-satisfaction.

"I see this much, _citoyen_ Gamelin, that, while a Revolutionary for

what is of this world, you are, where Heaven is concerned, of a

conservative, or even a reactionary temper. Robespierre and Marat are

the same to you. For me, I find it strange that Frenchmen, who will not

put up with a mortal king any longer, insist on retaining an immortal

tyrant, far more despotic and ferocious. For what is the Bastille, or

even the _Chambre Ardente_[1] beside Hellfire? Humanity models its gods

on its tyrants, and you, who reject the original, preserve the copy!"

"Oh! _citoyen!_" protested Gamelin, "are you not ashamed to hold such

language? how can you confound the dark divinities born of ignorance and

fear with the Author of Nature? Belief in a benevolent God is necessary

for morality. The Supreme Being is the source of all the virtues and a

man cannot be a Republican if he does not believe in God. Robespierre

knew this, who, as we all remember, had the bust of the philosopher

Helvétius removed from the Hall of the Jacobins, because he had taught

Frenchmen the lessons of slavery by preaching atheism.... I hope, at

least, _citoyen_ Brotteaux, that, as soon as the Republic has

established the worship of Reason, you will not refuse your adhesion to

so wise a religion!"

"I love reason, but I am no fanatic in my love," was Brotteaux's answer.

"Reason is our guide and beacon-light; but when you have made a divinity

of it, it will blind you and instigate you to crime,"--and he proceeded

to develop his thesis, standing both feet in the kennel, as he had once

been used to perorate, seated in one of Baron d'Holbach's gilt

armchairs, which, as he was fond of saying, formed the basis of natural

philosophy.

"Jean Jacques Rousseau," he proceeded, "who was not without talents,

particularly in music, was a scampish fellow who professed to derive his

morality from Nature while all the time he got it from the dogmas of

Calvin. Nature teaches us to devour each other and gives us the example

of all the crimes and all the vices which the social state corrects or

conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to know that this is

simply and solely a convenient expedient invented by men in order to

live comfortably together. What we call morality is merely a desperate

enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part of our fellow creatures to

reverse the order of the universe, which is strife and murder, the blind

interplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and the more I think

of things, the more convinced I am that the universe is mad. Theologians

and philosophers, who make God the author of Nature and the architect of

the universe, show Him to us as illogical and ill-conditioned. They

declare Him benevolent, because they are afraid of Him, but they are

forced to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute a malignity

to him seldom to be found even in mankind. And that is how they get

human beings to adore Him. For our miserable race would never lavish

worship on just and benevolent deities from which they would have

nothing to fear; they would feel only a barren gratitude for their

benefits. Without purgatory and hell, your good God would be a mighty

poor creature."

"Sir," said the Père Longuemare, "do not talk of Nature; you do not know

what Nature is."

"Egad, I know it as well as you do, Father."

"You cannot know it, because you have not religion, and religion alone

teaches us what Nature is, wherein it is good, and how it has been made

evil. However, you must not expect me to answer you; God has vouchsafed

me, to refute your errors, neither eloquence nor force of intellect. I

should only be afraid, by my inadequate replies, of giving you occasion

to blaspheme and further reasons for hardening your heart. I feel a

strong desire to help you; yet the sole fruit of my importunate efforts

would be to...."

The discussion was cut short by a tremendous shout coming from the head

of the column to warn the whole regiment of famished citizens that the

baker was opening his doors. The line began to push forward, but very,

very slowly. A National Guard on duty admitted the purchasers one by

one. The baker, his wife and boy presided over the sale, assisted by two

Civil Commissaries. These, wearing a tricoloured riband round the left

arm, saw that the customers belonged to the Section and were given their

proper share in proportion to the number of mouths to be filled.

The _citoyen_ Brotteaux made the quest of pleasure the one and only aim

of life, holding that the reason and the senses, the sole judges when

gods there were none, were unable to conceive any other. Accordingly,

finding the painter's remarks somewhat overfull of fanaticism, and the

Monk's of simplicity, to please his taste, this wise man, bent on

squaring his behaviour with his views and relieving the tedium of

waiting, drew from the bulging pocket of his plum-coloured coat his

Lucretius, now as always his chiefest solace and faithful comforter. The

binding of red morocco was chafed by hard wear, and the _citoyen_

Brotteaux had judiciously erased the coat of arms that once embellished

it,--three islets or, which his father the financier had bought for

good money down. He opened the book at the passage where the poet

philosopher, who is for curing men of the futile and mischievous passion

of love, surprises a woman in the arms of her serving-women in a state

bound to offend all a lover's susceptibilities. The _citoyen_ Brotteaux

read the lines, though not without casting a surreptitious glance at the

golden pate of the pretty girl in front of him and enjoying a sniff of

the heady perfume of the little slut's hot skin. The poet Lucretius was

a wise man, but he had only one string to his bow; his disciple

Brotteaux had several.

So he read on, taking two steps forward every quarter of an hour. His

ear, soothed by the grave and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, was

deaf to the women's scolding about the monstrous prices of bread and

sugar and coffee, candles and soap. In this calm and unruffled mood he

reached the threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Évariste Gamelin

could see over his head the gilt cornsheaf surmounting the iron grating

that filled the fanlight over the door.

When his turn came to enter the shop, he found the hampers and lockers

already emptied; the baker handed him the only scrap of bread left,

which did not weigh two pounds. Évariste paid his money, and the gate

was slammed on his heels, for fear of a riot and the people carrying the

place by storm.

But there was no need to fear; these poor folks, trained to obedience

alike by their old-time oppressors and by their liberators of to-day,

slunk off with drooping heads and dragging feet.

As he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin caught sight of the

_citoyenne_ Dumonteil, seated on a stone post, her nursling in her

arms. She sat there quite still; her face was colourless and her

tearless eyes seemed to see nothing. The infant was sucking her finger

voraciously. Gamelin stood a while in front of her, abashed and

uncertain what to do. She did not appear to see him.

He stammered something, then pulled out his pocket-knife, a clasp-knife

with a horn handle, cut his loaf in two and laid half on the young

mother's knee. She looked up at him in wonder; but he had already turned

the corner of the street.

On reaching home, Évariste found his mother sitting at the window

darning stockings. With a light laugh he put his half of the bread in

her hand.

"You must forgive me, mother dear; I was tired out with standing about

and exhausted by the heat, and out in the street there as I trudged

home, mouthful by mouthful I have gobbled up half of our allowance.

There's barely your share left,"--and as he spoke, he made a pretence of

shaking the crumbs off his jacket.