Évariste Gamelin was to enter on his duties on the 14th September, when
the reorganization of the Tribunal was complete, according to which it
was henceforth subdivided into four sections with fifteen jurors for
each. The prisons were full to overflowing; the Public Prosecutor was
working eighteen hours a day. Defeats in the field, revolts in the
provinces, conspiracies, plots, betrayals, the Convention had one
panacea for them all,--terror. The Gods were athirst.
The first act of the new juror was to pay a visit of ceremony to the
President Herman, who charmed him by the amiability of his conversation
and the courtesy of his bearing. A compatriot and friend of
Robespierre's, whose sentiments he shared, he showed every sign of a
feeling and virtuous temper. He was deeply attached to those humane
sentiments, too long foreign to the heart of our judges, that redound to
the everlasting glory of a Dupaty and a Beccaria. He looked with
complacency on the greater mildness of modern manners as evidenced, in
judicial matters, by the abolition of torture and of ignominious or
cruel forms of punishment. He was rejoiced to see the death penalty,
once so recklessly inflicted and employed till quite lately for the
repression of the most trifling offences, applied less frequently and
reserved for heinous crimes. For his own part, he agreed with
Robespierre and would gladly have seen it abolished altogether, except
only in cases touching the public safety. At the same time, he would
have deemed it treason to the State not to adjudge the punishment of
death for crimes against the National Sovereignty.
All his colleagues were of like mind; the old Monarchical idea of
reasons of State still inspired the Revolutionary Tribunal. Eight
centuries of absolute power had moulded the magisterial conscience, and
it was by the principles of Divine Right that the Court even now tried
and sentenced the enemies of Liberty.
The same day Évariste Gamelin sought an interview with the Public
Prosecutor, the _citoyen_ Fouquier, who received him in the Cabinet
where he used to work with his clerk of the court. He was a sturdily
built man, with a rough voice, catlike eyes, bearing in his pock-marked
face and leaden complexion marks of the mischief wrought by a sedentary
and indoor life on a vigorous constitution adapted to the open air and
violent exercise. Towering piles of papers shut him in like the walls of
a tomb, and it was plain to see he was in his element amid all these
dreadful documents that seemed like to bury him alive. His conversation
was that of a hard-working magistrate, a man devoted to his task and
whose mind never left the narrow groove of his official duties. His
fiery breath reeked of the brandy he took to keep up his strength; but
the liquor seemed never to fly to his brain, so clear-headed, albeit
entirely commonplace, was every word he uttered.
He lived in a small suite of rooms in the Palais de Justice with his
young wife, who had given him twin boys. His wife, an aunt Henriette and
the maid-servant Pélagie made up the whole household. He was good and
kind to these women. In a word, he was an excellent person in his family
and professional relations, with a scarcity of ideas and a total lack of
imagination.
Gamelin could not help being struck unpleasantly by the close
resemblance in temper and ways of thought between the new magistrates
and their predecessors under the old régime. In fact, they were of the
old régime; Herman had held the office of Advocate General to the
Council of Artois; Fouquier was a former Procureur at the Châtelet. They
had preserved their character, whereas Gamelin believed in a
Revolutionary palingenesis.
Quitting the precincts of the court, he passed along the great gallery
of the Palace and halted in front of the shops where articles of every
sort and kind were exposed for sale in the most attractive fashion.
Standing before the _citoyenne_ Ténot's stall, he turned over sundry
historical, political, and philosophical works:--"The Chains of
Slavery," "An Essay on Despotism," "The Crimes of Queens." "Very good!"
he thought, "here is Republican stuff!" and he asked the woman if she
sold a great many of these books. She shook her head:
"The only things that sell are songs and romances,"--and pulling a
duodecimo volume out of a drawer:
"Here," she told him, "here we have something good."
Évariste read the title: "La Religieuse en chemise," "The Nun in
dishabille!"
Before the next shop he came upon Philippe Desmahis, who, with a tender,
conquering-hero air, among the _citoyenne_ Saint-Jorre's perfumes and
powders and sachets, was assuring the fair tradeswoman of his undying
love, promising to paint her portrait and begging her to vouchsafe him a
moment's talk that evening in the Tuileries gardens. There was no
resisting him; persuasion sat on his lips and beamed from his eye. The
_citoyenne_ Saint-Jorre was listening without a word, her eyes on the
ground, only too ready to believe him.
* * * * *
Wishing to familiarize himself with the awful duties imposed on him, the
new juror resolved to mingle with the throng and look on at a case
before the Tribunal as a member of the general public. He climbed the
great stairs on which a vast crowd was seated as in an amphitheatre and
pushed his way into the ancient Hall of the Parlement of Paris.
This was crammed to suffocation; some General or other was taking his
trial. For in those days, as old Brotteaux put it, "the Convention,
copying the example of His Britannic Majesty's Government, made a point
of arraigning beaten Generals, in default of traitorous Generals, the
latter taking good care not to stand their trial. Not that a beaten
General," Brotteaux would add, "is necessarily criminal, for in the
nature of things there must be one in every battle. But there's nothing
like condemning a General to death for giving encouragement to others."
Several had already appeared before the Tribunal; they were all alike,
these empty-headed, opinionated soldiers with the brains of a sparrow in
an ox's skull. This particular commander was pretty nearly as ignorant
of the sieges and battles of his own campaign as the magistrates who
were questioning him; both sides, prosecution and defence, were lost in
a fog of effectives, objectives, munitions and ammunitions, marches and
counter-marches. But the mass of citizens listening to these obscure and
never-ending details could see behind the half-witted soldier the bare
and bleeding breast of the fatherland enduring a thousand deaths; and by
look and voice urged the jurymen, sitting quietly on their bench, to use
their verdict as a club to fell the foes of the Republic.
Évariste was firmly convinced of one thing,--what they had to strike at
in the pitiful creature was the two dread monsters that were battening
on the fatherland, revolt and defeat. What a to-do to discover if this
particular soldier was innocent or guilty! When La Vendée was recovering
heart, when Toulon was surrendering to the enemy, when the army of the
Rhine was recoiling before the victors of Mayence, when the Army of the
North, cowering in Cæsar's Camp, might be taken at a blow by the
Imperialists, the English, the Dutch, now masters of Valenciennes, the
one important thing was to teach the Generals of the Republic to conquer
or to die. To see yonder feeble-witted muddle-pated veteran losing
himself under cross-examination among his maps as he had done before in
the plains of Northern France, Gamelin longed to yell "death! death!"
with the rest, and fled from the Hall of Audience to escape the
temptation.
* * * * *
At the meeting of the Section, the newly appointed juryman received the
congratulations of the President Olivier, who made him swear on the old
high altar of the Barnabites, now altar of the fatherland, to stifle in
his heart, in the sacred name of humanity, every human weakness.
Gamelin, with uplifted right hand, invoked as witness of his oath the
august shade of Marat, martyr of Liberty, whose bust had lately been set
up against a pillar of the erstwhile church, facing that of Le Peltier.
There was some applause, interrupted by cries of protest. The meeting
was a stormy one; at the entrance of the nave stood a group of members
of the Section, armed with pikes and shouting clamorously:
"It is anti-republican," declared the President, "to carry arms at a
meeting of free citizens,"--and he ordered the muskets and pikes to be
deposited there and then in the erstwhile sacristy.
A hunchback, with blazing eyes and lips drawn back so as to show the
teeth, the _citoyen_ Beauvisage, of the Committee of Vigilance, mounted
to the pulpit, now become the speakers' tribune and surmounted by a red
cap of liberty.
"The Generals are betraying us," he vociferated, "and surrendering our
armies to the enemy. The Imperialists are pushing forward their cavalry
around Péronne and Saint-Quentin. Toulon has been given up to the
English, who are landing fourteen thousand men there. The foes of the
Republic are busy with plots in the very bosom of the Convention. In the
capital conspiracies without number are afoot to deliver _the Austrian_.
At this very moment while I speak there runs a rumour that the Capet
brat has escaped from the Temple and is being borne in triumph to
Saint-Cloud by those who would fain re-erect the tyrant's throne in his
favour. The dearness of food, the depreciation of the _assignats_ are
the direct result of manoeuvres carried out in our own homes, beneath
our very eyes, by the agents of the foreigners. In the name of public
safety I call upon the new juryman, our fellow-citizen, to show no pity
to conspirators and traitors."
As he left the tribune, cries rose among the audience: "Down with the
Revolutionary Tribunal! Down with the Moderates!"
A stout, rosy-faced man, the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, a joiner living in
the Place de Thionville, mounted the Tribune, announcing that he wished
to ask a question of the new juror. Then he demanded of Gamelin what
attitude he meant to take up in the matter of the Brissotins and of the
widow Capet.
Évariste was timid and unpractised in public speaking. But indignation
gave him eloquence. He rose with a pale face and said in a voice of
suppressed emotion:
"I am a magistrate. I am responsible to my conscience only. Any promise
I might make you would be against my duty, which is to speak in the
Court and hold my peace elsewhere. I have ceased to know you. It is mine
to give judgment; I know neither friends nor enemies."
The meeting, made up like all meetings of divers elements and subject to
sudden and incalculable moods, approved these sentiments. But the
_citoyen_ Dupont returned to the charge; he could not forgive Gamelin
for having secured a post he had coveted himself.
"I understand," he said, "I even approve the juror's scruples. They say
he is a patriot; it is for him to examine his conscience and see if it
permits him to sit on a tribunal intended to destroy the enemies of the
Republic and resolved to spare them. There are circumstances in which a
good citizen is bound to repudiate all complicity. Is it not averred
that more than one juror of this tribunal has let himself be corrupted
by the gold of the accused, and that the President Montané falsified the
procedure to save the head of the woman Corday?"
At the words the hall resounded with vehement applause. The vaults were
still reverberating with the uproar when Fortuné Trubert mounted the
tribune. He had grown thinner than ever in the last few months. His face
was pale and the cheek-bones seemed ready to pierce the reddened skin;
his eyes had a glassy look under the inflamed lids.
"_Citoyens_," he began, in a weak, breathless voice that yet had a
strangely penetrating quality, "we cannot suspect the Revolutionary
Tribunal without at the same time suspecting the Convention and the
Committee of Public Safety from which it derives its powers. The
_citoyen_ Beauvisage has alarmed us, showing us the President Montané
tampering with the course of justice in favour of a culprit. Why did he
not add, to relieve our fears, that on the denunciation of the Public
Prosecutor, Montané has been dismissed his office and thrown into
prison?... Is it impossible to watch over the public safety without
casting suspicion on all and sundry? Is there no talent, no virtue left
in the Convention? Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, are not these
honest men? It is a notable thing that the most violent language is held
by individuals who have never been known to fight for the Republic. They
could speak no otherwise if they wish to render her hateful. _Citoyens_,
less talk, say I, and more work! It is with shot and shell and not with
shouting that France will be saved. One-half the cellars of the Section
have not been dug up. Not a few citizens still hold considerable
quantities of bronze. We would remind the rich that patriotic gifts are
for them the most potent guarantees. I recommend to your generosity the
wives and daughters of our soldiers who are covering themselves with
glory on the frontiers and on the Loire. One of these, the hussar
Pommier (Augustin), formerly a cellarman's lad in the Rue de Jérusalem,
on the 10th of last month, before Condé, when watering the troop horses,
was set upon by six Austrian cavalrymen; he killed two of them and
brought in the others prisoners. I ask the Section to declare that
Pommier (Augustin) has done his duty."
This speech was applauded and the Sectionaries dispersed with cries of
"Vive la République!"
Left alone in the nave with Trubert, Gamelin pressed the latter's hand.
"Thank you. How are you?"
"I? Oh! Very well, very well!" replied Trubert, coughing and spitting
blood into his handkerchief. "The Republic has many enemies without and
within, and our own Section counts a not inconsiderable number of them.
It is not with loud talk but with iron and laws that empires are founded
... good night, Gamelin; I have letters to write."
And he disappeared, his handkerchief pressed to his lips, into the
old-time sacristy.
* * * * *
The widow Gamelin, her cockade now and henceforth fastened more
carefully in her hood, had from one day to the next assumed a fine,
consequential air, a Republican haughtiness and the dignified carriage
suitable to the mother of a juror of the State.
The veneration for the law in which she had been brought up, the
admiration with which the magistrate's gown and cassock had from a child
inspired her, the holy terror she had always experienced at sight of
those to whom God had delegated on earth His divine right of life and
death, these feelings made her regard as an august and worshipful and
holy being the son whom till yesterday she had thought of as little more
than a child. To her simple mind the conviction of the continuity of
justice through all the changes of the Revolution was as strong as was
that of the legislators of the Convention regarding the continuity of
the State under varying systems of government, and the Revolutionary
Tribunal appeared to her every whit as majestic as any of the
time-honoured jurisdictions she had been taught to revere.
The _citoyen_ Brotteaux showed the young magistrate an interest mingled
with surprise and a reluctant deference. His views were the same as the
widow Gamelin's as to the continuity of justice under successive
governments; but, in flat contradiction to that good lady's attitude,
his scorn for the Revolutionary Tribunals was on a par with his contempt
for the courts of the ancien régime. Not daring to express his opinions
openly and unable to make up his mind to say nothing, he indulged in a
string of paradoxes which Gamelin understood just well enough to suspect
the anti-patriotism that underlay them.
"The august tribunal whereon you are soon to take your seat," he told
him on one occasion, "was instituted by the French Senate for the
security of the Republic; and it was for certain a magnanimous thought
on the part of our legislators to set up a court to try our enemies. I
appreciate its generosity, but I doubt its wisdom. It would have shown
greater astuteness, it seems to me, if they had struck down in the dark
the more irreconcilable of their adversaries and won over the rest by
gifts and promises. A tribunal strikes slowly and effects more harm than
it inspires fear; its first duty is to make an example. The mischief
yours does is to unite together all whom it terrifies and make out of a
mass of contradictory interests and passions a great party capable of
common and effective action. You sow fear broadcast, and it is terror
more than courage that produces heroes; I pray, _citoyen_, you may not
one day see prodigies of terror arrayed against you!"
The engraver Desmahis, in love that week with a light o' love of the
Palais-Égalité named Flora, a brown-locked giantess, had nevertheless
found five minutes to congratulate his comrade and tell him that such an
appointment was a great compliment to the fine arts.
Élodie herself, though without knowing it she detested everything
revolutionary and who dreaded official functions as the most dangerous
of rivals, the most likely to estrange her lover's affections, the
tender Élodie was impressed by the glamour attaching to a magistrate
called upon to pronounce judgment in matters of life and death. Besides
which, Évariste's promotion as a juryman was followed by other fortunate
results that filled her loving heart with satisfaction; the _citoyen_
Jean Blaise made a point of calling at the studio in the Place de
Thionville and embraced the young juror affectionately in a burst of
manly sympathy.
Like all the anti-revolutionaries, he had a great respect for the
authorities established by the Republic, and ever since he had been
denounced for fraud in connection with his supplies for the army, the
Revolutionary Tribunal had inspired him with a wholesome dread. He felt
himself to be a person too much in the public eye and mixed up in too
many transactions to enjoy perfect security; so the _citoyen_ Gamelin
struck him as a friend worth cultivating. When all was said, one was a
good citizen and on the side of justice.
He gave the painter magistrate his hand, declaring himself his true
friend and a true patriot, a well-wisher of the arts and of liberty.
Gamelin forgot his injuries and pressed the hand so generously offered.
"_Citoyen_ Évariste Gamelin," said Jean Blaise, "I appeal to you as a
friend and as a man of talent. I am going to take you to-morrow for two
days' jaunt in the country; you can do some drawing and we can enjoy a
talk."
Several times every year the print-dealer was in the habit of making a
two or three days' expedition of this sort in the company of artists who
made drawings, according to his suggestions, of landscapes and ruins. He
was quick to see what would please the public and these little journeys
always resulted in some picturesque bits which were then finished at
home and cleverly engraved; prints in red or colours were struck off
from these, and brought in a good profit to the _citoyen_ Blaise. From
the same sketches he had over-doors and panels executed, which sold as
well or better than the decorative works of Hubert Robert.
On this occasion he had invited the _citoyen_ Gamelin to accompany him
to sketch buildings after nature, so much had the juror's office
increased the painter's importance in his eyes. Two other artists were
of the party, the engraver Desmahis, who drew well, and an almost
unknown man, Philippe Dubois, an excellent designer in the style of
Robert. According to custom, the _citoyenne_ Élodie with her friend the
_citoyenne_ Hasard accompanied the artists. Jean Blaise, an adept at
combining pleasure with profit, had also extended an invitation to the
_citoyenne_ Thévenin, an actress at the Vaudeville, who was reputed to
be on the best of terms with him.
X
On Saturday at seven in the morning the _citoyen_ Blaise, in a black
cocked-hat, scarlet waistcoat, doe-skin breeches, and boots with yellow
tops, rapped with the handle of his riding-whip at the studio door. The
_citoyenne_ Gamelin was in the room in polite conversation with the
_citoyen_ Brotteaux, while Évariste stood before a bit of looking-glass
knotting his high white cravat.
"A pleasant journey, Monsieur Blaise!" the _citoyenne_ greeted him.
"But, as you are going to paint landscapes, why don't you take Monsieur
Brotteaux, who is a painter?"
"Well, well," said Jean Blaise, "will you come with us, _citoyen_
Brotteaux?"
On being assured he would not be intruding, Brotteaux, a man of a
sociable temper and fond of all amusements, accepted the invitation.
The _citoyenne_ Élodie had climbed the four storeys to embrace the widow
Gamelin, whom she called her good mother. She was in white from head to
foot, and smelt of lavender.
An old two-horsed travelling _berline_ stood waiting in the Place, with
the hood down. Rose Thévenin occupied the back seat with Julienne
Hasard. Élodie made the actress sit on the right, took the left-hand
place herself and put the slim Julienne between the two of them.
Brotteaux settled himself, back to the horses, facing the _citoyenne_
Thévenin; Philippe Dubois, opposite the _citoyenne_ Hasard; Évariste
opposite Élodie. As for Philippe Desmahis, he planted his athletic
figure on the box, on the coachman's left, and proceeded to amaze that
worthy with a traveller's tale about a country in America where the
trees bore chitterlings and saveloys by way of fruit.
The _citoyen_ Blaise, who was a capital rider, took the road on
horseback, going on in front to escape the dust from the _berline_.
As the wheels rattled merrily over the suburban roads the travellers
began to forget their cares, and at sight of the green fields and trees
and sky, their minds turned to gay and pleasant thoughts. Élodie dreamed
she was surely born to rear poultry with Évariste, a country justice, to
help her, in some village on a river bank beside a wood. The roadside
elms whirled by as they sped along. Outside the villages the peasants'
mastiffs dashed out to intercept the carriage and barked at the horses,
while a fat spaniel, lying in the roadway, struggled reluctantly to its
feet; the fowls scattered and fled; the geese in a close-packed band
waddled slowly out of the way. The children, with their fresh morning
faces, watched the company go by. It was a hot day and a cloudless sky.
The parched earth was thirsting for rain. They alighted just outside
Villejuif. On their way through the little town, Desmahis went into a
fruiterer's to buy cherries for the overheated _citoyennes_. The
shop-keeper was a pretty woman, and Desmahis showed no signs of
reappearing. Philippe Dubois shouted to him, using the nickname his
friends constantly gave him:
"Ho there! Barbaroux!... Barbaroux!"
At this hated name the passers-by pricked up their ears and faces
appeared at every window. Then, when they saw a young and handsome man
emerge from the shop, his jacket thrown open, his neckerchief flying
loose over a muscular chest, and carrying over his shoulder a basket of
cherries and his coat at the end of a stick, taking him for the
proscribed girondist, a posse of _sansculottes_ laid violent hands on
him. Regardless of his indignant protests, they would have haled him to
the town-hall, had not old Brotteaux, Gamelin, and the three young women
borne testimony that the _citoyen_ was named Philippe Desmahis, a
copper-plate engraver and a good Jacobin. Even then the suspect had to
show his _carte de civisme_, which he had in his pocket by great good
luck, for he was very heedless in such matters. At this price he escaped
from the hands of these patriotic villagers without worse loss than one
of his lace ruffles, which had been torn off; but this was a trifle
after all. He even received the apologies of the National Guards who had
hustled him the most savagely and who now spoke of carrying him in
triumph to the Hôtel de Ville.
A free man again and with the _citoyennes_ Élodie, Rose, and Julienne
crowding round him, Desmahis looked at Philippe Dubois--he did not like
the man and suspected him of having played him a practical joke--with a
wry smile, and towering above him by a whole head:
"Dubois," he told him, "if you call me Barbaroux again, I shall call you
Brissot; he is a little fat man with a silly face, greasy hair, an oily
skin and damp hands. They'll be perfectly sure you are the infamous
Brissot, the people's enemy; and the good Republicans, filled with
horror and loathing at sight of you, will hang you from the nearest
lamp-post. You hear me?"
The _citoyen_ Blaise, who had been watering his horse, announced that he
had arranged the affair, though it was quite plain to everybody that it
had been arranged without him.
The company got in again, and as they drove on, Desmahis informed the
coachman that in this same plain of Longjumeau several inhabitants of
the Moon had once come down, in shape and colour much like frogs, only
very much bigger. Philippe Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art.
Dubois, a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome, where he had seen
Raphael's tapestries, which he set above all the masterpieces of the
world. He admired Correggio's colouring, Annibale Caracci's invention,
Domenichino's drawing, but thought nothing comparable in point of style
with the pictures of Pompeio Battoni. He had been in touch at Rome with
Monsieur Ménageot and Madame Lebrun, who had both pronounced against the
Revolution; so the less said of them the better. But he spoke highly of
Angelica Kauffmann, who had a pure taste and a fine knowledge of the
Antique.
Gamelin deplored that the apogee of French painting, belated as it was,
for it only dated from Lesueur, Claude and Poussin and corresponded with
the decadence of the Italian and Flemish schools, had been succeeded by
so rapid and profound a decline. This he attributed to the degraded
state of manners and to the Academy, which was the expression of that
state. But the Academy had been happily abolished, and under the
influence of new canons, David and his school were creating an art
worthy of a free people. Among the young painters, Gamelin, without a
trace of envy, gave the first place to Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun.
Philippe Dubois preferred his own master Regnault to David, and founded
his hopes for the future of painting on that rising artist Gérard.
Meantime Élodie complimented the _citoyenne_ Thévenin on her red velvet
toque and white gown. The actress repaid the compliment by
congratulating her two companions on their toilets and advising them how
to do better still; the thing, she said, was to be more sparing in
ornaments and trimmings.
"A woman can never be dressed too simply," was her dictum. "We see this
on the stage, where the costume should allow every pose to be
appreciated. That is its true beauty and it needs no other."
"You are right, my dear," replied Élodie. "Only there is nothing more
expensive in dress than simplicity. It is not always out of bad taste we
add frills and furbelows; sometimes it is to save our pockets."
They discussed eagerly the autumn fashions,--frocks entirely plain and
short-waisted.
"So many women disfigure themselves through following the fashion!"
declared Rose Thévenin. "In dressing every woman should study her own
figure."
"There is nothing beautiful save draperies that follow the lines of the
figure and fall in folds," put in Gamelin. "Everything that is cut out
and sewn is hideous."
These sentiments, more appropriate in a treatise of Winckelmann's than
in the mouth of a man talking to Parisiennes, met with the scorn they
deserved, being entirely disregarded.
"For the winter," observed Élodie, "they are making quilted gowns in
Lapland style of taffeta and muslin, and coats _à la Zulime_,
round-waisted and opening over a stomacher _à la Turque_."
"Nasty cheap things," declared the actress, "you can buy them ready
made. Now I have a little seamstress who works like an angel and is not
dear; I'll send her to see you, my dear."
So they prattled on trippingly, eagerly discussing and appraising
different fine fabrics--striped taffeta, self-coloured china silk,
muslin, gauze, nankeen.
And old Brotteaux, as he listened to them, thought with a pensive
pleasure of these veils that hide women's charms and change
incessantly,--how they last for a few years to be renewed eternally like
the flowers of the field. And his eyes, as they wandered from the three
pretty women to the cornflowers and the poppies in the wheat, were wet
with smiling tears.
They reached Orangis about nine o'clock and stopped before the inn, the
_Auberge de la Cloche_, where the Poitrines, husband and wife, offered
accommodation for man and beast. The _citoyen_ Blaise, who had repaired
any disorder in his dress, helped the _citoyennes_ to alight. After
ordering dinner for midday, they all set off, preceded by their
paintboxes, drawing-boards, easels, and parasols, which were carried by
a village lad, for the meadows near the confluence of the Orge and the
Yvette, a charming bit of country giving a view over the verdant plain
of Longjumeau and bounded by the Seine and the woods of
Sainte-Geneviève.
Jean Blaise, the leader of the troop of artists, was bandying funny
stories with the _ci-devant_ financier, tales that brought in without
rhyme or reason Verboquet the Open-handed, Catherine Cuissot the pedlar,
the demoiselles Chaudron, the fortune-teller Galichet, as well as
characters of a later time like Cadet-Rousselle and Madame Angot.
Évariste, inspired with a sudden love of nature, as he saw a troop of
harvesters binding their sheaves, felt the tears rise to his eyes, while
visions of concord and affection filled his heart. For his part,
Desmahis was blowing the light down of the seeding dandelions into the
_citoyennes'_ hair. All three loved posies, as town-bred girls always
do, and were busy in the meadows plucking the mullein, whose blossoms
grow in spikes close round the stem, the campanula, with its little
blue-bells hanging in rows one above another, the slender twigs of the
scented vervain, wallwort, mint, dyer's weed, milfoil--all the wild
flowers of late summer. Jean-Jacques had made botany the fashion among
townswomen, so all three knew the name and symbolism of every flower. As
the delicate petals, drooping for want of moisture, wilted in her hands
and fell in a shower about her feet, the _citoyenne_ Élodie sighed:
"They are dying already, the poor flowers!"
All set to work and strove to express nature as they saw her; but each
saw her through the eyes of a master. In a short time Philippe Dubois
had knocked off in the style of Hubert Robert a deserted farm, a clump
of storm-riven trees, a dried-up torrent. Évariste Gamelin found a
landscape by Poussin ready made on the banks of the Yvette. Philippe
Desmahis was at work before a pigeon-cote in the picaresque manner of
Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux who piqued himself on imitating the
Flemings, was drawing a cow with infinite care. Élodie was sketching a
peasant's hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourman's
daughter, set her palette. A swarm of children pressed about her,
watching her paint, whom she would scold out of her light at intervals,
calling them pestering gnats and giving them lollipops. The _citoyenne_
Thévenin, picking out the pretty ones, would wash their faces, kiss them
and put flowers in their hair. She fondled them with a gentle air of
melancholy, because she had missed the joy of motherhood,--as well as to
heighten her fascinations by a show of tender sentiment and to practise
herself in the art of pose and grouping.
She was the only member of the party neither drawing nor painting. She
devoted her attention to learning a part and still more to charming her
companions, flitting from one to another, book in hand, a bright,
entrancing creature.
"No complexion, no figure, no voice, no nothing," declared the
women,--and she filled the earth with movement, colour and harmony.
Faded, pretty, tired, indefatigable, she was the joy of the expedition.
A woman of ever-varying moods, but always gay, sensitive, quick-tempered
and yet easy-going and accommodating, a sharp tongue with the most
polished utterance, vain, modest, true, false, delightful; if Rose
Thévenin enjoyed no triumphant success, if she was not worshipped as a
goddess, it was because the times were out of joint and Paris had no
more incense, no more altars for the Graces. The _citoyenne_ Blaise
herself, who made a face when she spoke of her and used to call her "my
step-mother," could not see her and not be subjugated by such an array
of charms.
They were rehearsing _Les Visitandines_ at the Théâtre Feydeau, and Rose
was full of self-congratulation at having a part full of "naturalness."
It was this quality she strove after, this she sought and this she
found.
"Then we shall not see 'Paméla'?" asked Desmahis.
The Théâtre de la Nation was closed and the actors packed off to the
Madelonnettes and to Pélagie.
"Do you call that liberty?" cried Rose Thévenin, raising her beautiful
eyes to heaven in indignant protest.
"The players of the Théâtre de la Nation are aristocrats, and the
_citoyen_ François' piece tends to make men regret the privileges of the
noblesse."
"Gentlemen," said Rose Thévenin, "have you patience to listen only to
those who flatter you?"
As midday approached everybody began to feel pangs of hunger and the
little band marched back to the inn.
Évariste walked beside Élodie, smilingly recalling memories of their
first meetings:
"Two young birds had fallen out of their nests on the roof on to the
sill of your window. You brought the little creatures up by hand; one of
them lived and in due time flew away. The other died in the nest of
cotton-wool you had made him. 'It was the one I loved best,' I remember
you said. That day, Élodie, you were wearing a red bow in your hair."
Philippe Dubois and Brotteaux, a little behind the rest, were talking of
Rome, where they had both been, the latter in '72, the other towards the
last days of the Academy. Brotteaux indeed had never forgotten the
Princess Mondragone, to whom he would most certainly have poured out
his plaints but for the Count Altieri, who always followed her like her
shadow. Nor did Philippe Dubois fail to mention that he had been invited
to dine with Cardinal de Bernis and that he was the most obliging host
in the world.
"I knew him," said Brotteaux, "and I may add without boasting that I was
for some while one of his most intimate friends; he had a taste for low
society. He was an amiable man, and for all his affectation of telling
fairy tales, there was more sound philosophy in his little finger than
in the heads of all you Jacobins, who are for making us virtuous and
God-fearing by Act of Parliament. Upon my word I prefer our
simple-minded theophagists who know not what they say nor yet what they
do, to these mad law-menders, who make it their business to guillotine
us in order to render us wise and virtuous and adorers of the Supreme
Being who has created them in His likeness. In former days I used to
have Mass said in the Chapel at Les Ilettes by a poor devil of a Curé
who used to say in his cups: 'Don't let's speak ill of sinners; we live
by 'em, we priests, unworthy as we are!' You must agree, sir, this
prayer-monger held sound maxims of government. We should adopt his
principles, and govern men as being what they are and not what we should
like them to be."
Rose Thévenin had meantime drawn closer to the old man. She knew he had
lived on a grand scale, and the thought of this gilded the _ci-devant_
financier's present poverty, which she deemed less humiliating as being
due to general causes, the result of the public bankruptcy. She saw in
him, with curiosity not unmixed with respect, the survival of one of
those open-handed millionaires of whom her elder comrades of the stage
spoke with sighs of unfeigned regret. Besides, the old fellow in his
plum-coloured coat, so threadbare and so well brushed, pleased her by
his agreeable address.
"Monsieur Brotteaux," she said to him, "we know how once upon a time, in
a noble park, on moonlight nights, you would slip into the shade of
myrtle groves with actresses and dancing-girls to the far-off shrilling
of flutes and fiddles.... Alas! they were more lovely, were they not,
your goddesses of the Opera and the Comédie-Française, than we of
to-day, we poor little National actresses?"
"Never think it, Mademoiselle," returned Brotteaux, "but believe me, if
one like you had been known in those days, she would have moved alone,
as sovereign queen without a rival (little as she would have desired
such solitude), in the park you are obliging enough to form so
flattering a picture of...."
It was quite a rustic inn, this Hôtel de la Cloche. A branch of holly
hung over the great waggon doors that opened on a courtyard where fowls
were always pecking about in the damp soil. On the far side of this
stood the house itself, consisting of a ground floor and one storey
above, crowned by a high-pitched tiled roof and with walls almost hidden
under old climbing rose-trees covered with blossom. To the right,
trimmed fruit-trees showed their tops above the low garden wall. To the
left was the stable, with an outside manger and a barn supported by
wooden pillars. A ladder leaned against the wall. Here again, under a
shed crowded with agricultural implements and stumps of trees, a white
cock was keeping an eye on his hens from the top of a broken-down
cabriolet. The courtyard was enclosed on this side by cow-sheds, in
front of which rose in mountainous grandeur a dunghill which at this
moment a girl as broad as she was long, with straw-coloured hair, was
turning over with a pitchfork. The liquid manure filled her sabots and
bathed her bare feet, and you could see the heels rise out of her shoes
every now and then as yellow as saffron. Her petticoats were kilted and
revealed the filth on her enormous calves and thick ankles. While
Philippe Desmahis was staring at her, surprised and tickled by the
whimsicalities of nature in framing this odd example of breadth without
length, the landlord shouted:
"Ho, there! Tronche, my girl! go fetch some water!"
She turned her head, showing a scarlet face and a vast mouth in which
one huge front tooth was missing. It had needed nothing less than a
bull's horn to effect a breach in that powerful jaw. She stood there
grinning, pitchfork on shoulder. Her sleeves were rolled up and her
arms, as thick as another woman's thighs, gleamed in the sun.
The table was laid in the farm kitchen, where a brace of fowls was
roasting,--they were almost done to a turn,--under the hood of the open
fireplace, above which hung two or three old fowling-pieces by way of
ornament. The bare whitewashed room, twenty feet long, was lighted only
through the panes of greenish glass let into the door and by a single
window, framed in roses, near which the grandmother sat turning her
spinning-wheel. She wore a coif and a lace frilling in the fashion of
the Regency. Her gnarled, earth-stained fingers held the distaff. Flies
clustered about her lids without her trying to drive them away. As a
child in her mother's arms, she had seen Louis XIV go by in his coach.
Sixty years ago she had made the journey to Paris. In a weak sing-song
voice she told the tale to the three young women, standing in front of
her, how she had seen the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries and the
Samaritaine, and how, when she was crossing the Pont-Royal, a barge
loaded with apples for the Marché du Mail had broken up, the apples had
floated down the current and the river was all red with the rosy-cheeked
fruit.
She had been told of the changes that had occurred of late in the
kingdom, and in particular of the coil there was betwixt the curés who
had taken the oath and the nonjuring curés. She knew likewise there had
been wars and famines and portents in the sky. She did not believe the
King was dead. They had contrived his escape, she _would_ have it, by a
subterranean passage, and had handed over to the headsman in his stead a
man of the common people.
At the old woman's feet, in his wicker cradle, Jeannot, the last born of
the Poitrines, was cutting his teeth. The _citoyenne_ Thévenin lifted
the cradle and smiled at the child, which moaned feebly, worn out with
feverishness and convulsions. It must have been very ill, for they had
sent for the doctor, the _citoyen_ Pelleport, who, it is true, being a
deputy-substitute to the Convention, asked no payment for his visits.
The _citoyenne_ Thévenin, an innkeeper's daughter herself, was in her
element; not satisfied with the way the farm-girl had washed the plates
and dishes, she gave an extra wipe to the crockery and glass, an extra
polish to the knives and forks. While the _citoyenne_ Poitrine was
attending to the soup, which she tasted from time to time as a good cook
should, Élodie was cutting up into slices a four-pound loaf hot from the
oven. Gamelin, when he saw what she was doing, addressed her:
"A few days ago I read a book written by a young German whose name I
have forgotten, and which has been very well translated into French. In
it you have a beautiful young girl named Charlotte, who, like you,
Élodie, was cutting bread and butter, and like you, cutting it
gracefully, and so prettily that at the sight the young Werther fell in
love with her."
"And it ended in their marrying?" asked Élodie.
"No," replied Évariste; "it ended in Werther's death by violence."
They dined well, they were all very hungry; but the fare was
indifferent. Jean Blaise complained bitterly; he was a great trencherman
and made it a rule of conduct to feed well; and no doubt what urged him
to elaborate his gluttony into a system was the general scarcity. In
every household the Revolution had overturned the cooking pot. The
common run of citizens had nothing to chew upon. Clever folks like Jean
Blaise, who made big profits amid the general wretchedness, went to the
cookshop where they showed their astuteness by stuffing themselves to
repletion. As for Brotteaux who, in this year II of liberty, was living
on chestnuts and bread-crusts, he could remember having supped at Grimod
de la Reynière's at the near end of the Champs Élysées. Eager to win the
repute of an accomplished gourmand he reeled off, sitting there before
Dame Poitrine's bacon and cabbages, a string of artful kitchen recipes
and wise gastronomic maxims. Presently, when Gamelin protested that a
Republican scorns the pleasures of the table, the old financier, always
a lover of antiquity, gave the young Spartan the true recipe for the
famous black broth.
After dinner, Jean Blaise, who never forgot business, set his itinerant
academy to make studies and sketches of the inn, which struck him as
quite romantic in its dilapidation. While Philippe Desmahis and Philippe
Dubois were drawing the cow-houses the girl Tronche came out to feed the
pigs. The _citoyen_ Pelleport, officer of health, who at the same moment
appeared at the door of the farm kitchen where he had been bestowing his
professional services on the Poitrine baby, stepped up to the artists
and after complimenting them on their talents, which were an honour to
the whole nation, pointed to the Tronche girl in the middle of her
porkers:
"You see that creature," he said, "it is not one girl, it is two girls.
I speak by the letter, understand that. I was amazed at the
extraordinary massiveness of her bony framework and I examined her, to
discover she had most of the bones in duplicate--in each thigh two
femurs welded together, in each shoulder a double humerus. Some of her
muscles are likewise in duplicate. It is a case, in my view, of a pair
of twins associated or rather confounded together. It is an interesting
phenomenon. I notified Monsieur Saint-Hilaire of the facts, and he
thanked me. It is a monster you see before you, _citoyens_. The people
here call her 'the girl Tronche'; they should say 'the girls Tronches,'
for there are two of them. Nature has these freaks.... Good evening,
_citoyens_; we shall have a storm to-night...."
After supper by candle-light, the Academy Blaise adjourned to the
courtyard where they were joined by a son and daughter of the house in
a game of blindman's-buff, in which the young folks, both men and women,
displayed a feverish energy sufficiently accounted for by the high
spirits proper to their age without seeking an explanation in the wild
and precarious times in which they lived. When it was quite dark, Jean
Blaise proposed children's games in the farm kitchen. Élodie suggested
the game of "hunt my heart," and this was agreed to unanimously. Under
the girl's direction Philippe Desmahis traced in chalk, on different
pieces of furniture, on doors and walls, seven hearts, that is to say
one less than there were players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly
joined the rest. They danced round in a ring singing "La Tour, prends
garde!" and at a signal from Élodie, each ran to put a hand on a heart.
Gamelin in his absent-minded clumsiness was too late to find one vacant,
and had to pay a forfeit, the little knife he had bought for six sous at
the fair of Saint-Germain and with which he had cut the loaf for his
mother in her poverty. The game went on, and one after the other Blaise,
Élodie, Brotteaux and Rose Thévenin failed to touch a heart; each paid a
forfeit in turn--a ring, a reticule, a little morocco-bound book, a
bracelet. Then the forfeits were raffled on Élodie's lap, and each
player had to redeem his property by showing his society
accomplishments--singing a song or reciting a poem. Brotteaux chose the
speech of the patron saint of France in the first canto of the
_Pucelle_:
"Je suis Denis et saint de mon métier,
J'aime la Gaule,..."[2]
The _citoyen_ Blaise, though a far less well-read man, replied without
hesitation with Richemond's ripost:
"Monsieur le Saint, ce n'était pas la peine
D'abandonner le céleste domaine...."[3]
At that time everybody was reading and re-reading with delight the
masterpiece of the French Ariosto; the most serious of men smiled over
the loves of Jeanne and Dunois, the adventures of Agnès and Monrose and
the exploits of the winged ass. Every man of cultivation knew by heart
the choice passages of this diverting and philosophical poem. Évariste
Gamelin himself, stern-tempered as he was, when he recovered his
twopenny knife from Élodie's lap, recited the going down of Grisbourdon
into hell, with a good deal of spirit. The _citoyenne_ Thévenin sang
without accompaniment Nina's ballad:
"_Quand le bien-aimé reviendra._"
Desmahis sang to the tune of _La Faridondaine_:
"Quelques-uns prirent le cochon
De ce bon saint Antoine,
Et lui mettant un capuchon,
Ils en firent un moine.
Il n'en coûtait que la façon...."[4]
All the same Desmahis was in a pensive mood. For the moment he was
ardently in love with all the three women with whom he was playing
forfeits, and was casting burning looks of soft appeal at each in turn.
He loved Rose Thévenin for her grace, her supple figure, her clever
acting, her roving glances, and her voice that went straight to a man's
heart; he loved Élodie, because he recognized instinctively her rich
endowment of temperament and her kind, complaisant humour; he loved
Julienne Hasard, despite her colourless hair, her pale eyelashes, her
freckles and her thin bust, because, like Dunois in Voltaire's
_Pucelle_, he was always ready, in his generosity, to give the least
engaging a token of love--and the more so in this instance because she
appeared to be for the moment the most neglected, and therefore the most
amenable to his attentions. Without a trace of vanity, he was never sure
of these being agreeable; nor yet was he ever sure of their not being.
So he never omitted to offer them on the chance. Taking advantage of the
opportunities offered by the game of forfeits, he made some tender
speeches to Rose Thévenin, who showed no displeasure, but could hardly
say much in return under the jealous eyes of the _citoyen_ Jean Blaise.
He spoke more warmly still to the _citoyenne_ Élodie, whom he knew to be
pledged to Gamelin, but he was not so exacting as to want a heart all to
himself. Élodie could never care for him; but she thought him a handsome
fellow and did not altogether succeed in hiding the fact from him.
Finally, he whispered his most ardent vows in the ear of the _citoyenne_
Hasard, which she received with an air of bewildered stupefaction that
might equally express abject submission or chill indifference. And
Desmahis did not believe she was indifferent to him.
The inn contained only two bedrooms, both on the first floor and opening
on the same landing. That to the left, the better of the two, boasted a
flowered paper and a looking-glass the size of a man's hand, the gilt
frame of which had been blackened by generations of flies since the days
when Louis XIV was a child. In it, under sprigged muslin curtains, stood
two beds with down pillows, coverlets and counterpanes. This room was
reserved for the three _citoyennes_.
When the time came to retire, Desmahis and the _citoyenne_ Hasard, each
holding a bedroom candlestick, wished each other good-night on the
landing. The amorous engraver quickly passed a note to the colourman's
daughter, beseeching her to come to him, when everybody was asleep, in
the garret, which was over the _citoyennes'_ chamber.
With judicious foresight, he had taken care in the course of the day to
study the lie of the land and explore the garret in question, which was
full of strings of onions, apples and pears left there to ripen with a
swarm of wasps crawling over them, chests and old trunks. He had even
noticed an old bed of sacking, decrepit and now disused, as far as he
could see, and a palliasse, all ripped up and jumping with fleas.
Facing the _citoyennes'_ room was another of very modest dimensions
containing three beds, where the men of the party were to sleep, in such
comfort as they might. But Brotteaux, who was a Sybarite, betook himself
to the barn to sleep among the hay. As for Jean Blaise, _he_ had
disappeared. Dubois and Gamelin were soon asleep. Desmahis went to bed;
but no sooner had the silence of night, like a stagnant pool, enveloped
the house, than the engraver got up and climbed the wooden staircase,
which creaked under his bare feet. The door of the garret stood ajar.
From within came a breath of stifling hot air, mingled with the acrid
smell of rotting fruit. On the broken-down bed of sacking lay the girl
Tronche, fast asleep with her mouth open.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
Desmahis returned to his room, where he slept soundly and peacefully
till daybreak.
On the morrow, after a last day's work, the itinerant Academy took the
road back to Paris. When Jean Blaise paid mine host in assignats, the
_citoyen_ Poitrine complained bitterly that he never saw what he called
"square money" nowadays, and promised a fine candle to the beggar who'd
bring back the "yellow boys" again.
He offered the _citoyennes_ their pick of flowers. At his orders, the
girl Tronche mounted on a ladder in her sabots and kilted skirts, giving
a full view of her noble, much-bespattered calves, and was indefatigable
in cutting blossoms from the climbing roses that covered the wall. From
her huge hands the flowers fell in showers, in torrents, in avalanches,
into the laps of Élodie, Julienne, and Rose Thévenin, who held out their
skirts to catch them. The carriage was full of them. The whole party,
when they got back at nightfall, carried armfuls home, and their
sleeping and waking were perfumed with their fragrance.