XI

In the forenoon of the 7th September the _citoyenne_ Rochemaure, on her

way to visit Gamelin, the new juror, whose interest she wished to

solicit on behalf of an acquaintance, who had been denounced as a

suspect, encountered on the landing the _ci-devant_ Brotteaux des

Ilettes, who had been her lover in the old happy days. Brotteaux was

just starting to deliver a gross of dancing-dolls of his manufacture to

the toy-merchant in the Rue de la Loi; for their more convenient

carriage he had hit on the idea of tying them at the end of a pole, as

the street hawkers do with their commodities. His manners were always

chivalrous towards women, even to those whose fascination for him had

been blunted by long familiarity, as could hardly fail to be the case

with Madame de Rochemaure,--unless indeed he found her appetizing with

the added seasoning of betrayal, absence, unfaithfulness and fat. Be

this as it may, he now greeted her on the sordid stairs with their

cracked tiles as courteously as he had ever done on the steps before the

entrance-door of Les Ilettes, and begged her to do him the honour of

entering his garret. She climbed the ladder nimbly enough and found

herself under a timbering, the sloping beams of which supported a tiled

roof pierced with a skylight. It was impossible to stand upright. She

sat down on the only chair there was in the wretched place; after a

brief glance at the broken tiling, she asked in a tone of surprise and

sorrow:

"Is this where you live, Maurice? You need have little fear of

intruders. One must be an imp or a cat to find you here."

"I am cramped for space," returned the _ci-devant_ millionaire; "and I

do not deny the fact that sometimes it rains on my pallet. It is a

trifling inconvenience. And on fine nights I can see the moon, symbol

and confidant of men's loves. For the moon, Madame, since the world

began, has been apostrophized by lovers, and at her full, with her pale

round face, she recalls to the fond swain's mind the object of his

desires."

"I know," sighed the _citoyenne_.

"When their time comes the cats make a fine pandemonium in the rain

gutter yonder. But we must forgive love if it makes them caterwaul and

swear on the tiles, seeing how it fills the lives of men with torments

and villanies."

Both had had the tact to greet each other as friends who had parted the

night before to take their night's rest, and though grown strangers to

each other, they conversed with a good grace and on a footing of

friendliness.

At the same time Madame de Rochemaure seemed pensive. The Revolution,

which had for a long while been pleasant and profitable to her, was now

a source of anxiety and disquietude; her suppers were growing less

brilliant and less merry. The notes of her harp no longer charmed the

cloud from sombre faces. Her play-tables were forsaken by the most

lavish punters. Many of her cronies, now numbered among the suspects,

were in hiding; her lover, Morhardt the financier, was under arrest,

and it was on his behalf she had come to sound the juror Gamelin. She

was suspect herself. A posse of National Guards had made a search at her

house, had turned out the drawers of her cabinets, prised up boards in

her floor, thrust their bayonets into her mattresses. They had found

nothing, had made their apologies and drunk her wine. But they had come

very near lighting on her correspondence with an _émigré_, Monsieur

d'Expilly. Certain friends he had among the Jacobins had warned her that

Henry, her handsome favourite, was beginning to compromise his party by

his violent language, which was too extravagant to be sincere.

Elbows on knees and head on fist, she sat buried in thought; then

turning to her old lover sitting on the palliasse, she asked:

"What do you think of it all, Maurice?"

"I think these good gentry give a philosopher and an amateur of the

shows of life abundant matter for reflection and amusement; but that it

would be better for you, my dear, if you were out of France."

"Maurice, where will it land us?"

"That is what you asked me, Louise, one day we were driving on the banks

of the Cher, on the road to Les Ilettes; the horse, you remember, had

taken the bit in his teeth and was galloping off with us at a frantic

pace. How inquisitive women are! to-day, for the second time, you want

to know where we are going to. Ask the fortune-tellers. I am not a

wizard, sweetheart. And philosophy, even the soundest, is of small help

for revealing the future. These things will have an end; everything has.

One may foresee divers issues. The triumph of the Coalition and the

entry of the allies into Paris. They are not far off; yet I doubt if

they will get there. These soldiers of the Republic take their beatings

with a zest nothing can extinguish. It may be Robespierre will marry

Madame Royale and have himself proclaimed Protector of the Kingdom

during the minority of Louis XVII."

"You think so!" exclaimed the _citoyenne_, agog to have a hand in so

promising an intrigue.

"Again it may be," Brotteaux went on, "that La Vendée will win the day

and the rule of the priests be set up again over heaps of ruins and

piles of corpses. You cannot conceive, dear heart, the empire the clergy

still wields over the masses of the foolish,... I beg pardon, I meant to

say,--of 'the Faithful'; it was a slip of the tongue. The most likely

thing, in my poor opinion, is that the Revolutionary Tribunal will bring

about the destruction of the régime it has established; it is a menace

over too many heads. Those it terrifies are without number; they will

unite together, and to destroy it they will destroy the whole system of

government. I think you have got our young friend Gamelin posted to this

court. He is virtuous; he will be implacable. The more I think of it,

fair friend, the more convinced I am that this Tribunal, set up to save

the Republic, will destroy it. The Convention has resolved to have, like

Royalty, its _Grands Jours_,[5] its _Chambre Ardente_, and to provide

for its security by means of magistrates appointed by itself and by it

kept in subjection. But how inferior are the Convention's _Grands Jours_

to those of the Monarchy, and its _Chambre Ardente_ to that of Louis

XIV! The Revolutionary Tribunal is dominated by a sentiment of

mean-spirited justice and common equality that will quickly make it

odious and ridiculous and will disgust everybody. Do you know, Louise,

that this tribunal, which is about to cite to its bar the Queen of

France and twenty-one legislators, yesterday condemned a servant-girl

convicted of crying: 'Vive le Roi!' with malicious intent and in the

hope of destroying the Republic? Our judges, with their black hats and

plumes, are working on the model of that William Shakespeare, so dear to

the heart of Englishmen, who drags in coarse buffooneries in the middle

of his most tragic scenes."

"Ah, well! Maurice," asked the _citoyenne_, "are you still as fortunate

as ever with women?"

"Alas!" replied Brotteaux, "the doves flock to the bright new dovecote

and light no more on the ruined tower."

"You have not changed.... Good-bye, dear friend,--till we meet again."

* * * * *

The same evening the dragoon Henry, paying a visit uninvited at Madame

de Rochemaure's, found her in the act of sealing a letter on which he

read the address of the _citoyen_ Rauline at Vernon. The letter, he

knew, was for England. Rauline used to receive Madame de Rochemaure's

communications by a postilion of the posting-service and send them on to

Dieppe by the hands of a fishwife. The master of a fishing-smack

delivered them under cover of night to a British ship cruising off the

coast; an _émigré_, Monsieur d'Expilly, received them in London and

passed them on, if he thought it advisable, to the Cabinet of Saint

James's.

Henry was young and good looking; Achilles was not such a paragon of

grace and vigour when he donned the armour Ulysses offered him. But the

_citoyenne_ Rochemaure, once so enraptured by the charms of the young

hero of the Commune, now looked askance at him; her mood had changed

since the day she was told how the young soldier had been denounced at

the Jacobins as one whose zeal outran discretion and that he might

compromise and ruin her. Henry thought it might not break his heart

perhaps to leave off loving Madame de Rochemaure; but he was piqued to

have fallen in her good graces. He counted on her to meet sundry

expenses in which the service of the Republic had involved him. Last but

not least, remembering to what extremities women will proceed and how

they go in a flash from the most ardent tenderness to the coldest

indifference, and how easy they find it to sacrifice what once they held

dear and destroy what once they adored, he began to suspect that some

day his fascinating mistress might have him thrown into prison to get

rid of him. Common prudence urged him to regain his lost ascendancy and

to this end he had come armed with all his fascinations. He came near,

drew away, came near again, hovered round her, ran from her, in the

approved fashion of seduction in the ballet. Then he threw himself in an

armchair and in his irresistible voice, his voice that went straight to

women's hearts, he extolled the charms of nature and solitude and with a

lovelorn sigh proposed an expedition to Ermenonville.

Meanwhile she was striking chords on her harp and looking about her with

an expression of impatience and boredom. Suddenly Henry got up with a

gesture of gloomy resolution and informed her that he was starting for

the army and in a few days would be before Maubeuge.

Without a sign either of scepticism or surprise she nodded her approval.

"You congratulate me on my decision?"

"I do indeed."

She was expecting a new admirer who was infinitely to her taste and from

whom she hoped to reap great advantages,--a contrast in every way to the

old, a Mirabeau come to life again, a Danton rehabilitated and turned

army-contractor, a lion who talked of pitching every patriot into the

Seine. She was on tenter-hooks, thinking to hear the bell ring at any

moment.

To hasten Henry's departure, she fell silent, yawned, fingered a score,

and yawned again. Seeing he made no move to go, she told him she had to

go out and withdrew into her dressing-room.

He called to her in a broken voice:

"Farewell, Louise!... Shall I ever see you again?"--and his hands were

busy fumbling in the open writing-desk.

When he reached the street, he opened the letter addressed to the

_citoyen_ Rauline and read it with absorbed attention. Indeed it drew a

curious picture of the state of public feeling in France. It spoke of

the Queen, of the actress Rose Thévenin, of the Revolutionary Tribunal

and a host of confidential remarks emanating from that worthy, Brotteaux

des Ilettes, were repeated in it.

Having read to the end and restored the missive to his pocket, he stood

hesitating a few moments; then, like a man who has made up his mind and

says to himself "the sooner the better," he turned his steps to the

Tuileries and found his way into the antechamber of the Committee of

General Security.

* * * * *

The same day, at three o'clock of the afternoon, Évariste Gamelin was

seated on the jurors' bench along with fourteen colleagues, most of whom

he knew, simple-minded, honest, patriotic folks, savants, artists or

artisans,--a painter like himself, an artist in black-and-white, both

men of talent, a surgeon, a cobbler, a _ci-devant_ marquis, who had

given high proofs of patriotism, a printer, two or three small

tradesmen, a sample lot in a word of the inhabitants of Paris. There

they sat, in the workman's blouse or bourgeois coat, with their hair

close-cropped _à la Titus_ or clubbed _à la catogan_; there were

cocked-hats tilted over the eyes, round hats clapped on the back of the

head, red caps of liberty smothering the ears. Some were dressed in

coat, flapped waistcoat and breeches, as in olden days, others in the

_carmagnole_ and striped trousers of the sansculottes. Wearing top-boots

or buckled shoes or sabots, they offered in their persons every variety

of masculine attire prevalent at that date. Having all of them occupied

their places on several previous occasions, they seemed very much at

their ease, and Gamelin envied them their unconcern. His own heart was

thumping, his ears roaring; a mist was before his eyes and everything

about him took on a livid tinge.

When the usher announced the opening of the sitting, three judges took

their places on a raised platform of no great size in front of a green

table. They wore hats cockaded and crowned with great black plumes and

the official cloak with a tricolour riband from which a heavy silver

medal was suspended on the breast. In front of them at the foot of the

daïs, sat the deputy of the Public Prosecutor, similarly attired. The

clerk of the court had a seat between the judges' bench and the

prisoner's chair, at present unoccupied. To Gamelin's eyes these men

wore a different aspect from that of every day; they seemed nobler,

graver, more alarming, albeit their bearing was commonplace enough as

they turned over papers, beckoned to an usher or leant back to listen to

some communication from a juryman or an officer of the court.

Above the judges' heads hung the tables of the Rights of Man; to their

right and left, against the old feudal walls, the busts of Le Peltier

Saint-Fargeau and Marat. Facing the jury bench, at the lower end of the

hall, rose the public gallery. The first row of seats was filled by

women, who all, fair, brown and grey-haired alike, wore the high coif

with the pleated tucker shading their cheeks; the breast, which

invariably, as decreed by the fashion of the day, showed the amplitude

of the nursing mother's bosom, was covered with a crossed white kerchief

or the rounded bib of a blue apron. They sat with folded arms resting on

the rail of the tribune. Behind them, scattered about the rising tiers,

could be seen a sprinkling of citizens dressed in the varied garb which

at that date gave every gathering so striking and picturesque a

character. On the right hand, near the doors, behind a broad barrier, a

space was reserved where the public could stand. On this occasion it was

nearly empty. The business that was to occupy the attention of this

particular section of the tribunal interested only a few spectators,

while doubtless the other sections sitting at the same hour would be

hearing more exciting cases.

This fact somewhat reassured Gamelin; his heart was like to fail him as

it was, and he could not have endured the heated atmosphere of one of

the great days. His eyes took in the most trifling details of the

scene,--the cotton-wool in the _greffier's_ ear and a blot of ink on the

Deputy Prosecutor's papers. He could see, as through a magnifying glass,

the capitals of the pillars sculptured at a time when all knowledge of

the classical orders was forgotten and which crowned the Gothic columns

with wreaths of nettle and holly. But wherever he looked, his gaze came

back again and again to the fatal chair; this was of an antiquated make,

covered in red Utrecht velvet, the seat worn and the arms blackened with

use. Armed National Guards stood guarding every door.

At last the accused appeared, escorted by grenadiers, but with limbs

unbound, as the law directed. He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, lean

and dry, with a brown face, a very bald head, hollow cheeks and thin

livid lips, dressed in an out-of-date coat of a sanguine red. No doubt

it was fever that made his eyes glitter like jewels and gave his cheeks

their shiny, varnished look. He took his seat. His legs, which he

crossed, were extraordinarily spare and his great knotted hands met

round the knees they clasped. His name was Marie-Adolphe Guillergues,

and he was accused of malversation in the supply of forage to the

Republican troops. The act of indictment laid to his charge numerous and

serious offences, of which no single one was positively certain. Under

examination, Guillergues denied the majority of the charges and

explained the rest in a light favourable to himself. He spoke in a

cold, precise way, with a marked ability and gave the impression of

being a dangerous man to have business dealings with. He had an answer

for everything. When the judge asked him an embarrassing question, his

face remained unmoved and his voice confident, but his two hands, folded

on his breast, kept twitching in an agony. Gamelin was struck by this

and whispered to the colleague sitting next him, a painter like himself:

"Watch his thumbs!"

The first witness to depose alleged a number of most damaging facts. He

was the mainstay of the prosecution. Those on the other hand who

followed showed themselves well disposed to the prisoner. The Deputy of

the Public Prosecutor spoke strongly, but did not go beyond

generalities. The advocate for the defence adopted a tone of bluff

conviction of his client's innocence that earned the accused a sympathy

he had failed to secure by his own efforts. The sitting was suspended

and the jury assembled in the room set apart for deliberation. There,

after a confused and confusing discussion, they found themselves divided

in two groups about equal in number. On the one side were the

unemotional, the lukewarm, the men of reason, whom no passion could

stir, on the other the kind who let their feelings guide them, who prove

all but inaccessible to argument and only consult their heart. These

always voted guilty. They were the true metal, pure and unadulterated;

their only thought was to save the Republic and they cared not a straw

for anything else. Their attitude made a strong impression on Gamelin

who felt he was of the same kidney himself.

"This Guillergues," he thought to himself, "is a cunning scamp, a

villain who has speculated in the forage supplied to our cavalry. To

acquit him is to let a traitor escape, to be false to the fatherland, to

devote the army to defeat." And in a flash Gamelin could see the Hussars

of the Republic, mounted on stumbling horses, sabred by the enemy's

cavalry.... "But if Guillergues was innocent...?"

Suddenly he remembered Jean Blaise, likewise suspected of bad faith in

the matter of supplies. There were bound to be many others acting like

Guillergues and Blaise, contriving disaster, ruining the Republic! An

example must be made. But if Guillergues was innocent...?

"There are no proofs," said Gamelin, aloud.

"There never are," retorted the foreman of the jury, shrugging his

shoulders; he was good metal, pure metal!

In the end, there proved to be seven votes for condemnation, eight for

acquittal.

The jury re-entered the hall and the sitting was resumed. The jurors

were required to give reasons for their verdict, and each spoke in turn

facing the empty chair. Some were prolix, others confined themselves to

a sentence; one or two talked unintelligible gabble.

When Gamelin's turn came, he rose and said:

"In presence of a crime so heinous as that of robbing the defenders of

the fatherland of the sinews of victory, we need formal proofs which we

have not got."

By a majority of votes the accused was declared not guilty.

Guillergues was brought in again and stood before his judges amid a hum

of sympathy from the spectators which conveyed the news of his acquittal

to him. He was another man. His features had lost their harshness, his

lips were relaxed again. He looked venerable; his face bore the

impression of innocence. The President read out in tones of emotion the

verdict releasing the prisoner; the audience broke into applause. The

gendarme who had brought Guillergues in threw himself into his arms. The

President called him to the daïs and gave him the embrace of

brotherhood. The jurors kissed him, while Gamelin's eyes rained hot

tears.

The courtyard of the Palais, dimly lighted by the last rays of the

setting sun, was filled with a howling, excited crowd. The four sections

of the Tribunal had the day before pronounced thirty sentences of death,

and on the steps of the Great Stairway a throng of _tricoteuses_

squatted to see the tumbrils start. But Gamelin, as he descended the

steps among the press of jurors and spectators, saw nothing, heard

nothing but his own act of justice and humanity and the

self-congratulation he felt at having recognized innocence. In the

courtyard stood Élodie, all in white, smiling through her tears; she

threw herself into his arms and lay there half fainting. When she had

recovered her voice, she said to him:

"Évariste, you are noble, you are good, you are generous! In the hall

there, your voice, so gentle and manly, went right through me with its

magnetic waves. It electrified me. I gazed at you on your bench, I could

see no one but you. But you, dear heart, you never guessed I was there?

Nothing told you I was present? I sat in the gallery in the second row

to the right. By heaven! how sweet it is to do the right! you saved

that unhappy man's life. Without you, it was all over with him; he was

as good as dead. You have given him back to life and the love of his

friends. At this moment he must bless you. Évariste, how happy I am and

how proud to love you!"

Arm in arm, pressed close to one another, they went along the streets;

their bodies felt so light they seemed to be flying.

They went to the _Amour peintre_. On reaching the Oratoire:

"Better not go through the shop," Élodie suggested.

She made him go in by the main coach-door and mount the stairs with her

to the suite of rooms above. On the landing she drew out of her reticule

a heavy iron key.

"It might be the key of a prison," she exclaimed, "Évariste, you are

going to be my prisoner."

They crossed the dining-room and were in the girl's bedchamber.

Évariste felt upon his the ardent freshness of Élodie's lips. He pressed

her in his arms; with head thrown back and swooning eyes, her hair

flowing loose over her relaxed form, half fainting, she escaped his hold

and ran to shoot the bolt....

The night was far advanced when the _citoyenne_ Blaise opened the outer

door of the flat for her lover and whispered to him in the darkness.

"Good-bye, sweetheart! it is the hour my father will be coming home. If

you hear a noise on the stairs, go up quick to the higher floor and

don't come down till all danger is over of your being seen. To have the

street-door opened, give three raps on the _concierge's_ window.

Good-bye, my life, good-bye, my soul!"

When he found himself in the street, he saw the window of Élodie's

chamber half unclose and a little hand pluck a red carnation, which fell

at his feet like a drop of blood.