THE FIELD OF THE DEAD.
To great tempests succeeds calm, dreadful but reparative.
At two o’clock in the morning a wan moon was playing through the
swift-driving white clouds upon the fatal scene where the merry-makers
had trampled and buried one another in the ditches.
The corpses stuck out arms lifted in prayers and legs broken and
entangled, while the clothes were ripped and the faces livid.
Yellow and sickening smoke, rising from the burning platforms on Louis
XV. Place, helped to give it the aspect of a battlefield.
Over the bloody and desolate spot wandered shadows which were the
robbers of the dead, attracted like ravens. Unable to find living prey,
they stripped the corpses and swore with surprise when they found they
had been forestalled by rivals. They fled, frightened and disappointed
as soldier’s bayonets at last appeared, but among the long rows of the
dead, robbers and soldiers were not the solely moving objects.
Supplied with lanterns prowlers were busy. They were not only curious,
but relatives and parents and lovers who had not had their dear ones
come home from the sightseeing. They came from the remotest parts for
the horrible news had spread over Paris, mourning as if a hurricane had
passed over it, and anxiety was acted out in these searches.
It was muttered that the Provost of Paris had many corpses thrown into
the river from his fears at the immense number lost through his want of
foresight. Hence those who had ferreted about uselessly, went to the
river and stood in it knee-deep to stare at the flow; or they stole with
their lanterns into the by-streets where it was rumored some of the
crippled wretches had crept to beg help and at least flee the scene of
their misfortune.
At the end of the square, near the Royal Gardens, popular charity had
already set up a field hospital. A young man who might be identified as
a surgeon by the instruments by his side, was attending to the wounded
brought to him. While bandaging them he said words rather expressing
hatred for the cause of their injuries than pity for the effect. He had
two helpers, robust reporters, to whom he kept on shouting:
“Let me have the poor first. You can easily pick them out for they will
be badly dressed and most injured.”
At these words, continually croaked, a young gentleman with pale brow,
who was searching among the bodies with a lantern in his hand, raised
his head.
A deep gash on his forehead still dropped red blood. One of his hands
was thrust between two buttons of his coat to support his injured arm;
his perspiring face betrayed deep and ceaseless emotion.
Looking sadly at the amputated limbs which the operator appeared to
regard with professional pleasure, he said:
“Oh, doctor, why do you make a selection among the victims?”
“Because,” replied the surgeon, raising his head at this reproach, “no
one would care for the poor if I did not, and the rich will always find
plenty to look after them. Lower your light and look along the pavement
and you will find a hundred poor to one rich or noble. In this
catastrophe, with their luck which will in the end tire heaven itself,
the aristocrats have paid their tax as usual, one per thousand.”
The gentleman held up his lantern to his own face.
“Am I only one of my class?” he queried, without irritation, “a nobleman
who was lost in the throng, where a horse kicked me in the face and my
arm was broken by my falling into a ditch. You say the rich and noble
are looked after--have I had my wounds dressed?”
“You have your mansion and your family doctor; go home, for you are able
to walk.”
“I am not asking your help, sir; I am seeking my sister, a fair girl of
sixteen, no doubt killed, alas! albeit she is not of the lower classes.
She wore a white dress and a necklace with a cross. Though she has a
residence and a doctor, for pity’s sake! answer me if you have seen
her?”
“Humanity guides me, my lord,” said the young surgeon with feverish
vehemence proving that such ideas had long been seething within his
bosom; “I devote myself to mankind, and I obey the law of her who is my
goddess when I leave the aristocrat on his deathbed to run and relieve
the suffering people. All the woes happened here are derived from the
upper class; they come from your abuses, and usurpation; bear therefore
the consequences. No lord, I have not seen your sister.”
With this blasting retort, the surgeon resumed his task. A poor woman
was brought to him over whose both legs a carriage had rolled.
“Behold,” he pursued Philip with a shout, “is it the poor who drive
their coaches about on holidays so as to smash the limbs of the rich?”
Philip, belonging to the new race who sided with Làfayette, had more
than once professed the opinions which stung him from this youth: their
application fell on him like chastisement. With breaking heart, he
turned aloof on his mournful exploration, but soon they could hear his
tearful voice calling:
“Andrea, Andrea!”
Near him hurried an elderly man, in grey coat, cloth stockings, and
leaning on a cane, while with his left hand he held a cheap lantern made
of a candle surrounded by oiled paper.
“Poor young man,” he sighed on hearing the gentleman’s wail and
comprehending his anguish, “Forgive me,” he said, returning after
letting him pass as though he could not let such great sorrow go by
without endeavoring to give some alleviation, “forgive my mingling grief
with yours, but those whom the same stroke strikes ought to support one
another. Besides, you may be useful to me. As your candle is nearly
burnt out you must have been seeking for some time, and so know a good
many places. Where do they lie thickest?”
“In the great ditch more than fifty are heaped up.”
“So many victims during a festival?”
“So many?--I have looked upon a thousand dead--and have not yet come
upon my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“She was lost in that direction. I have found the bench where we were
parted. But of her not a trace. I began to search at the bastion. The
mob moved towards the new buildings in Madeleine Street. There I hunted,
but there were great fluctuations. The stream rushed thither, but a poor
girl would wander anywhere, with her crazed head, seeking flight in any
direction.”
“I can hardly think that she would have stemmed the current. We two may
find her together at the corner of the streets.”
“But who are you after--your son?” questioned Philip.
“No, an adopted youth, only eighteen, who was master of his actions and
would come to the festival. Besides, one was so far from imagining this
horrid catastrophe. Your candle is going out--come with me and I will
light you.”
“Thanks, you are very kind, but I shall obstruct you.”
“Fear nothing, for I must be seeking, too. Usually the lad comes home
punctually,” continued the old man, “but I had a forerunner last
evening. I was sitting up for him at eleven when my wife had the rumor
from the neighbors of the miseries of this rejoicing. I waited a couple
of hours in hopes that he would return, but then I felt it would be
cowardly to go to sleep without news.”
“So we will hunt over by the houses,” said the nobleman.
“Yes, as you say the crowd went there and would certainly have carried
him along. He is from the country and knows no more the way than the
streets. This may be the first time he came to this place.”
“My sister is country-bred also.”
“Shocking sight,” said the old man, before a mound of the suffocated.
“Still we must search,” said the chevalier, resolutely holding out the
lantern to the corpses. “Oh, here we are by the Wardrobe Stores--ha!
white rags--my sister wore a white dress. Lend me your light, I entreat
you, sir.”
“It is a piece of a white dress,” he continued, “but held in a young
man’s hand. It is like that she wore. Oh, Andrea!” he sobbed as if it
tore up his heart.
The old man came nearer.
“It is he,” he exclaimed, “Gilbert!”
“Gilbert? do you know our farmer’s son, Gilbert, and were you seeking
him?”
The old man took the youth’s hand, it was icy cold. Philip opened his
waistcoat and found that his heart was quiet. But the next instant he
cried: “No, he breathes--he lives, I tell you.”
“Help! this way, to the surgeon,” said the old man.
“Nay, let us do what we can for him for I was refused help when I spoke
to him just now.”
“He must take care of my dear boy,” said the old man.
And taking Gilbert between him and Taverney, they carried him towards
the surgeon, who was still croaking:
“The poor first--bring in the poor, first.”
This maxim was sure to be hailed with admiration from a group of
lookers-on.
“I bring a man of the people,” retorted the old man hotly, feeling a
little piqued at this exclusiveness.
“And the women next, as men can bear their hurt better,” proceeded the
character.
“The boy only wants bleeding,” said Gilbert’s friend.
“Ho, ho, so it is you, my lord, again?” sneered the surgeon, perceiving
Taverney.
The old gentleman thought that the speech was addressed to him and he
took it up warmly.
“I am not a lord--I am a man of the multitude--I am Jean Jacques
Rousseau.”
The surgeon uttered an exclamation of surprise and said as he waved the
crowd back imperiously:
“Way for the Man of Nature--the Emancipator of Humanity--the Citizen of
Geneva! Has any harm befallen you?”
“No, but to this poor lad.”
“Ah, like me, you represent the cause of mankind,” said the surgeon.
Startled by this unexpected eulogy, the author of the “Social contract”
could only stammer some unintelligible words, while Philip Taverney,
seized with stupefaction at being in face of the famous philosopher,
stepped aside.
Rousseau was helped in placing Gilbert on the table.
Then Rousseau gave a glance to the surgeon whose succor he invoked. He
was a youth of the patient’s own age, but no feature spoke of youth. His
yellow skin was wrinkled like an old man’s, his flaccid eyelid covered a
serpent’s glance, and his mouth was drawn one side like one in a fit.
With his sleeves tucked up to the elbow and his arms smeared with blood,
surrounded by the results of the operation he seemed rather an
enthusiastic executioner than a physician fulfilling his sad and holy
mission.
But the name of Rousseau seemed to influence him into laying aside his
ordinary brutality. He softly opened Gilbert’s sleeve, compressed the
arm with a linen ligature and pricked the vein.
“We shall pull him through,” he said, “but great care must be taken with
him for his chest was crushed in.”
“I have to thank you,” said Rousseau, “and praise you--not for the
exclusion you make on behalf of the poor, but for your devotion to the
afflicted. All men are brothers.”
“Even the rich, the noble, the lofty?” queried the surgeon, with a
kindling look in his sharp eye under the drooping lid.
“Even they, when they are in suffering.”
“Excuse me, but I am like you a Switzer, having been born at Neuchatel;
and so I am rather democratic.”
“My fellow-countryman? I should like to know your name.”
“An obscure one, a modest man who devotes his life to study until like
yourself he can employ it for the common-weal. I am Jean Paul Marat.”
“I thank you, Marat,” said Rousseau, “but in enlightening the masses on
their rights, do not excite their revengeful feelings. If ever they move
in that direction, you might be amazed at the reprisals.”
“Ah,” said Marat with a ghastly smile, “if it should come in my
time--should I see that day---- ”
Frightened at the accent, as a traveler by the mutterings of a coming
storm, Rousseau took Gilbert in his arms and tried to carry him away.
“Two willing friends to help Citizen Rousseau,” shouted Marat; “two men
of the lower order.”
Rousseau had plenty to choose among; he took two lusty fellows who
carried the youth in their arms.
“Take my lantern,” said the author to Taverney as he passed him: “I need
it no longer.”
Philip thanked him and went on with his search.
“Poor young gentleman,” sighed Rousseau, as he saw him disappear in the
thronged streets.
He shuddered, for still rang over the bloody field he surgeon’s shrill
voice shouting:
“Bring in the poor--none but the poor! Woe to the rich, the noble and
the high-born!”