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The Gods are Athirst, a novel by Anatole France |
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Chapter 27 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVII Robespierre, awake! The hour is come, time presses,... soon it will be too late.... At last, on the 8 Thermidor, in the Convention, the Incorruptible rises, he is going to speak. Sun of the 31st May, is this to be a second day-spring? Gamelin waits and hopes. His mind is made up then! Robespierre is to drag from the benches they dishonour these legislators more guilty than the federalists, more dangerous than Danton.... No! not yet. "I cannot," he says, "resolve to clear away entirely the veil that hides this mystery of iniquity." It is mere summer lightning that flashes harmlessly and without striking any one of the conspirators, terrifies all. Sixty of them at least for a fortnight had not dared sleep in their beds. Marat's way was to denounce traitors by their name, to point the finger of accusation at conspirators. The Incorruptible hesitates, and from that moment he is the accused.... That evening at the Jacobins, the hall is filled to suffocation, the corridors, the courtyard are crowded. They are all there, loud-voiced friends and silent enemies. Robespierre reads them the speech the Convention had heard in affrighted silence, and the Jacobins greet it with excited applause. "It is my dying testament," declares the orator. "You will see me drain the hemlock undismayed." "I will drink it with you," answered David. "All, we all will!" shout the Jacobins, and separate without deciding anything. Evariste, while the death of _The Just_ was preparing, slept the sleep of the Disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. Next day, he attended the Tribunal where two sections were sitting. That on which he served was trying twenty-one persons implicated in the conspiracy of the Lazare prison. The case was still proceeding when the tidings arrived: "The Convention, after a six-hours' session, has decreed Maximilien Robespierre accused,--with him Couthon and Saint-Just; add Augustin Robespierre, and Lebas, who have demanded to share the lot of the accused. The five outlaws stand at the bar of the house." News is brought that the President of the Section sitting in the next court, the _citoyen_ Dumas, has been arrested on the bench, but that the case goes on. Drums can be heard beating the alarm, and the tocsin peals from the churches. Evariste is still in his place when he is handed an order from the Commune to proceed to the Hotel de Ville to sit in the General Council. To the sound of the rolling drums and clanging church bells, he and his colleagues record their verdict; then he hurries home to embrace his mother and snatch up his scarf of office. The Place de Thionville is deserted. The Section is afraid to declare either for or against the Convention. Wayfarers creep along under the walls, slip down side-streets, sneak indoors. The call of the tocsin and alarm-drums is answered by the noise of barring shutters and bolting doors. The _citoyen_ Dupont senior has secreted himself in his shop; Remacle the porter is barricaded in his lodge. Little Josephine holds Mouton tremblingly in her arms. The widow Gamelin bemoans the dearness of victuals, cause of all the trouble. At the foot of the stairs Evariste encounters Elodie; she is panting for breath and her black locks are plastered on her hot cheek. "I have been to look for you at the Tribunal; but you had just left. Where are you going?" "To the Hotel de Ville." "Don't go there! It would be your ruin; Hanriot is arrested ... the Sections will not stir. The _Section des Piques_, Robespierre's Section, will do nothing, I know it for a fact; my father belongs to it. If you go to the Hotel de Ville, you are throwing away your life for nothing." "You wish me to be a coward?" "No! the brave thing is to be faithful to the Convention and to obey the Law." "The law is dead when malefactors triumph." "Evariste, hear me; hear your Elodie; hear your sister. Come and sit beside her and let her soothe your angry spirit." He looked at her; never had she seemed so desirable in his eyes; never had her voice sounded so seductive, so persuasive in his ears. "A couple of paces, only a couple of paces, dear Evariste!"--and she drew him towards the raised platform on which stood the pedestal of the overthrown statue. It was surrounded by benches occupied by strollers of both sexes. A dealer in fancy articles was offering his laces, a seller of cooling drinks, his portable cistern on his back, was tinkling his bell; little girls were showing off their airs and graces. The parapet was lined with anglers, standing, rod in hand, very still. The weather was stormy, the sky overcast. Gamelin leant on the low wall and looked down on the islet below, pointed like the prow of a ship, listening to the wind whistling in the tree-tops, and feeling his soul penetrated with an infinite longing for peace and solitude. Like a sweet echo of his thoughts, Elodie's voice sighed in his ear: "Do you remember, Evariste, how, at sight of the green fields, you wanted to be a country justice in a village? Yes, that would be happiness." But above the rustling of the trees and the girl's voice, he could hear the tocsin and alarm-drums, the distant tramp of horses, and rumbling of cannon along the streets. Two steps from them a young man, who was talking to an elegantly attired _citoyenne_, remarked: "Have you heard the latest?... The Opera is installed in the Rue de la Loi." Meantime the news was spreading; Robespierre's name was spoken, but in a shuddering whisper, for men feared him still. Women, when they heard the muttered rumour of his fall, concealed a smile. Evariste Gamelin seized Elodie's hand, but dropped it again swiftly next moment: "Farewell! I have involved you in my hideous fortunes, I have blasted your life for ever. Farewell! I pray you may forget me!" "Whatever you do," she warned him, "do not go back home to-night. Come to the _Amour peintre_. Do not ring; throw a pebble at my shutters. I will come and open the door to you myself; I will hide you in the loft." "You shall see me return triumphant, or you shall never see me more. Farewell!" On nearing the Hotel de Ville, he caught the well-remembered roar of the old great days rising to the grey heavens. In the Place de Greve a clash of arms, the glitter of scarfs and uniforms, Hanriot's cannon drawn up. He mounts the grand stairs and, entering the Council Hall, signs the attendance book. The Council General of the Commune, by the unanimous voice of the 491 members present, declares for the outlawed patriots. The Mayor sends for the Table of the Rights of Man, reads the clause which runs, "When the Government violates the Rights of the people, insurrection is for the people the most sacred and the most indispensable of duties," and the first magistrate of Paris announces that the Commune's answer to the Convention's act of violence is to raise the populace in insurrection. The members of the Council General take oath to die at their posts. Two municipal officers are deputed to go out on the Place de Greve and invite the people to join with their magistrates in saving the fatherland and freedom. There is an endless looking for friends, exchanging news, giving advice. Among these Magistrates, artisans are the exception. The Commune assembled here is such as the Jacobin purge has made it,--judges and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, artists like Beauvallet and Gamelin, householders living on their means and college professors, cosy citizens, well-to-do tradesmen, powdered heads, fat paunches, and gold watch-chains, very few sabots, striped trousers, carmagnole smocks and red caps. These bourgeois councillors are numerous and determined, but, when all is said, they are pretty well all Paris possesses of true Republicans. They stand on guard in the city mansion-house, as on a rock of liberty, but an ocean of indifference washes round their refuge. However, good news arrives. All the prisons where the proscribed had been confined open their doors and disgorge their prey. Augustin Robespierre, coming from La Force, is the first to enter the Hotel de Ville and is welcomed with acclamation. At eight o'clock it is announced that Maximilien, after a protracted resistance, is on his way to the Commune. He is eagerly expected; he is coming; he is here; a roar of triumph shakes the vault of the old Municipal Palace. He enters, supported by twenty arms. It is he, the little man there, slim, spruce, in blue coat and yellow breeches. He takes his seat; he speaks. At his arrival the Council orders the facade of the Hotel de Ville to be illuminated there and then. It is there the Republic resides. He speaks in a thin voice, in picked phrases. He speaks lucidly, copiously. His hearers who have staked their lives on his head, see the naked truth, see it to their horror. He is a man of words, a man of committees, a wind-bag incapable of prompt action, incompetent to lead a Revolution. They draw him into the Hall of Deliberation. Now they are all there, these illustrious outlaws,--Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre has the word. It is midnight and past, he is still speaking. Meantime Gamelin in the Council Hall, his bent brow pressed against a window, looks out with a haggard eye and sees the lamps flare and smoke in the gloom. Hanriot's cannon are parked before the Hotel de Ville. In the black Place de Greve surges an anxious crowd, in uncertainty and suspense. At half past twelve torches are seen turning the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, escorting a delegate of the Convention, clad in the insignia of office, who unfolds a paper and reads by the ruddy light the decree of the Convention, the outlawry of the members of the insurgent Commune, of the members of the Council General who are its abettors and of all such citizens as shall listen to its appeal. Outlawry, death without trial! The mere thought pales the cheek of the most determined. Gamelin feels the icy sweat on his brow. He watches the crowd hurrying with all speed from the Place. Turning his head, he finds that the Hall, packed but now with Councillors, is almost empty. But they have fled in vain; their signatures attest their attendance. It is two in the morning. The Incorruptible is in the neighbouring Hall, in deliberation with the Commune and the proscribed representatives. Gamelin casts a despairing look over the dark Square below. By the light of the lanterns he can see the wooden candles above the grocer's shop knocking together like ninepins; the street lamps shiver and swing; a high wind has sprung up. Next moment a deluge of rain comes down; the Place empties entirely; such as the fear of the Convention and its dread decree had not put to flight scatter in terror of a wetting. Hanriot's guns are abandoned, and when the lightning reveals the troops of the Convention debouching simultaneously from the Rue Antoine and from the Quai, the approaches to the Hotel de Ville are utterly deserted. At last Maximilien has resolved to make appeal from the decree of the Convention to his own Section,--the _Section des Piques_. The Council General sends for swords, pistols, muskets. But now the clash of arms, the trampling of feet and the shiver of broken glass fill the building. The troops of the Convention sweep by like an avalanche across the Hall of Deliberation, and pour into the Council Chamber. A shot rings out; Gamelin sees Robespierre fall; his jaw is broken. He himself grasps his knife, the six-sous knife that, one day of bitter scarcity, had cut bread for a starving mother, the same knife that, one summer evening at a farm at Orangis, Elodie had held in her lap, when she cried the forfeits. He opens it, tries to plunge it into his heart, but the blade strikes on a rib, closes on the handle, the catch giving way, and two fingers are badly cut. Gamelin falls, the blood pouring from the wounds. He lies quite still, but the cold is cruel, and he is trampled underfoot in the turmoil of a fearful struggle. Through the hurly-burly he can distinctly hear the voice of the young dragoon Henry, shouting: "The tyrant is no more; his myrmidons are broken. The Revolution will resume its course, majestic and terrible." Gamelin fainted. At seven in the morning a surgeon sent by the Convention dressed his hurts. The Convention was full of solicitude for Robespierre's accomplices; it would fain not have one of them escape the guillotine. The artist, ex-juror, ex-member of the Council General of the Commune, was borne on a litter to the Conciergerie. _ |
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