The Gods are Athirst Part 19

"Now we must set about nabbing our rascal," said Delourmel, who had long moustaches and great eyes that rolled in his head. "I feel quite in the mood this morning for a dish of aristocrat's lights and liver, washed down with a gla.s.s of white wine."

Beauvisage suggested to the delegates going to the Place Dauphine to see if his colleague Dupont senior was at his shop there; he would be sure to know this man, des Ilettes.

So they set off in the keen morning air, accompanied by four grenadiers of the Section.

"Have you seen '_The Last Judgment of Kings_' played?" Delourmel asked his companions; "the piece is worth seeing. The author shows you all the Kings of Europe on a desert island where they have taken refuge, at the foot of a volcano which swallows them up. It is a patriotic work."

At the corner of the Rue du Harlay Delourmel's eye was caught by a little cart, as brilliantly painted as a reliquary, which an old woman was pus.h.i.+ng, wearing over her coif a hat of waxed cloth.

"What is that old woman selling?" he asked.

The old dame answered for herself:

"Look, gentlemen, make your choice. I have beads and rosaries, crosses, St. Anthonys, holy cerecloths, St. Veronica handkerchiefs, _Ecce h.o.m.os_, _Agnus Deis_, hunting-horns and rings of St. Hubert, and articles of devotion of every sort and kind."

"Why, it is the very a.r.s.enal of fanaticism!" cried Delourmel in horror,--and he proceeded to a summary examination of the poor woman, who made the same answer to every question:

"My son, it's forty years I have been selling articles of devotion."

Another Delegate of the Committee of General Security, noticing a blue-coated National Guard pa.s.sing, directed him to convey the astonished old woman to the Conciergerie.

The _citoyen_ Beauvisage pointed out to Delourmel that it would have been more in the competence of the Committee of Surveillance to arrest the woman and bring her before the Section; that in any case, one never knew nowadays what att.i.tude to take up towards the old religion so as to act up to the views of the Government, and whether it was best to allow everything or forbid everything.

On nearing the joiner's shop, the delegates and the commissary could hear angry shouts mingling with the hissing of the saw and the grinding of the plane. A quarrel had broken out between the joiner, Dupont senior, and his neighbour Remacle, the porter, because of the _citoyenne_ Remacle, whom an irresistible attraction was for ever drawing into the recesses of the workshop, whence she would return to the porter's lodge all covered with shavings and saw-dust. The injured porter bestowed a kick on Mouton, the carpenter's dog, which at that very moment his own little daughter Josephine was nursing lovingly in her arms. Josephine was furious and burst into a torrent of imprecations against her father, while the carpenter shouted in a voice of exasperation:

"Wretch! I tell you you shall not beat my dog."

"And I," retorted the porter brandis.h.i.+ng his broom, "I tell you you shall _not_...."

He did not finish the sentence; the joiner's plane had hurtled close past his head.

The instant he caught sight of the _citoyen_ Beauvisage and the attendant delegates, he rushed up to him and cried:

"_Citoyen_ Commissary you are my witness, this villain has just tried to murder me."

The _citoyen_ Beauvisage, in his red cap, the badge of his office, put out his long arms in the att.i.tude of a peacemaker, and addressing the porter and the joiner:

"A hundred _sols_," he announced, "to whichever of you will inform us where to find a suspect, wanted by the Committee of General Security, a _ci-devant_ named des Ilettes, a maker of dancing-dolls."

With one accord porter and carpenter designated Brotteaux's lodging, the only quarrel now between them being who should have the a.s.signat for a hundred _sols_ promised the informer.

Delourmel, Guenot, and Beauvisage, followed by the four grenadiers, Remacle the porter, Dupont the carpenter, and a dozen little scamps of the neighbourhood filed up the stairs which shook under their tread, and finally mounted the ladder to the attics.

Brotteaux was in his garret busy cutting out his dancing figures, while the Pere Longuemare sat facing him, stringing their scattered limbs on threads, smiling to himself to see rhythm and harmony thus growing under his fingers.

At the sound of muskets being grounded on the landing, the monk trembled in every limb, not that he was a whit less courageous than Brotteaux, who never moved a muscle, but the habit of respect for human conventions had never disciplined him to a.s.sume an att.i.tude of self-composure.

Brotteaux gathered from the _citoyen_ Delourmel's questions the quarter from which the blow had come and saw too late how unwise it is to confide in women. He obeyed the _citoyen_ Commissary's order to go with him, first picking up his Lucretius and his three s.h.i.+rts.

"The _citoyen_," he said, pointing to the Pere Longuemare, "is an a.s.sistant I have taken to help me make my marionettes. His home is here."

But the monk failing to produce a certificate of citizens.h.i.+p, was put under arrest along with Brotteaux.

As the procession filed past the porter's door, the _citoyenne_ Remacle, leaning on her broom, looked at her lodger with the eyes of virtue beholding crime in the clutches of the law. Little Josephine, dainty and disdainful, held back Mouton by his collar when the dog tried to fawn on the friend who had often given him a lump of sugar. A gaping crowd filled the Place de Thionville.

At the foot of the stairs Brotteaux came face to face with a young peasant woman who was on the point of going up. She carried a basket on her arm full of eggs and in her hand a flat cake wrapped in a napkin. It was Athenas, who had come from Palaiseau to present her saviour with a token of her grat.i.tude. When she observed a posse of magistrates and four grenadiers and "Monsieur Maurice" being led away a prisoner, she stopped in consternation and asked if it was really true; then she stepped up to the Commissary and said in a gentle voice:

"You are not taking him to prison? it can't be possible.... Why! you don't know him! G.o.d himself is not better or kinder."

The _citoyen_ Delourmel pushed her away and beckoned to the grenadiers to come forward. Then Athenas let loose a torrent of the foulest abuse, the filthiest and most abominable invective, at the magistrates and soldiers, who thought that all the rinsings of the Palais-Royal and the Rue Fromenteau were being emptied over their devoted heads. After which, in a voice that filled the whole Place de Thionville and sent a shudder through the throng of curious onlookers:

"Vive le roi! Vive le roi!" she yelled.

XVIII

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin was devoted to old Brotteaux, and taking him altogether, thought him the best and greatest man she had ever known.

She had not bidden him good-bye when he was arrested, because she would not have dared to defy the powers that be and because in her lowly estate she looked upon cowardice as a duty. But she had received a blow she could not recover from.

She could not eat and lamented she had lost her appet.i.te just when she had at last the means to satisfy it. She still admired her son; but she durst not let her mind dwell on the appalling duties he was engaged upon and congratulated herself she was only an ignorant woman who had no call to judge his conduct.

The poor mother had found a rosary at the bottom of a trunk; she hardly knew how to use it, but often fumbled the beads in her trembling fingers. She had lived to grow old without any overt exercise of her religion, but she had always been a pious woman, and she would pray to G.o.d all day long, in the chimney corner, to save her boy and that good, kind Monsieur Brotteaux. elodie often came to see her; they durst not look each other in the eyes, and sitting side by side they would talk at random of indifferent matters.

One day in Pluviose, when the snow, falling in heavy flakes, darkened the sky and deadened the noises of the city, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin, who was alone in the lodging heard a knock at the door. She started violently; for months now the slightest noise had set her trembling. She opened the door. A young man of eighteen or twenty walked in, his hat on his head. He was dressed in a bottle-green box-coat, the triple collar of which covered his bust and descended to the waist. He wore top-boots of an English cut. His chestnut hair fell in ringlets about his shoulders. He stepped into the middle of the studio, as if wishful that all the light admitted by the snow-enc.u.mbered skylight might fall on him, and stood there some moments without moving or speaking.

At last, in answer to the _citoyenne_ Gamelin's look of amazement:

"Don't you know your daughter?"

The old dame clasped her hands:

"Julie!... It is you.... Good G.o.d! is it possible?..."

"Why, yes, it is I. Kiss me, mother."

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin pressed her daughter to her bosom, and dropped a tear on the collar of the box-coat. Then she began again in an anxious voice:

"You, in Paris!..."

"Ah! mother, but why did I not come alone! For myself, they will never know me in this dress."

It was a fact the box-coat sufficiently disguised her shape, and she did not look very different from a great many very young men, who, like her, wore their hair long and parted in two ma.s.ses on the forehead. Her features, which were delicately cut and charming, but burnt by the sun, drawn with fatigue, worn with anxiety, had a bold, masculine expression. She was slim, with long straight limbs and an easy carriage; only the clear treble of her voice could have betrayed her s.e.x.

Her mother asked her if she was hungry. She said she would be glad of something to eat, and when bread, wine and ham had been set before her, she fell to, one elbow on the table, with a pretty gluttony, like Ceres in the hut of the old woman Baubo.

Then, the gla.s.s still at her lips: