The Gods are Athirst Part 28

"The waggon's mired.... Hurrah! The Jacobins in the jakes!"

Gamelin was thinking, and truth seemed to dawn on him.

"I die justly," he reflected. "It is just we should receive these outrages cast at the Republic, for we should have safeguarded her against them. We have been weak; we have been guilty of supineness. We have betrayed the Republic. We have earned our fate. Robespierre himself, the immaculate, the saint, has sinned from mildness, mercifulness; his faults are wiped out by his martyrdom. He was my exemplar, and I, too, have betrayed the Republic; the Republic perishes; it is just and fair that I die with her. I have been over sparing of blood; let my blood flow! Let me peris.h.!.+ I have deserved ..."

Such were his reflections when suddenly he caught sight of the signboard of the _Amour peintre_, and a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swept tumultuously over his heart.

The shop was shut, the sun-blinds of the three windows on the mezzanine floor were drawn right down. As the cart pa.s.sed in front of the window of the blue chamber, a woman's hand, wearing a silver ring on the ring-finger, pushed aside the edge of the blind and threw towards Gamelin a red carnation which his bound hands prevented him from catching, but which he adored as the token and likeness of those red and fragrant lips that had refreshed his mouth. His eyes filled with bursting tears, and his whole being was still entranced with the glamour of this farewell when he saw the blood-stained knife rise into view in the Place de la Revolution.

XXIX

It was Nivose. Ma.s.ses of floating ice enc.u.mbered the Seine; the basins in the Tuileries garden, the kennels, the public fountains were frozen.

The North wind swept clouds of h.o.a.r frost before it in the streets. A white steam breathed from the horses' noses, and the city folk would glance in pa.s.sing at the thermometer at the opticians' doors. A shop-boy was wiping the fog from the window-panes of the _Amour peintre_, while curious pa.s.sers-by threw a look at the prints in vogue,--Robespierre squeezing into a cup a heart like a pumpkin to drink the blood, and ambitious allegorical designs with such t.i.tles as the Tigrocracy of Robespierre; it was all hydras, serpents, horrid monsters let loose on France by the tyrant. Other pictures represented the Horrible Conspiracy of Robespierre, Robespierre's Arrest, The Death of Robespierre.

That day, after the midday dinner, Philippe Desmahis walked into the _Amour peintre_, his portfolio under his arm, and brought the _citoyen_ Jean Blaise a plate he had just finished, a stippled engraving of the Suicide of Robespierre. The artist's picaresque burin had made Robespierre as hideous as possible. The French people were not yet satiated with all the memorials which enshrined the horror and opprobrium felt for the man who was made scapegoat of all the crimes of the Revolution. For all that, the printseller, who knew his public, informed Desmahis that henceforward he was going to give him military subjects to engrave.

"We shall all be wanting victories and conquests,--swords, waving plumes, triumphant generals. Glory is to be the word. I feel it in me; my heart beats high to hear the exploits of our valiant armies. And when I have a feeling, it is seldom all the world doesn't have the same feeling at the same time. What we want is warriors and women, Mars and Venus."

"_Citoyen_ Blaise, I have still two or three drawings of Gamelin's by me, which you gave me to engrave. Is it urgent?"

"Not a bit."

"By-the-bye, about Gamelin; yesterday, strolling in the Boulevard du Temple, I saw at a dealer's, who keeps a second-hand stall opposite the House of Beaumarchais, all that poor devil's canvases, amongst the rest his _Orestes and Electra_. The head of Orestes, who's like Gamelin, is really fine, I a.s.sure you.... The head and arm are superb.... The man told me he found no difficulty in getting rid of these canvases to artists who want to paint over them.... Poor Gamelin! He might have been a genius of the first order, perhaps, if he hadn't taken to politics."

"He had the soul of a criminal!" replied the _citoyen_ Blaise. "I unmasked him, on this very spot, when his sanguinary instincts were still held in check. He never forgave me.... Oh! he was a choice blackguard."

"Poor fellow! he was sincere enough. It was the fanatics were his ruin."

"You don't defend him, I presume, Desmahis!... There's no defending him."

"No, _citoyen_ Blaise, there's no defending him."

The _citoyen_ Blaise tapped the gallant Desmahis' shoulder amicably, and observed:

"Times are changed. We can call you _Barbaroux_ now the Convention is recalling the proscribed.... Now I think of it, Desmahis, engrave me a portrait of Charlotte Corday, will you?"

A woman, a tall, handsome brunette, enveloped in furs, entered the shop and bestowed on the _citoyen_ Blaise a little discreet nod that implied intimacy. It was Julie Gamelin; but she no longer bore that dishonoured name, she preferred to be called the _citoyenne_ widow Cha.s.sagne, and wore, under her mantle, a red tunic in honour of the red s.h.i.+rts of the terror. Julie had at first felt a certain repulsion towards evariste's mistress; anything that had come near her brother was odious to her. But the _citoyenne_ Blaise, after evariste's death, had found an asylum for the unhappy mother in the attics of the _Amour peintre_. Julie had also taken refuge there; then she had got employment again at the fas.h.i.+onable milliner's in the Rue des Lombards. Her short hair _a la victime_, her aristocratic looks, her mourning weeds had won the sympathies of the gilded youth. Jean Blaise, whom Rose Thevenin had pretty well thrown over, offered her his homage, which she accepted. Still Julie was fond of wearing men's clothes, as in the old tragic days; she had a fine _Muscadin_ costume made for her and often went, huge baton and all complete, to sup at some tavern at Sevres or Meudon with a girl friend, a little a.s.sistant in a fas.h.i.+on shop. Inconsolable for the loss of the young n.o.ble whose name she bore, this masculine-minded Julie found the only solace to her melancholy in a savage rancour; every time she encountered Jacobins, she would set the pa.s.sers-by on them, crying "Death, death!" She had small leisure left to give to her mother, who alone in her room told her beads all day, too deeply shocked at her boy's tragic death to feel the grief that might have been expected. Rose was now the constant companion of elodie who certainly got on amicably with her step-mothers.

"Where is elodie?" asked the _citoyenne_ Cha.s.sagne.

Jean Blaise shook his head; he did not know. He never did know; he made it a point of honour not to.

Julie had come to take her friend with her to see Rose Thevenin at Monceaux, where the actress lived in a little house with an English garden.

At the Conciergerie Rose Thevenin had made the acquaintance of a big army-contractor, the _citoyen_ Montfort. She had been released first, by Jean Blaise's intervention, and had then procured the _citoyen_ Montfort's pardon, who was no sooner at liberty than he started his old trade of provisioning the troops, to which he added speculation in building-lots in the Pepiniere quarter. The architects Ledoux, Olivier and Wailly were erecting pretty houses in that district, and in three months the land had trebled in value. Montfort, since their imprisonment together in the Luxembourg, had been Rose Thevenin's lover; he now gave her a little house in the neighbourhood of Tivoli and the Rue du Rocher, which was very expensive,--and cost him nothing, the sale of the adjacent properties having already repaid him several times over. Jean Blaise was a man of the world, so he deemed it best to put up with what he could not hinder; he gave up Mademoiselle Thevenin to Montfort without ceasing to be on friendly terms with her.

Julie had not been long at the _Amour peintre_ before elodie came down to her in the shop, looking like a fas.h.i.+on plate. Under her mantle, despite the rigours of the season, she wore nothing but her white frock; her face was even paler than of old, and her figure thinner; her looks were languis.h.i.+ng, and her whole person breathed voluptuous invitation.

The two women set off for Rose Thevenin's, who was expecting them.

Desmahis accompanied them; the actress was consulting him about the decoration of her new house and he was in love with elodie, who had by this time half made up her mind to let him sigh no more in vain. When the party came near Monceaux, where the victims of the Place de la Revolution lay buried under a layer of lime:

"It is all very well in the cold weather," remarked Julie; "but in the spring the exhalations from the ground there will poison half the town."

Rose Thevenin received her two friends in a drawing-room furnished _a l'antique_, the sofas and armchairs of which were designed by David.

Roman bas-reliefs, copied in monochrome, adorned the walls above statues, busts and candelabra of imitation bronze. She wore a curled wig of a straw colour. At that date wigs were all the rage; it was quite common to include half a dozen, a dozen, a dozen and a half in a bride's trousseau. A gown _a la Cyprienne_ moulded her body like a sheath.

Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she led her two friends and the engraver into the garden, which Ledoux was laying out for her, but which as yet was a chaos of leafless trees and plaster. She showed them, however, Fingal's grotto, a gothic chapel with a bell, a temple, a torrent.

"There," she said, pointing to a clump of firs, "I should like to raise a cenotaph to the memory of the unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. I was not indifferent to him; he was a lovable man. The monsters slaughtered him; I bewailed his fate. Desmahis, you shall design me an urn on a column."

Then she added almost without a pause:

"It is heart-breaking.... I wanted to give a ball this week; but all the fiddles are engaged three weeks in advance. There is dancing every night at the _citoyenne_ Tallien's."

After dinner Mademoiselle Thevenin's carriage took the three friends and Desmahis to the Theatre Feydeau. All that was most elegant in Paris was gathered in the house--the women with hair dressed _a l'antique_ or _a la victime_, in very low dresses, purple or white and spangled with gold, the men wearing very tall black collars and the chin disappearing in enormous white cravats.

The bill announced _Phedre_ and the _Chien du Jardinier_,--The Gardener's Dog. With one voice the audience demanded the hymn dear to the _muscadins_ and the gilded youth, the _Reveil du peuple_,--The Awakening of the People.

The curtain rose and a little man, short and fat, took the stage; it was the celebrated Lays. He sang in his fine tenor voice:

_Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

Such storms of applause broke out as set the l.u.s.tres of the chandelier jingling. Then some murmurs made themselves heard, and the voice of a citizen in a round hat answered from the pit with the hymn of the Ma.r.s.eillaise:

_Allons, enfants de la patrie...._

The voice was drowned by howls, and shouts were raised:

"Down with the Terrorists! Death to the Jacobins!"

Lays was recalled and sang a second time over the hymn of the Thermidorians.

_Peuple francais, peuple de freres!..._

In every play-house was to be seen the bust of Marat, surmounting a column or raised on a pedestal; at the Theatre Feydeau this bust stood on a dwarf pillar on the "prompt" side, against the masonry-framing in the stage.

While the orchestra was playing the Overture of _Phedre et Hippolyte_, a young _Muscadin_, pointing his cane at the bust, shouted:

"Down with Marat!"--and the whole house took up the cry: "Down with Marat! Down with Marat!"

Urgent voices rose above the uproar:

"It is a black shame that bust should still be there!"

"The infamous Marat lords it everywhere, to our dishonour! His busts are as many as the heads he wanted to cut off."