________________________________________________
_ It was night. She lay in the narrow, crimson-draped bed. The heavy
crimson curtains had been drawn across the dirty lace curtains of
the window, but the lights of the little square faintly penetrated
through chinks into the room. The sounds of the square also
penetrated, extraordinarily loud and clear, for the unabated heat
had compelled her to leave the window open. She could not sleep.
Exhausted though she was, there was no hope of her being able to
sleep.
Once again she was profoundly depressed. She remembered the dinner
with horror. The long, crowded table, with semi-circular ends, in
the oppressive and reeking dining-room lighted by oil-lamps! There
must have been at least forty people at that table. Most of them
ate disgustingly, as noisily as pigs, with the ends of the large
coarse napkins tucked in at their necks. All the service was done
by the fat woman whom she had seen at the window with Gerald, and
a young girl whose demeanour was candidly brazen. Both these
creatures were slatterns. Everything was dirty. But the food was
good. Chirac and Gerald were agreed that the food was good, as
well as the wine. "Remarquable!" Chirac had said, of the wine.
Sophia, however, could neither eat nor drink with relish. She was
afraid. The company shocked her by its gestures alone. It was very
heterogeneous in appearance, some of the diners being well
dressed, approaching elegance, and others shabby. But all the
faces, to the youngest, were brutalized, corrupt, and shameless.
The juxtaposition of old men and young women was odious to her,
especially when those pairs kissed, as they did frequently towards
the end of the meal. Happily she was placed between Chirac and
Gerald. That situation seemed to shelter her even from the
conversation. She would have comprehended nothing of the
conversation, had it not been for the presence of a middle-aged
Englishman who sat at the opposite end of the table with a
youngish, stylish Frenchwoman whom she had seen at Sylvain's on
the previous night. The Englishman was evidently under a promise
to teach English to the Frenchwoman. He kept translating for her
into English, slowly and distinctly, and she would repeat the
phrases after him, with strange contortions of the mouth.
Thus Sophia gathered that the talk was exclusively about
assassinations, executions, criminals, and executioners. Some of
the people there made a practice of attending every execution.
They were fountains of interesting gossip, and the lions of the
meal. There was a woman who could recall the dying words of all
the victims of justice for twenty years past. The table roared
with hysteric laughter at one of this woman's anecdotes. Sophia
learned that she had related how a criminal had said to the priest
who was good-naturedly trying to screen the sight of the
guillotine from him with his body: "Stand away now, parson.
Haven't I paid to see it?" Such was the Englishman's rendering.
The wages of the executioners and their assistants were discussed,
and differences of opinions led to ferocious arguments. A young
and dandiacal fellow told, as a fact which he was ready to vouch
for with a pistol, how Cora Pearl, the renowned English courtesan,
had through her influence over a prefect of police succeeded in
visiting a criminal alone in his cell during the night preceding
his execution, and had only quitted him an hour before the final
summons. The tale won the honours of the dinner. It was regarded
as truly impressive, and inevitably it led to the general inquiry:
what could the highest personages in the empire see to admire in
that red-haired Englishwoman? And of course Rivain himself, the
handsome homicide, the centre and hero of the fete, was never long
out of the conversation. Several of the diners had seen him; one
or two knew him and could give amazing details of his prowess as a
man of pleasure. Despite his crime, he seemed to be the object of
sincere idolatry. It was said positively that a niece of his
victim had been promised a front place at the execution.
Apropos of this, Sophia gathered, to her intense astonishment and
alarm, that the prison was close by and that the execution would
take place at the corner of the square itself in which the hotel
was situated. Gerald must have known; he had hidden it from her.
She regarded him sideways, with distrust. As the dinner finished,
Gerald's pose of a calm, disinterested, scientific observer of
humanity gradually broke down. He could not maintain it in front
of the increasing license of the scene round the table. He was at
length somewhat ashamed of having exposed his wife to the view of
such an orgy; his restless glance carefully avoided both Sophia
and Chirac. The latter, whose unaffected simplicity of interest in
the affair had more than anything helped to keep Sophia in
countenance, observed the change in Gerald and Sophia's excessive
discomfort, and suggested that they should leave the table without
waiting for the coffee. Gerald agreed quickly. Thus had Sophia
been released from the horror of the dinner. She did not
understand how a man so thoughtful and kindly as Chirac--he had
bidden her good night with the most distinguished courtesy--could
tolerate, much less pleasurably savour, the gluttonous, drunken,
and salacious debauchery of the Hotel de Vezelay; but his theory
was, so far as she could judge from his imperfect English, that
whatever existed might be admitted and examined by serious persons
interested in the study of human nature. His face seemed to say:
"Why not?" His face seemed to say to Gerald and to herself: "If
this incommodes you, what did you come for?"
Gerald had left her at the bedroom door with a self-conscious nod.
She had partly undressed and lain down, and instantly the hotel
had transformed itself into a kind of sounding-box. It was as if,
beneath and within all the noises of the square, every movement in
the hotel reached her ears through cardboard walls: distant
shoutings and laughter below; rattlings of crockery below;
stampings up and down stairs; stealthy creepings up and down
stairs; brusque calls; fragments of song, whisperings; long sighs
suddenly stifled; mysterious groans as of torture, broken by a
giggle; quarrels and bickering,--she was spared nothing in the
strangely resonant darkness.
Then there came out of the little square a great uproar and
commotion, with shrieks, and under the shrieks a confused din. In
vain she pressed her face into the pillow and listened to the
irregular, prodigious noise of her eyelashes as they scraped the
rough linen. The thought had somehow introduced itself into her
head that she must arise and go to the window and see all that was
to be seen. She resisted. She said to herself that the idea was
absurd, that she did not wish to go to the window. Nevertheless,
while arguing with herself, she well knew that resistance to the
thought was useless and that ultimately her legs would obey its
command.
When ultimately she yielded to the fascination and went to the
window and pulled aside one of the curtains, she had a feeling of
relief. The cool, grey beginnings of dawn were in the sky, and
every detail of the square was visible. Without exception all the
windows were wide open and filled with sightseers. In the
background of many windows were burning candles or lamps that the
far distant approach of the sun was already killing. In front of
these, on the frontier of two mingling lights, the attentive
figures of the watchers were curiously silhouetted. On the red-
tiled roofs, too, was a squatted population. Below, a troop of
gendarmes, mounted on caracoling horses stretched in line across
the square, was gradually sweeping the entire square of a packed,
gesticulating, cursing crowd. The operation of this immense besom
was very slow. As the spaces of the square were cleared they began
to be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law officers or
their friends, who walked to and fro in conscious pride; among
them Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, strolling arm-in-arm and
talking to two elaborately clad girls, who were also arm-in-arm.
Then she saw a red reflection coming from one of the side streets
of which she had a vista; it was the swinging lantern of a waggon
drawn by a gaunt grey horse. The vehicle stopped at the end of the
square from which the besom had started, and it was immediately
surrounded by the privileged, who, however, were soon persuaded to
stand away. The crowd amassed now at the principal inlets of the
square, gave a formidable cry and burst into the refrain--
"Le voila! Nicolas! Ah! Ah! Ah!"
The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in blue blouses
drew piece by piece all the components of the guillotine from the
waggon and laid them carefully on the ground, under the
superintendence of a man in a black frock-coat and a silk hat with
broad flat brims; a little fussy man of nervous gestures. And
presently the red columns had risen upright from the ground and
were joined at the top by an acrobatic climber. As each part was
bolted and screwed to the growing machine the man in the high hat
carefully tested it. In a short time that seemed very long, the
guillotine was finished save for the triangular steel blade which
lay shining on the ground, a cynosure. The executioner pointed to
it, and two men picked it up and slipped it into its groove, and
hoisted it to the summit of the machine. The executioner peered at
it interminably amid a universal silence. Then he actuated the
mechanism, and the mass of metal fell with a muffled,
reverberating thud. There were a few faint shrieks, blended
together, and then an overpowering racket of cheers, shouts,
hootings, and fragments of song. The blade was again lifted,
instantly reproducing silence, and again it fell, liberating a new
bedlam. The executioner made a movement of satisfaction. Many
women at the windows clapped enthusiastically, and the gendarmes
had to fight brutally against the fierce pressure of the crowd.
The workmen doffed their blouses and put on coats, and Sophia was
disturbed to see them coming in single file towards the hotel,
followed by the executioner in the silk hat. _
Read next: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER III - AN AMBITION SATISFIED: PART IV
Read previous: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER III - AN AMBITION SATISFIED: PART II
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