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The Gods are Athirst, a novel by Anatole France |
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Chapter 16 |
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_ CHAPTER XVI After three months during which he had made a daily holocaust of victims, illustrious or insignificant, to the fatherland, Evariste had a case that interested him personally; there was one prisoner he made it his special business to track down to death. Ever since he had sat on the juror's bench, he had been eagerly watching, among the crowd of culprits who appeared before him, for Elodie's seducer; of this man he had elaborated in his busy fancy a portrait, some details of which were accurate. He pictured him as young, handsome, haughty, and felt convinced he had fled to England. He thought he had discovered him in a young _emigre_ named Maubel, who, having come back to France and been denounced by his host, had been arrested in an inn at Passy; Fouquier-Tinville was in charge of the prosecution,--among a thousand others. Letters had been found on him which the accusation regarded as proofs of a plot concocted between Maubel and the agents of Pitt, but which were in fact only letters written to the _emigre_ by a banking-house in London which he had entrusted with certain funds. Maubel, who was young and good-looking, seemed to be mainly occupied in affairs of gallantry. His pocket-book afforded a clue to some correspondence with Spain, then at war with France; but these communications were really of a purely private nature, and if the court of preliminary enquiry did not ignore the bill, it was only in virtue of the maxim that justice should never be in too great a hurry to release a prisoner. Gamelin was handed a report of Maubel's first semi-private examination and he was struck by what it revealed of the young man's character, which he took to agree with what he believed to be that of Elodie's betrayer. Thereafter he spent long hours in the private room of the Clerk of the Court, poring eagerly over the papers relating to this case. His suspicion received a remarkable confirmation on his discovering in a note-book belonging to the _emigre_, but long out of date, the address of the _Amour peintre_, in company, it is true, with those of the _Green Monkey_, the _Dauphin's Head_, and several more print and picture shops. But when he was informed that in this same note-book had been found three or four petals of a red carnation carefully wrapped in a piece of silk paper, remembering how the red carnation was Elodie's favourite flower, the one she cultivated on her window-sill, wore in her hair and used to give (he had reason to know) as a love-token, Evariste's last doubts vanished. Being now convinced he knew the facts, he resolved to question Elodie, though without letting her know the circumstances that had led him to discover the culprit. As he was climbing the stairs to his lodgings, he perceived even on the lower landings a stifling smell of fruit, and on reaching the studio, found Elodie helping the _citoyenne_ Gamelin to make quince preserve. While the old housewife was kindling the stove and turning over in her mind ways of saving the fuel and moist sugar without prejudicing the quality of the preserves, the _citoyenne_ Blaise, seated in a straw-bottomed chair, with an apron of brown holland and her lap full of the golden fruit, was peeling the quinces, quartering and throwing them into a shallow copper basin. The strings of her coif were thrown back over her shoulders, the meshes of her black hair coiled above her moist forehead; from her whole person breathed a domestic charm and an intimate grace that induced gentle thoughts and voluptuous dreams of tranquil pleasures. Without stirring from her seat, she lifted her beautiful eyes, that gleamed like molten gold, to her lover's face, and said: "See, Evariste, we are working for you. We mean you to have a store of delicious quince jelly to last you the winter; it will settle your stomach and make your heart merry." But Gamelin, stepping nearer, uttered a name in her ear: "Jacques Maubel...." At that moment Combalot the cobbler showed his red nose at the half-open door. He had brought, along with some pairs of shoes he had re-heeled, the bill for the repairs. For fear of being taken for a bad citizen, he made a point of using the new calendar. The _citoyenne_ Gamelin, who liked to see clearly what was what in her accounts, was all astray among the _Fructidors_ and _Vendemiaires_. She heaved a sigh. "Jesus!" she complained, "they want to alter everything,--days, months, seasons of the year, the sun and the moon! Lord God, Monsieur Combalot, what ever is this pair of over-shoes down for the 8 Vendemiaire?" "_Citoyenne_, just cast your eye over your almanac, and you'll get the hang of it." She took it down from the wall, glanced at it and immediately turning her head another way. "It hasn't a Christian look!" she cried in a shocked tone. "Not only that, _citoyenne_," said the cobbler, "but now we have only three Sundays in the month instead of four. And that's not all; we shall soon have to change our ways of reckoning. There will be no more farthings and half-farthings, everything will be regulated by distilled water." At the words the _citoyenne_ Gamelin, whose lips were trembling, threw up her eyes to the ceiling and sighed out: "They are going too far!" And, while she was lost in lamentations, looking like the holy women in a wayside calvary, a bad coal that had caught alight in the fire when her attention was diverted, began to fill the studio with a poisonous smother which, added to the stifling smell of quinces, was like to make the air unbreathable. Elodie complained that her throat was tickling her and begged to have the window opened. But, directly the _citoyen_ Combalot had taken his leave and the _citoyenne_ Gamelin had gone back to her stove, Evariste repeated the same name in the girl's ear: "Jacques Maubel," he reiterated. She looked up at him in some surprise, and very quietly, still going on cutting a quince in quarters: "Well!... Jacques Maubel...?" "He is the man." "The man! what man?" "You once gave him a red carnation." She declared she did not understand and asked him to explain himself. "That aristocrat! that _emigre_! that scoundrel!" She shrugged her shoulders, and denied with the most natural air that she had never known a Jacques Maubel. It was true; she _had_ never known anyone of the name. She denied she had ever given red carnations to anybody but Evariste; but perhaps, on this point, her memory was not very good. He had little experience of women and was far from having fully fathomed Elodie's character; still, he deemed her quite capable of cajoling and deceiving a cleverer man than himself. "Why deny?" he asked. "I know all." Again she asseverated she had never known anybody called Maubel. And, having done peeling the quinces, she asked for a basin of water, because her fingers were sticky. This Gamelin brought her, and, as she washed her hands, she repeated her denials. Again he repeated that he knew, and this time she made no reply. She did not guess the object of her lover's question and she was a thousand miles from suspecting that this Maubel, whom she had never heard spoken of before, was to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal; she could make nothing of the suspicions with which she was assailed, but she knew them to be unfounded. For this reason, having very little hope of dissipating them, she had very little wish to do so either. She ceased to deny having known Maubel, preferring to leave her jealous lover to go astray on a false trail, when from one moment to the next, the smallest incident might start him on the right road. Her little lawyer's clerk of former days, now grown into a patriot dragoon and lady-killer, had quarrelled by now with his aristocratic mistress. Whenever he met Elodie in the street, he would gaze at her with a glance that seemed to say: "Come, my beauty! I feel sure I am going to forgive you for having betrayed you, and I am really quite ready to take you back into favour." She made no further attempt therefore to cure what she called her lover's crotchets, and Gamelin remained firm in the conviction that Jacques Maubel was Elodie's seducer. * * * * * Through the days that ensued the Tribunal devoted its undivided attention to the task of crushing Federalism, which, like a hydra, had threatened to devour Liberty. They were busy days; and the jurors, worn out with fatigue, despatched with the utmost possible expedition the case of the woman Roland, instigator and accomplice of the crimes of the Brissotin faction. Meantime Gamelin spent every morning at the Courts to press on Maubel's trial. Some important pieces of evidence were to be found at Bordeaux; he insisted on a Commissioner being sent to ride post to fetch them. They arrived at last. The deputy of the Public Prosecutor read them, pulled a face and told Evariste: "It is not good for much, your new evidence! there is nothing in it! mere fiddle-faddle.... If only it was certain that this _ci-devant_ Comte de Maubel ever really emigrated...!" In the end Gamelin succeeded. Young Maubel was served with his act of accusation and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 19 Brumaire. From the first opening of the sitting the President showed the gloomy and dreadful face he took care to assume for the hearing of cases where the evidence was weak. The Deputy Prosecutor stroked his chin with the feather of his pen and affected the serenity of a conscience at ease. The Clerk read the act of accusation; it was the hollowest sham the Court had ever heard so far. The President asked the accused if he had not been aware of the laws passed against the _emigres_. "I was aware of them and I observed them," answered Maubel, "and I left France provided with passports in proper form." As to the reasons for his journey to England and his return to France he had satisfactory explanations to offer. His face was pleasant, with a look of frankness and confidence that was agreeable. The women in the galleries looked at the young man with a favourable eye. The prosecution maintained that he had made a stay in Spain at the time that Nation was at war with France; he averred he had never left Bayonne at that period. One point alone remained obscure. Among the papers he had thrown in the fire at the time of his arrest, and of which only fragments had been found, some words in Spanish had been deciphered and the name of "Nieves." On this subject Jacques Maubel refused to give the explanations demanded; and, when the President told him that it was in the accused's own interest to clear up the point, he answered that a man ought not always to do what his own interest requires. Gamelin only thought of convicting Maubel of a crime; three times over he pressed the President to ask the accused if he could explain about the carnation the dried petals of which he hoarded so carefully in his pocket-book. Maubel replied that he did not consider himself obliged to answer a question that had no concern with the case at law, as no letter had been found concealed in the flower. The jury retired to the hall of deliberations, favourably impressed towards the young man whose mysterious conduct appeared chiefly connected with a lover's secrets. This time the good patriots, the purest of the pure themselves, would gladly have voted for acquittal. One of them, a _ci-devant_ noble, who had given pledges to the Revolution, said: "Is it his birth they bring up against him? I, too, I have had the misfortune to be born in the aristocracy." "Yes, but you have left them," retorted Gamelin, "and he has not." And he spoke with such vehemence against this conspirator, this emissary of Pitt, this accomplice of Coburg, who had climbed the mountains and sailed the seas to stir up enemies to Liberty, he demanded the traitor's condemnation in such burning words, that he awoke the never-resting suspicions, the old stern temper of the patriot jury. One of them told him cynically: "There are services that cannot well be refused between colleagues." The verdict of death was recorded by a majority of one. The condemned man heard his sentence with a quiet smile. His eyes, which had been gazing unconcernedly about the hall, as they fell on Gamelin's face, took on an expression of unspeakable contempt. No one applauded the decision of the court. Jacques Maubel was taken back to the Conciergerie; here he wrote a letter while he waited the hour of execution, which was to take place the same evening, by torchlight: My dear sister,--The tribunal sends me to the scaffold, affording me the only joy I have been able to appreciate since the death of my adored Nieves. They have taken from me the only relic I had left of her, a pomegranate flower, which they called, I cannot tell why, a carnation. I loved the arts; at Paris, in happier times, I made a collection of paintings and engravings, which are now in a sure place, and which will be delivered to you so soon as this is possible. I pray you, dear sister, to keep them in memory of me. He cut a lock of his hair, enclosed it in the letter, which he folded and wrote outside: _To the citoyenne Clemence Dezeimeries, nee Maubel, La Reole._ He gave all the silver he had on him to the turnkey, begging him to forward this letter to its destination, asked for a bottle of wine, which he drank in little sips while waiting for the cart.... After supper Gamelin ran to the _Amour Peintre_ and burst into the blue chamber where every night Elodie was waiting for him. "You are avenged," he told her. "Jacques Maubel is no more. The cart that took him to his death has just passed beneath your window, escorted by torch-bearers." She understood: "Wretch! it is you have killed him, and he was not my lover. I did not know him.... I have never seen him.... What was this man? He was young, amiable ... innocent. And you have killed him, wretch! wretch!" She fell in a faint. But, amid the shadows of this momentary death, she felt herself overborne by a flood at once of horror and voluptuous ecstasy. She half revived; her heavy lids lifted to show the whites of the eyes, her bosom swelled, her hands beat the air, seeking for her lover. She pressed him to her in a strangling embrace, drove her nails into the flesh, and gave him with her bleeding lips, without a word, without a sound, the longest, the most agonized, the most delicious of kisses. She loved him with all her flesh, and the more terrible, cruel, atrocious she thought him, the more she saw him reeking with the blood of his victims, the more consuming was her hunger and thirst for him. _ |
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