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The Gods are Athirst, a novel by Anatole France |
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Chapter 25 |
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_ CHAPTER XXV While the carts, escorted by gendarmes, were rumbling along on their way to the Place du Trone Renverse, carrying to their death Brotteaux and his "accomplices," Evariste sat pensive on a bench in the garden of the Tuileries. He was waiting for Elodie. The sun, nearing its setting, shot its fiery darts through the leafy chestnuts. At the gate of the garden, Fame on her winged horse blew her everlasting trumpet. The newspaper hawkers were bawling the news of the great victory of Fleurus. "Yes," thought Gamelin, "victory is ours. We have paid full price for it." He could see the beaten Generals, disconsolate shades, trailing in the blood-stained dust of yonder Place de la Revolution where they perished. And he smiled proudly, reflecting that, but for the severities in which he had borne his share, the Austrian horses would to-day be gnawing the bark of the trees beside him. He soliloquized: "Life-giving terror, oh! blessed terror! Last year at this time, our heroic defenders were beaten and in rags, the soil of the fatherland was invaded, two-thirds of the departments in revolt. Now our armies, well equipped, well trained, commanded by able generals, are taking the offensive, ready to bear liberty through the world. Peace reigns over all the territory of the Republic.... Life-giving terror, oh! blessed terror! oh! saintly guillotine! Last year at this time, the Republic was torn with factions, the hydra of Federalism threatened to devour her. Now a united Jacobinism spreads over the empire its might and its wisdom...." Nevertheless, he was gloomy. His brow was deeply lined, his mouth bitter. His thoughts ran: "We used to say: _To conquer or to die._ We were wrong; it is _to conquer and to die_ we ought to say." He looked about him. Children were building sand-castles. _Citoyennes_ in their wooden chairs under the trees were sewing or embroidering. The passers-by, in coat and breeches of elegant cut and strange fashion, their thoughts fixed on their business or their pleasures, were making for home. And Gamelin felt himself alone amongst them; he was no compatriot, no contemporary of theirs. What was it had happened? How came the enthusiasm of the great years to have been succeeded by indifference, weariness, perhaps disgust? It was plain to see, these people never wanted to hear the Revolutionary Tribunal spoken of again and averted their eyes from the guillotine. Grown too painful a sight in the Place de la Revolution, it had been banished to the extremity of the Faubourg Antoine. There even, the passage of the tumbrils was greeted with murmurs. Voices, it was said, had been heard to shout: "Enough!" Enough, when there were still traitors, conspirators! Enough, when the Committees must be reformed, the Convention purged! Enough, when scoundrels disgraced the National representation. Enough, when they were planning the downfall of _The Just!_ For, dreadful thought, but only too true! Fouquier himself was weaving plots, and it was to ruin Maximilien that he had sacrificed with solemn ceremony fifty-seven victims haled to death in the red sheet of parricides. France was giving way to pity--and pity was a crime! Then we should have saved her in spite of herself, and when she cried for mercy, stopped our ears and struck! Alas! the fates had decided otherwise; the fatherland was for cursing its saviours. Well, let it curse, if only it may be saved! "It is not enough to immolate obscure victims, aristocrats, financiers, publicists, poets, a Lavoisier, a Roucher, an Andre Chenier. We must strike these all-puissant malefactors who, with hands full of gold and dripping with blood, are plotting the ruin of _the Mountain_--the Fouchers, Talliens, Roveres, Carriers, Bourdons. We must deliver the State from all its enemies. If Hebert had triumphed, the Convention was overthrown, the Republic hastening to the abyss; if Desmoulins and Danton had triumphed, the Convention had lost its virtue, ready to surrender the Republic to the aristocrats, the money-jobbers and the Generals. If men like Tallien and Foucher, monsters gorged with blood and rapine, triumph, France is overwhelmed in a welter of crime and infamy ... Robespierre, awake; when criminals, drunken with fury and affright, plan your death and the death of freedom! Couthon, Saint-Just, make haste; why tarry ye to denounce the plots? "Why! the old-time state, the Royal monster, assured its empire by imprisoning every year four hundred thousand persons, by hanging fifteen thousand, by breaking three thousand on the wheel--and the Republic still hesitates to sacrifice a few hundred heads for its security and domination! Let us drown in blood and save the fatherland...." He was buried in these thoughts when Elodie hurried up to him, pale-faced and distraught: "Evariste, what have you to say to me? Why not come to the _Amour peintre_ to the blue chamber? Why have you made me come here?" "To bid you an eternal farewell." He had lost his wits, she faltered, she could not understand.... He stopped her with a very slight movement of the hand: "Elodie, I cannot any more accept your love." She begged him to walk on further; people could see them, overhear them, where they were. He moved on a score of yards, and resumed, very quietly: "I have made sacrifices to my country of my life and my honour. I shall die infamous; I shall have naught to leave you, unhappy girl, save an execrated memory.... We, love? Can anyone love me still?... Can I love?" She told him he was mad; that she loved him, that she would always love him. She was ardent, sincere; but she felt as well as he, she felt better than he, that he was right. But she fought against the evidence of her senses. He went on: "I blame myself for nothing. What I have done, I would do again. I have made myself anathema for my country's sake. I am accursed. I have put myself outside humanity; I shall never re-enter its pale. No, the great task is not finished. Oh! clemency, forgiveness!--Do the traitors forgive? Are the conspirators clement? scoundrels, parricides multiply unceasingly; they spring up from underground, they swarm in from all our frontiers,--young men, who would have done better to perish with our armies, old men, children, women, with every mark of innocence, purity, and grace. They are offered up a sacrifice,--and more victims are ready for the knife!... You can see, Elodie, I must needs renounce love, renounce all joy, all sweetness of life, renounce life itself." He fell silent. Born to taste tranquil joys, Elodie not for the first time was appalled to find, under the tragic kisses of a lover like Evariste, her voluptuous transports blended with images of horror and bloodshed; she offered no reply. To Evariste the girl's silence was as a draught of a bitter chalice. "Yes, you can see, Elodie, we are on a precipice; our deeds devour us. Our days, our hours are years. I shall soon have lived a century. Look at this brow! Is it a lover's? Love!..." "Evariste, you are mine, I will not let you go; I will not give you back your freedom." She was speaking in the language of sacrifice. He felt it; she felt it herself. "Will you be able, Elodie, one day to bear witness that I lived faithful to my duty, that my heart was upright and my soul unsullied, that I knew no passion but the public good; that I was born to feel and love? Will you say: 'He did his duty'? But no! You will not say it and I do not ask you to say it. Perish my memory! My glory is in my own heart; shame beleaguers me about. If you love me, never speak my name; eternal silence is best." A child of eight or nine, trundling its hoop, ran just then between Gamelin's legs. He lifted the boy suddenly in his arms: "Child, you will grow up free, happy, and you will owe it to the infamous Gamelin. I am ferocious, that you may be happy. I am cruel, that you may be kind; I am pitiless, that to-morrow all Frenchmen may embrace with tears of joy." He pressed the child to his breast. "Little one, when you are a man, you will owe your happiness, your innocence to me; and, if ever you hear my name uttered, you will execrate it." Then he put down the child, which ran away in terror to cling to its mother's skirts, who had hurried up to the rescue. The young mother, who was pretty and charming in her aristocratic grace, with her gown of white lawn, carried off the boy with a haughty look. Gamelin turned his eyes on Elodie: "I have held the child in my arms; perhaps I shall send the mother to the guillotine,"--and he walked away with long strides under the ordered trees. Elodie stood a moment motionless, her eyes fixed on the ground. Then, suddenly, she darted after her lover, and frenzied, dishevelled, like a Maenad, she gripped him as if to tear him in pieces and cried in a voice choked with blood and tears: "Well, then! me too, my beloved, send me to the guillotine; me too, lay me under the knife!" And, at the thought of the knife at her neck, all her flesh melted in an ecstasy of horror and voluptuous transport. _ |
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