The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of 29 · Review of The Gods Are Athirst

Évariste Gamelin, a painter, a pupil of David, and a member of the Pont-Neuf Section, formerly the Henri IV Section, had gone early that morning to the former church of the Barnabites, which for three years, since 21 May 1790, had served as the seat of the Section's general assembly. The church stood on a narrow, gloomy square near the gates of the Palais de Justice. On its façade, composed of two classical orders, adorned with inverted consoles and flaming urns, saddened by time and defaced by men, the religious emblems had been hammered away, and above the door, in black letters, had been inscribed the republican motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death." Évariste Gamelin entered the nave: the vaults that had heard the clerks of the Congregation of Saint Paul, clad in rochets, chanting the divine offices now beheld patriots in red caps assembled to elect municipal magistrates and deliberate upon the affairs of the Section. The saints had been removed from their niches and replaced by busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques, and Le Peltier. The tablet of the Rights of Man stood upon the stripped altar.

It was in this nave that the public assemblies were held twice a week, from five in the evening until eleven. The pulpit, adorned with the flag in the national colours, served as a rostrum for speeches. Opposite it, on the Epistle side, a gallery of rough timber had been erected for the women and children, who attended these meetings in considerable numbers. That morning, at a desk beneath the pulpit, stood Citizen Dupont the elder, the joiner from the Place de Thionville and one of the twelve members of the Committee of Surveillance, wearing a red cap and a carmagnole jacket. On the desk were a bottle and glasses, an inkstand, and a sheaf of paper bearing the text of the petition that called upon the Convention to expel from its midst the twenty-two unworthy members.

Évariste Gamelin took up the pen and signed.

"I knew," said the artisan magistrate, "that you would come and add your name, Citizen Gamelin. You are a true patriot. But the Section is lukewarm; it lacks virtue. I proposed to the Committee of Surveillance that no certificate of civic loyalty should be issued to anyone who refused to sign the petition."

"I am ready to sign in my own blood," said Gamelin, "the proscription of the federalist traitors. They sought Marat's death: let them perish."

"What will be the ruin of us," Dupont the elder replied, "is indifference. In a Section containing nine hundred citizens entitled to vote, fewer than fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday there were twenty-eight of us."

"Well then," said Gamelin, "the citizens must be compelled to attend, on pain of a fine."

"Ha! Ha!" said the joiner, knitting his brow. "If they all came, the patriots would be in the minority... Citizen Gamelin, will you drink a glass of wine to the health of the good sans-culottes?..."

On the church wall, on the Gospel side, could be read the following words, accompanied by a black hand whose forefinger pointed towards the passage leading to the cloister: Civil Committee, Committee of Surveillance, Committee of Public Assistance. A few steps farther on stood the door of the former sacristy, surmounted by the inscription: Military Committee. Gamelin pushed it open and found the Committee's secretary writing at a large table littered with books, papers, bars of steel, cartridges, and samples of saltpetrous earth.

"Greetings, Citizen Trubert. How are you?"

"I?... I am in excellent health."

Fortuné Trubert, secretary of the Military Committee, invariably gave this answer to those who inquired after his health, less to inform them of his condition than to put an end to any conversation on the subject. At twenty-eight he had dry skin, thinning hair, red cheekbones, and a stooping back. An optician on the Quai des Orfèvres, he owned a very old-established business, which in '91 he had handed over to an elderly clerk so that he might devote himself to his municipal duties. A charming mother, who had died at twenty and whose touching memory was still preserved by a few elderly people in the neighbourhood, had bequeathed to him her beautiful eyes, gentle and ardent, her pallor, and her shyness. From his father, an optical engineer and supplier to the King, carried off by the same illness before his thirtieth year, he had inherited a sound and diligent mind.

Without ceasing to write, he said:

"And you, Citizen, how are you?"

"Well. What news is there?"

"None, none. As you see, everything is perfectly quiet here."

"And the situation?"

"The situation remains unchanged."

The situation was appalling. The Republic's finest army was surrounded in Mainz; Valenciennes was under siege; Fontenay had been taken by the Vendéans; Lyon was in revolt; the Cévennes were in insurrection; the frontier lay open to the Spaniards; two-thirds of the departments had been invaded or had risen in rebellion; Paris was beneath the Austrian guns, without money and without bread.

Fortuné Trubert went on writing calmly. The Sections having been charged by a decree of the Paris Commune with raising twelve thousand men for the Vendée, he was drafting instructions concerning the enlistment and equipment of the contingent to be furnished by the "Pont-Neuf," formerly "Henri IV." All regulation muskets were to be issued to the men called up. The Section's National Guard would be armed with sporting guns and pikes.

"I have brought you," said Gamelin, "the inventory of the bells that are to be sent to the Luxembourg and cast into cannon."

Although he did not possess a penny, Évariste Gamelin was enrolled among the active members of the Section: the law granted this privilege only to citizens rich enough to pay a contribution equal to three days' wages, and required ten days' wages before an elector could be eligible for office. But the Pont-Neuf Section, enamoured of equality and jealous of its autonomy, regarded as both elector and eligible candidate every citizen who had paid for his National Guard uniform out of his own pocket. Such was Gamelin's case; he was an active citizen of his Section and a member of the Military Committee.

Fortuné Trubert laid down his pen.

"Citizen Évariste, go to the Convention and ask that we be sent instructions for digging up the floors of cellars, leaching the earth and rubble, and extracting the saltpetre. Cannon are not enough; we must have powder as well."

A little hunchback, with a pen behind his ear and papers in his hand, entered the former sacristy. It was Citizen Beauvisage, of the Committee of Surveillance.

"Citizens," he said, "we have received bad news: Custine has evacuated Landau."

"Custine is a traitor!" cried Gamelin.

"He will be guillotined," said Beauvisage.

In his slightly breathless voice, Trubert spoke with his customary composure:

"The Convention did not create a Committee of Public Safety for nothing. Custine's conduct will be examined there. Whether incompetent or a traitor, he will be replaced by a general resolved upon victory, and all will go well!"

He leafed through some papers and passed his weary eyes over them.

"For our soldiers to do their duty without anxiety or faltering, they must know that the welfare of those they have left at home is assured. If you agree, Citizen Gamelin, you will join me at the next assembly in asking that the Committee of Public Assistance confer with the Military Committee to provide relief for needy families who have a relative in the army."

He smiled and hummed:

"All will go well! All will go well!..."

Working twelve and fourteen hours a day at his deal table for the defence of the imperilled fatherland, this humble secretary of a Section committee perceived no disproportion between the immensity of the task and the meagreness of his means, so closely did he feel himself united in a common endeavour with all the patriots, so wholly was he one with the nation, so completely did his life merge into the life of a great people. He was one of those who, ardent and patient, after every defeat prepared the triumph that was at once impossible and certain. Besides, they had to conquer. These nobodies who had destroyed the monarchy and overthrown the old world—this Trubert, a minor optical engineer, this Évariste Gamelin, an obscure painter—expected no mercy from their enemies. They had no choice but victory or death. Hence their fervour and their serenity.