The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 12

Chapter 12 of 29 · Review of The Gods Are Athirst

One evening, when old Brotteaux delivered a gross of jumping-jacks to Citizen Caillou, the toy-dealer in the Rue de la Loi, the merchant, ordinarily mild and civil, received him ungraciously amid his dolls and Punch figures.

“Take care, Citizen Brotteaux,” he told him, “take care! It is not always a time for laughter; not every jest is a safe one. A member of the Section’s Security Committee, who inspected my establishment yesterday, saw your jumping-jacks and found them counter-revolutionary.”

“He was making fun of you!” said Brotteaux.

“No indeed, Citizen, no indeed. He is not a man who jokes. He said that these little figures were perfidious distortions of the national representatives, and that among them one could recognize caricatures of Couthon, Saint-Just, and Robespierre in particular; and he confiscated them. It is a dead loss to me, quite apart from the dangers to which I am exposed.”

“What! These Harlequins, these Gilles, these Scaramouches, these Colins and Colettes, whom I have painted just as Boucher painted them fifty years ago, are supposed to be counterfeit Couthons and Saint-Justs? No sane man could maintain such a thing.”

“It is possible,” Citizen Caillou resumed, “that you acted without malice, though one must always be wary of a man of wit such as you. But the game is dangerous. Shall I give you an example? Natoile, who keeps a little theatre on the Champs-Élysées, was arrested the day before yesterday for want of civic spirit, because he had Punch perform the Convention.”

“Once again,” said Brotteaux, lifting the cloth that covered his little hanging figures, “look at these masks and faces: are they anything but characters from comedy and pastoral plays? How could you let anyone persuade you, Citizen Caillou, that I was making a show of the Convention?”

Brotteaux was astonished. Though he allowed a great deal for human stupidity, he would never have believed it capable of suspecting his Scaramouches and his little Colettes. He protested their innocence and his own. But Citizen Caillou would hear nothing.

“Citizen Brotteaux, take your jumping-jacks away. I esteem you, I honour you, but I will neither be censured nor harassed on your account. I respect the law. I mean to remain a good citizen and to be treated as one. Good evening, Citizen Brotteaux; take your jumping-jacks away.”

Old Brotteaux set out again for his lodging, carrying his suspects over his shoulder at the end of a pole, while children mocked him, believing him to be the rat-poison seller. His thoughts were gloomy. To be sure, he did not live by his jumping-jacks alone: he drew portraits for twenty sous beneath carriage entrances and inside a barrel at the market halls, in the company of women mending clothes, and many young men departing for the army wished to leave their likeness with their sweethearts. But these little works cost him immense trouble, and he was far from drawing his portraits as well as he made his jumping-jacks. At times he acted as secretary to the market women, but that meant becoming involved in royalist plots, and the risks were great. He remembered that in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, near the square formerly called Vendôme, there was another toy-dealer named Joly, and resolved to offer him the next day what the timorous Caillou had refused.

A fine rain began to fall. Brotteaux, fearing the damage it might do his jumping-jacks, quickened his pace. As he crossed the dark and deserted Pont-Neuf and turned the corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the light of a lantern, seated on a mounting-block, a gaunt old man who seemed spent with fatigue and hunger, yet still retained a venerable air. He wore a torn frock coat, had no hat, and appeared to be more than sixty years old. Drawing nearer to the unfortunate man, Brotteaux recognized Father Longuemare, whom he had saved from the lamppost six months before, when they had both been waiting in line outside the bakery in the Rue de Jérusalem. Bound to the priest by that first service, Brotteaux approached him, made himself known as the tax-farmer who had stood beside him amid the rabble on a day of great scarcity, and asked whether he might be of assistance.

“You seem weary, Father. Take a drop of cordial.”

And Brotteaux drew from the pocket of his flea-brown frock coat a small flask of brandy which he kept there with his Lucretius.

“Drink. Then I shall help you back to your lodgings.”

Father Longuemare pushed the flask away with his hand and attempted to rise. But he sank back upon the mounting-block.

“Sir,” he said in a voice that was weak but steady, “for the past three months I have been living in Picpus. Warned that men had come to arrest me at my home yesterday at five in the afternoon, I did not return to my lodgings. I have no refuge; I have been wandering through the streets and am somewhat tired.”

“Well then, Father,” said Brotteaux, “grant me the honour of sharing my attic.”

“Sir,” said the Barnabite, “you understand that I am a suspect.”

“So am I,” said Brotteaux, “and so are my jumping-jacks, which is worst of all. You see them exposed beneath this thin cloth to the fine rain that is chilling us to the bone. For you must know, Father, that after having been a tax-farmer, I now make jumping-jacks for my livelihood.”

Father Longuemare took the hand extended to him by the former financier and accepted his hospitality. In his attic, Brotteaux served him bread, cheese, and wine, which he had set to cool in the gutter, for he was a sybarite.

When he had appeased his hunger:

“Sir,” said Father Longuemare, “I must inform you of the circumstances that led to my flight and cast me, half dead, upon the mounting-block where you found me. Driven from my monastery, I lived on the meagre pension granted me by the Assembly; I gave lessons in Latin and mathematics and wrote pamphlets on the persecution of the Church of France. I even composed a work of some length to demonstrate that the constitutional oath imposed upon priests is contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The progress of the Revolution deprived me of all my pupils, and I could not draw my pension because I lacked the certificate of civic virtue required by law. It was this certificate that I went to request at the Hôtel de Ville, convinced that I deserved it. As a member of an order founded by the Apostle Saint Paul himself, who asserted his title as a Roman citizen, I flattered myself that, in imitation of him, I had behaved as a good French citizen, respectful of every human law that does not conflict with the divine laws. I presented my petition to Mr Colin, a pork butcher and municipal officer charged with issuing documents of this kind. He questioned me about my condition. I told him I was a priest; he asked whether I was married, and when I replied that I was not, he said that was so much the worse for me. Finally, after various questions, he asked whether I had proved my civic virtue on 10 August, 2 September, and 31 May. ‘Certificates can be given,’ he added, ‘only to those whose conduct on those three occasions proved their civic virtue.’ I could give him no answer that satisfied him. Nevertheless, he took my name and address and promised to make a prompt inquiry into my case. He kept his word, and as the conclusion of his inquiry two commissioners from the Committee of General Security of Picpus, accompanied by an armed force, came to my lodgings in my absence to take me to prison. I do not know of what crime I am accused. But you must admit that Mr Colin is to be pitied, since his mind is sufficiently disordered to reproach a clergyman for failing to display his civic virtue on 10 August, 2 September, and 31 May. A man capable of such a thought is indeed deserving of compassion.”

“I have no certificate either,” said Brotteaux. “We are both suspects. But you are weary. Go to bed, Father. Tomorrow we shall consider how to keep you safe.”

He gave his guest the mattress and kept the straw pallet for himself. Out of humility, the priest claimed the pallet with such insistence that Brotteaux was obliged to yield it to him; otherwise he would have slept on the tiled floor.

These arrangements completed, Brotteaux blew out the candle from motives of economy and prudence.

“Sir,” the priest said to him, “I recognize what you are doing for me; but alas, it is of little consequence to you that I should be grateful. May God reckon it to your merit! That would be of infinite consequence to you. Yet God takes no account of what is not done for His glory and is merely the effort of a purely natural virtue. I therefore beseech you, sir, to do for His sake what you were inclined to do for mine.”

“Father,” Brotteaux replied, “do not trouble yourself, and feel no gratitude towards me. What I am doing at this moment, and whose merit you exaggerate, I do not do for love of you; for after all, amiable though you are, Father, I know you too little to love you. Nor do I do it for love of humanity, for I am not so simple as Don Juan, who believed that humanity had rights; and such a prejudice in a mind as free as his grieves me. I do it through that self-interest which inspires every act of generosity and devotion in mankind, making a man recognize himself in every wretch, disposing him to pity his own misfortune in the misfortune of others, and prompting him to help a mortal akin to him in nature and destiny, until he believes that in helping another he is helping himself. I also do it from idleness, for life is so insipid that one must seek diversion at any price, and benevolence is a tolerably dull amusement to which one resorts for lack of more savoury pleasures; I do it from pride and to gain an advantage over you; finally, I do it out of devotion to a system and to show you what an atheist is capable of.”

“Do not slander yourself, sir,” Father Longuemare replied. “I have received more graces from God than He has yet granted you; but I am worth less than you, and am greatly your inferior in natural merit. Permit me, nevertheless, to gain an advantage over you in my turn. Since you do not know me, you cannot love me. But I, sir, without knowing you, love you more than myself: God commands me to do so.”

Having spoken thus, Father Longuemare knelt upon the tiled floor and, after reciting his prayers, stretched himself upon his straw pallet and fell peacefully asleep.