The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 24

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There seemed no end to the prison conspiracy. Forty-nine defendants filled the tiers of benches. Maurice Brotteaux occupied the right-hand seat on the highest tier, the place of honour. He wore his flea-brown frock coat, which he had carefully brushed the night before and darned where the little Lucretius, carried so long in its pocket, had worn it through. Beside him sat Madame Rochemaure, painted, rouged, resplendent, horrible. Father Longuemare had been placed between her and Athénaïs, who at the Madelonnettes had recovered the freshness of adolescence.

The gendarmes crowded onto the benches people whom these prisoners did not know and who perhaps did not know one another, yet all were accomplices: parliamentarians, day labourers, former nobles, men and women of the bourgeoisie. Citizen Rochemaure caught sight of Gamelin on the jurors' bench. Although he had answered neither her urgent letters nor her repeated messages, she placed her hopes in him, sent him an imploring look, and strove to appear beautiful and touching in his eyes. But the young magistrate's cold gaze stripped her of every illusion.

The clerk read the indictment, which was brief concerning each defendant but long because of their number. It outlined the plot hatched in the prisons to drown the Republic in the blood of the representatives of the nation and of the people of Paris and, assigning to each his part, declared:

“One of the most pernicious authors of this abominable conspiracy is the man Brotteaux, formerly des Ilettes, a receiver of revenues under the tyrant. This individual, who even in the days of tyranny was notorious for his dissolute conduct, affords certain proof that libertinism and depravity are the greatest enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples. Indeed, after squandering the public finances and consuming in debauchery a considerable portion of the people's substance, this individual joined with his former concubine, the woman Rochemaure, to correspond with the émigrés and treacherously inform the foreign faction of the state of our finances, the movements of our troops, and the fluctuations of opinion.

“Brotteaux, who at this period of his contemptible existence was living in concubinage with a prostitute whom he had picked out of the mire of the rue Fromenteau, the girl Athénaïs, easily won her over to his designs and employed her to foment counter-revolution by shameless outcries and indecent incitements.

“A few remarks made by this baneful man will clearly reveal his abject ideas and pernicious purpose. Speaking of the patriotic tribunal now called upon to punish him, he insolently declared: ‘The Revolutionary Tribunal resembles a play by William Shakespeare, mingling the most vulgar buffoonery with the bloodiest scenes.’ He ceaselessly extolled atheism as the surest means of degrading the people and plunging them back into immorality. In the prison of the Conciergerie, where he was confined, he deplored the victories of our valiant armies as though they were the direst of calamities and endeavoured to cast suspicion upon the most patriotic generals by attributing tyrannical designs to them. ‘You may expect,’ he said in atrocious language which the pen recoils from reproducing, ‘you may expect that one day one of these sword-bearers to whom you owe your salvation will swallow you all, as the crane in the fable swallowed the frogs.’”

And the indictment continued in this fashion:

“The woman Rochemaure, formerly a noble and Brotteaux's concubine, is no less guilty than he. Not only did she correspond with the foreign powers and receive payment from Pitt himself, but, in league with corrupt men such as Jullien of Toulouse and Chabot and in communication with the former Baron de Batz, she joined that villain in devising every kind of scheme to depress the shares of the East India Company, purchase them at a paltry price, and raise their value again by schemes contrary to the first, thereby defrauding private and public wealth alike. Imprisoned at the Bourbe and the Madelonnettes, she never ceased conspiring within her prison, speculating, and attempting to corrupt judges and jurors.

“Louis Longuemare, former noble and former Capuchin, had long practised infamy and crime before committing the acts of treason for which he must answer here. Living beneath Brotteaux's own roof in shameful promiscuity with the girl Gorcut, called Athénaïs, he is the accomplice of that girl and of that former noble. Throughout his captivity in the Conciergerie, not a single day passed without his writing libels assailing public liberty and peace.

“It is proper to observe, concerning Marthe Gorcut, called Athénaïs, that prostitutes are the greatest scourge of public morals, which they outrage, and the shame of the society they dishonour. But why dwell upon repugnant crimes which the accused confesses without a blush?…”

The indictment then reviewed the fifty-four other persons charged, whom neither Brotteaux nor Father Longuemare nor Citizen Rochemaure knew, except for having seen several of them in prison, and who were included with the first in “this execrable conspiracy, of which the annals of nations furnish no example.”

The prosecution demanded the death penalty for every person indicted.

Brotteaux was questioned first.

“You conspired?”

“No, I did not conspire. Everything in the indictment I have just heard is false.”

“You see: at this very moment you are still conspiring against the Tribunal.”

The presiding judge then turned to Madame Rochemaure, who answered with desperate protests, tears, and quibbles.

Father Longuemare entrusted himself wholly to the will of God. He had not even brought his written defence.

To every question put to him he replied in a spirit of resignation. Yet when the presiding judge called him a Capuchin, the old Adam revived within him:

“I am not a Capuchin,” he said. “I am a priest and a religious of the Barnabite order.”

“It is all the same thing,” replied the presiding judge good-naturedly.

Father Longuemare stared at him indignantly.

“No error could be more extraordinary,” he said, “than to mistake for a Capuchin a religious of that Barnabite order which received its constitutions from the apostle Saint Paul himself.”

Peals of laughter and hoots broke out among the spectators.

And Father Longuemare, taking this mockery for expressions of disbelief, proclaimed that he would die a member of that order of Saint Barnabas whose habit he wore in his heart.

“Do you admit,” asked the presiding judge, “that you conspired with the girl Gorcut, called Athénaïs, who granted you her contemptible favours?”

At this question Father Longuemare raised a sorrowful gaze to heaven and answered with a silence expressive of the astonishment of a guileless soul and the solemnity of a religious who fears to utter idle words.

“Girl Gorcut,” the presiding judge asked the young Athénaïs, “do you admit that you conspired with Brotteaux?”

She answered gently:

“Mr Brotteaux, so far as I know, has done nothing but good. He is the sort of man there ought to be many of, and no better man exists. Those who say otherwise are mistaken. That is all I have to say.”

The presiding judge asked whether she admitted having lived in concubinage with Brotteaux. The term, which she did not understand, had to be explained to her. But as soon as she grasped what it meant, she replied that he had only needed to wish it, but that he had never asked her.

There was laughter in the galleries, and the presiding judge threatened to exclude the girl Gorcut from the proceedings if she again answered with such cynicism.

She then called him a canting hypocrite, a Lenten face, and a cuckold, and poured bucketfuls of abuse over him, the judges, and the jurors, until the gendarmes dragged her from the bench and led her out of the courtroom.

The presiding judge then questioned the other defendants briefly, in the order in which they sat upon the tiers. A man named Navette replied that he could not have conspired in a prison where he had spent only four days. The presiding judge observed that this answer deserved consideration and asked the citizen jurors to take account of it. A certain Bellier gave the same reply, and the presiding judge made the same favourable observation to the jury. This benevolence on the judge's part was interpreted either as the effect of commendable fairness or as the reward due for informing.

The deputy public prosecutor rose to speak. He merely amplified the indictment and put the following question:

“Is it established that Maurice Brotteaux, Louise Rochemaure, Louis Longuemare, Marthe Gorcut, called Athénaïs, Eusèbe Rocher, Pierre Guyton-Fabulet, Marceline Descourtis, and so forth, formed a conspiracy whose means were assassination, famine, the manufacture of counterfeit assignats and false coin, the corruption of public morals and the public spirit, and the insurrection of the prisons; and whose object was civil war, the dissolution of the national representation, and the restoration of royalty?”

The jurors withdrew to the deliberation room. They returned a unanimous affirmative verdict concerning all the defendants except the men named Navette and Bellier, whom the presiding judge and, after him, the public prosecutor had in some measure removed from the case. Gamelin explained his verdict in these words:

“The guilt of the accused stares us in the face. Their punishment is necessary to the salvation of the Nation, and they themselves should desire their execution as the sole means of expiating their crimes.”

The presiding judge pronounced sentence in the absence of those whom it concerned. On these great trial days, contrary to the requirements of the law, the condemned were not brought back to hear their sentence read, no doubt because the despair of so many people was feared. A vain fear, so great and general was the victims' submission in those days! The clerk went below to read the verdict, which was heard amid that silence and tranquillity which caused the condemned of Prairial to be compared to trees marked for felling.

Citizen Rochemaure declared that she was pregnant. A surgeon who was also a juror was appointed to examine her. She was carried unconscious to her cell.

“Ah!” sighed Father Longuemare. “These judges are men greatly to be pitied: the state of their souls is truly deplorable. They muddle everything and mistake a Barnabite for a Franciscan.”

The execution was to take place that same day at the “Barrier of the Overturned Throne.” Their final preparations made, their hair cut and their shirts opened at the neck, the condemned awaited the executioner, penned like cattle in the small room separated from the clerk's office by a glass partition.

When the executioner and his assistants arrived, Brotteaux, who was quietly reading his Lucretius, placed his marker at the page he had begun, closed the book, thrust it into the pocket of his frock coat, and said to the Barnabite:

“Reverend Father, what maddens me is that I shall never convince you. We are both about to sleep our last sleep, and I shall not be able to tug at your sleeve and wake you to say: ‘You see: you have neither sensation nor knowledge now; you are inanimate. What follows life is like what precedes it.’”

He tried to smile; but an atrocious pain seized his heart and entrails, and he nearly fainted.

Nevertheless, he continued:

“Father, you see my weakness. I love life and do not leave it without regret.”

“Sir,” the monk replied gently, “consider that you are braver than I, and yet death troubles you more. What can that mean, unless I see the light which you do not yet see?”

“It might also mean,” said Brotteaux, “that I regret life because I have enjoyed it better than you, who made it resemble death as closely as possible.”

“Sir,” said Father Longuemare, turning pale, “this is a solemn hour. May God assist me! It is certain that we shall die without spiritual aid. I must formerly have received the sacraments with lukewarmness and an ungrateful heart, for Heaven to deny them to me today, when my need of them is so urgent.”

The carts were waiting. The condemned were crowded into them with their hands bound. Madame Rochemaure, whose pregnancy the surgeon had not confirmed, was hoisted into one of the tumbrils. She recovered enough of her energy to scrutinize the crowd of spectators, hoping against all hope to find rescuers among them. Her eyes implored. The crowd was smaller than in former days, and passions were less violent. Only a few women shouted, “Death to them!” or jeered at those about to die. The men shrugged their shoulders, turned their heads away, and remained silent, whether from prudence or respect for the laws.

A shudder passed through the crowd when Athénaïs came through the gate. She looked like a child.

She bowed before the priest.

“Father,” she said, “give me absolution.”

Father Longuemare gravely murmured the sacramental words, then said:

“My daughter! You have fallen into grievous disorders; but if only I could present to the Lord a heart as simple as yours!”

She sprang lightly into the cart. There, her body erect and her child's head held proudly high, she cried:

“Long live the King!”

She made a little sign to Brotteaux, showing him that there was room beside her. Brotteaux helped the Barnabite into the cart and took his place between the priest and the innocent girl.

“Monsieur,” Father Longuemare said to the Epicurean philosopher, “I ask one favour of you: pray for me to that God in whom you do not yet believe. You may be nearer to Him than I am myself: a single moment may decide it. For you to become the favoured child of the Lord, only a second is needed. Monsieur, pray for me.”

While the wheels turned creaking over the cobbles of the long faubourg, the priest recited, with heart and lips, the prayers for the dying.

Brotteaux called to mind the verses of the poet of nature: Sic ubi non erimus… Bound though he was and jolted in the infamous cart, he preserved an air of composure, as though still mindful of his ease. Beside him, Athénaïs, proud to die as the Queen of France had died, cast a haughty gaze upon the crowd; and the old tax-farmer, contemplating the young woman’s white bosom with a connoisseur’s eye, regretted the light of day.