The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 27

Chapter 27 of 29 · Review of The Gods Are Athirst

Robespierre, you sleep! The hour passes, precious time flows away…

At last, on 8 Thermidor, the Incorruptible rises in the Convention and prepares to speak. Sun of 31 May, are you rising for a second time? Gamelin waits and hopes. So Robespierre will tear from the benches they dishonour those legislators guiltier than the federalists, more dangerous than Danton… No! Not yet. “I cannot,” he says, “bring myself to rend entirely the veil that covers this profound mystery of iniquity.” And the scattered thunderbolt, striking none of the conspirators, terrifies them all. There were sixty of them who, for the past fortnight, had not dared sleep in their own beds. Marat named the traitors; he pointed them out. The Incorruptible hesitates, and from that moment it is he who stands accused…

That evening, at the Jacobins, the hall, the corridors, and the courtyard are packed to suffocation.

They are all there: the clamorous friends and the silent enemies. Robespierre reads them the speech which the Convention heard in a dreadful silence and which the Jacobins cover with impassioned applause.

“This is my last testament,” the man says. “You shall see me drink the hemlock calmly.”

“I shall drink it with you,” David replies.

“All of us, all of us!” cry the Jacobins, who disperse without deciding anything.

While the death of the Just was being prepared, Évariste slept the sleep of the disciples in the Garden of Olives. The next day he went to the Tribunal, where two divisions were sitting. The one to which he belonged was trying twenty-one accomplices in Lazare’s conspiracy. Meanwhile, news arrived: “After a six-hour sitting, the Convention has decreed the indictment of Maximilien Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just, together with Augustin Robespierre and Lebas, who asked to share the fate of the accused. The five proscribed men have been brought before the bar.”

Word comes that the president of the division sitting in the adjoining chamber, Citizen Dumas, has been arrested on the bench, but that the hearing continues. The general alarm is heard beating and the tocsin ringing.

From his place on the bench, Évariste receives an order from the Paris Commune to go to the Hôtel de Ville and sit on the General Council. To the sound of bells and drums, he delivers his verdict with his colleagues, then runs home to embrace his mother and fetch his sash. The Place de Thionville is deserted. The Section dares declare neither for nor against the Convention. People hug the walls, slip into passageways, and hurry home. The call of the tocsin and the general alarm is answered by the clatter of shutters being closed and locks being turned. The elder Citizen Dupont has hidden in his shop; the porter Remacle is barricading himself in his lodge. Little Joséphine clutches Mouton fearfully in her arms. Citizen Widow Gamelin laments the high price of food, the cause of all their troubles. At the foot of the stairs, Évariste meets Élodie, breathless, her black locks clinging to her damp neck.

“I looked for you at the Tribunal. You had just left.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the Hôtel de Ville.”

“Do not go! You will destroy yourself: Hanriot has been arrested… the Sections will not march. The Section of the Pikes, Robespierre’s own Section, is remaining quiet. I know; my father belongs to it. If you go to the Hôtel de Ville, you will throw your life away for nothing.”

“Would you have me be a coward?”

“On the contrary, it takes courage to remain faithful to the Convention and obey the law.”

“The law is dead when villains triumph.”

“Évariste, listen to your Élodie; listen to your sister. Come and sit beside her, and let her soothe your tormented soul.”

He looked at her: never had she seemed so desirable to him; never had that voice sounded so voluptuous or persuasive in his ears.

“A few steps—only a few steps, my dear!”

She drew him towards the terrace that bore the pedestal of the fallen statue. Benches encircled it, crowded with men and women taking the air. A hawker of fripperies offered lace for sale; the tisane seller, carrying his fountain on his back, rang his bell; little girls played the Graces. On the embankment, fishermen stood motionless, rods in hand. The weather was stormy, the sky overcast. Leaning over the parapet, Gamelin gazed down upon the island, pointed like the prow of a ship, listened to the treetops moaning in the wind, and felt an infinite longing for peace and solitude enter his soul.

And, like a delicious echo of his thought, Élodie’s voice sighed:

“Do you remember how, at the sight of the fields, you longed to be a justice of the peace in some little village? That would be happiness.”

But through the rustling of the trees and the woman’s voice he heard the tocsin, the general alarm, and the distant thunder of horses and cannon upon the paving stones.

A few steps away, a young man conversing with an elegant Citizen said:

“Have you heard the news?… The Opera has moved to the Rue de la Loi.”

Yet they knew: Robespierre’s name was being whispered, though with trembling, for he was still feared. And at the murmured tidings of his fall, the women concealed a smile.

Évariste Gamelin seized Élodie’s hand, then suddenly cast it away:

“Farewell! I have bound you to my dreadful fate; I have blighted your life for ever. Farewell. May you forget me!”

“Above all,” she told him, “do not go home tonight: come to the Painted Cupid. Do not ring; throw a stone against my shutters. I shall open the door for you myself and hide you in the attic.”

“You will see me again in triumph, or you will never see me again. Farewell!”

As he approached the Hôtel de Ville, he heard the clamour of great historic days rising towards the heavy sky. On the Place de Grève there was a tumult of weapons, a blaze of sashes and uniforms, and Hanriot’s cannon drawn up for action. He climbed the grand staircase and, entering the council chamber, signed the attendance sheet. By the unanimous vote of its 491 members present, the General Council of the Commune declares itself for the proscribed men.

The mayor has the tablet of the Rights of Man brought in and reads the article stating: “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people the holiest and most indispensable of duties”; and the chief magistrate of Paris declares that the Commune will answer the Convention’s coup d’état with popular insurrection.

The members of the General Council swear to die at their posts. Two municipal officers are instructed to go out upon the Place de Grève and invite the people to join their magistrates in saving the fatherland and liberty.

Men seek one another out, exchange news, and offer advice. There are few artisans among these magistrates. The Commune assembled here is as the Jacobin purge has fashioned it: judges and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, artists such as Beauvallet and Gamelin, men of private means and professors, prosperous bourgeois and wealthy merchants, powdered heads and bellies hung with watch-charms; few clogs, trousers, carmagnoles, or red caps. These bourgeois are numerous and resolute. Yet, when one considers it, they are almost all the true republicans Paris possesses. Standing in the Hôtel de Ville as upon the rock of liberty, they are surrounded by an ocean of indifference.

Yet favourable news arrives. Every prison in which the proscribed men have been confined opens its doors and surrenders its prey. Augustin Robespierre, coming from La Force, is the first to enter the Hôtel de Ville and is greeted with acclamations. At eight o’clock it is learned that Maximilien, after resisting for a long while, is coming to the Commune. They await him; he is about to come; he comes: a tremendous acclamation shakes the vaults of the old municipal palace. He enters, borne aloft by twenty arms. That slender, primly neat man in a blue coat and yellow breeches—it is he. He takes his seat; he speaks.

Upon his arrival, the council orders the façade of the Hôtel de Ville to be illuminated at once. In him the Republic resides. He speaks and speaks, in a thin voice, with elegance. He speaks correctly and abundantly. Those who are there, who have staked their lives upon him, realize with horror that he is a man of words, a man of committees and the rostrum, incapable of a swift decision or a revolutionary act.

They draw him into the debating chamber. Now all the illustrious proscribed men are there: Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre speaks. It is half past midnight; still he speaks. Meanwhile, in the council chamber, Gamelin stands with his brow pressed against a window, gazing anxiously out; he sees the lamps smoking in the dark night. Hanriot’s cannon are drawn up before the Hôtel de Ville. An uncertain, uneasy crowd stirs upon the pitch-black square. At half past midnight, torches emerge from the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, surrounding a delegate of the Convention who, arrayed in his insignia, unfolds a paper and reads, in the red glare, the Convention’s decree outlawing the members of the insurgent Commune, the members of the General Council assisting them, and any citizens who answer their call.

Outlawry—death without trial! The very thought turns the most resolute pale. Gamelin feels his brow grow icy. He watches the crowd leave the Place de Grève at a hurried pace.

And when he turns his head, he sees that the chamber where the councillors were packed to suffocation a moment before is almost empty.

But they have fled in vain: they signed their names.

It is two o’clock. In the adjoining chamber, the Incorruptible deliberates with the Commune and the proscribed representatives.

Gamelin stares despairingly down upon the dark square. By the lantern light he sees the wooden tapers knocking together on the grocer’s awning with the clatter of skittles; the street lamps sway and flicker: a high wind has arisen. A moment later, a storm breaks. The square empties completely; those whom the terrible decree had not driven away are scattered by a few drops of rain. Hanriot’s cannon stand abandoned. And when, in the lightning flashes, the Convention’s troops are seen emerging simultaneously from the Rue Antoine and along the quay, the approaches to the Hôtel de Ville are deserted.

At last Maximilien has decided to appeal from the Convention’s decree to the Section of the Pikes.

The General Council has sabres, pistols, and muskets brought in. But a crash of weapons, footsteps, and shattering glass fills the building. The Convention’s troops sweep like an avalanche through the debating chamber and pour into the council chamber. A shot rings out: Gamelin sees Robespierre fall with his jaw shattered. He himself snatches up his knife, the six-sou knife that, on a day of famine, had cut bread for a destitute mother, and which, at the farm in Orangis one lovely evening, Élodie had kept upon her knees while the forfeits were drawn. He opens it and tries to drive it into his heart; the blade strikes a rib and folds back against the ferrule, which gives way, gashing two of his fingers. Gamelin falls bleeding. He lies motionless, but suffers from a cruel cold; and amid the tumult of a dreadful struggle, trampled underfoot, he hears distinctly the voice of the young dragoon Henry crying:

“The tyrant is no more; his satellites are crushed. The Revolution will resume its majestic and terrible course.”

Gamelin loses consciousness.

At seven in the morning, a surgeon sent by the Convention dressed his wounds. The Convention was full of solicitude for Robespierre’s accomplices: it did not wish a single one of them to escape the guillotine. The painter, former juror, and former member of the General Council of the Commune was carried on a stretcher to the Conciergerie.