The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 28

Chapter 28 of 29 · Review of The Gods Are Athirst

On the 10th, while Évariste, upon the pallet in his cell, awoke with a start from a fevered sleep into unspeakable horror, Paris, in all its grace and immensity, smiled beneath the sun; hope revived in the hearts of the prisoners; shopkeepers cheerfully opened their shops, the bourgeois felt richer, young men happier, women more beautiful, because Robespierre had fallen. Only a handful of Jacobins, a few constitutional priests, and a few old women trembled to see power passing into the hands of the wicked and corrupt. A delegation from the Revolutionary Tribunal, consisting of the public prosecutor and two judges, proceeded to the Convention to congratulate it on having thwarted the conspiracies. The assembly decreed that the scaffold should once more be erected in the Place de la Révolution. It was desired that the rich, the fashionable, and pretty women should be able to witness, without going out of their way, the execution of Robespierre, which was to take place that very day. The dictator and his accomplices had been outlawed: it was enough for their identity to be attested by two municipal officers for the Tribunal to deliver them immediately to the executioner. But a difficulty arose: the attestations could not be made in due form, since the entire Paris Commune had been outlawed. The assembly authorized the Tribunal to establish their identity through ordinary witnesses.

The triumvirs were dragged to their death with their principal accomplices, amid shouts of joy and fury, curses, laughter, and dancing.

The next day, Évariste, who had recovered a little strength and could almost stand upon his legs, was taken from his cell, brought before the Tribunal, and placed upon the platform he had so often seen crowded with defendants, where so many victims, illustrious or obscure, had sat in turn. It now groaned beneath the weight of seventy persons, most of them members of the Paris Commune, with several jurors who, like Gamelin, had been outlawed. He saw again his bench, the back against which he had been accustomed to lean, the place from which he had struck terror into the wretched, the place where he had been forced to endure the gaze of Jacques Maubel, of Fortuné Chassagne, of Maurice Brotteaux, and the imploring eyes of Citizen Rochemaure, who had secured his appointment as a juror and whom he had rewarded with a verdict of death. He saw again, overlooking the platform where the judges sat in three mahogany chairs upholstered in red Utrecht velvet, the busts of Chalier and Marat, and that bust of Brutus upon which he had once called as witness. Nothing had changed: neither the axes, the fasces, and the red caps upon the wallpaper, nor the insults hurled from the galleries by the knitting women at those about to die, nor the soul of Fouquier-Tinville, obstinate and industrious, zealously shuffling his murderous papers and, the consummate magistrate, sending yesterday’s friends to the scaffold.

Citizens Remacle, porter and tailor, and Dupont the elder, a joiner of the Place de Thionville and a member of the Watch Committee of the Pont-Neuf Section, identified Gamelin (Évariste), painter, former juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and former member of the General Council of the Paris Commune. They were testifying in return for an assignat of one hundred sols, paid by the Section; but because they had been on neighbourly and friendly terms with the outlaw, they felt some discomfort at meeting his eyes. Besides, it was hot: they were thirsty and eager to go and drink a glass of wine.

Gamelin made an effort to climb into the cart: he had lost a great deal of blood, and his wound caused him cruel pain. The driver whipped his jade, and the procession set off amid hoots and jeers.

Women who recognized Gamelin shouted at him:

“Off with you, blood-drinker! Murderer at eighteen francs a day!… He is not laughing now: see how pale he is, the coward!”

They were the same women who, not long before, had insulted the conspirators and aristocrats, the extremists and the moderates whom Gamelin and his colleagues had sent to the guillotine.

The cart turned onto the Quai des Morfondus and slowly made its way to the Pont-Neuf and the Rue de la Monnaie: they were bound for the Place de la Révolution, for Robespierre’s scaffold. The horse limped; every few moments the driver brushed its ears with his whip. The lively, jubilant crowd of spectators slowed the escort’s progress. The public congratulated the gendarmes, who reined in their horses. At the corner of the Rue Honoré, the insults redoubled. Young men dining in the mezzanine rooms of the fashionable eating houses came to the windows, napkins in hand, and shouted:

“Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires!”

When the cart jolted into a heap of refuse that had not been cleared away during the past two days of turmoil, the gilded youth burst into delighted cries:

“The cart is bogged down!… Jacobins in the mire!” Gamelin pondered, and believed he understood.

“I die justly,” he thought. “It is just that we should receive these insults hurled at the Republic, from which we ought to have defended her. We were weak; we made ourselves guilty of indulgence. We betrayed the Republic. We have deserved our fate. Robespierre himself, the pure one, the saint, sinned through gentleness and mercy; his faults are effaced by his martyrdom. Following his example, I betrayed the Republic; she is perishing: it is just that I should die with her. I spared blood: let my blood flow! Let me perish! I have deserved it…”

As he reflected thus, he caught sight of the sign of the Painter Cupid, and torrents of bitterness and sweetness surged tumultuously through his heart.

The shop was closed, and the blinds of all three mezzanine windows were drawn completely down. As the cart passed the window on the left, the window of the blue room, a woman’s hand, wearing a silver ring upon the ring finger, pushed aside the edge of the blind and flung a red carnation towards Gamelin. His bound hands could not catch it, but he worshipped it as the symbol and image of those red and fragrant lips from which his mouth had drunk refreshment. His eyes filled with tears, and, steeped in the enchantment of that farewell, he saw the bloodstained knife rise in the Place de la Révolution.