The Gods Are Athirst — Chapter 9

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Évariste Gamelin was to take up his duties on 14 September, when the Tribunal was reorganized and divided henceforth into four Sections, each with fifteen jurors. The prisons were overflowing; the public prosecutor worked eighteen hours a day. To the defeats of the armies, the revolts of the provinces, the conspiracies, plots, and betrayals, the Convention opposed terror. The Gods were athirst.

The new juror's first step was to pay a visit of deference to President Herman, who charmed him by the gentleness of his speech and the amenity of his manner. A compatriot and friend of Robespierre, whose sentiments he shared, he revealed a sensitive and virtuous heart. He was deeply imbued with those humane sentiments, too long strangers to the hearts of judges, which are the eternal glory of a Dupaty and a Beccaria. He rejoiced in the softening of manners that had manifested itself in the administration of justice through the abolition of torture and of ignominious or cruel punishments. He was glad to see that the death penalty, once lavishly imposed and until lately employed to punish the slightest offences, had become rarer and was reserved for great crimes. For his own part, like Robespierre, he would willingly have abolished it in all matters that did not touch upon public safety. But he would have thought himself a traitor to the State had he failed to punish with death crimes committed against the sovereignty of the nation.

All his colleagues thought likewise: the old monarchical idea of reason of State inspired the Revolutionary Tribunal. Eight centuries of absolute power had formed its magistrates, and it was upon the principles of divine right that they judged the enemies of liberty.

That same day, Évariste Gamelin presented himself before the public prosecutor, Citizen Fouquier, who received him in the office where he worked with his clerk. He was a robust man, with a harsh voice and catlike eyes, whose broad, pockmarked face and leaden complexion bore witness to the ravages wrought by a sedentary, cloistered existence upon vigorous men made for the open air and violent exercise. The case files rose around him like the walls of a tomb, and he plainly loved this terrible mass of papers that seemed bent on smothering him. His conversation was that of a laborious magistrate, intent upon his duties, whose mind never strayed beyond the circle of his office. His hot breath smelled of the brandy he took to sustain himself, which seemed never to rise to his brain, so lucid were his invariably commonplace remarks.

He lived in a small apartment in the Palais de Justice with his young wife, who had borne him twins. This young woman, Aunt Henriette, and the servant Pélagie composed his entire household. He was gentle and kind to them. In short, he was an excellent man in his family and in his profession, with few ideas and no imagination whatever.

Gamelin could not help observing with some displeasure how closely these magistrates of the new order resembled those of the old regime in mind and manner. And indeed they were the same men: Herman had served as advocate-general to the Council of Artois; Fouquier had formerly been a prosecutor at the Châtelet. They had retained their character. But Évariste Gamelin believed in revolutionary regeneration.

On leaving the prosecutor's offices, he crossed the gallery of the Palais and stopped before the shops, where objects of every kind were artfully displayed. At Citizen Ténot's stall he leafed through historical, political, and philosophical works: The Chains of Slavery; Essay on Despotism; The Crimes of Queens. "Now, these," he thought, "are republican writings!" and he asked the bookseller whether she sold many books of that sort. She shook her head:

"Nothing sells but songs and novels."

And, taking a small volume from a drawer:

"Here," she added, "is something good."

Évariste read the title: The Nun in Her Shift.

Outside the neighbouring shop he found Philippe Desmahis, splendid and tender among Citizen Saint-Jorre's perfumes, powders, and sachets, assuring the beautiful shopkeeper of his love, promising to paint her portrait, and asking for a private meeting in the Tuileries gardens that evening. He was handsome. Persuasion flowed from his lips and flashed from his eyes. Citizen Saint-Jorre listened in silence and, already disposed to believe him, lowered her eyes.

To acquaint himself with the terrible duties entrusted to him, the new juror resolved to attend a trial among the public. He climbed the staircase, where an immense crowd sat as in an amphitheatre, and entered the former chamber of the Parlement of Paris.

People were crushing one another to see some general brought to trial. For at that time, as old Brotteaux said, "the Convention, following the example of His Britannic Majesty's government, put defeated generals on trial in default of traitorous generals, who took care not to submit to judgement. Not," Brotteaux added, "that a defeated general is necessarily a criminal, since every battle must of necessity have one. But nothing is so effective as condemning one general to death for putting courage into the others..."

Several had already occupied the defendant's chair, those flighty and obstinate military men, with birds' brains in oxen's skulls. The one now before them knew scarcely more about the sieges and battles he had conducted than the magistrates questioning him: prosecution and defence alike lost themselves amid troop strengths, objectives, munitions, marches, and countermarches. And the crowd of citizens following these obscure and interminable proceedings saw behind the imbecile soldier their country laid open and torn asunder, suffering a thousand deaths; with eyes and voices they urged the jurors, composed upon their bench, to bring down their verdict like a bludgeon upon the enemies of the Republic.

Évariste felt it ardently: what must be struck down in this wretch were the two hideous monsters tearing the country apart—rebellion and defeat. As though it truly mattered whether this soldier was innocent or guilty! When the Vendée was taking heart again, when Toulon was surrendering itself to the enemy, when the Army of the Rhine was retreating before the victors of Mainz, when the Army of the North, withdrawn to Caesar's Camp, might be carried at a single stroke by the Imperial troops, the English, and the Dutch, masters of Valenciennes, what mattered was to teach generals to conquer or to die. Seeing this crippled, stupefied trooper, who in court lost himself among his maps as he had lost himself yonder upon the plains of the North, Gamelin hastily left the chamber lest he join the public in crying: "Death!"

At the meeting of the Section, the new juror received the congratulations of President Olivier, who made him swear upon the old high altar of the Barnabites, now transformed into an altar of the fatherland, that in the sacred name of humanity he would stifle every human weakness in his soul.

With uplifted hand, Gamelin called to witness his oath the august shade of Marat, martyr of liberty, whose bust had just been placed against a pillar of the former church, facing the bust of Le Peltier.

A few bursts of applause rang out, mingled with murmurs. The assembly was restless. At the entrance to the nave, a group of Section members armed with pikes were vociferating.

"It is anti-republican," said the president, "to bear arms at a gathering of free men."

And he ordered the muskets and pikes to be deposited at once in the former sacristy.

A hunchback with lively eyes and curling lips, Citizen Beauvisage of the Vigilance Committee, took his place in the pulpit, now become the rostrum and surmounted by a red cap.

"The generals are betraying us," he said, "and delivering our armies to the enemy. The Imperial troops are sending cavalry detachments into the country around Péronne and Saint-Quentin. Toulon has been delivered to the English, who are landing fourteen thousand men there. The enemies of the Republic are conspiring within the Convention itself. In the capital, innumerable plots are being hatched to free the Austrian woman. At this very moment, rumour has it that the Capet boy has escaped from the Temple and is being borne in triumph to Saint-Cloud: they mean to restore the tyrant's throne in his favour. The rising price of provisions and the depreciation of the assignats are the result of schemes carried out in our own homes, beneath our eyes, by agents of foreign powers. In the name of public safety, I call upon the Citizen juror to show no mercy to conspirators and traitors."

As he descended from the rostrum, voices rose from the assembly: "Down with the Revolutionary Tribunal! Down with the moderates!"

Plump and rosy-cheeked, Citizen Dupont the elder, a joiner in the Place de Thionville, mounted the rostrum, wishing, as he said, to put a question to the Citizen juror. He asked Gamelin what his attitude would be in the case of the Brissotins and the widow Capet.

Évariste was shy and had no gift for public speaking. But indignation inspired him. He rose, pale, and said in a low voice:

"I am a magistrate. I answer to my conscience alone. Any promise I might make you would be contrary to my duty. I must speak in the Tribunal and remain silent everywhere else. I know none of you any longer. I am a judge: I know neither friends nor enemies."

The assembly, divided, uncertain, and wavering, as all assemblies are, expressed its approval. But Citizen Dupont the elder returned to the attack; he could not forgive Gamelin for occupying a post he had himself coveted.

"I understand," he said, "and I even approve the Citizen juror's scruples. He is said to be a patriot: it is for him to decide whether his conscience permits him to sit in a tribunal established to destroy the enemies of the Republic, yet resolved to spare them. There are forms of complicity from which a good citizen must withdraw. Is it not established that several jurors of this tribunal have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the gold of the accused, and that President Montané committed a falsification to save the Corday girl's head?"

At these words the chamber resounded with vigorous applause. Its last bursts were still mounting to the vaults when Fortuné Trubert ascended the rostrum. He had grown much thinner during the past few months. Red cheekbones thrust against the skin of his pale face; his eyelids were inflamed and his pupils glassy.

"Citizens," he said in a weak, slightly breathless voice, yet one of strange penetration, "one cannot cast suspicion upon the Revolutionary Tribunal without casting suspicion at the same time upon the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, from which it derives its authority. Citizen Beauvisage alarmed us by showing President Montané tampering with the proceedings in favour of a guilty person. Why did he not add, for our reassurance, that upon the public prosecutor's denunciation Montané was dismissed and imprisoned?... Can we not safeguard the public welfare without sowing suspicion everywhere? Are there no longer talents or virtues in the Convention? Are Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just not honest men? It is remarkable that the most violent speeches come from individuals who have never been seen fighting for the Republic! They would speak no differently if they wished to make it hateful. Citizens, less noise and more work! France will be saved with cannon, not with clamour. Half the cellars in the Section have not yet been searched. Several citizens are still holding considerable quantities of bronze. We remind the rich that patriotic gifts are the best insurance they can obtain. I commend to your generosity the daughters and wives of our soldiers, who are covering themselves with glory on the frontier and along the Loire. One of them, the hussar Pommier (Augustin), formerly a wine steward's apprentice in the Rue de Jérusalem, was leading horses to water outside Condé on the tenth of last month when six Austrian cavalrymen fell upon him: he killed two and brought back the others as prisoners. I move that the Section declare that Pommier (Augustin) has done his duty."

The speech was applauded, and the Section members dispersed to cries of "Long live the Republic!"

Left alone with Trubert in the nave, Gamelin clasped his hand:

"Thank you. How are you?"

"I am very well, very well!" replied Trubert, coughing blood into his handkerchief with a convulsive gasp. "The Republic has many enemies abroad and at home; and our Section, for its part, contains a considerable number. Empires are founded not with clamour, but with iron and laws... Good evening, Gamelin; I have some letters to write."

And he went away into the former sacristy, his handkerchief pressed to his lips.

Citizen Widow Gamelin, her cockade now set more neatly upon her cap, had acquired overnight a matronly gravity, a republican pride, and the dignified bearing befitting the mother of a Citizen juror. The respect for justice in which she had been reared, the admiration inspired in her from childhood by the judicial gown and robe of office, the holy terror she had always felt at the sight of those men to whom God himself yields upon earth his right over life and death—all these sentiments rendered august, venerable, and sacred in her eyes the son whom but lately she had still regarded almost as a child. In her simplicity, she conceived the continuity of justice through the Revolution as firmly as the legislators of the Convention conceived the continuity of the State through changes of regime, and the Revolutionary Tribunal appeared to her equal in majesty to all the ancient courts she had been taught to revere.

Citizen Brotteaux displayed towards the young magistrate an interest mingled with surprise and a constrained deference. Like Citizen Widow Gamelin, he perceived the continuity of justice through successive regimes; but, unlike that lady, he despised the revolutionary tribunals as thoroughly as the courts of the old regime. Not daring to express his thoughts openly, yet unable to resign himself to silence, he took refuge in paradoxes that Gamelin understood just well enough to suspect them of being unpatriotic.

“The august tribunal on which you will shortly sit,” he said to him one day, “was instituted by the French senate for the salvation of the Republic; and it was certainly a virtuous thought on the part of our legislators to provide their enemies with judges. I can appreciate its generosity, but I do not believe it politic. It would have been more skilful, it seems to me, to strike their most irreconcilable adversaries in the shadows and win the others over with gifts or promises. A tribunal strikes slowly and causes less harm than fear: above all, it serves as an example. The disadvantage of yours is that it unites all whom it terrifies, and thus turns a rabble of conflicting interests and passions into a great party capable of concerted and powerful action. You are sowing fear: it is fear, more often than courage, that begets heroes. May you never, Citizen Gamelin, see prodigies born of fear unleashed against you!”

The engraver Desmahis, who that week was in love with a girl from the Palais-Égalité—the dark-haired Flora, a giantess—nevertheless found five minutes to congratulate his friend and tell him that such an appointment did great honour to the fine arts.

Élodie herself, although unbeknown to her she detested everything revolutionary, and although she feared public office as the most dangerous rival that could contend with her for her lover’s heart—even tender Élodie yielded to the ascendancy of a magistrate called upon to pass judgment in capital cases. Moreover, Évariste’s appointment as a juror produced happy effects around her in which her tender heart found cause for rejoicing: Citizen Jean Blaise came to the studio on the Place de Thionville and embraced the juror with an outpouring of manly affection.

Like all counter-revolutionaries, he had a regard for the powers of the Republic; and since he had been denounced for fraud in supplying the army, the Revolutionary Tribunal inspired him with respectful fear. He considered himself too conspicuous a figure, and involved in too many affairs, to enjoy perfect security: Citizen Gamelin seemed to him a man whose goodwill ought to be cultivated. After all, he was a good citizen and a friend of the laws.

He held out his hand to the painter-magistrate, showing himself cordial and patriotic, a friend to the arts and to liberty. Gamelin, with characteristic generosity, clasped the hand so freely offered.

“Citizen Évariste Gamelin,” said Jean Blaise, “I appeal to your friendship and your talents. I am taking you into the country tomorrow for forty-eight hours: you shall draw, and we shall talk.”

Several times each year, the print-dealer made an excursion of two or three days in the company of painters who, under his direction, drew landscapes and ruins. Skilful in seizing upon whatever might please the public, he brought back from these tours pieces which, finished in the studio and engraved with spirit, became red-chalk or coloured prints from which he made a handsome profit. From the same sketches he also had overdoors and pier panels executed, which sold as well as, and even better than, the decorative works of Hubert Robert.

This time he wished to take Citizen Gamelin with him to sketch garden follies from nature, so greatly had the juror enhanced the painter in his eyes. Two other artists were to join the party: the engraver Desmahis, who drew well, and the obscure Philippe Dubois, who worked admirably in Robert’s manner. As usual, Citizen Élodie, accompanied by her friend Citizen Hasard, went with the artists. Jean Blaise, who knew how to combine attention to his interests with care for his pleasures, had also invited Citizen Thévenin, an actress at the Vaudeville who was reputed to be his intimate friend.