Les Dieux ont soif. English Read online

  Produced by R. Cedron, Camille Francois, Henry Craig andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive)

  THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCEIN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONEDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

  THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

  THE GODS AREATHIRST

  BY ANATOLE FRANCE

  A TRANSLATION BYMRS. WILFRID JACKSON

  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANYLONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEADTORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV

  Copyright, 1913 byJOHN LANE COMPANY

  THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

  I

  Evariste Gamelin, painter, pupil of David, member of the Section duPont-Neuf, formerly Section Henri IV, had betaken himself at an earlyhour in the morning to the old church of the Barnabites, which for threeyears, since 21st May 1790, had served as meeting-place for the GeneralAssembly of the Section. The church stood in a narrow, gloomy square,not far from the gates of the Palais de Justice. On the facade, whichconsisted of two of the Classical orders superimposed and was decoratedwith inverted brackets and flaming urns, blackened by the weather anddisfigured by the hand of man, the religious emblems had been batteredto pieces, while above the doorway had been inscribed in black lettersthe Republican catchword of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death."Evariste Gamelin made his way into the nave; the same vaults which hadheard the surpliced clerks of the Congregation of St. Paul sing thedivine offices, now looked down on red-capped patriots assembled toelect the Municipal magistrates and deliberate on the affairs of theSection. The Saints had been dragged from their niches and replaced bythe busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Peltier. The altar had beenstripped bare and was surmounted by the Table of the Rights of Man.

  It was here in the nave that twice a week, from five in the evening toeleven, were held the public assemblies. The pulpit, decorated with thecolours of the Nation, served as tribune for the speakers who haranguedthe meeting. Opposite, on the Epistle side, rose a platform of roughplanks, for the accommodation of the women and children, who attendedthese gatherings in considerable numbers.

  On this particular morning, facing a desk planted underneath the pulpit,sat in red cap and _carmagnole_ complete the joiner from the PlaceThionville, the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, one of the twelve forming theCommittee of Surveillance. On the desk stood a bottle and glasses, anink-horn, and a folio containing the text of the petition urging theConvention to expel from its bosom the twenty-two members deemedunworthy.

  Evariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.

  "I was sure," said the carpenter and magistrate, "I was sure you wouldcome and give in your name, _citoyen_ Gamelin. You are the real thing.But the Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have proposed tothe Committee of Surveillance to deliver no certificate of citizenshipto any one who has failed to sign the petition."

  "I am ready to sign with my blood," said Gamelin, "for the proscriptionof these federalists, these traitors. They have desired the death ofMarat: let them perish."

  "What ruins us," replied Dupont senior, "is indifferentism. In a Sectionwhich contains nine hundred citizens with the right to vote there arenot fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were eight and twenty."

  "Well then," said Gamelin, "citizens must be obliged to come underpenalty of a fine."

  "Oh, ho!" exclaimed the joiner frowning, "but if they all came, thepatriots would be in a minority.... _Citoyen_ Gamelin, will you drink aglass of wine to the health of all good sansculottes?..."

  On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side, could be read the words,accompanied by a black hand, the forefinger pointing to the passageleading to the cloisters: "_Comite civil, Comite de surveillance, Comitede bienfaisance._" A few yards further on, you came to the door of theerstwhile sacristy, over which was inscribed: _Comite militaire_.

  Gamelin pushed this door open and found the Secretary of the Committeewithin; he was writing at a large table loaded with books, papers, steelingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing soils.

  "Greeting, _citoyen_ Trubert. How are you?"

  "I?... I am perfectly well."

  The Secretary of the Military Committee, Fortune Trubert, invariablymade this same reply to all who troubled about his health, less by wayof informing them of his welfare than to cut short any discussion on thesubject. At twenty-eight, he had a parched skin, thin hair, hecticcheeks and bent shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des Orfevres,and owned a very old house which he had given up in '91 to asuperannuated clerk in order to devote his energies to the discharge ofhis municipal duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose memory a fewold men of the neighbourhood still cherished fondly, had died at twenty;she had left him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, herpallor and timidity. From his father, optician and mathematicalinstrument maker to the King, carried off by the same complaint beforehis thirtieth year, he inherited an upright character and an industrioustemperament.

  Without stopping his writing:

  "And you, _citoyen_," he asked, "how are you?"

  "Very well. Anything new?"

  "Nothing, nothing. You can see,--we are all quiet here."

  "And the situation?"

  "The situation is just the same."

  The situation was appalling. The finest army of the Republic blockadedin Mayence; Valenciennes besieged; Fontenay taken by the Vendeens; Lyonsrebellious; the Cevennes in insurrection, the frontier open to theSpaniards; two-thirds of the Departments invaded or revolted; Parishelpless before the Austrian cannon, without money, without bread!

  Fortune Trubert wrote on calmly. The Sections being instructed byresolution of the Commune to carry out the levy of twelve thousand menfor La Vendee, he was drawing up directions relating to the enrolmentand arming of the contingent which the "Pont-Neuf," erstwhile "HenriIV," was to supply. All the muskets in store were to be handed over tothe men requisitioned for the front; the National Guard of the Sectionwould be armed with fowling-pieces and pikes.

  "I have brought you here," said Gamelin, "the schedule of thechurch-bells to be sent to the Luxembourg to be converted into cannon."

  Evariste Gamelin, albeit he had not a penny, was inscribed among theactive members of the Section; the law accorded this privilege only tosuch citizens as were rich enough to pay a contribution equivalent inamount to three days' work, and demanded a ten days' contribution toqualify an elector for office. But the Section du Pont-Neuf, enamouredof equality and jealous of its independence, regarded as qualified bothfor the vote and for office every citizen who had paid out of his ownpocket for his National Guard's uniform. This was Gamelin's case, whowas an _active_ citizen of his Section and member of the MilitaryCommittee.

  Fortune Trubert laid down his pen:

  "_Citoyen_ Evariste," he said, "I beg you to go to the Convention andask them to send us orders to dig up the floor of cellars, to wash thesoil and flag-stones and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything tohave guns, we must have gunpowder too."

  A little hunchback, a pen behind his ear and a bundle of papers in hishand, entered the erstwhile sacristy. It was the _citoyen_ Beauvisage,of the Committee of Surveillance.

  "_Citoyens_," he announced, "we have bad news: Custine has evacuatedLandau."

  "Custine is a traitor!" cried Gamelin.

  "He shall be guillotined," said Beauvisage.

  Trubert, in his rather breathless voice, expressed himself with hishabitual calmness:

  "The Convention has not instituted a Committee of Public Safety for fun.It will enquire into Custine's conduct. Incompetent or traitor, he willbe superseded by a General resolved to win the victory,--and _ca ira!_"

  He turned over a heap of papers, sc
rutinizing them with his tired eyes:

  "That our soldiers may do their duty with a quiet mind and stout heart,they must be assured that the lot of those they leave behind at home issafeguarded. If you are of the same opinion, _citoyen_ Gamelin, you willjoin me in demanding, at the next assembly, that the Committee ofBenevolence concert measures with the Military Committee to succour thefamilies that are in indigence and have a relative at the front."

  He smiled and hummed to himself: "_Ca ira! ca ira!..._"

  Working twelve and fourteen hours a day at his table of unpainted dealfor the defence of the fatherland in peril, this humble Secretary of theSectional Committee could see no disproportion between the immensity ofthe task and the meagreness of his means for performing it, so filledwas he with a sense of the unity in a common effort between himself andall other patriots, so intimately did he feel himself one with theNation at large, so merged was his individual life in the life of agreat People. He was of the sort who combine enthusiasm withlong-suffering, who, after each check, set about organizing the victorythat is impossible, but is bound to come. And verily they _must_ win theday. These men of no account, who had destroyed Royalty and upset theold order of things, this Trubert, a penniless optician, this EvaristeGamelin, an unknown dauber, could expect no mercy from their enemies.They had no choice save between victory and death. Hence both theirfervour and their serenity.