Les Dieux ont soif. English Read online

  XVI

  After three months during which he had made a daily holocaust ofvictims, illustrious or insignificant, to the fatherland, Evariste had acase that interested him personally; there was one prisoner he made ithis special business to track down to death.

  Ever since he had sat on the juror's bench, he had been eagerlywatching, among the crowd of culprits who appeared before him, forElodie's seducer; of this man he had elaborated in his busy fancy aportrait, some details of which were accurate. He pictured him as young,handsome, haughty, and felt convinced he had fled to England. He thoughthe had discovered him in a young _emigre_ named Maubel, who, having comeback to France and been denounced by his host, had been arrested in aninn at Passy; Fouquier-Tinville was in charge of the prosecution,--amonga thousand others. Letters had been found on him which the accusationregarded as proofs of a plot concocted between Maubel and the agents ofPitt, but which were in fact only letters written to the _emigre_ by abanking-house in London which he had entrusted with certain funds.Maubel, who was young and good-looking, seemed to be mainly occupied inaffairs of gallantry. His pocket-book afforded a clue to somecorrespondence with Spain, then at war with France; but thesecommunications were really of a purely private nature, and if the courtof preliminary enquiry did not ignore the bill, it was only in virtue ofthe maxim that justice should never be in too great a hurry to release aprisoner.

  Gamelin was handed a report of Maubel's first semi-private examinationand he was struck by what it revealed of the young man's character,which he took to agree with what he believed to be that of Elodie'sbetrayer. Thereafter he spent long hours in the private room of theClerk of the Court, poring eagerly over the papers relating to thiscase. His suspicion received a remarkable confirmation on hisdiscovering in a note-book belonging to the _emigre_, but long out ofdate, the address of the _Amour peintre_, in company, it is true, withthose of the _Green Monkey_, the _Dauphin's Head_, and several moreprint and picture shops. But when he was informed that in this samenote-book had been found three or four petals of a red carnationcarefully wrapped in a piece of silk paper, remembering how the redcarnation was Elodie's favourite flower, the one she cultivated on herwindow-sill, wore in her hair and used to give (he had reason to know)as a love-token, Evariste's last doubts vanished. Being now convinced heknew the facts, he resolved to question Elodie, though without lettingher know the circumstances that had led him to discover the culprit.

  As he was climbing the stairs to his lodgings, he perceived even on thelower landings a stifling smell of fruit, and on reaching the studio,found Elodie helping the _citoyenne_ Gamelin to make quince preserve.While the old housewife was kindling the stove and turning over in hermind ways of saving the fuel and moist sugar without prejudicing thequality of the preserves, the _citoyenne_ Blaise, seated in astraw-bottomed chair, with an apron of brown holland and her lap full ofthe golden fruit, was peeling the quinces, quartering and throwing theminto a shallow copper basin. The strings of her coif were thrown backover her shoulders, the meshes of her black hair coiled above her moistforehead; from her whole person breathed a domestic charm and anintimate grace that induced gentle thoughts and voluptuous dreams oftranquil pleasures.

  Without stirring from her seat, she lifted her beautiful eyes, thatgleamed like molten gold, to her lover's face, and said:

  "See, Evariste, we are working for you. We mean you to have a store ofdelicious quince jelly to last you the winter; it will settle yourstomach and make your heart merry."

  But Gamelin, stepping nearer, uttered a name in her ear:

  "Jacques Maubel...."

  At that moment Combalot the cobbler showed his red nose at the half-opendoor. He had brought, along with some pairs of shoes he had re-heeled,the bill for the repairs.

  For fear of being taken for a bad citizen, he made a point of using thenew calendar. The _citoyenne_ Gamelin, who liked to see clearly what waswhat in her accounts, was all astray among the _Fructidors_ and_Vendemiaires_. She heaved a sigh.

  "Jesus!" she complained, "they want to alter everything,--days, months,seasons of the year, the sun and the moon! Lord God, Monsieur Combalot,what ever is this pair of over-shoes down for the 8 Vendemiaire?"

  "_Citoyenne_, just cast your eye over your almanac, and you'll get thehang of it."

  She took it down from the wall, glanced at it and immediately turningher head another way.

  "It hasn't a Christian look!" she cried in a shocked tone.

  "Not only that, _citoyenne_," said the cobbler, "but now we have onlythree Sundays in the month instead of four. And that's not all; we shallsoon have to change our ways of reckoning. There will be no morefarthings and half-farthings, everything will be regulated by distilledwater."

  At the words the _citoyenne_ Gamelin, whose lips were trembling, threwup her eyes to the ceiling and sighed out:

  "They are going too far!"

  And, while she was lost in lamentations, looking like the holy women ina wayside calvary, a bad coal that had caught alight in the fire whenher attention was diverted, began to fill the studio with a poisonoussmother which, added to the stifling smell of quinces, was like to makethe air unbreathable.

  Elodie complained that her throat was tickling her and begged to havethe window opened. But, directly the _citoyen_ Combalot had taken hisleave and the _citoyenne_ Gamelin had gone back to her stove, Evaristerepeated the same name in the girl's ear:

  "Jacques Maubel," he reiterated.

  She looked up at him in some surprise, and very quietly, still going oncutting a quince in quarters:

  "Well!... Jacques Maubel...?"

  "He is the man."

  "The man! what man?"

  "You once gave him a red carnation."

  She declared she did not understand and asked him to explain himself.

  "That aristocrat! that _emigre_! that scoundrel!"

  She shrugged her shoulders, and denied with the most natural air thatshe had never known a Jacques Maubel.

  It was true; she _had_ never known anyone of the name.

  She denied she had ever given red carnations to anybody but Evariste;but perhaps, on this point, her memory was not very good.

  He had little experience of women and was far from having fully fathomedElodie's character; still, he deemed her quite capable of cajoling anddeceiving a cleverer man than himself.

  "Why deny?" he asked. "I know all."

  Again she asseverated she had never known anybody called Maubel. And,having done peeling the quinces, she asked for a basin of water, becauseher fingers were sticky. This Gamelin brought her, and, as she washedher hands, she repeated her denials.

  Again he repeated that he knew, and this time she made no reply.

  She did not guess the object of her lover's question and she was athousand miles from suspecting that this Maubel, whom she had neverheard spoken of before, was to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal;she could make nothing of the suspicions with which she was assailed,but she knew them to be unfounded. For this reason, having very littlehope of dissipating them, she had very little wish to do so either. Sheceased to deny having known Maubel, preferring to leave her jealouslover to go astray on a false trail, when from one moment to the next,the smallest incident might start him on the right road. Her littlelawyer's clerk of former days, now grown into a patriot dragoon andlady-killer, had quarrelled by now with his aristocratic mistress.Whenever he met Elodie in the street, he would gaze at her with a glancethat seemed to say:

  "Come, my beauty! I feel sure I am going to forgive you for havingbetrayed you, and I am really quite ready to take you back into favour."She made no further attempt therefore to cure what she called herlover's crotchets, and Gamelin remained firm in the conviction thatJacques Maubel was Elodie's seducer.

  * * * * *

  Through the days that ensued the Tribunal devoted its undividedattention to the task of crushing Federalism, which, like a hydra, hadthreatened to devour Liberty. They were busy days; and th
e jurors, wornout with fatigue, despatched with the utmost possible expedition thecase of the woman Roland, instigator and accomplice of the crimes of theBrissotin faction.

  Meantime Gamelin spent every morning at the Courts to press on Maubel'strial. Some important pieces of evidence were to be found at Bordeaux;he insisted on a Commissioner being sent to ride post to fetch them.They arrived at last. The deputy of the Public Prosecutor read them,pulled a face and told Evariste:

  "It is not good for much, your new evidence! there is nothing in it!mere fiddle-faddle.... If only it was certain that this _ci-devant_Comte de Maubel ever really emigrated...!"

  In the end Gamelin succeeded. Young Maubel was served with his act ofaccusation and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 19Brumaire.

  From the first opening of the sitting the President showed the gloomyand dreadful face he took care to assume for the hearing of cases wherethe evidence was weak. The Deputy Prosecutor stroked his chin with thefeather of his pen and affected the serenity of a conscience at ease.The Clerk read the act of accusation; it was the hollowest sham theCourt had ever heard so far.

  The President asked the accused if he had not been aware of the lawspassed against the _emigres_.

  "I was aware of them and I observed them," answered Maubel, "and I leftFrance provided with passports in proper form."

  As to the reasons for his journey to England and his return to France hehad satisfactory explanations to offer. His face was pleasant, with alook of frankness and confidence that was agreeable. The women in thegalleries looked at the young man with a favourable eye. The prosecutionmaintained that he had made a stay in Spain at the time that Nation wasat war with France; he averred he had never left Bayonne at that period.One point alone remained obscure. Among the papers he had thrown in thefire at the time of his arrest, and of which only fragments had beenfound, some words in Spanish had been deciphered and the name of"Nieves."

  On this subject Jacques Maubel refused to give the explanationsdemanded; and, when the President told him that it was in the accused'sown interest to clear up the point, he answered that a man ought notalways to do what his own interest requires.

  Gamelin only thought of convicting Maubel of a crime; three times overhe pressed the President to ask the accused if he could explain aboutthe carnation the dried petals of which he hoarded so carefully in hispocket-book.

  Maubel replied that he did not consider himself obliged to answer aquestion that had no concern with the case at law, as no letter had beenfound concealed in the flower.

  The jury retired to the hall of deliberations, favourably impressedtowards the young man whose mysterious conduct appeared chieflyconnected with a lover's secrets. This time the good patriots, thepurest of the pure themselves, would gladly have voted for acquittal.One of them, a _ci-devant_ noble, who had given pledges to theRevolution, said:

  "Is it his birth they bring up against him? I, too, I have had themisfortune to be born in the aristocracy."

  "Yes, but you have left them," retorted Gamelin, "and he has not."

  And he spoke with such vehemence against this conspirator, this emissaryof Pitt, this accomplice of Coburg, who had climbed the mountains andsailed the seas to stir up enemies to Liberty, he demanded the traitor'scondemnation in such burning words, that he awoke the never-restingsuspicions, the old stern temper of the patriot jury.

  One of them told him cynically:

  "There are services that cannot well be refused between colleagues."

  The verdict of death was recorded by a majority of one.

  The condemned man heard his sentence with a quiet smile. His eyes, whichhad been gazing unconcernedly about the hall, as they fell on Gamelin'sface, took on an expression of unspeakable contempt.

  No one applauded the decision of the court.

  Jacques Maubel was taken back to the Conciergerie; here he wrote aletter while he waited the hour of execution, which was to take placethe same evening, by torchlight:

  _My dear sister,--The tribunal sends me to the scaffold, affording me the only joy I have been able to appreciate since the death of my adored Nieves. They have taken from me the only relic I had left of her, a pomegranate flower, which they called, I cannot tell why, a carnation.

  I loved the arts; at Paris, in happier times, I made a collection of paintings and engravings, which are now in a sure place, and which will be delivered to you so soon as this is possible. I pray you, dear sister, to keep them in memory of me._

  He cut a lock of his hair, enclosed it in the letter, which he foldedand wrote outside:

  _To the citoyenne Clemence Dezeimeries, nee Maubel,

  La Reole._

  He gave all the silver he had on him to the turnkey, begging him toforward this letter to its destination, asked for a bottle of wine,which he drank in little sips while waiting for the cart....

  After supper Gamelin ran to the _Amour Peintre_ and burst into the bluechamber where every night Elodie was waiting for him.

  "You are avenged," he told her. "Jacques Maubel is no more. The cartthat took him to his death has just passed beneath your window, escortedby torch-bearers."

  She understood:

  "Wretch! it is you have killed him, and he was not my lover. I did notknow him.... I have never seen him.... What was this man? He was young,amiable ... innocent. And you have killed him, wretch! wretch!"

  She fell in a faint. But, amid the shadows of this momentary death, shefelt herself overborne by a flood at once of horror and voluptuousecstasy. She half revived; her heavy lids lifted to show the whites ofthe eyes, her bosom swelled, her hands beat the air, seeking for herlover. She pressed him to her in a strangling embrace, drove her nailsinto the flesh, and gave him with her bleeding lips, without a word,without a sound, the longest, the most agonized, the most delicious ofkisses.

  She loved him with all her flesh, and the more terrible, cruel,atrocious she thought him, the more she saw him reeking with the bloodof his victims, the more consuming was her hunger and thirst for him.