Les Dieux ont soif. English Read online

  II

  Quitting the Barnabites, Evariste Gamelin set off in the direction ofthe Place Dauphine, now renamed the Place de Thionville in honour of acity that had shown itself impregnable.

  Situated in the busiest quarter of Paris, the _Place_ had long lost thefine stateliness it had worn a hundred years ago; the mansions formingits three sides, built in the days of Henri IV in one uniform style, ofred brick with white stone dressings, to lodge splendour-lovingmagistrates, had had their imposing roofs of slate removed to make wayfor two or three wretched storeys of lath and plaster or had even beendemolished altogether and replaced by shabby whitewashed houses, and nowdisplayed only a series of irregular, poverty-stricken, squalid fronts,pierced with countless narrow, unevenly spaced windows enlivened withflowers in pots, birdcages, and rags hanging out to dry. These wereoccupied by a swarm of artisans, jewellers, metal-workers, clockmakers,opticians, printers, laundresses, sempstresses, milliners, and a fewgrey-beard lawyers who had not been swept away in the storm ofrevolution along with the King's courts.

  It was morning and springtime. Golden sunbeams, intoxicating as newwine, played on the walls and flashed gaily in at garret casements.Every sash of every window was thrown open, showing the housewives'frowsy heads peeping out. The Clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, whohad just left his house on his way to Court, distributed amicable tapson the cheeks of the children playing under the trees. From thePont-Neuf came the crier's voice denouncing the treason of the infamousDumouriez.

  Evariste Gamelin lived in a house on the side towards the Quai del'Horloge, a house that dated from Henri IV and would still havepreserved a not unhandsome appearance but for a mean tiled attic thathad been added on to heighten the building under the last but one of the_tyrants_. To adapt the lodging of some erstwhile dignitary of the_Parlement_ to the exigencies of the bourgeois and artisan householdsthat formed its present denizens, endless partitions and false floorshad been run up. This was why the _citoyen_ Remacle, concierge andjobbing tailor, perched in a sort of 'tween-decks, as low ceilinged asit was confined in area. Here he could be seen through the glass doorsitting cross-legged on his work-bench, his bowed back within an inch ofthe floor above, stitching away at a National Guard's uniform, while the_citoyenne_ Remacle, whose cooking stove boasted no chimney but the wellof the staircase, poisoned the other tenants with the fumes of herstew-pots and frying-pans, and their little girl Josephine, her facesmudged with treacle and looking as pretty as an angel, played on thethreshold with Mouton, the joiner's dog. The _citoyenne_, whose heartwas as capacious as her ample bosom and broad back, was reputed tobestow her favours on her neighbour the _citoyen_ Dupont senior, who wasone of the twelve constituting the Committee of Surveillance. At anyrate her husband had his strong suspicions, and from morning to nightthe house resounded with the racket of the alternate squabbles andreconciliations of the pair. The upper floors were occupied by the_citoyen_ Chaperon, gold and silver-smith, who had his shop on the Quaide l'Horloge, by a health officer, an attorney, a goldbeater, andseveral employes at the Palais de Justice.

  Evariste Gamelin climbed the old-fashioned staircase as far as thefourth and last storey, where he had his studio together with a bedroomfor his mother. At this point ended the wooden stairs laid with tilesthat took the place of the grand stairway of the more important floors.A ladder clamped to the wall led to a cock-loft, from which at thatmoment emerged a stout man with a handsome, florid, rosy-cheeked face,climbing painfully down with an enormous package clasped in his arms,yet humming gaily to himself: _J'ai perdu mon serviteur_.

  Breaking off his song, he wished a polite good-day to Gamelin, whoreturned him a fraternal greeting and helped him down with his parcel,for which the old man thanked him.

  "There," said he, shouldering his burden again, "you have a batch ofdancing-dolls which I am going to deliver straight away to atoy-merchant in the Rue de la Loi. There is a whole tribe of theminside; I am their creator; they have received of me a perishable body,exempt from joys and sufferings. I have not given them the gift ofthought, for I am a benevolent God."

  It was the _citoyen_ Brotteaux, once farmer of taxes and _ci-devant_noble; his father, having made a fortune in these transactions, hadbought himself an office conferring a title on the possessor. In thegood old times Maurice Brotteaux had called himself Monsieur des Ilettesand used to give elegant suppers which the fair Madame de Rochemaure,wife of a King's _procureur_, enlivened with her bright glances,--afinished gentlewoman whose loyal fidelity was never impugned so long asthe Revolution left Maurice Brotteaux in possession of his offices andemoluments, his hotel, his estates and his noble name. The Revolutionswept them all away. He made his living by painting portraits under thearchways of doors, making pancakes and fritters on the Quai de laMegisserie, composing speeches for the representatives of the people andgiving dancing lessons to the young _citoyennes_. At the present time,in his garret into which you climbed by a ladder and where a man couldnot stand upright, Maurice Brotteaux, the proud owner of a glue-pot, aball of twine, a box of water-colours and sundry clippings of paper,manufactured dancing-dolls which he sold to wholesale toy-dealers, whoresold them to the pedlars who hawked them up and down theChamps-Elysees at the end of a pole,--glittering magnets to draw thelittle ones' eyes. Amidst the calamities of the State and the disasterthat overwhelmed himself, he preserved an unruffled spirit, reading forthe refreshment of his mind in his Lucretius, which he carried with himwherever he went in the gaping pocket of his plum-coloured surtout.

  Evariste Gamelin pushed open the door of his lodging. It offered noresistance, for his poverty spared him any trouble about lock and key;when his mother from force of habit shot the bolt, he would tell her:"Why, what's the good? Folks don't steal spiders'-webs,--nor mypictures, neither." In his workroom were piled, under a thick layer ofdust or with faces turned to the wall, the canvases of his studentyears,--when, as the fashion of the day was, he limned scenes ofgallantry, depicting with a sleek, timorous brush emptied quivers andbirds put to flight, risky pastimes and reveries of bliss, high-kiltedgoose-girls and shepherdesses with rose-wreathed bosoms.

  But it was not a genre that suited his temperament. His cold treatmentof such like scenes proved the painter's incurable purity of heart.Amateurs were right: Gamelin had no gifts as an erotic artist. Nowadays,though he was still short of thirty, these subjects struck him as datingfrom an immemorial antiquity. He saw in them the degradation wrought byMonarchy, the shameful effects of the corruption of Courts. He blamedhimself for having practised so contemptible a style and prostituted hisgenius to the vile arts of slavery. Now, citizen of a free people, heoccupied his hand with bold charcoal sketches of Liberties, Rights ofMan, French Constitutions, Republican Virtues, the People as Herculesfelling the Hydra of Tyranny, throwing into each and all hiscompositions all the fire of his patriotism. Alas! he could not make aliving by it. The times were hard for artists. No doubt the fault didnot lie with the Convention, which was hurling its armies against thekings gathered on every frontier, which, proud, unmoved, determined inthe face of the coalesced powers of Europe, false and ruthless toitself, was rending its own bosom with its own hands, which was settingup terror as the order of the day, establishing for the punishment ofplotters a pitiless tribunal to whose devouring maw it was soon todeliver up its own members; but which through it all, with calm andthoughtful brow, the patroness of science and friend of all thingsbeautiful, was reforming the calendar, instituting technical schools,decreeing competitions in painting and sculpture, founding prizes toencourage artists, organizing annual exhibitions, opening the Museum ofthe Louvre, and, on the model of Athens and Rome, endowing with astately sublimity the celebration of National festivals and publicobsequies. But French Art, once so widely appreciated in England, andGermany, in Russia, in Poland, now found every outlet to foreign landsclosed. Amateurs of painting, dilettanti of the fine arts, greatnoblemen and financiers, were ruined, had emigrated or were in hiding.The men the Revolution had enriched, peasants who ha
d bought up Nationalproperties, speculators, army-contractors, gamesters of thePalais-Royal, durst not at present show their wealth, and did not care afig for pictures, either. It needed Regnault's fame or the youthfulGerard's cleverness to sell a canvas. Greuze, Fragonard, Houin werereduced to indigence. Prud'hon could barely earn bread for his wife andchildren by drawing subjects which Copia reproduced in stippledengravings. The patriot painters Hennequin, Wicar, Topino-Lebrun werestarving. Gamelin, without means to meet the expenses of a picture, tohire a model or buy colours, abandoned his vast canvas of _The Tyrantpursued in the Infernal Regions by the Furies_, after barely sketchingin the main outlines. It blocked up half the studio with itshalf-finished, threatening shapes, greater than life-size, and its vastbrood of green snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues. Inthe foreground, to the left, could be discerned Charon in his boat, ahaggard, wild-looking figure,--a powerful and well conceived design, butof the schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and less ofartificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions, also unfinished, thathung in the best lighted corner of the studio. It was an Orestes whomhis sister Electra was raising in her arms on his bed of pain. Themaiden was putting back with a moving tenderness the matted hair thathung over her brother's eyes. The head of the hero was tragic and fine,and you could see a likeness in it to the painter's own countenance.

  Gamelin cast many a mournful look at this composition; sometimes hisfingers itched with the craving to be at work on it, and his arms wouldbe stretched longingly towards the boldly sketched figure of Electra, tofall back again helpless to his sides. The artist was burning withenthusiasm, his soul aspired to great achievements. But he had toexhaust his energy on pot-boilers which he executed indifferently,because he was bound to please the taste of the vulgar and also becausehe had no skill to impress trivial things with the seal of genius. Hedrew little allegorical compositions which his comrade Desmahis engravedcleverly enough in black or in colours and which were bought at a lowfigure by a print-dealer in the Rue Honore, the _citoyen_ Blaise. Butthe trade was going from bad to worse, declared Blaise, who for sometime now had declined to purchase anything.

  This time, however, made inventive by necessity, Gamelin had conceived anew and happy thought, as _he_ at any rate believed,--an idea that wasto make the print-seller's fortune, and the engraver's and his own toboot. This was a "patriotic" pack of cards, where for the kings andqueens and knaves of the old style he meant to substitute figures ofGenius, of Liberty, of Equality and the like. He had already sketchedout all his designs, had finished several and was eager to pass on toDesmahis such as were in a state to be engraved. The one he deemed themost successful represented a soldier dressed in the three-cornered hat,blue coat with red facings, yellow breeches and black gaiters of theVolunteer, seated on a big drum, his feet on a pile of cannon-balls andhis musket between his knees. It was the _citizen of hearts_ replacingthe _ci-devant_ knave of hearts. For six months and more Gamelin hadbeen drawing soldiers with never-failing gusto. He had sold some ofthese while the fit of martial enthusiasm lasted, while others hung onthe walls of the room, and five or six, water-colours, colour-washes andchalks in two tints, lay about on the table and chairs. In the days ofJuly, '92, when in every open space rose platforms for enrollingrecruits, when all the taverns were gay with green leaves and resoundedto the shouts of "Vive la Nation! freedom or death!" Gamelin could notcross the Pont-Neuf or pass the Hotel de Ville without his heart beatinghigh at sight of the beflagged marquee in which magistrates in tricolourscarves were inscribing the names of volunteers to the sound of the_Marseillaise_. But for him to join the Republic's armies would havemeant leaving his mother to starve.

  Heralded by a grievous sound of puffing and panting the old _citoyenne_,Gamelin's widowed mother, entered the studio, hot, red and out ofbreath, the National cockade hanging half unpinned in her cap and on thepoint of falling out. She deposited her basket on a chair and stillstanding, the better to get her breath, began to groan over the highprice of victuals.

  A shopkeeper's wife till the death of her husband, a cutler in the Ruede Grenelle-Saint-Germain, at the sign of the Ville de Chatellerault,now reduced to poverty, the _citoyenne_ Gamelin lived in seclusion,keeping house for her son the painter. He was the elder of her twochildren. As for her daughter Julie, at one time employed at afashionable milliner's in the Rue Honore, the best thing was not to knowwhat had become of her, for it was ill saying the truth, that she hademigrated with an aristocrat.

  "Lord God!" sighed the _citoyenne_, showing her son a loaf baked ofheavy dun-coloured dough, "bread is too dear for anything; the morereason it should be made of pure wheat! At market neither eggs norgreen-stuff nor cheese to be had. By dint of eating chestnuts, we'relike to grow into chestnuts."

  After a long pause, she began again:

  "Why, I've seen women in the streets who had nothing to feed theirlittle ones with. The distress is sore among poor folks. And it will goon the same till things are put back on a proper footing."

  "Mother," broke in Gamelin with a frown, "the scarcity we suffer from isdue to the unprincipled buyers and speculators who starve the people andconnive with our foes over the border to render the Republic odious tothe citizens and to destroy liberty. This comes of the Brissotins' plotsand the traitorous dealings of your Petions and Rolands. It is well ifthe federalists in arms do not march on Paris and massacre the patriotremnant whom famine is too slow in killing! There is no time to lose;we must tax the price of flour and guillotine every man who speculatesin the food of the people, foments insurrection or palters with theforeigner. The Convention has set up an extraordinary tribunal to tryconspirators. Patriots form the court; but will its members have energyenough to defend the fatherland against our foes? There is hope inRobespierre; he is virtuous. There is hope above all in Marat. He lovesthe people, discerns its true interests and promotes them. He was everthe first to unmask traitors, to baffle plots. He is incorruptible andfearless. He, and he alone, can save the imperilled Republic."

  The _citoyenne_ Gamelin shook her head, paying no heed to the cockadethat fell out of her cap at the gesture.

  "Have done, Evariste; your Marat is a man like another and no betterthan the rest. You are young and your head is full of fancies. What yousay to-day of Marat, you said before of Mirabeau, of La Fayette, ofPetion, of Brissot."

  "Never!" cried Gamelin, who was genuinely oblivious.

  After clearing one end of the deal table of the papers and books,brushes and chalks that littered it, the _citoyenne_ laid out on it theearthenware soup-bowl, two tin porringers, two iron forks, the loaf ofbrown bread and a jug of thin wine.

  Mother and son ate the soup in silence and finished their meal with asmall scrap of bacon. The _citoyenne_, putting _her_ titbit on herbread, used the point of her pocket knife to convey the pieces one byone slowly and solemnly to her toothless jaws and masticated with aproper reverence the victuals that had cost so dear.

  She had left the best part on the dish for her son, who sat lost in abrown study.

  "Eat, Evariste," she repeated at regular intervals, "eat,"--and on herlips the word had all the solemnity of a religious commandment.

  She began again with her lamentations on the dearness of provisions, andagain Gamelin demanded taxation as the only remedy for these evils.

  But she shrilled:

  "There is no money left in the country. The _emigres_ have carried itall off with them. There is no confidence left either. Everything isdesperate."

  "Hush, mother, hush!" protested Gamelin. "What matter our privations,our hardships of a moment? The Revolution will win for all time thehappiness of the human race."

  The good dame sopped her bread in her wine; her mood grew more cheerfuland she smiled as her thoughts returned to her young days, when she usedto dance on the green in honour of the King's birthday. She wellremembered too the day when Joseph Gamelin, cutler by trade, had askedher hand in marriage. And she told over, detail by detail, how thingshad gone,--how her mother h
ad bidden her: "Go dress. We are going to thePlace de Greve, to Monsieur Bienassis' shop, to see Damiens drawn andquartered," and what difficulty they had to force their way through thepress of eager spectators. Presently, in Monsieur Bienassis' shop, shehad seen Joseph Gamelin, wearing his fine rose-pink coat and had knownin an instant what he would be at. All the time she sat at the window tosee the regicide torn with red-hot pincers, drenched with molten lead,dragged at the tail of four horses and thrown into the flames, JosephGamelin had stood behind her chair and had never once left offcomplimenting her on her complexion, her hair and her figure.

  She drained the last drop in her cup and continued her reminiscences ofother days:

  "I brought you into the world, Evariste, sooner than I had expected, byreason of a fright I had when I was big. It was on the Pont-Neuf, whereI came near being knocked down by a crowd of sightseers hurrying toMonsieur de Lally's execution. You were so little at your birth thesurgeon thought you would not live. But I felt sure God would begracious to me and preserve your life. I reared you to the best of mypowers, grudging neither pains nor expense. It is fair to say, myEvariste, that you showed me you were grateful and that, from childhoodup, you tried your best to recompense me for what I had done. You werenaturally affectionate and tender-hearted. Your sister was not bad atheart; but she was selfish and of unbridled temper. Your compassion wasgreater than ever was hers for the unfortunate. When the littleragamuffins of the neighbourhood robbed birds' nests in the trees, youalways fought hard to rescue the nestlings from their hands and restorethem to the mother, and many a time you did not give in till after youhad been kicked and cuffed cruelly. At seven years of age, instead ofwrangling with bad boys, you would pace soberly along the street sayingover your catechism; and all the poor people you came across youinsisted on bringing home with you to relieve their needs, till I wasforced to whip you to break you of the habit. You could not see a livingcreature suffer without tears. When you had done growing, you turned outa very handsome lad. To my great surprise, you appeared not to knowit,--how different from most pretty boys, who are full of conceit andvain of their good looks!"

  His old mother spoke the truth. Evariste at twenty had had a grave andcharming cast of countenance, a beauty at once austere and feminine, thecountenance of a Minerva. Now his sombre eyes and pale cheeks revealed amelancholy and passionate soul. But his gaze, when it fell on hismother, recovered for a brief moment its childish softness.

  She went on:

  "You might have profited by your advantages to run after the girls, butyou preferred to stay with me in the shop, and I had sometimes to tellyou not to hang on always to my apron-strings, but to go and amuseyourself with your young companions. To my dying day I shall alwaystestify that you have been a good son, Evariste. After your father'sdeath, you bravely took me and provided for me; though your work barelypays you, you have never let me want for anything, and if we are at thismoment destitute and miserable, I cannot blame you for it. The faultlies with the Revolution."

  He raised his hand to protest; but she only shrugged and continued:

  "I am no aristocrat. I have seen the great in the full tide of theirpower, and I can bear witness that they abused their privileges. I haveseen your father cudgelled by the Duc de Canaleilles' lackeys because hedid not make way quick enough for their master. I could never abide _theAustrian_--she was too haughty and too extravagant. As for the King, Ithought him good-hearted, and it needed his trial and condemnation toalter my opinion. In fact, I do not regret the old regime,--though Ihave had some agreeable times under it. But never tell me the Revolutionis going to establish equality, because men will never be equal; it isan impossibility, and, let them turn the country upside down to theirheart's content, there will still be great and small, fat and lean init."

  As she talked, she was busy putting away the plates and dishes. Thepainter had left off listening. He was thinking out a design,--for asansculotte, in red cap and _carmagnole_, who was to supersede thediscredited knave of spades in his pack of cards.

  There was a sound of scratching on the door, and a girl appeared,--acountry wench, as broad as she was long, red-haired and bandy-legged, awen hiding the left eye, the right so pale a blue it looked white, withmonstrous thick lips and teeth protruding beyond them.

  She asked Gamelin if he was Gamelin the painter and if he could do her aportrait of her betrothed, Ferrand (Jules), a volunteer serving with theArmy of the Ardennes.

  Gamelin replied that he would be glad to execute the portrait on thegallant warrior's return.

  But the girl insisted gently but firmly that it must be done at once.

  The painter protested, smiling in spite of himself as he pointed outthat he could do nothing without the original.

  The poor creature was dumfounded; she had not foreseen the difficulty.Her head drooping over the left shoulder, her hands clasped in front ofher, she stood still and silent as if overwhelmed by her disappointment.Touched and diverted by so much simplicity, and by way of distractingthe poor, lovesick creature's grief, the painter handed her one of thesoldiers he had drawn in water-colours and asked her if he was likethat, her sweetheart in the Ardennes.

  She bent her doleful look on the sketch, and little by little her eyebrightened, sparkled, flashed, and her moon face beamed out in a radiantsmile.

  "It is his very likeness," she cried at last. "It is the very spit ofJules Ferrand, it is Jules Ferrand to the life."

  Before it occurred to the artist to take the sheet of paper out of herhands, she folded it carefully with her coarse red fingers into a tinysquare, slipped it over her heart between her stays and her shift,handed the painter an _assignat_ for five livres, and wishing thecompany a very good day, hobbled light-heartedly to the door and so outof the room.