# The Gods Are Athirst

*Les Dieux ont soif*

**Anatole France**

French–English bilingual edition · Complete novel

Diotimos Editions · 2026

New English translation and editorial matter generated and revised with AI for Diotimos Editions.

Novel published in volume in 1912; complete French reading text from Project Gutenberg 36477, whose underlying impression is undated and bears a later Brodard & Taupin colophon. Chapter I checked against a separate 1912 printing.

The French and English are paired by source paragraph. Notes follow each chapter and link to the source register.

## Contents

- [Introduction](#introduction)
- [Key Words of the Novel](#key-words)
- [Principal Persons](#persons)
- [Historical Orientation](#chronology)
- [Chapter I](#chapter-01)
- [Chapter II](#chapter-02)
- [Chapter III](#chapter-03)
- [Chapter IV](#chapter-04)
- [Chapter V](#chapter-05)
- [Chapter VI](#chapter-06)
- [Chapter VII](#chapter-07)
- [Chapter VIII](#chapter-08)
- [Chapter IX](#chapter-09)
- [Chapter X](#chapter-10)
- [Chapter XI](#chapter-11)
- [Chapter XII](#chapter-12)
- [Chapter XIII](#chapter-13)
- [Chapter XIV](#chapter-14)
- [Chapter XV](#chapter-15)
- [Chapter XVI](#chapter-16)
- [Chapter XVII](#chapter-17)
- [Chapter XVIII](#chapter-18)
- [Chapter XIX](#chapter-19)
- [Chapter XX](#chapter-20)
- [Chapter XXI](#chapter-21)
- [Chapter XXII](#chapter-22)
- [Chapter XXIII](#chapter-23)
- [Chapter XXIV](#chapter-24)
- [Chapter XXV](#chapter-25)
- [Chapter XXVI](#chapter-26)
- [Chapter XXVII](#chapter-27)
- [Chapter XXVIII](#chapter-28)
- [Chapter XXIX](#chapter-29)
- [Outline of the Novel](#outline)
- [Editorial Note](#editorial-note)
- [Source Colophon](#source-colophon)
- [Glossary of Key Terms](#glossary)
- [Sources and Further Reading](#sources)
- [Note on this Edition](#edition-note)

<a id="introduction"></a>

## Introduction

### The novel

A young painter enters a church whose saints have been replaced by republican heroes. He signs a petition against political opponents, speaks with a carpenter who fears that the patriots would lose if everyone attended the assembly, and visits a sick man arranging recruitment, weapons and relief. Before the first chapter ends, Anatole France has brought together the two claims that will trouble the whole novel: the Revolution can organise coercion in the name of virtue, and obscure people can serve it with courage and generosity.

Les Dieux ont soif follows Évariste Gamelin through revolutionary Paris in 1793–94. His artistic ambitions, his attachment to his mother, his love for Élodie Blaise and his public responsibilities occupy the same small urban world. Shops, staircases, attics, streets, gardens and courtrooms connect the characters long before political categories divide them. An accusation can travel through those ordinary connections and return as a verdict.

The following account offers a reading of the novel. The outline at the back gives the events of every chapter and reveals the ending. Readers who prefer to discover the plot as they read can leave it until later. The historical notes distinguish people and institutions documented outside the novel from the actions and words France gives his fictional characters.

### A painter and a juror

Gamelin is a pupil of David. His artistic allegiance matters because the ancient figures offered as examples of public virtue are also models for feeling and action. He admires the severe gesture, the act that places the common good above personal attachment. The challenge is to recognise how readily an image of moral greatness can become a way of arranging other people’s lives. The paintings are part of the novel’s machinery of judgement.

France first shows Gamelin’s limitations in his work. His feeling for elevated subjects does not reliably give him the power to paint them. Poverty makes him dependent on the small commissions and marketable objects he disdains. His designs belong in a trade of prints and images whose customers have desires of their own. Élodie and her father understand that trade more readily than he does. Artistic aspiration consequently meets a practical world of money, taste and appetite from the beginning.

His later place on the Revolutionary Tribunal gives his desire for significance a public instrument. A juror must decide what to believe about another person. The novel attends to the mixture of evidence, expectation, loyalty, fear and personal feeling that enters such decisions. Gamelin’s confidence can grow as his knowledge becomes less secure. He increasingly takes political explanation to supply what an actual inquiry would have had to discover.

This development is visible in the language. Words such as virtue, patriot, traitor and public safety offer an apparent clarity that the circumstances of particular lives resist. France lets those words circulate between official speech, private conversation and inward thought. Their repetition is part of the action: a label makes one response seem necessary and another disloyal. The translation preserves their recurrence instead of replacing them with a succession of English synonyms.

### Other ways to live

Brotteaux’s small manufacture of puppets places him at another point in the same economy of images. Having lost the security of his earlier social position, he makes fragile figures for a living. The little bodies can be moved by someone else’s hand. The comparison with political life is available to the reader, but Brotteaux’s work also remains a real occupation performed by a man who needs food and shelter. France repeatedly allows a suggestive object to keep its ordinary use.

The Lucretius Brotteaux carries supplies a vocabulary for his scepticism and for an imagination of human beings within nature. His conversation offers pleasure, friendship and the limits of knowledge as alternatives to the ambition to order everyone’s life. His scepticism does not give him unlimited foresight or immunity from danger. It changes what he thinks he may demand of another person.

The religious Longuemare and the unbelieving Brotteaux disagree about fundamental matters, yet their proximity brings convictions into contact with acts of kindness and need. Their arguments should be heard as arguments by particular people in particular circumstances. The narrator supplies reasons to admire conduct across the boundary between belief and unbelief. The novel’s account of fanaticism therefore requires attention to how people live with convictions, as well as to the convictions themselves.

Trubert offers another difficulty for any reading that would turn the book into a simple inventory of good sceptics and bad believers. His body is failing, but he keeps working for people who must be armed and for families who must be supported. The first chapter closes with admiration for his participation in a common effort. The phrase impossible and certain gives that effort its paradoxical horizon. A reader has to carry the admiration forward alongside the carpenter’s admission about the minority of patriots.

### Private feeling and public language

Élodie’s print shop belongs to the world through which Gamelin moves as an artist and a lover. Her gestures, wishes and recollections have a force that exceeds the political meanings he may assign to them. The movement between her perspective and his is essential. A scene can change when the narration makes available a thought one character has concealed, misunderstood or never considered.

Sexual history becomes especially dangerous when a lover treats an imagined rival as a fact about another person. In this novel, the wish to know, the wish to possess and the wish to punish can reinforce one another. Political suspicion lends a public vocabulary to private jealousy. The resulting judgement can look impersonal to the person making it precisely because an institution has given it a recognised form.

France also gives the body a persistent place in public history. Hunger, illness, sexual desire, fatigue and fear interrupt programmes of regeneration. The descriptions of bread, meals, clothes and small purchases keep the reader close to the needs on which declarations of virtue act. They also prevent the crowd from becoming a single, permanent subject. People gather for food, entertainment, a procession, a political assembly or an execution; the purpose and composition of a gathering change.

Gamelin’s mother remembers the old order through experiences that do not arrange themselves into her son’s moral scheme. Such recollection has its own inconsistencies, but it gives the reader a measure of what ideological explanation omits. France’s narration can preserve affection and expose error in the same person. The English seeks the same freedom of movement.

### History inside fiction

The novel’s public figures, assemblies, political trials, festivals and laws have a historical existence beyond the story. The same is true of much of its physical Paris. The notes give enough information to identify these references and to distinguish the local committees of a section from the national committees of the Convention. They do not treat every invented conversation as a record of what a historical person said.

Chronology needs particular care. The first chapter places a petition against twenty-two deputies beside a panorama of military and municipal crises that developed at different moments in spring 1793. It also invokes the earlier distinction between active and passive citizens after that distinction had been abolished for elections to the Convention. Translating these passages into a perfectly consistent chronology would change France’s text. The edition retains them and explains the difficulty where it occurs.

A character’s allegation is another kind of historical problem. Claims about conspirators, bankers, foreign agents or the hidden direction of events belong first to the speaker or thinker to whom France assigns them. A note may identify the real person named without endorsing the accusation. This distinction becomes especially important when Gamelin’s inward account of events grows more comprehensive and more assured.

The broad historical sequence remains legible: the Republic confronts war and civil conflict; rival revolutionary groups struggle over authority; exceptional judicial and political measures grow; the overthrow of Robespierre changes the distribution of power. The novel places that sequence inside the much smaller scale of neighbourhood, livelihood and attachment. Its effects are experienced through particular encounters and particular losses.

### The narrator’s manner

France’s irony often depends on placing two sentences beside one another. Trubert says that the situation is unchanged; the narration supplies an appalling catalogue. The carpenter wants citizens compelled to attend the assembly; he then remembers what their attendance would mean. Neither episode needs a new sentence telling the reader to recognise hypocrisy or self-deception. An English translation that adds the judgement can weaken the arrangement that already makes it visible.

The narration also changes distance. It can report a public claim, enter a character’s thought, linger over a small object, or withdraw into a general reflection. Those reflections should not automatically be reassigned to the nearest character. Their position in the narrative matters. So does the possibility that a later scene will put pressure on what has sounded like a settled observation.

Repetition and contrast are often carried by concrete things: an altar, a print, a puppet, a flower, a piece of clothing, an inscription, a melody. The notes explain references that would otherwise be obscure, but they leave room for these objects to accumulate significance as the reader encounters them. The surviving verbal link between Trubert’s reassurance and the refrain he hums is one small example. The same English phrase is used in both places.

### Reading the parallel text

The French occupies the left page and the English the facing right page in the print files. Each spread presents corresponding portions of a chapter. Paragraph locators have been added to both languages so that the reader can follow a passage when differences of sentence structure carry a phrase across a page boundary. These are editorial locators, not numbering supplied by France. Letters and songs are included in their proper places.

The footnotes are placed beneath the English and begin again at one on each printed page. They identify historical references, explain consequential lexical choices and distinguish textual difficulties from interpretation. The glossary and editorial note collect matters that recur. The bilingual ebook and Markdown file pair passages in reading order; the English-only ebook retains the English text and its notes without the parallel French.

### Anatole France and publication

Anatole France was the pen name of Jacques-Anatole Thibault, born in Paris in 1844, who died in 1924. He worked in publishing and in the Senate library, was elected to the Académie française in 1896, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. These dates situate a writer whose learning and public standing had been acquired long after the revolutionary world reconstructed here.

Les Dieux ont soif appeared in serial form in 1911–12 and in volume from Calmann-Lévy in 1912. The present title retains the established English form The Gods Are Athirst. The French title and the new English text remain visible together because a translation is also a sequence of choices that the reader may wish to inspect. The source record and the precise limits of the textual checks are set out in the editorial note.

<a id="key-words"></a>

## Key Words of the Novel

### Virtue  vertu

The word can name integrity, self-command, civic dedication or the conformity a political speaker demands. Its value depends on the action it authorises. The translation keeps virtue rather than introducing modern terms that would resolve the ambiguity in advance.

### Patriot  patriote

A partisan claim to devotion to the Revolution and the nation. A character who calls someone a patriot is making a judgement. The editor does not turn that judgement into a neutral description of the person’s conduct.

### Citizen  citoyen and citoyenne

A civic form of address that can carry equality, familiarity, official authority or pressure. Citizen is used for both French genders. Former social titles are retained when France uses them, so that changes of address remain audible.

### Former  ci-devant

The term marks an earlier status or name, often one displaced by the Revolution. Its force can be administrative, mocking or accusatory. Former and formerly are used according to the sentence, with a note where the political implication needs explanation.

### Section  section

One of the neighbourhood units of Parisian political life. Assemblies and committees give the section a presence in everyday administration, recruitment and surveillance. Section is retained as a specific institution rather than replaced by ward or constituency.

### Convention  Convention

The National Convention is the national representative assembly. It must be distinguished from the Paris Commune and from the meetings of a local section. The notes identify the institutional level whenever the distinction controls the sense.

### Commune  Commune

In this Parisian setting the name usually denotes the municipal government. It is not a synonym for the Convention or for every local neighbourhood body. Capitalisation in English helps keep the named authority distinct.

### Committee  comité

The novel names several committees with different responsibilities. The local Surveillance, Relief and Military Committees must be distinguished from the national Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security.

### Public safety  salut public

The established institutional translation is preserved. Salut includes preservation or deliverance as well as safety. The phrase is politically charged in the novel and should not be reduced to a modern administrative department’s remit.

### Suspect  suspect

Suspicion can be a personal feeling, a political classification or part of a legal process. The notes identify legislation and procedural changes when the text calls for them. The word alone is not a verdict of guilt.

### Terror  terreur

France moves between fear experienced by an individual, coercive policy and the historical period commonly called the Terror. Capitalisation follows context. It does not make a character’s defence of terror into an editorial endorsement.

### Federalist  fédéraliste

A partisan label in the conflicts of 1793. It should not be read as the name of a modern constitutional party. When Gamelin applies it to opponents, the translation retains the accusation and the notes explain the occasion.

### Sans-culottes  sans-culottes

Literally those without knee-breeches, the name links dress to popular revolutionary militancy. It does not mean people without trousers, and it does not describe a socially uniform group. The French term is retained.

### Assignat  assignat

A revolutionary paper monetary instrument. The notes distinguish it from metal money and explain relevant financial practices. Prices are not converted into a supposedly exact present-day equivalent, which would conceal changing values and purchasing conditions.

### Livre and sou  livre and sou

Monetary terms are retained where the French uses them. Their relation and practical meaning are explained in the relevant notes. A sum matters within a particular transaction; a single modern currency conversion would give a false precision.

### Émigré  émigré

The French term is retained for this politically charged category. Leaving the country, returning and possessing particular documents could become matters of suspicion and danger. Its legal and accusatory force is explained where the context requires it.

### Nature  nature

Brotteaux’s reading and the novel’s descriptions give the word several ranges: bodily constitution, the physical world, an explanation of human conduct and a possible limit to political programmes. A single philosophical doctrine should not be assigned to every occurrence.

### Gods  dieux

The title invites attention to the objects of reverence and sacrifice the characters create or inherit. The introduction treats the invitation as an interpretation, not as a statement that every religious believer in the novel has the same moral character.

### Pleasure  plaisir

Pleasure has bodily, social and aesthetic forms. The little wafers called plaisirs give the word a material and commercial presence. Repeated occurrences are kept where possible so that the reader can hear connections without explanatory additions to the narration.

### All will be well  ça ira

In Chapter I the assurance and the sung refrain receive the same English phrase. Elsewhere Ça ira may remain as the song’s French title. The musical reference is explained in the notes; no verses have been added beyond those France quotes.

### Judgement  jugement

The word can concern intelligence, artistic discrimination, an opinion or a judicial decision. The novel brings these capacities into contact. English judgement and judicial terms are selected by context, without allowing one institutional meaning to erase the others.

### Mercy  merci and related terms

At the close of the first chapter, expecting no merci means expecting no mercy, not no thanks. Other passages require their own judgement. Similar-looking words across French and English are examined in context rather than translated mechanically.

<a id="persons"></a>

## Principal Persons

**Évariste Gamelin.** A young painter, son of a widowed mother, associated with the Pont-Neuf section and later a juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal. His artistic and political commitments shape the story’s central line.

**Élodie Blaise.** Daughter of the print dealer Jean Blaise. Her work, desires and memories have a perspective of their own; they are not exhausted by what Gamelin thinks he knows about her.

**Jean Blaise.** A dealer and publisher of prints. His business connects artistic fashion, customers, money and the private lives of the principal characters.

**Widow Gamelin.** Évariste’s mother. Her recollections of the old order and concern for ordinary livelihood repeatedly disturb her son’s explanations.

**Julie Gamelin.** Évariste’s sister. Her attachments and movements expose the difficulty of keeping family loyalties within political classifications.

**Brotteaux, formerly Monsieur des Ilettes.** A man of the old order who earns his living making puppets. He reads Lucretius and gives sceptical conversation a persistent presence in the novel.

**Father Longuemare.** A religious figure whose convictions and conduct are brought into contact with Brotteaux’s unbelief and with the demands of revolutionary society.

**Fortuné Trubert.** Secretary of the section’s Military Committee. His illness and his dedication to practical public work are established in the opening chapter.

**Madame de Rochemaure.** A woman whose social connections pass through several political and financial worlds. The notes distinguish the story’s representation of her from the historical persons she names.

**Desmahis.** An artist and engraver linked to Blaise’s business and to the novel’s exploration of taste, desire and changing public fashion.

**Jacques Maubel.** A man whose name becomes entangled in Gamelin’s private imagination and judicial action. Further details are left to the text and the outline.

**Historical figures.** David, Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Just and others belong to the historical world reconstructed in the novel. Identification of a real name does not authenticate an invented conversation or a character’s accusation.

<a id="chronology"></a>

## Historical Orientation

This short sequence supplies public landmarks. It does not assign a precise day to every scene, and it does not remove the chronological compressions identified in the notes.

**1789.** The Revolution begins to transform the institutions of the monarchy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is adopted on 26 August.

**21 May 1790.** The division of Paris into forty-eight sections is authorised, replacing the earlier sixty districts.

**August and September 1792.** The monarchy falls; elections for the Convention follow, and the Republic is proclaimed. The active/passive distinction is abolished for the Convention elections.

**21 January 1793.** Louis XVI is executed. The novel’s opening political world is that of the Republic after the king’s death.

**Spring 1793.** War, the Vendée rising and conflict between revolutionary groups intensify. The Committee of Public Safety is established in April. Marat’s prosecution and acquittal become public demonstrations of political allegiance.

**31 May to 2 June 1793.** The confrontation with the Girondins culminates in the arrest of leading deputies. Lists and demands concerning the twenty-two have their own earlier history, explained in the notes.

**Autumn 1793.** Suspicion, arrest, political trials and the recasting of civic and religious life give the novel much of its institutional setting. The revolutionary calendar renames the measures of time.

**Spring and early summer 1794.** The elimination of rival revolutionary groups, the Festival of the Supreme Being and the Law of 22 Prairial belong to the later movement of the story.

**9 and 10 Thermidor Year II, 27 and 28 July 1794.** Robespierre’s overthrow and execution change the political situation. The novel continues through the effects of that reversal.

**1911–12.** France publishes the novel in serial form and then in a Calmann-Lévy volume. The author and his readers look back on the revolutionary events from more than a century later.

<a id="chapter-01"></a>

## I

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c01p001"></a>Évariste Gamelin, peintre, élève de David, membre de la section du Pont-Neuf, précédemment section Henri IV, s’était rendu de bon matin à l’ancienne église des Barnabites, qui depuis trois ans, depuis le 21 mai 1790, servait de siège à l’assemblée générale de la section. Cette église s’élevait sur une place étroite et sombre, près de la grille du Palais. Sur la façade, composée de deux ordres classiques, ornée de consoles renversées et de pots à feu, attristée par le temps, offensée par les hommes, les emblèmes religieux avaient été martelés et l’on avait inscrit en lettres noires au-dessus de la porte la devise républicaine: "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ou la Mort." Évariste Gamelin pénétra dans la nef: les voûtes, qui avaient entendu les clercs de la congrégation de Saint-Paul chanter en rochet les offices divins, voyaient maintenant les patriotes en bonnet rouge assemblés pour élire les magistrats municipaux et délibérer sur les affaires de la section. Les saints avaient été tirés de leurs niches et remplacés par les bustes de Brutus, de Jean-Jacques et de Le Peltier. La table des Droits de l’Homme se dressait sur l’autel dépouillé. | Évariste Gamelin, a painter, pupil of David[^c01n01] and member of the Pont-Neuf section, formerly the Henri IV section[^c01n02], had gone early that morning to the former church of the Barnabites[^c01n03]. For three years, since 21 May 1790, it had served as the meeting place of the section’s general assembly. The church stood in a narrow, gloomy square near the gates of the Palais de Justice. The façade, composed of two classical orders and decorated with inverted scroll brackets and urns crowned with carved flames[^c01n04], was saddened by time and defaced by men. Its religious emblems had been hammered away. Above the door, the republican motto had been painted in black letters: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death.”[^c01n06] Évariste Gamelin entered the nave. The vaults that had heard the clerics of the congregation of Saint-Paul chanting the divine offices in their rochets[^c01n05] now looked down on patriots in red caps, gathered to elect municipal magistrates and deliberate on the section’s affairs. The saints had been pulled from their niches and replaced with busts of Brutus[^c01n07], Jean-Jacques[^c01n08] and Le Peltier[^c01n09]. The tablet of the Rights of Man[^c01n10] stood on the stripped altar. |
| <a id="c01p002"></a>C’est dans cette nef que, deux fois la semaine, de cinq heures du soir à onze heures, se tenaient les assemblées publiques. La chaire, ornée du drapeau aux couleurs de la nation, servait de tribune aux harangues. Vis-à-vis, du côté de l’Épître, une estrade de charpentes grossières s’élevait, destinée à recevoir les femmes et les enfants, qui venaient en assez grand nombre à ces réunions. Ce matin-là, devant un bureau, au pied de la chaire, se tenait, en bonnet rouge et carmagnole, le menuisier de la place de Thionville, le citoyen Dupont aîné, l’un des douze du Comité de surveillance. Il y avait sur le bureau une bouteille et des verres, une écritoire et un cahier de papier contenant le texte de la pétition qui invitait la Convention à rejeter de son sein les vingt-deux membres indignes. | Public meetings were held in this nave twice a week, from five in the evening until eleven. The pulpit, hung with the national flag, served as a platform for harangues. Opposite, on the Epistle side[^c01n11], stood a roughly built wooden platform for the women and children, who attended these meetings in large numbers. That morning, the carpenter from the Place de Thionville, Citizen Dupont the elder, one of the twelve members of the Surveillance Committee[^c01n13], was at a desk at the foot of the pulpit, wearing a red cap and a carmagnole[^c01n12]. On the desk were a bottle and glasses, an inkstand, and a notebook containing the text of the petition calling on the Convention to expel its twenty-two unworthy members[^c01n14]. |
| <a id="c01p003"></a>Évariste Gamelin prit la plume et signa. | Évariste Gamelin took up the pen and signed. |
| <a id="c01p004"></a>"Je savais bien, dit le magistrat artisan, que tu viendrais donner ton nom, citoyen Gamelin. Tu es un pur. Mais la section n’est pas chaude; elle manque de vertu. J’ai proposé au Comité de surveillance de ne point délivrer de certificat de civisme à quiconque ne signerait pas la pétition. | “I knew you’d come and put your name down, Citizen Gamelin,” said the municipal official. “You’re a true believer[^c01n16]. But the section is lukewarm. It lacks virtue. I’ve proposed that the Surveillance Committee refuse a certificate of civic loyalty[^c01n15] to anyone who won’t sign the petition.” |
| <a id="c01p005"></a>— Je suis prêt à signer de mon sang, dit Gamelin, la proscription des traîtres fédéralistes. Ils ont voulu la mort de Marat: qu’ils périssent. | “I’m ready to sign the proscription of these federalist traitors with my own blood,” said Gamelin. “They wanted Marat dead. Let them die.” |
| <a id="c01p006"></a>— Ce qui nous perd, répliqua Dupont aîné, c’est l’indifférentisme. Dans une section, qui contient neuf cents citoyens ayant droit de vote, il n’y en a pas cinquante qui viennent à l’assemblée. Hier nous étions vingt-huit. | “What’s ruining us,” replied Dupont the elder, “is indifference. There are nine hundred citizens entitled to vote in this section, and fewer than fifty come to the assembly. Yesterday there were twenty-eight of us.” |
| <a id="c01p007"></a>— Eh bien! dit Gamelin, il faut obliger, sous peine d’amende, les citoyens à venir. | “Well, then,” said Gamelin, “we must make the citizens attend, under penalty of a fine.” |
| <a id="c01p008"></a>— Hé! Hé! fit le menuisier en fronçant le sourcil, s’ils venaient tous, les patriotes seraient en minorité.... Citoyen Gamelin, veux-tu boire un verre de vin à la santé des bons sans-culottes?..." | “But then,” said the carpenter, frowning, “if they all came, the patriots would be in the minority… Citizen Gamelin, will you have a glass of wine to the health of the good sans-culottes?” |
| <a id="c01p009"></a>Sur le mur de l’église, du côté de l’Évangile, on lisait ces mots accompagnés d’une main noire dont l’index montrait le passage conduisant au cloître: *Comité civil*, *Comité de surveillance*, *Comité de bienfaisance*. Quelques pas plus avant, on atteignait la porte de la ci-devant sacristie, que surmontait cette inscription: *Comité militaire*. Gamelin la poussa et trouva le secrétaire du Comité qui écrivait sur une grande table encombrée de livres, de papiers, de lingots d’acier, de cartouches et d’échantillons de terres salpêtrées. | On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side, were these words, beside a black hand whose forefinger pointed towards the passage leading to the cloister: Civil Committee, Surveillance Committee, Relief Committee[^c01n17]. A few steps further on was the door of the former sacristy, with this inscription above it: Military Committee. Gamelin pushed it open and found the committee’s secretary writing at a large table cluttered with books, papers, steel ingots, cartridges and samples of earth containing saltpetre. |
| <a id="c01p010"></a>"Salut, citoyen Trubert. Comment vas-tu? | “Greetings, Citizen Trubert. How are you?” |
| <a id="c01p011"></a>— Moi?... je me porte à merveille." | “Me?… I’m perfectly well.” |
| <a id="c01p012"></a>Le secrétaire du Comité militaire, Fortuné Trubert, faisait invariablement cette réponse à ceux qui s’inquiétaient de sa santé, moins pour les instruire de son état que pour couper court à toute conversation sur ce sujet. Il avait, à vingt-huit ans, la peau aride, les cheveux rares, les pommettes rouges, le dos voûté. Opticien sur le quai des Orfèvres, il était propriétaire d’une très ancienne maison qu’il avait cédée en 91 à un vieux commis pour se dévouer à ses fonctions municipales. Une mère charmante, morte à vingt ans et dont quelques vieillards, dans le quartier, gardaient le touchant souvenir, lui avait donné ses beaux yeux doux et passionnés, sa pâleur, sa timidité. De son père, ingénieur opticien, fournisseur du roi, emporté par le même mal avant sa trentième année, il tenait un esprit juste et appliqué. Sans s’arrêter d’écrire: | Fortuné Trubert, secretary of the Military Committee, invariably gave this answer to anyone who asked after his health, less to tell them how he was than to put an end to the subject. At twenty-eight, his skin was parched, his hair sparse, his cheekbones flushed and his back stooped. An optician on the Quai des Orfèvres, he had handed over his long-established business to an elderly clerk in ’91 so that he could devote himself to his municipal duties. From his charming mother, who had died at twenty and was still tenderly remembered by a few old men in the neighbourhood, he had inherited his beautiful eyes, gentle and ardent, his pallor and his shyness. From his father, an optical engineer and supplier to the king, carried off by the same illness before he was thirty, he had inherited a sound, painstaking mind. Without stopping his writing, he asked: |
| <a id="c01p013"></a>"Et toi, citoyen, comment vas-tu? | “And you, Citizen, how are you?” |
| <a id="c01p014"></a>— Bien. Quoi de nouveau? | “Well. What’s new?” |
| <a id="c01p015"></a>— Rien, rien. Tu vois: tout est bien tranquille ici. | “Nothing, nothing. You see, everything’s perfectly quiet here.” |
| <a id="c01p016"></a>— Et la situation? | “And the situation?” |
| <a id="c01p017"></a>— La situation est toujours la même." | “The situation is unchanged.” |
| <a id="c01p018"></a>La situation était effroyable. La plus belle armée de la République investie dans Mayence; Valenciennes assiégée; Fontenay pris par les Vendéens; Lyon révolté; les Cévennes insurgées, la frontière ouverte aux Espagnols; les deux tiers des départements envahis ou soulevés; Paris sous les canons autrichiens, sans argent, sans pain. | The situation was appalling.[^c01n18] The Republic’s finest army besieged in Mainz; Valenciennes under siege; Fontenay taken by the Vendéans; Lyon in revolt; the Cévennes in rebellion, the frontier open to the Spaniards; two-thirds of the departments invaded or in revolt; Paris under Austrian guns, without money, without bread. |
| <a id="c01p019"></a>Fortuné Trubert écrivait tranquillement. Les sections étant chargées par arrêté de la Commune d’opérer la levée de douze mille hommes pour la Vendée, il rédigeait des instructions relatives à l’enrôlement et l’armement du contingent que le "Pont-Neuf", ci-devant "Henri IV", devait fournir. Tous les fusils de munition devaient être délivrés aux réquisitionnaires. La garde nationale de la section serait armée de fusils de chasse et de piques. | Fortuné Trubert wrote calmly on. By decree of the Commune, the sections had been ordered to raise twelve thousand men for the Vendée[^c01n19], and he was drafting instructions for enlisting and arming the contingent that the Pont-Neuf, formerly Henri IV, was to supply. All the service muskets[^c01n20] were to be issued to the men called up. The section’s National Guard would be armed with hunting guns and pikes. |
| <a id="c01p020"></a>"Je t’apporte, dit Gamelin, l’état des cloches qui doivent être envoyées au Luxembourg pour être converties en canons." | “I’ve brought you the list of bells that are to be sent to the Luxembourg to be melted down into cannon[^c01n21],” said Gamelin. |
| <a id="c01p021"></a>Évariste Gamelin, bien qu’il ne possédât pas un sou, était inscrit parmi les membres actifs de la section: la loi n’accordait cette prérogative qu’aux citoyens assez riches pour payer une contribution de la valeur de trois journées de travail; et elle exigeait dix journées pour qu’un électeur fût éligible. Mais la section du Pont-Neuf, éprise d’égalité et jalouse de son autonomie, tenait pour électeur et pour éligible tout citoyen qui avait payé de ses deniers son uniforme de garde national. C’était le cas de Gamelin, qui était citoyen actif de sa section et membre du Comité militaire. | Although he did not possess a sou, Évariste Gamelin was enrolled among the section’s active members. The law allowed this privilege only to citizens rich enough to pay a tax equal to three days’ wages[^c01n22], and required ten days’ wages before a voter could stand for election. But the Pont-Neuf section, in love with equality and jealous of its autonomy, granted both the vote and eligibility for office to any citizen who had bought his National Guard uniform with his own money. Gamelin had done so. He was an active citizen of his section and a member of the Military Committee. |
| <a id="c01p022"></a>Fortuné Trubert posa sa plume: | Fortuné Trubert laid down his pen. |
| <a id="c01p023"></a>"Citoyen Évariste, va donc à la Convention demander qu’on nous envoie des instructions pour fouiller le sol des caves, lessiver la terre et les moellons et recueillir le salpêtre. Ce n’est pas tout que d’avoir des canons, il faut aussi de la poudre." | “Citizen Évariste, go to the Convention and ask them to send us instructions on digging up cellar floors, leaching the earth and rubble[^c01n23], and collecting the saltpetre. It’s not enough to have cannon. We need powder too.” |
| <a id="c01p024"></a>Un petit bossu, la plume à l’oreille et des papiers à la main, entra dans la ci-devant sacristie. C’était le citoyen Beauvisage, du Comité de surveillance. | A small hunchback, with a pen behind his ear and papers in his hand, came into the former sacristy. It was Citizen Beauvisage of the Surveillance Committee. |
| <a id="c01p025"></a>"Citoyens, dit-il, nous recevons de mauvaises nouvelles: Custine a évacué Landau. | “Citizens,” he said, “we’ve had bad news. Custine has evacuated Landau.[^c01n24]” |
| <a id="c01p026"></a>— Custine est un traître! s’écria Gamelin. | “Custine is a traitor!” cried Gamelin. |
| <a id="c01p027"></a>— Il sera guillotiné", dit Beauvisage. | “He’ll be guillotined,” said Beauvisage. |
| <a id="c01p028"></a>Trubert, de sa voix un peu haletante, s’exprima avec son calme ordinaire: | Trubert spoke in his slightly breathless voice, with his usual calm. |
| <a id="c01p029"></a>"La Convention n’a pas créé un Comité de salut public pour des prunes. La conduite de Custine y sera examinée. Incapable ou traître, il sera remplacé par un général résolu à vaincre, et *ça ira*!" | “The Convention didn’t set up a Committee of Public Safety for nothing. It will look into Custine’s conduct. Whether he’s incompetent or a traitor, he’ll be replaced by a general determined to win, and all will be well!” |
| <a id="c01p030"></a>Il feuilleta des papiers et y promena le regard de ses yeux fatigués: | He leafed through some papers, running his tired eyes over them. |
| <a id="c01p031"></a>"Pour que nos soldats fassent leur devoir sans trouble ni défaillance, il faut qu’ils sachent que le sort de ceux qu’ils ont laissés dans leur foyer est assuré. Si tu es de cet avis, citoyen Gamelin, tu demanderas avec moi, à la prochaine assemblée, que le Comité de bienfaisance se concerte avec le Comité militaire pour secourir les familles indigentes qui ont un parent à l’armée." | “If our soldiers are to do their duty without anxiety or wavering, they must know that those they’ve left at home will be provided for. If you agree, Citizen Gamelin, you’ll join me at the next assembly in asking the Relief Committee to work with the Military Committee to help poor families with a relative in the army.” |
| <a id="c01p032"></a>Il sourit et fredonna: | He smiled and hummed: |
| <a id="c01p033"></a>"Ça ira! ça ira!..." | “All will be well! All will be well![^c01n25]…” |
| <a id="c01p034"></a>Travaillant douze et quatorze heures par jour, devant sa table de bois blanc, à la défense de la patrie en péril, cet humble secrétaire d’un comité de section ne voyait point de disproportion entre l’énormité de la tâche et la petitesse de ses moyens, tant il se sentait uni dans un commun effort à tous les patriotes, tant il faisait corps avec la nation, tant sa vie se confondait avec la vie d’un grand peuple. Il était de ceux qui, enthousiastes et patients, après chaque défaite, préparaient le triomphe impossible et certain. Aussi bien leur fallait-il vaincre. Ces hommes de rien, qui avaient détruit la royauté, renversé le vieux monde, ce Trubert, petit ingénieur opticien, cet Évariste Gamelin, peintre obscur, n’attendaient point de merci de leurs ennemis. Ils n’avaient de choix qu’entre la victoire et la mort. De là leur ardeur et leur sérénité. | Working twelve to fourteen hours a day at his pale wooden table to defend his country in peril, this humble secretary of a section committee saw no disproportion between the enormity of the task and the meagreness of his means, so completely did he feel himself joined in a common effort with all patriots, so completely was he at one with the nation, so completely was his life bound up with the life of a great people. He was one of those who, ardent and patient, worked after every defeat to bring about a triumph impossible and certain[^c01n26]. They had to win, after all. These men of no account, who had destroyed the monarchy and overthrown the old world—this Trubert, an unassuming optical engineer, this Évariste Gamelin, an obscure painter—expected no mercy from their enemies. Their only choice was between victory and death. Hence their ardour and their serenity. |

### Notes

[^c01n01]: Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), the leading painter of French Neoclassicism, made ancient history a source of moral exemplars and trained a generation of artists. Gamelin’s allegiance to David establishes both his artistic formation and the conjunction of art and civic virtue that governs the novel. [S010](#S010)

[^c01n02]: The sections were Paris’s neighbourhood units of electoral and municipal organisation. On 21 May 1790 the Constituent Assembly authorised the division of Paris into forty-eight sections in place of sixty districts. A surviving Convention record of September 1793 identifies Pont-Neuf as the city’s smallest section and records its further renaming as the Section Révolutionnaire. [S011](#S011) [S012](#S012)

[^c01n03]: The Barnabites occupied the former priory of Saint-Éloi on the Île de la Cité from 1631. The church later disappeared during the rebuilding of central Paris, but its façade was reused at Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux in the 1860 s. France is reconstructing an earlier city through a building partly familiar to later Parisians. [S013](#S013) [S014](#S014)

[^c01n04]: An architectural order is a coordinated system of columns or pilasters and their entablature; here the façade has two superposed levels. The pots à feu are decorative urns represented as emitting flames, not braziers. The inverted consoles are scroll-shaped architectural brackets. [S015](#S015) [S016](#S016) [S017](#S017)

[^c01n05]: The Clerics Regular of Saint Paul are the Barnabites, named after the church of Saint Barnabas in Milan. The reference is to a religious congregation, not a Paris parish of Saint-Paul. A rochet is a white ecclesiastical vestment worn over the cassock, resembling a surplice. [S013](#S013) [S018](#S018)

[^c01n06]: Revolutionary inscriptions were more varied and more threatening than the Republic’s present three-word motto. Robespierre proposed Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité for National Guard uniforms and flags in 1790; formulas ending ou la mort were painted on Parisian façades in 1793. France’s wording makes coercion visible within the language of fraternity. [S019](#S019)

[^c01n07]: Brutus evokes the Roman republican ideal of placing public liberty above private feeling. David’s Brutus of 1789 depicts Lucius Junius Brutus after the execution of his own sons for conspiring to restore the monarchy. France does not specify whether the bust is of this founder of the Republic or of Marcus Brutus, Caesar’s assassin. [S020](#S020) [S021](#S021)

[^c01n08]: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), author of Du contrat social, was venerated by revolutionaries as a thinker of popular sovereignty. His familiar first names signal that public cult. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon in 1794, after the events evoked in this opening chapter. [S022](#S022) [S023](#S023)

[^c01n09]: Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau (1760–1793), a Convention deputy who voted for Louis XVI’s execution, was mortally attacked by a royalist on 20 January 1793, the eve of the king’s death. Celebrated as a martyr of the Republic, he could replace a Christian saint in the new civic pantheon. [S024](#S024) [S025](#S025)

[^c01n10]: The Rights of Man evokes the revolutionary declarations of natural and civic rights. The 1789 Declaration has seventeen articles and was often represented as tablets of law. France does not specify which declaration is displayed here. Its position on the stripped altar is a literary image of civic authority occupying sacred space. [S026](#S026)

[^c01n11]: In the older arrangement of the Catholic Mass, the Epistle side is the right-hand side of the altar as seen by someone entering the choir; the Gospel side is opposite. France retains the church’s liturgical coordinates while its pulpit and side spaces are reassigned to revolutionary business. [S027](#S027)

[^c01n12]: The carmagnole was a short jacket associated with revolutionary artisans. Sans-culottes, literally ‘without knee-breeches’, distinguished wearers of trousers from those dressed in the more elaborate breeches of social elites. Together with the red liberty cap, these garments made political allegiance publicly legible. [S028](#S028) [S029](#S029)

[^c01n13]: The decree of 21 March 1793 ordered a committee of twelve citizens in every commune, or in every section of a commune divided into sections. Initially concerned with supervising foreigners, these bodies became instruments of political surveillance. Dupont’s twelve are a local committee, not the national Girondin Commission of Twelve. [S030](#S030) [S031](#S031)

[^c01n14]: A petition presented on 15 April 1793 demanded the recall of twenty-two Girondin deputies. The Girondins had supported the prosecution of the radical journalist and deputy Jean-Paul Marat; acquitted by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 24 April, he was carried in triumph back to the Convention. Gamelin treats political prosecution as attempted murder. [S032](#S032) [S033](#S033)

[^c01n15]: A certificat de civisme attested its holder’s political reliability and adherence to the Revolution. Local surveillance committees issued such documents, and failure to secure one could cost a person his livelihood: an Archives nationales record documents a Paris notary obliged to cease work in February 1793 for this reason. Dupont proposes using certification to compel signatures. [S034](#S034) [S035](#S035)

[^c01n16]: Un pur is a person who professes a religious or ideological doctrine in its full rigour. Dupont’s praise makes personal integrity inseparable from political conformity: a citizen proves his ‘virtue’ by signing a demand to expel opponents. The later acknowledgement that patriots are a minority exposes the pressure behind the language. [S036](#S036)

[^c01n17]: The signs name the section’s local administrative bodies: civil business, political surveillance, poor relief and military recruitment or supply. They should be distinguished from committees of the National Convention. The Commune is Paris’s municipal government; the Convention is the national assembly that abolished the monarchy in September 1792. [S037](#S037) [S034](#S034)

[^c01n18]: This panorama brings together military and civil crises spread across spring 1793. The Mainz garrison was besieged from April to July; Fontenay fell to the Vendéans on 25 May, and Lyon’s Jacobin municipality was overthrown on 29 May. These later events sit beside an April petition. The narrative should not be treated as a day-by-day military dispatch. [S038](#S038) [S039](#S039) [S040](#S040)

[^c01n19]: The Vendée was a civil-war theatre in western France, where a Catholic and royalist insurrection confronted the Republic. France describes a special Parisian recruitment effort. This is distinct from the national levée en masse decreed on 23 August 1793; the chapter supplies no date for the local order. [S039](#S039) [S041](#S041) [S034](#S034)

[^c01n20]: A fusil de munition was the standard large-calibre infantry firearm, not a special ‘ammunition rifle’. Here regular service muskets are reserved for men going to war, leaving the local National Guard with hunting guns and pikes. The allocation makes the shortage of military equipment concrete. [S042](#S042) [S028](#S028)

[^c01n21]: Church bells supplied bronze for the war effort. A decree of 23 February 1793 authorised communes to turn their bells into cannon; subsequent reports to the Convention celebrate the transformation of religious metal into republican weapons. The action repeats the opening scene’s conversion of a church into an instrument of the new order. [S043](#S043) [S044](#S044)

[^c01n22]: The early Revolution distinguished active citizens by a direct-tax threshold equivalent to three working days; higher qualifications governed eligibility for office. France retains this hierarchy in a 1793 setting, although the decree of 11 August 1792 had abolished the active/passive distinction for Convention elections. The uniform exception is the novel’s account of local egalitarian practice. [S045](#S045) [S046](#S046) [S047](#S047)

[^c01n23]: Saltpetre, potassium nitrate, was an essential ingredient of gunpowder. Leaching extracts soluble material from earth with water. A Convention instruction of 4 December 1793 describes the use of cellar earth. That later document explains the practice; it should not be identified as the particular instruction Trubert requests. [S048](#S048) [S049](#S049)

[^c01n24]: General Adam-Philippe de Custine(1740–1793) had led the 1792 advance into the Rhineland. In 1793 military reverses brought accusations of treason; he was condemned on 27 August and executed on 28 August. Beauvisage’s prediction is a retrospective warning of how quickly a defeated commander could become a political victim. [S050](#S050) [S051](#S051)

[^c01n25]: Ah! ça ira was a revolutionary song set to Jean-Antoine Bécourt’s contredanse Le Carillon national and in circulation by 1790. The phrase promises that things will come right; later versions acquired threatening anti-aristocratic words. Here Trubert’s speech becomes song, joining personal reassurance to collective revolutionary confidence. [S052](#S052) [S053](#S053) [S054](#S054)

[^c01n26]: The conjunction is France’s: impossible and certain, not impossible but certain. The narrator allows Trubert’s collective resolve its dignity. The chapter’s account of political coercion does not cancel this admiration. This is an interpretive observation on the passage, rather than an identification of the narrator with Gamelin. 

<a id="chapter-02"></a>

## II

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c02p001"></a>Au sortir des Barnabites, Évariste Gamelin s’achemina vers la place Dauphine, devenue place de Thionville, en l’honneur d’une cité inexpugnable. | Leaving the Barnabites, Évariste Gamelin made his way towards the Place Dauphine, renamed Place de Thionville[^c02n01] in honour of a city that could not be taken. |
| <a id="c02p002"></a>Située dans le quartier le plus fréquenté de Paris, cette place avait perdu depuis près d’un siècle sa belle ordonnance: les hôtels construits sur les trois faces, au temps de Henri IV, uniformément en brique rouge avec chaînes de pierre blanche, pour des magistrats magnifiques, maintenant, ayant échangé leurs nobles toits d’ardoise contre deux ou trois misérables étages en plâtras, ou même rasés jusqu’à terre et remplacés sans honneur par des maisons mal blanchies à la chaux, n’offraient plus que des façades irrégulières, pauvres, sales, percées de fenêtres inégales, étroites, innombrables, qu’égayaient des pots de fleurs, des cages d’oiseaux et des linges qui séchaient. Là, logeait une multitude d’artisans, bijoutiers, ciseleurs, horlogers, opticiens, imprimeurs, lingères, modistes, blanchisseuses, et quelques vieux hommes de loi qui n’avaient point été emportés dans la tourmente avec la justice royale. | In the busiest quarter of Paris, the square had lost its fine symmetry nearly a century before. The mansions built on its three sides in Henri IV’s time, all in red brick with white stone quoins, for splendidly housed magistrates, had now exchanged their noble slate roofs for two or three wretched storeys of plaster rubble, or had even been razed and ingloriously replaced by poorly whitewashed houses. They offered only irregular façades, shabby and dirty, pierced with innumerable narrow, uneven windows, enlivened by flowerpots, birdcages and washing hung out to dry. Here lived a multitude of artisans: jewellers, metal chasers, watchmakers, opticians, printers, linen sellers, milliners and washerwomen, with a few old lawyers whom the storm had not swept away along with the royal courts. |
| <a id="c02p003"></a>C’était le matin et c’était le printemps. De jeunes rayons de soleil, enivrants comme du vin doux, riaient sur les murs et se coulaient gaiement dans les mansardes. Les châssis des croisées à guillotine étaient tous soulevés et l’on voyait au-dessous les têtes échevelées des ménagères. Le greffier du tribunal révolutionnaire, sorti de la maison pour se rendre à son poste, tapotait en passant les joues des enfants qui jouaient sous les arbres. On entendait crier sur le Pont-Neuf la trahison de l’infâme Dumouriez. | It was morning, and it was spring. Young rays of sunshine, intoxicating as sweet wine, laughed on the walls and slipped merrily into the attics. Every sash window[^c02n02] had been raised, and beneath the frames appeared the housewives’ dishevelled heads. The clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, leaving the house to go to his post, patted the cheeks of children playing under the trees as he passed. On the Pont-Neuf, criers could be heard announcing the infamous Dumouriez’s treachery. |
| <a id="c02p004"></a>Évariste Gamelin habitait, sur le côté du quai de l’Horloge, une maison qui datait de Henri IV et aurait fait encore assez bonne figure sans un petit grenier couvert de tuiles dont on l’avait exhaussée sous l’avant-dernier tyran. Pour approprier l’appartement de quelque vieux parlementaire aux convenances des familles bourgeoises et artisanes qui y logeaient, on avait multiplié les cloisons et les soupentes. C’est ainsi que le citoyen Remacle, concierge-tailleur, nichait dans un entresol fort abrégé en hauteur comme en largeur, où on le voyait par la porte vitrée, les jambes croisées sur son établi et la nuque au plancher, cousant un uniforme de garde national, tandis que la citoyenne Remacle, dont le fourneau n’avait pour cheminée que l’escalier, empoisonnait les locataires de la fumée de ses ragoûts et de ses fritures, et que, sur le seuil de la porte, la petite Joséphine, leur fille, barbouillée de mélasse et belle comme le jour, jouait avec Mouton, le chien du menuisier. La citoyenne Remacle, abondante de cœur, de poitrine et de reins, passait pour accorder ses faveurs à son voisin le citoyen Dupont aîné, l’un des douze du Comité de surveillance. Son mari, tout du moins, l’en soupçonnait véhémentement et les époux Remacle emplissaient la maison des éclats alternés de leurs querelles et de leurs raccommodements. Les étages supérieurs de la maison étaient occupés par le citoyen Chaperon, orfèvre, qui avait sa boutique sur le quai de l’Horloge, par un officier de santé, par un homme de loi, par un batteur d’or et par plusieurs employés du Palais. | On the side facing the Quai de l’Horloge, Évariste Gamelin lived in a house dating from Henri IV. It would still have looked respectable enough without the little tiled attic added to its height under the last tyrant but one. To adapt some old parliamentary magistrate’s apartment to the needs of the bourgeois and artisan families now living there, partitions and lofts had multiplied. Thus Citizen Remacle, doorkeeper and tailor[^c02n03], nested in a mezzanine drastically reduced in both height and width. Through its glass door he could be seen sitting cross-legged on his workbench, the back of his neck against the ceiling, sewing a National Guard uniform. Meanwhile Citizen Remacle, his wife, whose stove had only the staircase for a chimney, poisoned the tenants with the smoke of her stews and frying, while their little daughter Joséphine, smeared with treacle and beautiful as daylight, played on the doorstep with Mouton, the carpenter’s dog. Citizen Remacle, generous of heart, bosom and hips, was said to bestow her favours on her neighbour Citizen Dupont the elder, one of the twelve members of the Surveillance Committee. Her husband, at least, suspected her vehemently, and the Remacles filled the house with the alternating uproar of their quarrels and reconciliations. The upper floors were occupied by Citizen Chaperon, a goldsmith with a shop on the Quai de l’Horloge, by a medical practitioner, a lawyer, a goldbeater and several employees of the Palais de Justice. |
| <a id="c02p005"></a>Évariste Gamelin monta l’escalier antique jusqu’au quatrième et dernier étage, où il avait son atelier avec une chambre pour sa mère. Là finissaient les degrés de bois garnis de carreaux qui avaient succédé aux grandes marches de pierre des premiers étages. Une échelle, appliquée au mur, conduisait à un grenier d’où descendait pour lors un gros homme assez vieux, d’une belle figure rose et fleurie, qui tenait péniblement embrassé un énorme ballot, et fredonnait toutefois: *J’ai perdu mon serviteur*. | Évariste Gamelin climbed the ancient staircase to the fourth and top floor, where he had his studio and a room for his mother. Here ended the tiled wooden steps that had replaced the broad stone staircase of the lower floors. A ladder set against the wall led to an attic, from which a stout, rather elderly man was just then descending. He had a handsome, rosy, blooming face and struggled to clasp an enormous bundle in his arms, yet still hummed: *I have lost my servant*. |
| <a id="c02p006"></a>S’arrêtant de chantonner, il souhaita courtoisement le bonjour à Gamelin, qui le salua fraternellement et l’aida à descendre son paquet, ce dont le vieillard lui rendit grâces. | Breaking off his song, he courteously wished Gamelin good morning. Gamelin greeted him fraternally and helped him down with his bundle, for which the old man thanked him. |
| <a id="c02p007"></a>"Vous voyez là, dit-il en reprenant son fardeau, des pantins que je vais de ce pas livrer à un marchand de jouets de la rue de la Loi. Il y en a ici tout un peuple: ce sont mes créatures; elles ont reçu de moi un corps périssable, exempt de joies et de souffrances. Je ne leur ai pas donné la pensée, car je suis un Dieu bon." | “What you see here,” he said, taking up his burden again, “are jumping jacks that I’m about to deliver to a toy seller in the Rue de la Loi. There’s a whole nation of them here. They are my creatures; they have received from me a perishable body, free from joys and sufferings. I have not given them thought, for I am a good God[^c02n04].” |
| <a id="c02p008"></a>C’était le citoyen Maurice Brotteaux, ancien traitant, ci-devant noble: son père, enrichi dans les partis, avait acheté une savonnette à vilain. Au bon temps, Maurice Brotteaux se nommait monsieur des Ilettes et donnait, dans son hôtel de la rue de la Chaise, des soupers fins que la belle madame de Rochemaure, épouse d’un procureur, illuminait de ses yeux, femme accomplie, dont la fidélité honorable ne se démentit point tant que la Révolution laissa à Maurice Brotteaux des Ilettes ses offices, ses rentes, son hôtel, ses terres, son nom. La Révolution les lui enleva. Il gagna sa vie à peindre des portraits sous les portes cochères, à faire des crêpes et des beignets sur le quai de la Mégisserie, à composer des discours pour les représentants du peuple et à donner des leçons de danse aux jeunes citoyennes. Présentement, dans son grenier, où l’on se coulait par une échelle et où l’on ne pouvait se tenir debout, Maurice Brotteaux, riche d’un pot de colle, d’un paquet de ficelles, d’une boîte d’aquarelle et de quelques rognures de papier, fabriquait des pantins qu’il vendait à de gros marchands de jouets, qui les revendaient aux colporteurs, qui les promenaient par les Champs-Élysées, au bout d’une perche, brillants objets des désirs des petits enfants. Au milieu des troubles publics et dans la grande infortune dont il était lui-même accablé, il gardait une âme sereine, lisant pour se récréer son Lucrèce, qu’il portait constamment dans la poche béante de sa redingote puce. | This was Citizen Maurice Brotteaux, once a tax contractor and formerly a nobleman: his father, enriched by government contracts, had bought himself a patent to wash away his common birth[^c02n05]. In the good days Maurice Brotteaux had called himself Monsieur des Ilettes, and in his mansion in the Rue de la Chaise had given exquisite suppers brightened by the eyes of the beautiful Madame de Rochemaure, a public prosecutor’s wife, an accomplished woman whose honourable fidelity never faltered so long as the Revolution left Maurice Brotteaux des Ilettes his offices, his income, his mansion, his estates and his name. The Revolution took them from him. He earned his living painting portraits in gateways, making pancakes and fritters on the Quai de la Mégisserie, composing speeches for the people’s representatives and giving dancing lessons to young female citizens. At present, in his attic, reached by a ladder and too low to stand upright in, Maurice Brotteaux, rich in a pot of glue, a bundle of string, a box of watercolours and a few scraps of paper, made jumping jacks. He sold them to wholesale toy dealers, who sold them to pedlars, who carried them about the Champs-Élysées on the end of a pole, glittering objects of little children’s desire. Amid the public turmoil and the great misfortune that had fallen on him, he kept a serene spirit, reading his Lucretius[^c02n06] for recreation; the book was always with him in the gaping pocket of his puce frock coat. |
| <a id="c02p009"></a>Évariste Gamelin poussa la porte de son logis, qui céda tout de suite. Sa pauvreté lui épargnait le souci des serrures, et quand sa mère, par habitude, tirait le verrou, il lui disait: "A quoi bon? On ne vole pas les toiles d’araignée... et les miennes pas davantage." Dans son atelier s’entassaient, sous une couche épaisse de poussière ou retournées contre le mur, les toiles de ses débuts, alors qu’il traitait, selon la mode, des scènes galantes, caressait d’un pinceau lisse et timide des carquois épuisés et des oiseaux envolés, des jeux dangereux et des songes de bonheur, troussait des gardeuses d’oies et fleurissait de roses le sein des bergères. | Évariste Gamelin pushed at his door, which gave way at once. Poverty spared him the trouble of locks, and when his mother shot the bolt out of habit he would say, “What’s the use? Nobody steals spiders’ webs… or my canvases either[^c02n07].” His early canvases lay piled in the studio, under a thick layer of dust or turned to the wall. In those days he had painted fashionable scenes of gallantry, caressing with a smooth, timid brush exhausted quivers and flown birds[^c02n08], dangerous games and dreams of happiness, lifting goose girls’ skirts and flowering shepherdesses’ breasts with roses. |
| <a id="c02p010"></a>Mais cette manière ne convenait point à son tempérament. Ces scènes, froidement traitées, attestaient l’irrémédiable chasteté du peintre. Les amateurs ne s’y étaient pas trompés et Gamelin n’avait jamais passé pour un artiste érotique. Aujourd’hui, bien qu’il n’eût pas encore atteint la trentaine, ces sujets lui semblaient dater d’un temps immémorial. Il y reconnaissait la dépravation monarchique et l’effet honteux de la corruption des cours. Il s’accusait d’avoir donné dans ce genre méprisable et montré un génie avili par l’esclavage. Maintenant, citoyen d’un peuple libre, il charbonnait d’un trait vigoureux des Libertés, des Droits de l’Homme, des Constitutions françaises, des Vertus républicaines, des Hercules populaires terrassant l’Hydre de la Tyrannie, et mettait dans toutes ces compositions toute l’ardeur de son patriotisme. Hélas! il n’y gagnait point sa vie. Le temps était mauvais pour les artistes. Ce n’était pas, sans doute, la faute de la Convention, qui lançait de toutes parts des armées contre les rois, qui, fière, impassible, résolue devant l’Europe conjurée, perfide et cruelle envers elle-même, se déchirait de ses propres mains, qui mettait la terreur à l’ordre du jour, instituait pour punir les conspirateurs un tribunal impitoyable auquel elle allait donner bientôt ses membres à dévorer, et qui dans le même temps, calme, pensive, amie de la science et de la beauté, réformait le calendrier, créait des écoles spéciales, décrétait des concours de peinture et de sculpture, fondait des prix pour encourager les artistes, organisait des salons annuels, ouvrait le Muséum et, à l’exemple d’Athènes et de Rome, imprimait un caractère sublime à la célébration des fêtes et des deuils publics. Mais l’art français, autrefois si répandu en Angleterre, en Allemagne, en Russie, en Pologne, n’avait plus de débouchés à l’étranger. Les amateurs de peinture, les curieux d’art, grands seigneurs et financiers, étaient ruinés, avaient émigré ou se cachaient. Les gens que la Révolution avait enrichis, paysans acquéreurs de biens nationaux, agioteurs, fournisseurs aux armées, croupiers du Palais-Royal, n’osaient encore montrer leur opulence et, d’ailleurs, ne se souciaient point de peinture. Il fallait ou la réputation de Regnault ou l’adresse du jeune Gérard pour vendre un tableau. Greuze, Fragonard, Houin étaient réduits à l’indigence. Prud’hon nourrissait péniblement sa femme et ses enfants en dessinant des sujets que Copia gravait au pointillé. Les peintres patriotes Hennequin, Wicar, Topino-Lebrun souffraient la faim. Gamelin, incapable de faire les frais d’un tableau, ne pouvant ni payer le modèle, ni acheter des couleurs, laissait à peine ébauchée sa vaste toile du *Tyran poursuivi aux Enfers par les Furies*. Elle couvrait la moitié de l’atelier de figures inachevées et terribles, plus grandes que nature, et d’une multitude de serpents verts dardant chacun deux langues aiguës et recourbées. On distinguait au premier plan, à gauche, un Charon maigre et farouche dans sa barque, morceau puissant et d’un beau dessin, mais qui sentait l’école. Il y avait bien plus de génie et de naturel dans une toile de moindres dimensions, également inachevée, qui était pendue à l’endroit le mieux éclairé de l’atelier. C’était un Oreste que sa sœur Électre soulevait sur son lit de douleur. Et l’on voyait la jeune fille écarter d’un geste touchant les cheveux emmêlés qui voilaient les yeux de son frère. La tête d’Oreste était tragique et belle et l’on y reconnaissait une ressemblance avec le visage du peintre. | But this manner did not suit his temperament. These coldly painted scenes testified to the painter’s incurable chastity. Connoisseurs had not been deceived, and Gamelin had never passed for an erotic artist. Now, though he was not yet thirty, such subjects seemed to him to belong to a time beyond memory. He saw in them monarchical depravity and the shameful effects of corrupt courts. He accused himself of having fallen into this contemptible genre, displaying a talent debased by slavery. Now, a citizen of a free people, he drew in bold charcoal strokes Liberties, Rights of Man, French Constitutions, Republican Virtues, popular Hercules figures crushing the Hydra of Tyranny, and poured all his patriotic ardour into every composition. Alas, he could not make a living at it. These were bad times for artists. It was surely no fault of the Convention[^c02n09], which sent armies against the kings on every side; which, proud, impassive and resolute before a Europe united against it, treacherous and cruel towards itself, tore itself apart with its own hands; which made terror the order of the day, establishing to punish conspirators a merciless tribunal to which it would soon give its own members to devour; and which at the same time, calm and thoughtful, a friend to science and beauty, reformed the calendar, founded specialist schools, decreed competitions in painting and sculpture, established prizes to encourage artists, organised annual Salons, opened the Museum[^c02n10] and, following Athens and Rome, gave a sublime character to the celebration of public festivals and mourning. But French art, once so widespread in England, Germany, Russia and Poland, had lost its foreign markets. Picture collectors and art lovers, great noblemen and financiers, were ruined, had emigrated or were in hiding. Those whom the Revolution had enriched—peasants who had bought national property, speculators, army contractors and Palais-Royal croupiers—did not yet dare display their wealth, and cared nothing for painting in any case. It took Regnault’s reputation or the young Gérard’s skill to sell a picture. Greuze, Fragonard and Houin were destitute. Prud’hon could barely feed his wife and children by drawing subjects which Copia reproduced in stipple engravings. The patriot painters Hennequin, Wicar and Topino-Lebrun went hungry. Unable to meet a painting’s expenses, to pay a model or buy colours, Gamelin had left his vast canvas of *The Tyrant Pursued into Hell by the Furies* barely begun. It covered half the studio with terrible, unfinished figures larger than life, and a multitude of green snakes, each thrusting out two sharp, curved tongues. In the left foreground stood a gaunt, fierce Charon in his boat: a powerful passage, finely drawn, but smelling of the schoolroom. There was far more genius and natural feeling in a smaller canvas, also unfinished, hanging in the best-lit part of the studio. It showed Orestes being raised from his bed of pain by his sister Electra. The girl could be seen brushing aside, with a touching gesture, the tangled hair that veiled her brother’s eyes. Orestes’ head was tragic and beautiful, and a resemblance to the painter’s own face[^c02n11] could be recognised in it. |
| <a id="c02p011"></a>Gamelin regardait souvent d’un œil attristé cette composition; parfois ses bras frémissants du désir de peindre se tendaient vers la figure largement esquissée d’Électre et retombaient impuissants. L’artiste était gonflé d’enthousiasme et son âme tendue vers de grandes choses. Mais il lui fallait s’épuiser sur des ouvrages de commande qu’il exécutait médiocrement, parce qu’il devait contenter le goût du vulgaire et aussi parce qu’il ne savait point imprimer aux moindres choses le caractère du génie. Il dessinait de petites compositions allégoriques, que son camarade Desmahis gravait assez adroitement en noir ou en couleurs et que prenait à bas prix un marchand d’estampes de la rue Honoré, le citoyen Blaise. Mais le commerce des estampes allait de mal en pis, disait Blaise, qui depuis quelque temps ne voulait plus rien acheter. | Gamelin often looked sadly at this composition. Sometimes his arms, trembling with the desire to paint, reached towards the broadly sketched figure of Electra, then fell back helplessly. The artist swelled with enthusiasm, his soul straining towards great things. But he had to exhaust himself on commissions, which he executed indifferently because he had to satisfy common tastes, and also because he could not give even the smallest things the character of genius. He drew little allegorical compositions, which his friend Desmahis engraved quite skilfully in black or in colour and which a print seller in the Rue Honoré, Citizen Blaise, bought cheaply. But the print trade was going from bad to worse, Blaise said, and for some time he had refused to buy anything at all. |
| <a id="c02p012"></a>Cette fois pourtant, Gamelin, que la nécessité rendait ingénieux, venait de concevoir une invention heureuse et neuve, du moins le croyait-il, qui devait faire la fortune du marchand d’estampes, du graveur et la sienne; un jeu de cartes patriotique dans lequel aux rois, aux dames, aux valets de l’ancien régime il substituait des Génies, des Libertés, des Égalités. Il avait déjà esquissé toutes ses figures, il en avait terminé plusieurs, et il était pressé de livrer à Desmahis celles qui se trouvaient en état d’être gravées. La figure qui lui paraissait la mieux venue représentait un volontaire coiffé du tricorne, vêtu d’un habit bleu à parements rouges, avec une culotte jaune et des guêtres noires, assis sur une caisse, les pieds sur une pile de boulets, son fusil entre les jambes. C’était le "citoyen de cœur", remplaçant le valet de cœur. Depuis plus de six mois Gamelin dessinait des volontaires, et toujours avec amour. Il en avait vendu quelques-uns, aux jours d’enthousiasme. Plusieurs pendaient au mur de l’atelier. Cinq ou six, à l’aquarelle, à la gouache, aux deux crayons, traînaient sur la table et sur les chaises. Au mois de juillet 92, lorsque s’élevaient sur toutes les places de Paris des estrades pour les enrôlements, quand tous les cabarets, ornés de feuillage, retentissaient des cris de "Vive la Nation! vivre libre ou mourir!" Gamelin ne pouvait passer sur le Pont-Neuf ou devant la maison de ville sans que son cœur bondît vers la tente pavoisée sous laquelle des magistrats en écharpe inscrivaient les volontaires au son de la *Marseillaise*. Mais en rejoignant les armées il eût laissé sa mère sans pain. | This time, however, necessity had made Gamelin ingenious, and he had just devised a happy and original invention—or so he believed—which would make the fortunes of the print seller, the engraver and himself: a patriotic pack of cards in which Spirits, Liberties and Equalities would replace the kings, queens and jacks of the old regime. He had sketched all his figures, finished several, and was eager to give Desmahis those ready to be engraved. The figure he thought most successful showed a volunteer in a three-cornered hat, a blue coat with red facings, yellow breeches and black gaiters, sitting on a drum with his feet on a pile of cannonballs and his musket between his legs. This was the “citizen of hearts”[^c02n12], replacing the jack of hearts. Gamelin had been drawing volunteers for more than six months, always with love. He had sold a few in the days of enthusiasm. Several hung on the studio walls. Five or six, in watercolour, gouache, or black and white chalk, lay about on the table and chairs. In July ’92, when platforms for enlistment rose in every square of Paris and all the taverns, decorated with greenery, rang with cries of “Long live the Nation! Live free or die!”, Gamelin could not cross the Pont-Neuf or pass the town hall without his heart leaping towards the flag-draped tent where sash-wearing magistrates enrolled volunteers to the sound of the *Marseillaise*. But had he joined the armies, he would have left his mother without bread. |
| <a id="c02p013"></a>Précédée du bruit de son souffle péniblement expiré, la citoyenne veuve Gamelin entra dans l’atelier, suante, rougeoyante, palpitante, la cocarde nationale négligemment pendue à son bonnet et prête à s’échapper. Elle posa son panier sur une chaise et, plantée debout pour mieux respirer, gémit de la cherté des vivres. | Preceded by the sound of her laborious breathing, Citizen Widow Gamelin came into the studio, sweating, flushed and panting, the national cockade carelessly dangling from her cap and ready to fall. She put her basket on a chair and, standing planted on her feet to breathe more easily, lamented the price of food. |
| <a id="c02p014"></a>Coutelière dans la rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, à l’enseigne de "la Ville de Châtellerault", tant qu’avait vécu son époux, et maintenant pauvre ménagère, la citoyenne Gamelin vivait retirée chez son fils le peintre. C’était l’aîné de ses deux enfants. Quant à sa fille Julie, naguère demoiselle de modes rue Honoré, le mieux était d’ignorer ce qu’elle était devenue, car il n’était pas bon de dire qu’elle avait émigré avec un aristocrate. | A cutler’s wife in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, at the sign of “The Town of Châtellerault”, while her husband lived, and now a poor housekeeper, Citizen Gamelin lived quietly with her son the painter. He was the elder of her two children. As for her daughter Julie, formerly a milliner’s assistant in the Rue Honoré, it was best not to know what had become of her, since it was unwise to say[^c02n13] that she had emigrated with an aristocrat. |
| <a id="c02p015"></a>"Seigneur Dieu! soupira la citoyenne en montrant à son fils une miche de pâte épaisse et bise, le pain est hors de prix; encore s’en faut-il bien qu’il soit de pur froment. On ne trouve au marché ni œufs, ni légumes, ni fromages. A force de manger des châtaignes, nous deviendrons châtaignes." | “Lord God!” sighed the citizen, showing her son a loaf of thick, dark dough. “Bread costs a fortune, and it’s a long way from being pure wheat. There are no eggs, vegetables or cheeses in the market. If we go on eating chestnuts, we’ll turn into chestnuts.” |
| <a id="c02p016"></a>Après un long silence, elle reprit: | After a long silence she went on: |
| <a id="c02p017"></a>"J’ai vu dans la rue des femmes qui n’avaient pas de quoi nourrir leurs petits enfants. La misère est grande pour le pauvre monde. Et il en sera ainsi tant que les affaires ne seront pas rétablies. | “I’ve seen women in the streets with nothing to feed their little children. Poor people are suffering terribly. And that’s how it will be until things are put right.” |
| <a id="c02p018"></a>— Ma mère, dit Gamelin en fronçant le sourcil, la disette dont nous souffrons est due aux accapareurs et aux agioteurs qui affament le peuple et s’entendent avec les ennemis du dehors pour rendre la République odieuse aux citoyens et détruire la liberté. Voilà où aboutissent les complots des Brissotins, les trahisons des Pétion et des Roland! Heureux encore si les fédéralistes en armes ne viennent pas massacrer, à Paris, les patriotes que la famine ne détruit pas assez vite! Il n’y a pas de temps à perdre: il faut taxer la farine et guillotiner quiconque spécule sur la nourriture du peuple, fomente l’insurrection ou pactise avec l’étranger. La Convention vient d’établir un tribunal extraordinaire pour juger les conspirateurs. Il est composé de patriotes; mais ses membres auront-ils assez d’énergie pour défendre la patrie contre tous ses ennemis? Espérons en Robespierre: il est vertueux. Espérons surtout en Marat. Celui-là aime le peuple, discerne ses véritables intérêts et les sert. Il fut toujours le premier à démasquer les traîtres, à déjouer les complots. Il est incorruptible et sans peur. Lui seul est capable de sauver la République en péril." | “Mother,” said Gamelin, frowning, “the scarcity we suffer from is the work of hoarders and speculators who starve the people and conspire with our enemies abroad to make the Republic hateful to its citizens and destroy liberty. This is where the Brissotins’ plots and the treachery of men like Pétion and Roland[^c02n14] have brought us! We’ll be lucky if armed federalists don’t come to Paris and massacre the patriots whom famine isn’t destroying fast enough. There’s no time to lose. We must fix the price of flour and guillotine anyone who speculates in the people’s food, foments insurrection or conspires with foreigners. The Convention has just established an extraordinary tribunal to try conspirators. It consists of patriots, but will its members have the energy to defend their country against all its enemies? Let us put our hopes in Robespierre: he is virtuous. Above all, let us put our hopes in Marat. He loves the people, understands their true interests and serves them. He was always the first to unmask traitors and foil plots. He is incorruptible and fearless. He alone can save the Republic in danger.” |
| <a id="c02p019"></a>La citoyenne Gamelin, secouant la tête, fit tomber de son bonnet sa cocarde négligée. | Citizen Gamelin shook her head and dislodged the neglected cockade from her cap. |
| <a id="c02p020"></a>"Laisse donc, Évariste: ton Marat est un homme comme les autres, et qui ne vaut pas mieux que les autres. Tu es jeune, tu as des illusions. Ce que tu dis aujourd’hui de Marat, tu l’as dit autrefois de Mirabeau, de La Fayette, de Pétion, de Brissot. | “Oh, leave it, Évariste. Your Marat is a man like any other, and no better than any other. You’re young; you have illusions. What you say about Marat today you used to say about Mirabeau, La Fayette, Pétion and Brissot.” |
| <a id="c02p021"></a>— Jamais!" s’écria Gamelin, sincèrement oublieux. | “Never!” cried Gamelin, sincerely forgetful[^c02n15]. |
| <a id="c02p022"></a>Ayant dégagé un bout de la table de bois blanc encombrée de papiers, de livres, de brosses et de crayons, la citoyenne y posa la soupière de faïence, deux écuelles d’étain, deux fourchettes de fer, la miche de pain bis et un pot de piquette. | Clearing a corner of the pale wooden table cluttered with papers, books, brushes and pencils, the citizen set down the earthenware soup tureen, two pewter bowls, two iron forks, the loaf of brown bread and a jug of thin wine. |
| <a id="c02p023"></a>Le fils et la mère mangèrent la soupe en silence et ils finirent leur dîner par un petit morceau de lard. La mère ayant mis son fricot sur son pain, portait gravement sur la pointe de son couteau de poche les morceaux à sa bouche édentée et mâchait avec respect des aliments qui avaient coûté cher. | Son and mother ate their soup in silence and finished their midday meal with a small piece of bacon. The mother put her bit of meat on her bread, solemnly carried the pieces to her toothless mouth on the point of her pocketknife, and respectfully chewed food that had cost so much. |
| <a id="c02p024"></a>Elle avait laissé dans le plat le meilleur à son fils, qui restait songeur et distrait. | She had left the best of the dish for her son, who remained thoughtful and distracted. |
| <a id="c02p025"></a>"Mange, Évariste, lui disait-elle, à intervalles égaux, mange." | “Eat, Évariste,” she told him at regular intervals. “Eat.” |
| <a id="c02p026"></a>Et cette parole prenait sur ses lèvres la gravité d’un précepte religieux. | On her lips the word acquired the gravity of a religious precept. |
| <a id="c02p027"></a>Elle recommença ses lamentations sur la cherté des vivres. Gamelin réclama de nouveau la taxe comme le seul remède à ces maux. | She began lamenting the price of food again. Gamelin again demanded price controls as the sole remedy for these evils. |
| <a id="c02p028"></a>Mais elle: | But she replied: |
| <a id="c02p029"></a>"Il n’y a plus d’argent. Les émigrés ont tout emporté. Il n’y a plus de confiance. C’est à désespérer de tout. | “There’s no money left. The émigrés have taken it all away. There’s no confidence any more. It makes you despair of everything.” |
| <a id="c02p030"></a>— Taisez-vous, ma mère, taisez-vous! s’écria Gamelin. Qu’importent nos privations, nos souffrances d’un moment! La Révolution fera pour les siècles le bonheur du genre humain." | “Be quiet, Mother, be quiet!” cried Gamelin. “What do our privations matter, our moment’s suffering? The Revolution will bring happiness to the human race for centuries to come.” |
| <a id="c02p031"></a>La bonne dame trempa son pain dans son vin: son esprit s’éclaircit et elle songea en souriant au temps de sa jeunesse, quand elle dansait sur l’herbe à la fête du roi. Il lui souvenait aussi du jour où Joseph Gamelin, coutelier de son état, l’avait demandée en mariage. Et elle conta par le menu comment les choses s’étaient passées. Sa mère lui avait dit: "Habille-toi. Nous allons sur la place de Grève, dans le magasin de M. Bienassis, orfèvre, pour voir écarteler Damiens." Elles eurent grand-peine à se frayer un chemin à travers la foule des curieux. Dans le magasin de M. Bienassis la jeune fille avait trouvé Joseph Gamelin, vêtu de son bel habit rose, et elle avait compris tout de suite de quoi il retournait. Tout le temps qu’elle s’était tenue à la fenêtre pour voir le régicide tenaillé, arrosé de plomb fondu, tiré à quatre chevaux et jeté au feu, M. Joseph Gamelin, debout derrière elle, n’avait pas cessé de la complimenter sur son teint, sa coiffure et sa taille. | The good woman dipped her bread in her wine. Her spirits lightened, and she thought with a smile of her youth, when she danced on the grass at the king’s birthday celebrations. She also remembered the day when Joseph Gamelin, a cutler by trade, had asked for her hand. She recounted exactly how it had happened. Her mother had said, “Get dressed. We’re going to Monsieur Bienassis the goldsmith’s shop on the Place de Grève to see Damiens drawn and quartered[^c02n16].” They had struggled to force their way through the crowd of spectators. At Monsieur Bienassis’s shop the girl had found Joseph Gamelin in his fine pink coat, and had understood at once what was afoot. Throughout the time she stood at the window watching the would-be regicide torn with pincers, drenched in molten lead, pulled apart by four horses and thrown into the fire, Monsieur Joseph Gamelin, standing behind her, had never stopped complimenting her complexion, her hair and her figure. |
| <a id="c02p032"></a>Elle vida le fond de son verre et continua de se remémorer sa vie. | She drained her glass and went on remembering her life. |
| <a id="c02p033"></a>"Je te mis au monde, Évariste, plus tôt que je ne m’y attendais, par suite d’une frayeur que j’eus, étant grosse, sur le Pont-Neuf, où je faillis être renversée par des curieux, qui couraient à l’exécution de M. de Lally. Tu étais si petit, à ta naissance, que le chirurgien croyait que tu ne vivrais pas. Mais je savais bien que Dieu me ferait la grâce de te conserver. Je t’élevai de mon mieux, ne ménageant ni les soins ni la dépense. Il est juste de dire, mon Évariste, que tu m’en témoignas de la reconnaissance et que, dès l’enfance, tu cherchas à m’en récompenser selon tes moyens. Tu étais d’un naturel affectueux et doux. Ta sœur n’avait pas mauvais cœur; mais elle était égoïste et violente. Tu avais plus de pitié qu’elle des malheureux. Quand les petits polissons du quartier dénichaient des nids dans les arbres, tu t’efforçais de leur tirer des mains les oisillons pour les rendre à leur mère, et bien souvent tu n’y renonçais que foulé aux pieds et cruellement battu. A l’âge de sept ans, au lieu de te quereller avec de mauvais sujets, tu allais tranquillement dans la rue en récitant ton catéchisme; et tous les pauvres que tu rencontrais, tu les amenais à la maison pour les secourir, tant que je fus obligée de te fouetter pour t’ôter cette habitude. Tu ne pouvais voir un être souffrir sans verser des larmes. Quand tu eus achevé ta croissance, tu devins très beau. A ma grande surprise, tu ne semblais pas le savoir, très différent en cela de la plupart des jolis garçons, qui sont coquets et vains de leur figure." | “You came into the world earlier than I expected, Évariste, because of a fright I had while I was carrying you. On the Pont-Neuf I was nearly knocked down by spectators running to Monsieur de Lally’s execution[^c02n17]. You were so small at birth that the surgeon thought you wouldn’t live. But I knew God would grant me the grace of keeping you. I brought you up as well as I could, sparing neither care nor expense. It’s only fair to say, my Évariste, that you showed your gratitude, and from childhood tried to repay me as best you could. You were naturally affectionate and gentle. Your sister didn’t have a bad heart, but she was selfish and violent. You pitied the unfortunate more than she did. When the little scoundrels in the neighbourhood robbed nests in the trees, you tried to pull the fledglings from their hands to give them back to their mothers, and often you only gave up when you’d been trampled on and cruelly beaten. At seven, instead of quarrelling with bad boys, you walked quietly down the street reciting your catechism; and every poor person you met you brought home to help, until I had to whip you to break the habit. You couldn’t see a creature suffer without crying. When you were fully grown you became very handsome. To my great surprise, you didn’t seem to know it, quite unlike most good-looking boys, who are vain and conceited about their faces.” |
| <a id="c02p034"></a>La vieille mère disait vrai. Évariste avait eu à vingt ans un visage grave et charmant, une beauté à la fois austère et féminine, les traits d’une Minerve. Maintenant ses yeux sombres et ses joues pâles exprimaient une âme triste et violente. Mais son regard, lorsqu’il le tourna sur sa mère, reprit pour un moment la douceur de la première jeunesse. | His old mother spoke the truth. At twenty, Évariste had had a grave, charming face, a beauty at once austere and feminine, the features of a Minerva. Now his dark eyes and pale cheeks expressed a sad and violent soul. But when he turned his gaze on his mother it briefly regained the gentleness of his earliest youth. |
| <a id="c02p035"></a>Elle poursuivit: | She continued: |
| <a id="c02p036"></a>"Tu aurais pu profiter de tes avantages pour courir les filles, mais tu te plaisais à rester près de moi, à la boutique, et il m’arrivait parfois de te dire de te retirer de mes jupes et d’aller un peu te dégourdir avec tes camarades. Jusque sur mon lit de mort je te rendrai ce témoignage, Évariste, que tu es un bon fils. Après le décès de ton père, tu m’as prise courageusement à ta charge; bien que ton état ne te rapporte guère, tu ne m’as jamais laissée manquer de rien, et, si nous sommes aujourd’hui tous deux dépourvus et misérables, je ne puis te le reprocher: la faute en est à la Révolution." | “You could have used your good looks to chase girls, but you liked staying beside me in the shop. Sometimes I had to tell you to get out from under my skirts and go and enjoy yourself with your friends. I’ll say it on my deathbed, Évariste: you are a good son. After your father’s death you bravely took on the burden of keeping me. Your trade brings you little enough, but you’ve never let me want for anything, and if we’re both penniless and miserable now, I can’t blame you. It’s the Revolution’s fault.” |
| <a id="c02p037"></a>Il fit un geste de reproche; mais elle haussa les épaules et poursuivit. | He made a reproachful gesture, but she shrugged and went on. |
| <a id="c02p038"></a>"Je ne suis pas une aristocrate. J’ai connu les grands dans toute leur puissance et je puis dire qu’ils abusaient de leurs privilèges. J’ai vu ton père bâtonné par les laquais du duc de Canaleilles parce qu’il ne se rangeait pas assez vite sur le passage de leur maître. Je n’aimais point l’Autrichienne: elle était trop fière et faisait trop de dépenses. Quant au roi, je l’ai cru bon, et il a fallu son procès et sa condamnation pour me faire changer d’idée. Enfin je ne regrette pas l’ancien régime, bien que j’y aie passé quelques moments agréables. Mais ne me dis pas que la Révolution établira l’égalité, parce que les hommes ne seront jamais égaux; ce n’est pas possible, et l’on a beau mettre le pays sens dessus dessous: il y aura toujours des grands et petits, des gras et des maigres." | “I’m no aristocrat. I knew the great when they had all their power, and I can say they abused their privileges. I saw your father beaten with sticks by the Duc de Canaleilles’s lackeys because he didn’t get out of their master’s way quickly enough. I had no love for the Austrian woman: she was too proud and spent too much. As for the king, I thought him good, and it took his trial and condemnation to change my mind. In any case, I don’t regret the old regime, though I had some pleasant times under it. But don’t tell me the Revolution will establish equality, because men will never be equal. It’s impossible, and you can turn the country upside down as much as you please: there will always be great and small, fat and thin.” |
| <a id="c02p039"></a>Et, tout en parlant, elle rangeait la vaisselle. Le peintre ne l’écoutait plus. Il cherchait la silhouette d’un sans-culotte, en bonnet rouge et en carmagnole, qui devait, dans son jeu de cartes, remplacer le valet de pique condamné. | As she spoke she put away the dishes. The painter was no longer listening. He was trying to find the outline of a sans-culotte in red cap and carmagnole, to replace the condemned jack of spades in his pack of cards. |
| <a id="c02p040"></a>On gratta à la porte et une fille, une campagnarde, parut, plus large que haute, rousse, bancale, une loupe lui cachant l’œil gauche, l’œil droit d’un bleu si pâle qu’il en paraissait blanc, les lèvres énormes et les dents débordant les lèvres. | There was a scratching at the door, and a girl appeared, a country girl, broader than she was tall, red-haired and bandy-legged, a swelling hiding her left eye[^c02n18], her right eye such a pale blue that it seemed white, her lips enormous and her teeth projecting beyond them. |
| <a id="c02p041"></a>Elle demanda à Gamelin si c’était lui le peintre et s’il pouvait lui faire un portrait de son fiancé, Ferrand (Jules), volontaire à l’armée des Ardennes. | She asked Gamelin whether he was the painter and whether he could make her a portrait of her fiancé, Ferrand (Jules), a volunteer with the Army of the Ardennes. |
| <a id="c02p042"></a>Gamelin répondit qu’il ferait volontiers ce portrait au retour du brave guerrier. | Gamelin replied that he would gladly paint the portrait when the brave warrior returned. |
| <a id="c02p043"></a>La fille demanda avec une douceur pressante que ce fût tout de suite. | With gentle insistence the girl asked for it to be done at once. |
| <a id="c02p044"></a>Le peintre, souriant malgré lui, objecta qu’il ne pouvait rien faire sans le modèle. | Smiling despite himself, the painter objected that he could do nothing without the sitter. |
| <a id="c02p045"></a>La pauvre créature ne répondit rien: elle n’avait pas prévu cette difficulté. La tête inclinée sur l’épaule gauche, les mains jointes sur le ventre, elle demeurait inerte et muette et semblait accablée de chagrin. Touché et amusé de tant de simplicité, le peintre, pour distraire la malheureuse amante, lui mit dans la main un des volontaires qu’il avait peints à l’aquarelle et lui demanda s’il était fait ainsi, son fiancé des Ardennes. | The poor creature made no answer. She had not foreseen this difficulty. Her head leaning towards her left shoulder, her hands clasped over her stomach, she stood motionless and silent, apparently overwhelmed by grief. Touched and amused by such simplicity, the painter put one of his watercolours of volunteers into her hand to distract the unhappy lover, and asked whether this was what her fiancé in the Ardennes looked like. |
| <a id="c02p046"></a>Elle appliqua sur le papier le regard de son œil morne, qui lentement s’anima, puis brilla, et resplendit; sa large face s’épanouit en un radieux sourire. | She fixed her dull eye on the paper. Slowly it came alive, then shone, then blazed; her broad face opened in a radiant smile. |
| <a id="c02p047"></a>"C’est sa vraie ressemblance, dit-elle enfin; c’est Ferrand (Jules) au naturel, c’est Ferrand (Jules) tout craché." | “That’s his very likeness,” she said at last. “That’s Ferrand (Jules) to the life, the spitting image of Ferrand (Jules)[^c02n19].” |
| <a id="c02p048"></a>Avant que le peintre eût songé à lui tirer la feuille des mains, elle la plia soigneusement de ses gros doigts rouges et en fit un tout petit carré qu’elle coula sur son cœur, entre le busc et la chemise, remit à l’artiste un assignat de cinq livres, souhaita le bonsoir à la compagnie et sortit clochante et légère. | Before the painter thought of taking the sheet from her hands, she carefully folded it with her thick red fingers into a tiny square, slipped it over her heart between the busk and her shift, handed the artist a five-livre assignat[^c02n20], wished the company good evening, and went out, limping and light-footed. |

### Notes

[^c02n01]: The Place Dauphine, laid out under Henri IV, bore this revolutionary name from 1792 to 1814. The renaming replaces the royal heir suggested by Dauphine with a city celebrated for resistance. France makes changing street names part of everyday political language. [S055](#S055)

[^c02n02]: The French calls these croisées à guillotine: windows whose sliding frames move vertically. The translation gives the English architectural term; the original also lets the name of the execution machine intrude upon a sunny domestic scene. This second effect is an interpretive observation. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n03]: The compound concierge-tailleur joins two occupations. Remacle sews in the tiny space associated with his responsibility for the building: the passage depicts living quarters, workrooms and businesses compressed into the same subdivided house. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n04]: Interpretive note: Brotteaux calls himself benevolent because he denies his creatures thought, and thus the sufferings thought may bring. His harmless manufactured nation offers an ironic counterpoint to Gamelin’s ambition to remake the real one. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n05]: Savonnette à vilain, literally a commoner’s little cake of soap, derisively meant a purchased office conferring nobility. The translation preserves the cleansing metaphor; Brotteaux’s lineage is purchased rather than ancient. [S057](#S057)

[^c02n06]: France names the author rather than a title and presents the volume as Brotteaux’s constant companion. Interpretively, its portability makes philosophy something practised amid material deprivation, alongside the practical work of making children’s toys. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n07]: The French repeats toiles, which means both webs and painting canvases. English cannot reproduce that double meaning without an addition; the paired nouns retain the joke and its implication that Gamelin’s paintings have no more market value than cobwebs. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n08]: Interpretive note: these apparently decorative emblems accompany lifted skirts and exposed breasts. Their erotic suggestions belong to the fashionable language Gamelin once tried to paint; the narration immediately undercuts his success by calling him incurably chaste. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n09]: The long ensuing sentence balances civic achievement against violence and self-destruction. Its provisional defence of the Convention should not be reduced to uncomplicated praise or sarcasm; both its cultural labour and its devouring tribunal remain in view. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n10]: The Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793. France’s paragraph surveys a range of revolutionary achievements rather than maintaining the narrow chronology of this morning’s action; the narration’s broader perspective is retained. [S058](#S058)

[^c02n11]: Interpretive note: the narrative explicitly makes Gamelin resemble his suffering Orestes, while Electra’s gesture gives the unfinished work a tenderness absent from the grandiose Tyrant. The comparison supplies evidence about his character without making the fictional canvas an identifiable surviving painting. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n12]: The proposed cards enact political replacement at the level of ordinary amusement: citizen succeeds royal servant, and abstract principles replace court ranks. The repeated substitution also becomes a small-scale counterpart of Gamelin’s programme for society. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n13]: The daughter’s absence is both family embarrassment and political exposure. France leaves the precise consequences unstated: the translation preserves the household’s evasive wording rather than supplying a legal accusation absent from the passage. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n14]: The French pluralises the surnames, des Pétion et des Roland. “Men like” conveys the speaker’s conversion of individual names into a suspect class. The sweeping attribution is Gamelin’s rhetoric, not a documentary finding by the narrator. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n15]: Sincèrement oublieux is a deliberate paradox. Gamelin’s denial is not presented as a calculated lie: his feeling of sincerity coexists with his inability to remember former allegiances. The compact contradiction is therefore kept. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n16]: Robert-François Damiens attacked Louis XV with a penknife in 1757 and was subjected to the spectacular punishment described here. The courtship recollection sets habitual royal violence beside the new regime’s violence; the mother’s tender memory does not register the contradiction. [S059](#S059)

[^c02n17]: Thomas-Arthur de Lally-Tollendal was executed in 1766 after the loss of French possessions in India. France makes the remembered public execution a marker in Gamelin’s private history; it should not be confused with the death of Damiens recalled immediately before it. [S060](#S060)

[^c02n18]: Loupe here has its older medical sense of a swelling or cyst beneath the skin, not its familiar optical sense of a magnifying glass. “Swelling” avoids diagnosing a specific modern condition while preserving the physical description. [S061](#S061)

[^c02n19]: Interpretive note: the apparently generic volunteer becomes exact likeness through the girl’s desire. The episode tests the relation between an image and the belief invested in it, while briefly turning Gamelin’s political art into a source of private consolation. [S056](#S056)

[^c02n20]: An assignat was revolutionary paper currency whose security was assigned to national property. The livre is the stated monetary denomination; no modern purchasing-power equivalent is supplied. Her payment gives the ostensibly valueless sketch an immediate practical value. [S062](#S062)

<a id="chapter-03"></a>

## III

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c03p001"></a>Dans l’après-midi du même jour, Évariste se rendit chez le citoyen Jean Blaise, marchand d’estampes, qui vendait aussi des boîtes, des cartonnages et toutes sortes de jeux, rue Honoré, vis-à-vis de l’Oratoire, proche les Messageries, à l'*Amour peintre*. Le magasin s’ouvrait au rez-de-chaussée d’une maison vieille de soixante ans, par une baie dont la voûte portait à sa clef un mascaron cornu. Le cintre de cette baie était rempli par une peinture à l’huile représentant "le Sicilien ou l’Amour peintre", d’après une composition de Boucher, que le père de Jean Blaise avait fait poser en 1770 et qu’effaçaient depuis lors le soleil et la pluie. De chaque côté de la porte, une baie semblable, avec une tête de nymphe en clef de voûte, garnie de vitres aussi grandes qu’il s’en était pu trouver, offrait aux regards les estampes à la mode et les dernières nouveautés de la gravure en couleurs. On y voyait, ce jour-là, des scènes galantes traitées avec une grâce un peu sèche par Boilly, *Leçons d’amour conjugal* et *Douces résistances*, dont se scandalisaient les Jacobins et que les purs dénonçaient à la Société des arts; la *Promenade publique* de Debucourt, avec un petit-maître en culotte serin, étalé sur trois chaises, des chevaux du jeune Carle Vernet, des aérostats, le *Bain de Virginie* et des figures d’après l’antique. | That afternoon Évariste went to see Citizen Jean Blaise, a print seller who also sold boxes, cardboard goods and every sort of game, in the Rue Honoré, opposite the Oratoire, near the coach offices, at the sign of *Love the Painter*[^c03n01]. The shop occupied the ground floor of a sixty-year-old house. Its entrance was an arched opening with a horned mask carved on the keystone. The arch was filled by an oil painting of “The Sicilian, or Love the Painter”, after a composition by Boucher, which Jean Blaise’s father had installed in 1770 and sun and rain had been erasing ever since. On either side of the door, a similar opening, with a nymph’s head on its keystone and fitted with the largest panes of glass obtainable, displayed fashionable prints and the latest novelties in colour engraving. That day there were scenes of gallantry drawn with a rather dry grace by Boilly, *Lessons in Conjugal Love*[^c03n02] and *Sweet Resistance*, which scandalised the Jacobins and were denounced by the purists to the Society of Arts; Debucourt’s *Public Promenade*, with a dandy in canary-yellow breeches sprawling across three chairs; horses by the young Carle Vernet; balloons; *Virginia Bathing*; and figures after the antique. |
| <a id="c03p002"></a>Parmi les citoyens dont le flot coulait devant le magasin, c’étaient les plus déguenillés qui s’arrêtaient le plus longtemps devant les deux belles vitrines, prompts à se distraire, avides d’images et jaloux de prendre, du moins par les yeux, leur part des biens de ce monde; ils admiraient bouche béante, tandis que les aristocrates donnaient un coup d’œil, fronçaient le sourcil et passaient. | Among the citizens streaming past the shop, the most ragged stopped longest before the two fine windows. Easily distracted, hungry for pictures and eager to take their share of this world’s goods at least through their eyes[^c03n03], they admired open-mouthed, while aristocrats glanced, frowned and passed on. |
| <a id="c03p003"></a>Du plus loin qu’il put l’apercevoir, Évariste leva ses regards vers une des fenêtres qui s’ouvraient au-dessus du magasin, celle de gauche, où il y avait un pot d’œillets rouges derrière le balcon de fer à coquille. Cette fenêtre éclairait la chambre d’Élodie, fille de Jean Blaise. Le marchand d’estampes habitait avec son unique enfant le premier étage de la maison. | As soon as he could see it, Évariste looked up at one of the windows above the shop, the one on the left, where a pot of red carnations stood behind an iron balcony decorated with a shell. That window lit the bedroom of Élodie, Jean Blaise’s daughter. The print seller occupied the first floor with his only child. |
| <a id="c03p004"></a>Évariste, s’étant arrêté un moment, comme pour prendre haleine devant l'*Amour peintre*, tourna le bec-de-cane. Il trouva la citoyenne Élodie qui, ayant vendu des gravures, deux compositions de Fragonard fils et de Naigeon, soigneusement choisies entre beaucoup d’autres, avant d’enfermer dans la caisse les assignats qu’elle venait de recevoir, les passait l’un après l’autre entre ses beaux yeux et le jour, pour en examiner les pontuseaux, les vergeures et le filigrane, inquiète, car il circulait autant de faux papier que de vrai, ce qui nuisait beaucoup au commerce. Comme autrefois ceux qui imitaient la signature du roi, les contrefacteurs de la monnaie nationale étaient punis de mort; cependant on trouvait des planches à assignats dans toutes les caves; les Suisses introduisaient de faux assignats par millions; on les jetait par paquets dans les auberges; les Anglais en débarquaient tous les jours des ballots sur nos côtes pour discréditer la République et réduire les patriotes à la misère, Élodie craignait de recevoir du mauvais papier et craignait plus encore d’en passer et d’être traitée comme complice de Pitt, s’en fiant toutefois à sa chance et sûre de se tirer d’affaire en toute rencontre. | Évariste paused for a moment before *Love the Painter*, as though to catch his breath, then turned the door handle. He found Citizen Élodie, who had just sold two prints, compositions by Fragonard’s son and Naigeon, carefully chosen from many others. Before locking away the assignats she had received, she was holding them one by one between her fine eyes and the light to examine their chain lines, laid lines and watermarks[^c03n04]. She was anxious, for as much forged paper circulated as genuine, greatly harming trade. Like those who had once imitated the king’s signature, counterfeiters of the national currency were punished with death. Yet assignat plates were found in every cellar; the Swiss brought in millions of counterfeit notes; bundles were thrown into inns; every day the English landed bales on our coasts to discredit the Republic and reduce patriots to destitution. Élodie feared accepting bad paper, and feared still more passing it on and being treated as Pitt’s accomplice[^c03n05]. Nevertheless, she trusted her luck and was certain she could extricate herself from any predicament. |
| <a id="c03p005"></a>Évariste la regarda de cet air sombre qui mieux que tous les sourires exprime l’amour. Elle le regarda avec une moue un peu moqueuse qui retroussait ses yeux noirs, et cette expression lui venait de ce qu’elle se savait aimée et qu’elle n’était pas fâchée de l’être et de ce que cette figure-là irrite un amoureux, l’excite à se plaindre, l’induit à se déclarer s’il ne l’a pas encore fait, ce qui était le cas d’Évariste. | Évariste looked at her with that sombre expression which declares love better than any smile. She looked back with a faintly mocking pout that tilted her dark eyes upwards. This expression came from knowing she was loved and being not displeased by it, and from knowing that such a face irritates a lover, provokes his complaints and induces him to declare himself if he has not already done so—which was Évariste’s case. |
| <a id="c03p006"></a>Ayant mis les assignats dans la caisse, elle tira de sa corbeille à ouvrage une écharpe blanche, qu’elle avait commencé de broder, et se mit à travailler. Elle était laborieuse et coquette, et comme, d’instinct, elle maniait l’aiguille pour plaire en même temps que pour se faire une parure, elle brodait de façons différentes selon ceux qui la regardaient: elle brodait nonchalamment pour ceux à qui elle voulait communiquer une douce langueur; elle brodait capricieusement pour ceux qu’elle s’amusait à désespérer un peu. Elle se mit à broder avec soin pour Évariste, en qui elle désirait entretenir un sentiment sérieux. | Having put the assignats in the till, she took from her workbasket a white scarf she had begun embroidering and resumed her work. She was industrious and coquettish. Instinctively using her needle to please as well as to make herself an ornament, she embroidered differently according to who was watching: languidly for those in whom she wished to inspire a gentle languor, capriciously for those whom it amused her to torment a little. For Évariste, in whom she wished to encourage a serious attachment, she began embroidering carefully[^c03n06]. |
| <a id="c03p007"></a>Élodie n’était ni très jeune ni très jolie. On pouvait la trouver laide au premier abord. Brune, le teint olivâtre, sous le grand mouchoir blanc noué négligemment autour de sa tête et d’où s’échappaient les boucles azurées de sa chevelure, ses yeux de feu charbonnaient leurs orbites. En son visage rond, aux pommettes saillantes, riant, un peu camus, agreste et voluptueux, le peintre retrouvait la tête du faune Borghèse, dont il admirait, sur un moulage, la divine espièglerie. De petites moustaches donnaient de l’accent à ses lèvres ardentes. Un sein qui semblait gonflé de tendresse soulevait le fichu croisé à la mode de l’année. Sa taille souple, ses jambes agiles, tout son corps robuste se mouvaient avec des grâces sauvages et délicieuses. Son regard, son souffle, les frissons de sa chair, tout en elle demandait le cœur et promettait l’amour. Derrière le comptoir de marchande, elle donnait l’idée d’une nymphe de la danse, d’une bacchante d’Opéra, dépouillée de sa peau de lynx, de son thyrse et de ses guirlandes de lierre, contenue, dissimulée par enchantement dans l’enveloppe modeste d’une ménagère de Chardin. | Élodie was neither very young nor very pretty. At first glance one might have thought her ugly. She was dark, her skin olive. Beneath the large white kerchief loosely tied round her head, from which escaped the blue-black curls of her hair, her fiery eyes charred their sockets. In her round, high-cheekboned, laughing, slightly snub-nosed face, rustic and voluptuous, the painter recognised the head of the Borghese faun, whose divine mischief he admired in a plaster cast. A little moustache gave emphasis to her ardent lips. A bosom that seemed swollen with tenderness lifted the fichu crossed in the fashion of that year. Her supple waist, her nimble legs, her whole robust body moved with wild, delicious grace. Her glance, her breath, the shivers of her flesh—everything about her asked for the heart and promised love. Behind the shop counter she suggested a dancing nymph, an operatic bacchante stripped of her lynx skin, her thyrsus and her ivy garlands, confined and magically disguised in the modest exterior of a housewife by Chardin[^c03n07]. |
| <a id="c03p008"></a>"Mon père n’est pas à la maison, dit-elle au peintre; attendez-le un moment: il ne tardera pas à rentrer." | “My father isn’t at home,” she told the painter. “Wait a little; he’ll soon be back.” |
| <a id="c03p009"></a>Les petites mains brunes faisaient courir l’aiguille à travers le linon. | Her small brown hands sent the needle running through the lawn. |
| <a id="c03p010"></a>"Trouvez-vous ce dessin à votre goût, monsieur Gamelin?" | “Do you like this design, Monsieur Gamelin?” |
| <a id="c03p011"></a>Gamelin était incapable de feindre. Et l’amour, en enflammant son courage, exaltait sa franchise. | Gamelin could not pretend. Love, inflaming his courage, intensified his frankness. |
| <a id="c03p012"></a>"Vous brodez avec habileté, citoyenne, mais, si vous voulez que je vous le dise, le dessin qui vous a été tracé n’est pas assez simple, assez nu, et se ressent du goût affecté qui régna trop longtemps en France dans l’art de décorer les étoffes, les meubles, les lambris; ces nœuds, ces guirlandes rappellent le style petit et mesquin qui fut en faveur sous le tyran. Le goût renaît. Hélas! nous revenons de loin. Du temps de l’infâme Louis XV, la décoration avait quelque chose de chinois. On faisait des commodes à gros ventre, à poignées contournées d’un aspect ridicule, qui ne sont bonnes qu’à être mises au feu pour chauffer les patriotes; la simplicité seule est belle. Il faut revenir à l’antique. David dessine des lits et des fauteuils d’après les vases étrusques et les peintures d’Herculanum. | “You embroider skilfully, Citizen, but if you want me to tell you, the design drawn for you isn’t simple or bare enough. It shows the affected taste that reigned too long in France in the decoration of fabrics, furniture and panelling. These knots and garlands recall the small, petty style favoured under the tyrant. Taste is reviving. Alas, we have a long way to come back. In the days of the infamous Louis XV, decoration had something Chinese about it. They made pot-bellied chests with twisted handles, ridiculous-looking things fit only to burn to warm patriots. Only simplicity is beautiful[^c03n08]. We must return to antiquity. David designs beds and chairs after Etruscan vases and the paintings of Herculaneum.” |
| <a id="c03p013"></a>— J’ai vu de ces lits et de ces fauteuils, dit Élodie, c’est beau! Bientôt on n’en voudra pas d’autres. Comme vous, j’adore l’antique. | “I’ve seen beds and chairs like that,” said Élodie. “They’re beautiful! Soon nobody will want anything else. Like you, I adore antiquity.” |
| <a id="c03p014"></a>— Eh bien! citoyenne, reprit Évariste, si vous aviez orné cette écharpe d’une grecque, de feuilles de lierre, de serpents ou de flèches entrecroisées, elle eût été digne d’une Spartiate... et de vous. Vous pouvez cependant garder ce modèle en le simplifiant, en le ramenant à la ligne droite." | “Well, Citizen,” Évariste continued, “if you had decorated this scarf with a Greek key[^c03n09], ivy leaves, snakes or crossed arrows, it would have been worthy of a Spartan woman… and of you. Still, you can keep this pattern if you simplify it and bring it back to the straight line.” |
| <a id="c03p015"></a>Elle lui demanda ce qu’il fallait ôter. | She asked what she should take out. |
| <a id="c03p016"></a>Il se pencha sur l’écharpe: ses joues effleurèrent les boucles d’Élodie. Leurs mains se rencontraient sur le linon, leurs souffles se mêlaient. Évariste goûtait en ce moment une joie infinie; mais, sentant près de ses lèvres les lèvres d’Élodie, il craignait d’avoir offensé la jeune fille et se retira brusquement. | He bent over the scarf; his cheeks brushed Élodie’s curls. Their hands met on the lawn, their breaths mingled. Évariste tasted infinite joy at that moment. But feeling Élodie’s lips close to his own, he feared he had offended the girl and abruptly drew away. |
| <a id="c03p017"></a>La citoyenne Blaise aimait Évariste Gamelin. Elle le trouvait superbe avec ses grands yeux ardents, son beau visage ovale, sa pâleur, ses abondants cheveux noirs, partagés sur le front et tombant à flots sur ses épaules, son maintien grave, son air froid, son abord sévère, sa parole ferme, qui ne flattait point. Et, comme elle l’aimait, elle lui prêtait un fier génie d’artiste qui éclaterait un jour en chefs-d’œuvre et rendrait son nom célèbre, et elle l’en aimait davantage. La citoyenne Blaise n’avait pas un culte pour la pudeur virile, sa morale n’était pas offensée de ce qu’un homme cédât à ses passions, à ses goûts, à ses désirs; elle aimait Évariste, qui était chaste; elle ne l’aimait pas parce qu’il était chaste; mais elle trouvait à ce qu’il le fût l’avantage de ne concevoir ni jalousie ni soupçons et de ne point craindre de rivales. | Citizen Blaise loved Évariste Gamelin. She found him magnificent, with his large, ardent eyes, his handsome oval face, his pallor, his abundant black hair parted on his forehead and falling in waves over his shoulders, his grave bearing, his cold air, his stern approach and his firm speech, which offered no flattery. And because she loved him, she endowed him with a proud artistic genius which would one day burst forth in masterpieces and make his name famous; for this she loved him still more. Citizen Blaise did not worship masculine modesty. Her morals were not offended when a man yielded to his passions, tastes or desires. She loved Évariste, who was chaste; she did not love him because he was chaste. But she saw the advantage in it: she felt neither jealousy nor suspicion, and had no rivals to fear. |
| <a id="c03p018"></a>Toutefois, en cet instant, elle le jugea un peu trop réservé. Si l’Aricie de Racine, qui aimait Hippolyte, admirait la vertu farouche du jeune héros, c’était avec l’espoir d’en triompher et elle eût bientôt gémi d’une sévérité de mœurs qu’il n’eût point adoucie pour elle. Et, dès qu’elle en trouva l’occasion, elle se déclara plus qu’à demi, pour le contraindre à se déclarer lui-même. A l’exemple de cette tendre Aricie, la citoyenne Blaise n’était pas très éloignée de croire qu’en amour la femme est tenue à faire des avances. "Les plus aimants, se disait-elle, sont les plus timides; ils ont besoin d’aide et d’encouragement. Telle est, au reste, leur candeur, qu’une femme peut faire la moitié du chemin et même davantage sans qu’ils s’en aperçoivent, en leur ménageant les apparences d’une attaque audacieuse et la gloire de la conquête." Ce qui la tranquillisait sur l’issue de l’affaire, c’est qu’elle savait avec certitude (et aussi n’y avait-il pas de doute à ce sujet) qu’Évariste, avant que la Révolution l’eût héroïsé, avait aimé très humainement une femme, une humble créature, la concierge de l’académie. | At that moment, however, she thought him a little too reserved. When Racine’s Aricia[^c03n10], in love with Hippolytus, admired the young hero’s fierce virtue, she did so in the hope of overcoming it, and would soon have lamented his strict morals had he not relaxed them for her. At the first opportunity she more than half declared herself to oblige him to do the same. Like that tender Aricia, Citizen Blaise was not far from believing that in love a woman was bound to make advances. “The most loving are the shyest,” she told herself. “They need help and encouragement. Besides, they’re so innocent that a woman can come halfway, or further, without their noticing, while leaving them the appearance of a bold attack and the glory of conquest.” What reassured her about the outcome was her certain knowledge—and there was no doubt about it—that before the Revolution had made a hero of him, Évariste had loved a woman in a thoroughly human way: a humble creature, the doorkeeper at the academy. |
| <a id="c03p019"></a>Élodie, qui n’était point une ingénue, concevait différentes sortes d’amour. Le sentiment que lui inspirait Évariste était assez profond pour qu’elle pensât lui engager sa vie. Elle était toute disposée à l’épouser, mais s’attendait à ce que son père n’approuvât pas l’union de sa fille unique avec un artiste obscur et pauvre. Gamelin n’avait rien; le marchand d’estampes remuait de grosses sommes d’argent. L'*Amour peintre* lui rapportait beaucoup, l’agio plus encore, et il s’était associé à un fournisseur qui livrait à la cavalerie de la République des bottes de jonc et de l’avoine mouillée. Enfin, le fils du coutelier de la rue Saint-Dominique était un mince personnage auprès de l’éditeur d’estampes connu dans toute l’Europe, apparenté aux Blaizot, aux Basan, aux Didot, et qui fréquentait chez les citoyens Saint-Pierre et Florian. Ce n’est pas qu’en fille obéissante elle tînt le consentement de son père pour nécessaire à son établissement. Le père, veuf de bonne heure, d’humeur avide et légère, grand coureur de filles, grand brasseur d’affaires, ne s’était jamais occupé d’elle, l’avait laissée grandir libre, sans conseils, sans amitié, soucieux non de surveiller, mais d’ignorer la conduite de cette fille, dont il appréciait en connaisseur le tempérament fougueux et les moyens de séduction bien autrement puissants qu’un joli visage. Trop généreuse pour se garder, trop intelligente pour se perdre, sage dans ses folies, le goût d’aimer ne lui avait jamais fait oublier les convenances sociales. Son père lui savait un gré infini de cette prudence; et, comme elle tenait de lui le sens du commerce et le goût des entreprises, il ne s’inquiétait pas des raisons mystérieuses qui détournaient du mariage une fille si nubile et la retenaient à la maison, où elle valait une gouvernante et quatre commis. A vingt-sept ans, elle se sentait d’âge et d’expérience à faire sa vie elle-même et n’éprouvait nul besoin de demander les conseils ou de suivre la volonté d’un père jeune, facile et distrait. Mais pour qu’elle épousât Gamelin, il aurait fallu que M. Blaise fît un sort à ce gendre pauvre, l’intéressât dans la maison, lui assurât des travaux comme il en assurait à plusieurs artistes, enfin, d’une manière ou d’une autre, lui créât des ressources; et cela elle jugeait impossible que l’un l’offrît, que l’autre l’acceptât, tant il y avait peu de sympathie entre ces deux hommes. | Élodie, who was no innocent, understood several kinds of love. Her feeling for Évariste was deep enough for her to think of pledging her life to him. She was quite ready to marry him, but expected her father to disapprove of his only daughter’s union with a poor, obscure artist. Gamelin had nothing; the print seller handled large sums. *Love the Painter* brought him a great deal, speculation still more, and he had joined forces with a contractor supplying the Republic’s cavalry with bundles of rushes and wet oats[^c03n11]. Moreover, the cutler’s son from the Rue Saint-Dominique was an insignificant figure beside the print publisher known throughout Europe, related to the Blaizots, the Basans and the Didots, and received in the houses of Citizens Saint-Pierre and Florian. It was not that, as an obedient daughter, she considered her father’s consent essential to settling her future. Widowed early, greedy and light-minded, a great pursuer of women and manipulator of business ventures, he had never concerned himself with her. He had let her grow up freely, without advice or affection, anxious to remain ignorant of her conduct rather than supervise it. As a connoisseur, he appreciated his daughter’s fiery temperament and powers of seduction, far more potent than a pretty face. Too generous to keep herself wholly safe, too intelligent to ruin herself, prudent in her follies, she had never let her love of loving make her forget social proprieties. Her father was infinitely grateful for this discretion. Since she had inherited his commercial sense and taste for enterprise, he did not trouble himself about the mysterious reasons that kept so marriageable a daughter unmarried and at home, where she was worth a housekeeper and four clerks. At twenty-seven she felt old and experienced enough to make her own life, with no need to seek advice or obey the wishes of a youthful, easy-going, inattentive father. But for her to marry Gamelin, Monsieur Blaise would have to provide a future for this penniless son-in-law, give him a share in the business, guarantee him commissions as he did for several artists—in short, create an income for him somehow. And she thought it impossible either that one should offer or the other accept, so little sympathy existed between the two men. |
| <a id="c03p020"></a>Cette difficulté embarrassait la tendre et sage Élodie. Elle envisageait sans terreur l’idée de s’unir à son ami par des liens secrets et de prendre l’auteur de la nature pour seul témoin de leur foi mutuelle. Sa philosophie ne trouvait pas condamnable une telle union que l’indépendance où elle vivait rendait possible et à laquelle le caractère honnête et vertueux d’Évariste donnerait une force rassurante; mais Gamelin avait grand-peine à subsister et à soutenir la vie de sa vieille mère: il ne semblait pas qu’il y eût dans une existence si étroite place pour un amour même réduit à la simplicité de la nature. D’ailleurs Évariste n’avait pas encore déclaré ses sentiments ni fait part de ses intentions. La citoyenne Blaise espérait bien l’y obliger avant peu. | This difficulty troubled tender, prudent Élodie. She could contemplate without terror uniting herself secretly with her beloved and taking the author of nature[^c03n12] as the sole witness to their mutual vows. Her philosophy found nothing blameworthy in such a union, which her independent life made possible and Évariste’s honest, virtuous character would give a reassuring strength. But Gamelin struggled to keep himself and his old mother alive. In so narrow an existence there seemed no room even for a love reduced to nature’s simplicity. Besides, Évariste had not yet declared his feelings or disclosed his intentions. Citizen Blaise fully hoped to compel him to do so before long. |
| <a id="c03p021"></a>Elle arrêta du même coup ses méditations et son aiguille: | She stopped her thoughts and her needle together. |
| <a id="c03p022"></a>"Citoyen Évariste, dit-elle, cette écharpe ne me plaira qu’autant qu’elle vous plaira à vous-même. Dessinez-moi un modèle, je vous prie. En l’attendant, je déferai comme Pénélope ce qui a été fait en votre absence." | “Citizen Évariste,” she said, “this scarf will please me only if it pleases you. Draw me a pattern, please. While I’m waiting, I’ll undo, like Penelope[^c03n13], what was done in your absence.” |
| <a id="c03p023"></a>Il répondit avec un sombre enthousiasme: | He answered with sombre enthusiasm: |
| <a id="c03p024"></a>"Je m’y engage, citoyenne. Je vous dessinerai le glaive d’Harmodius: une épée dans une guirlande." | “I promise, Citizen. I’ll draw you Harmodius’ sword[^c03n14]: a blade in a garland.” |
| <a id="c03p025"></a>Et, tirant son crayon, il esquissa des épées et des fleurs dans ce style sobre et nu, qu’il aimait. Et, en même temps, il exposait ses doctrines. | Taking out his pencil, he sketched swords and flowers in the spare, bare style he loved. At the same time he explained his doctrines. |
| <a id="c03p026"></a>"Les Français régénérés, disait-il, doivent répudier tous les legs de la servitude: le mauvais goût, la mauvaise forme, le mauvais dessin. Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard travaillaient pour des tyrans et pour des esclaves. Dans leurs ouvrages, nul sentiment du bon style ni de la ligne pure; nulle part la nature ni la vérité. Des masques, des poupées, des chiffons, des singeries. La postérité méprisera leurs frivoles ouvrages. Dans cent ans, tous les tableaux de Watteau auront péri méprisés dans les greniers; en 1893, les étudiants en peinture recouvriront de leurs ébauches les toiles de Boucher. David a ouvert la voie: il se rapproche de l’antique; mais il n’est pas encore assez simple, assez grand, assez nu. Nos artistes ont encore bien des secrets à apprendre des frises d’Herculanum, des bas-reliefs romains, des vases étrusques." | “The regenerated French,” he said, “must reject every legacy of servitude: bad taste, bad form, bad drawing. Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard worked for tyrants and slaves. In their works there is no feeling for good style or pure line; nowhere nature or truth. Masks, dolls, rags, monkey tricks. Posterity will despise their frivolous works. A hundred years from now all Watteau’s paintings will have perished, despised, in attics; in 1893[^c03n15] painting students will cover Boucher’s canvases with their sketches. David has shown the way: he approaches antiquity, but he is not yet simple, great or bare enough. Our artists still have many secrets to learn from Herculaneum’s friezes, Roman reliefs and Etruscan vases.” |
| <a id="c03p027"></a>Il parla longtemps de la beauté antique, puis revint à Fragonard, qu’il poursuivait d’une haine inextinguible: | He spoke at length about ancient beauty, then returned to Fragonard, whom he pursued with inextinguishable hatred. |
| <a id="c03p028"></a>"Le connaissez-vous, citoyenne?" | “Do you know him, Citizen?” |
| <a id="c03p029"></a>Élodie fit signe qu’oui. | Élodie nodded. |
| <a id="c03p030"></a>"Vous connaissez aussi le bonhomme Greuze, qui certes est suffisamment ridicule avec son habit écarlate et son épée. Mais il a l’air d’un sage de la Grèce auprès de Fragonard. Je l’ai rencontré, il y a quelque temps, ce misérable vieillard, trottinant sous les arcades du Palais-Égalité, poudré, galant, frétillant, égrillard, hideux. A cette vue, je souhaitai qu’à défaut d’Apollon quelque vigoureux ami des arts le pendît à un arbre et l’écorchât comme Marsyas, en exemple éternel aux mauvais peintres." | “You also know old Greuze, who is certainly ridiculous enough in his scarlet coat and sword. But beside Fragonard he looks like a Greek sage. I met that wretched old man some time ago, trotting under the arcades of the Palais-Égalité, powdered, gallant, twitching, lecherous, hideous. The sight made me wish that, failing Apollo, some vigorous friend of the arts would hang him from a tree and flay him like Marsyas[^c03n16], as an eternal warning to bad painters.” |
| <a id="c03p031"></a>Élodie fixa sur lui le regard de ses yeux gais et voluptueux: | Élodie fixed him with her merry, voluptuous eyes. |
| <a id="c03p032"></a>"Vous savez haïr, monsieur Gamelin, faut-il croire que vous savez aussi ai.... | “You know how to hate, Monsieur Gamelin. Are we to believe you also know how to lo—” |
| <a id="c03p033"></a>— C’est vous, Gamelin?" fit une voix de ténor, la voix du citoyen Blaise qui rentrait dans son magasin, bottes craquantes, breloques sonnantes, basques envolées, et coiffé d’un énorme chapeau noir dont les cornes lui descendaient sur les épaules. | “Is that you, Gamelin?” came a tenor voice, the voice of Citizen Blaise returning to his shop, boots creaking, watch charms jingling, coat-tails flying, an enormous black hat on his head whose points reached down to his shoulders. |
| <a id="c03p034"></a>Élodie, emportant sa corbeille, monta dans sa chambre. | Carrying her workbasket, Élodie went up to her room. |
| <a id="c03p035"></a>"Eh bien, Gamelin! demanda le citoyen Blaise, m’apportez-vous quelque chose de neuf? | “Well, Gamelin!” Citizen Blaise asked. “Have you brought me anything new?” |
| <a id="c03p036"></a>— Peut-être", dit le peintre. | “Perhaps,” said the painter. |
| <a id="c03p037"></a>Et il exposa son idée: | He explained his idea: |
| <a id="c03p038"></a>"Nos cartes à jouer offrent un contraste choquant avec l’état des mœurs. Les noms de valet et de roi offensent les oreilles d’un patriote. J’ai conçu et exécuté le nouveau jeu de cartes révolutionnaire dans lequel aux rois, aux dames, aux valets sont substituées les Libertés, les Égalités, les Fraternités; les as, entourés de faisceaux, s’appellent les Lois.... Vous annoncez Liberté de trèfle, Égalité de pique, Fraternité de carreau, Loi de cœur.... Je crois ces cartes assez fièrement dessinées; j’ai l’intention de les faire graver en taille-douce par Desmahis, et de prendre un brevet." | “Our playing cards offer a shocking contrast with our present morals. The names jack and king offend a patriot’s ears. I’ve designed and executed a new revolutionary pack in which Liberties, Equalities and Fraternities replace kings, queens and jacks; the aces, surrounded by fasces, are called Laws… You announce Liberty of clubs, Equality of spades, Fraternity of diamonds, Law of hearts[^c03n17]… I think the cards have a certain grandeur of design. I intend to have Desmahis engrave them in intaglio, and to take out a patent.” |
| <a id="c03p039"></a>Et, tirant de son carton quelques figures terminées à l’aquarelle, l’artiste les tendit au marchand d’estampes. | Taking several finished watercolour figures from his portfolio, the artist held them out to the print seller. |
| <a id="c03p040"></a>Le citoyen Blaise refusa de les prendre et détourna la tête. | Citizen Blaise refused to take them and turned his head away. |
| <a id="c03p041"></a>"Mon petit, portez cela à la Convention, qui vous accordera les honneurs de la séance. Mais n’espérez pas tirer un sol de votre nouvelle invention, qui n’est pas nouvelle. Vous vous êtes levé trop tard. Votre jeu de cartes révolutionnaire est le troisième qu’on m’apporte. Votre camarade Dugourc m’a offert, la semaine dernière, un jeu de piquet avec quatre Génies, quatre Libertés, quatre Égalités. On m’a proposé un autre jeu où il y avait des sages, des braves, Caton, Rousseau, Annibal, qui sais-je encore!... Et ces cartes avaient sur les vôtres, mon ami, l’avantage d’être grossièrement dessinées et gravées sur bois au canif. Que vous connaissez peu les hommes pour croire que les joueurs se serviront de cartes dessinées dans le goût de David et gravées dans la manière de Bartolozzi! Et c’est encore une étrange illusion de croire qu’il faille faire tant de façons pour conformer les vieux jeux de cartes aux idées actuelles. D’eux-mêmes, les bons sans-culottes en corrigent l’incivisme en annonçant: "Le tyran!" ou simplement: "Le gros cochon!" Ils se servent de leurs cartes crasseuses et n’en achètent jamais d’autres. La grande consommation de jeux se fait dans les tripots du Palais-Égalité: je vous conseille d’y aller et d’offrir aux croupiers et aux pontes vos Libertés, vos Égalités, vos..., comment dites-vous?... vos Lois de cœur... et vous reviendrez me dire comment ils vous ont reçu!" | “My boy, take those to the Convention, which will grant you the honours of admission to its sitting. But don’t hope to earn a sou from your new invention, which isn’t new. You got up too late. Yours is the third revolutionary pack I’ve been offered. Last week your colleague Dugourc[^c03n18] brought me a piquet pack with four Spirits, four Liberties and four Equalities. Someone proposed another with sages and heroes, Cato, Rousseau, Hannibal and heaven knows who else! And those cards had the advantage over yours, my friend, of being roughly drawn and cut in wood with a penknife. How little you know men if you think gamblers will use cards designed in David’s taste and engraved in Bartolozzi’s manner! And what a strange illusion to believe so much fuss is needed to bring old packs into line with current ideas. The good sans-culottes correct their unpatriotic character themselves by announcing ‘The tyrant!’ or simply ‘The great pig!’ They use their greasy cards and never buy any others. The great consumers of cards are the gambling dens of the Palais-Égalité. I suggest you go there and offer your Liberties, your Equalities, your—what do you call them?—your Laws of hearts to the croupiers and punters… then come back and tell me how they received you!” |
| <a id="c03p042"></a>Le citoyen Blaise s’assit sur le comptoir, donna des pichenettes sur sa culotte nankin pour en ôter les grains de tabac, et, regardant Gamelin avec une douce pitié: | Citizen Blaise sat on the counter, flicked grains of tobacco from his nankeen breeches and looked at Gamelin with gentle pity. |
| <a id="c03p043"></a>"Permettez-moi de vous donner un conseil, citoyen peintre: si vous voulez gagner votre vie, laissez là vos cartes patriotiques, laissez là vos symboles révolutionnaires, vos Hercules, vos hydres, vos Furies poursuivant le crime, vos génies de la Liberté, et peignez-moi de jolies filles. L’ardeur des citoyens à se régénérer tiédit avec le temps et les hommes aimeront toujours les femmes. Faites-moi des femmes toutes roses, avec de petits pieds et de petites mains. Et mettez-vous dans la tête que personne ne s’intéresse plus à la Révolution et qu’on ne veut plus en entendre parler." | “Let me give you some advice, Citizen Painter. If you want to earn a living, leave your patriotic cards alone, leave your revolutionary symbols, your Hercules figures, hydras, Furies pursuing crime, your spirits of Liberty, and paint pretty girls for me[^c03n19]. The citizens’ eagerness to regenerate themselves cools with time, and men will always love women. Make me women all pink, with little feet and little hands. And get it into your head that nobody is interested in the Revolution any more, and nobody wants to hear of it.” |
| <a id="c03p044"></a>Du coup, Évariste Gamelin se cabra: | At that Évariste Gamelin reared up. |
| <a id="c03p045"></a>"Quoi! ne plus entendre parler de la Révolution!... Mais l’établissement de la liberté, les victoires de nos armées, le châtiment des tyrans sont des événements qui étonneront la postérité la plus reculée? Comment n’en pourrions-nous pas être frappés?... Quoi! la secte du sans-culotte Jésus a duré près de dix-huit siècles, et le culte de la Liberté serait aboli après quatre ans à peine d’existence!" | “What! No longer hear of the Revolution! But the establishment of liberty, our armies’ victories, the punishment of tyrants are events that will astonish the remotest posterity! How could we fail to be struck by them? What! The sect of the sans-culotte Jesus has lasted nearly eighteen centuries, and the cult of Liberty is to vanish after barely four years!” |
| <a id="c03p046"></a>Mais Jean Blaise, d’un air de supériorité: | But Jean Blaise answered with an air of superiority: |
| <a id="c03p047"></a>"Vous êtes dans le rêve; moi, je suis dans la vie. Croyez-moi, mon ami, la Révolution ennuie: elle dure trop. Cinq ans d’enthousiasme, cinq ans d’embrassades, de massacres, de discours, de *Marseillaise*, de tocsins, d’aristocrates à la lanterne, de têtes portées sur des piques, de femmes à cheval sur des canons, d’arbres de la Liberté coiffés du bonnet rouge, de jeunes filles et de vieillards traînés en robes blanches dans des chars de fleurs; d’emprisonnements, de guillotine, de rationnements, d’affiches, de cocardes, de panaches, de sabres, de carmagnoles, c’est long! Et puis l’on commence à n’y plus rien comprendre. Nous en avons trop vu, de ces grands citoyens que vous n’avez conduits au Capitole que pour les précipiter ensuite de la roche Tarpéienne, Necker, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly, Pétion, Manuel, et tant d’autres. Qui nous dit que vous ne préparez pas le même sort à vos nouveaux héros?... On ne sait plus. | “You live in a dream; I live in life. Believe me, my friend, the Revolution is boring: it goes on too long. Five years of enthusiasm, five years of embracing, massacres, speeches, the *Marseillaise*, alarm bells, aristocrats strung up from lamp-posts[^c03n20], heads carried on pikes, women astride cannon, Liberty trees topped with red caps, young girls and old men drawn along in white robes on flower-decked chariots; imprisonments, guillotining, rationing, posters, cockades, plumes, sabres, carmagnoles—it’s a long time! And besides, we’re beginning not to understand it any more. We’ve seen too many of these great citizens whom you took up to the Capitol only to hurl them from the Tarpeian Rock afterwards: Necker, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly, Pétion, Manuel and so many others. Who can say you aren’t preparing the same fate for your new heroes? We don’t know what to think any more.” |
| <a id="c03p048"></a>— Nommez-les, citoyen Blaise, nommez-les ces héros que nous nous préparons à sacrifier! dit Gamelin, d’un ton qui rappela le marchand d’estampes à la prudence. | “Name them, Citizen Blaise, name these heroes whom we’re preparing to sacrifice!” said Gamelin, in a tone that recalled the print seller to caution. |
| <a id="c03p049"></a>— Je suis républicain et patriote, répliqua-t-il, la main sur son cœur. Je suis aussi républicain que vous, je suis aussi patriote que vous, citoyen Évariste Gamelin. Je ne soupçonne pas votre civisme et ne vous accuse nullement de versatilité. Mais sachez que mon civisme et mon dévouement à la chose publique sont attestés par des actes nombreux. Mes principes, les voici: Je donne ma confiance à tout individu capable de servir la nation. Devant les hommes que la voix publique désigne au périlleux honneur du pouvoir législatif, comme Marat, comme Robespierre, je m’incline; je suis prêt à les aider dans la mesure de mes faibles moyens et à leur apporter l’humble concours d’un bon citoyen. Les comités peuvent témoigner de mon zèle et de mon dévouement. En société avec de vrais patriotes, j’ai fourni de l’avoine et du fourrage à notre brave cavalerie, des souliers à nos soldats. Aujourd’hui même, je fais envoyer de Vernon soixante bœufs à l’armée du Midi, à travers un pays infesté de brigands et battu par les émissaires de Pitt et de Condé. Je ne parle pas; j’agis." | “I am a republican and a patriot,” he replied, his hand on his heart. “I am as republican as you are, as patriotic as you are, Citizen Évariste Gamelin. I don’t suspect your civic loyalty, and I certainly don’t accuse you of fickleness. But understand that my civic loyalty and devotion to the common good are proved by numerous actions. Here are my principles. I give my confidence to anyone capable of serving the nation. Before men whom the public voice designates for the perilous honour of legislative power, such as Marat and Robespierre, I bow. I’m ready to help them within my modest means and offer the humble assistance of a good citizen. The committees can testify to my zeal and devotion. In partnership with true patriots, I’ve supplied oats and fodder to our brave cavalry, shoes to our soldiers. This very day I’m having sixty oxen sent from Vernon to the Army of the South, through country infested with brigands and overrun by the emissaries of Pitt and Condé. I don’t talk; I act.” |
| <a id="c03p050"></a>Gamelin remit tranquillement ses aquarelles dans son carton, dont il noua les cordons et qu’il passa sous son bras. | Gamelin calmly returned his watercolours to the portfolio, tied its strings and put it under his arm. |
| <a id="c03p051"></a>"C’est une étrange contradiction, dit-il, les dents serrées, que d’aider nos soldats à porter à travers le monde cette liberté qu’on trahit dans ses foyers en semant le trouble et l’inquiétude dans l’âme de ses défenseurs.... Salut, citoyen Blaise." | “It’s a strange contradiction,” he said through clenched teeth, “to help our soldiers carry liberty across the world while betraying it in one’s own home by sowing trouble and anxiety in the minds of its defenders… Farewell, Citizen Blaise.” |
| <a id="c03p052"></a>Avant de s’engager dans la ruelle qui longe l’Oratoire, Gamelin, le cœur gros d’amour et de colère, se retourna pour donner un regard aux œillets rouges fleuris sur le rebord d’une fenêtre. | Before turning into the lane beside the Oratoire, Gamelin, his heart heavy with love and anger, looked back at the red carnations flowering on a windowsill. |
| <a id="c03p053"></a>Il ne désespérait point du salut de la patrie. Aux propos inciviques de Jean Blaise il opposait sa foi révolutionnaire. Encore lui fallait-il reconnaître que ce marchand ne prétendait pas sans quelque apparence de raison que désormais le peuple de Paris se désintéressait des événements. Hélas! il n’était que trop certain qu’à l’enthousiasme de la première heure succédait l’indifférence générale, et qu’on ne reverrait plus les grandes foules unanimes de Quatre-vingt-neuf, qu’on ne reverrait plus les millions d’âmes harmonieuses qui se pressaient en Quatre-vingt-dix autour de l’autel des fédérés. Eh bien! les bons citoyens redoubleraient de zèle et d’audace, réveilleraient le peuple assoupi, en lui donnant le choix de la liberté ou de la mort. | He did not despair of his country’s salvation. Against Jean Blaise’s unpatriotic remarks he set his revolutionary faith. Still, he had to admit that the merchant was not wholly without apparent grounds in claiming that the people of Paris were now losing interest in events. Alas, it was only too certain that the first hour’s enthusiasm had given way to general indifference; that the great unanimous crowds of Eighty-nine would never be seen again, nor the millions of souls in harmony who thronged round the altar of the federates in Ninety. Very well! Good citizens would redouble their zeal and daring, rousing the sleeping people by giving them the choice of liberty or death. |
| <a id="c03p054"></a>Ainsi songeait Gamelin, et la pensée d’Élodie soutenait son courage. | So Gamelin thought, and the thought of Élodie sustained his courage. |
| <a id="c03p055"></a>Arrivé aux quais, il vit le soleil descendre à l’horizon sous des nuées pesantes, semblables à des montagnes de lave incandescente; les toits de la ville baignaient dans une lumière d’or; les vitres des fenêtres jetaient des éclairs. Et Gamelin imaginait des Titans forgeant, avec les débris ardents des vieux mondes, Dicé, la cité d’airain. | Reaching the quays, he saw the sun sink towards the horizon beneath heavy clouds like mountains of glowing lava. The city’s roofs bathed in golden light; its windowpanes flashed. And Gamelin imagined Titans forging Dicé, the city of bronze[^c03n21], from the burning wreckage of old worlds. |
| <a id="c03p056"></a>N’ayant pas un morceau de pain pour sa mère ni pour lui, il rêvait de s’asseoir à la table sans bouts qui convierait l’univers et où prendrait place l’humanité régénérée. En attendant, il se persuadait que la patrie, en bonne mère, nourrirait son enfant fidèle. Se roidissant contre les dédains du marchand d’estampes, il s’excitait à croire que son idée d’un jeu de cartes révolutionnaire était nouvelle et bonne et qu’avec ses aquarelles bien réussies il tenait une fortune sous son bras. "Desmahis les gravera, pensait-il. Nous éditerons nous-mêmes le nouveau jeu patriotique et nous sommes sûrs d’en vendre dix mille, à vingt sols chaque, en un mois." | Without a piece of bread for his mother or himself, he dreamed of sitting at the endless table to which the universe would be invited, where regenerated humanity would take its place. Meanwhile he persuaded himself that his country, a good mother, would feed her faithful child. Stiffening against the print seller’s contempt, he worked himself into believing that his idea for revolutionary cards was good and new, and that his successful watercolours meant he was carrying a fortune under his arm. “Desmahis will engrave them,” he thought. “We’ll publish the new patriotic pack ourselves, and we’re certain to sell ten thousand at twenty sous each in a month.” |
| <a id="c03p057"></a>Et, dans son impatience de réaliser ce projet, il se dirigea à grands pas sur le quai de la Ferraille, où logeait Desmahis, au-dessus du vitrier. | Impatient to put his plan into practice, he strode towards the Quai de la Ferraille, where Desmahis lodged above a glazier’s shop. |
| <a id="c03p058"></a>On entrait par la boutique. La vitrière avertit Gamelin que le citoyen Desmahis n’était pas chez lui, ce qui ne pouvait beaucoup surprendre le peintre, qui savait que son ami était d’humeur vagabonde et dissipée, et qui s’étonnait qu’on pût graver autant et si bien qu’il le faisait avec aussi peu d’assiduité. Gamelin résolut de l’attendre un moment. La femme du vitrier lui offrit un siège. Elle était morose et se plaignait des affaires qui allaient mal, quoiqu’on eût dit que la Révolution, en cassant les carreaux, enrichissait les vitriers. | The entrance was through the shop. The glazier’s wife told Gamelin that Citizen Desmahis was out, which could hardly surprise the painter. He knew his friend’s wandering, dissipated nature, and marvelled that he could engrave so much and so well with so little application. Gamelin decided to wait a little. The glazier’s wife offered him a chair. She was gloomy and complained of poor business, though one might have supposed that, by breaking windows, the Revolution enriched glaziers. |
| <a id="c03p059"></a>La nuit tombait: renonçant à attendre son camarade, Gamelin prit congé de la vitrière. Comme il passait sur le Pont-Neuf, il vit déboucher du quai des Morfondus des gardes nationaux à cheval qui refoulaient les passants, portaient des torches et, avec un grand cliquetis de sabres, escortaient une charrette qui traînait lentement à la guillotine un homme dont personne ne savait le nom, un ci-devant, le premier condamné du nouveau tribunal révolutionnaire. On l’apercevait confusément entre les chapeaux des gardes, assis, les mains liées sur le dos, la tête nue et ballante, tournée vers le cul de la charrette. Le bourreau se tenait debout près de lui, appuyé à la ridelle. Les passants, arrêtés, disaient entre eux que c’était probablement quelque affameur du peuple et regardaient avec indifférence. Gamelin, s’étant approché, reconnut parmi les spectateurs Desmahis, qui s’efforçait de fendre la foule et de couper le cortège. Il l’appela et lui mit la main sur l’épaule; Desmahis tourna la tête. C’était un jeune homme beau et vigoureux. | Night was falling. Giving up his wait, Gamelin took leave of the glazier’s wife. Crossing the Pont-Neuf, he saw mounted National Guards emerge from the Quai des Morfondus, pushing back passers-by and carrying torches. With a great clatter of sabres they escorted a cart slowly dragging a man to the guillotine. Nobody knew his name[^c03n22]: a former nobleman, the first man condemned by the new Revolutionary Tribunal. He could be glimpsed between the guards’ hats, seated with his hands tied behind his back, his bare, lolling head turned towards the back of the cart. The executioner stood beside him, leaning against the side rail. The halted passers-by told one another that he was probably some starver of the people, and watched indifferently. Drawing closer, Gamelin recognised Desmahis among the spectators, trying to force his way through the crowd and cut across the procession. He called and put his hand on his shoulder. Desmahis turned his head. He was a handsome, vigorous young man. |
| <a id="c03p060"></a>On disait naguère, à l’académie, qu’il portait la tête de Bacchus sur le corps d’Hercule. Ses amis l’appelaient "Barbaroux", à cause de sa ressemblance avec ce représentant du peuple. | At the academy they used to say that he carried the head of Bacchus on the body of Hercules. His friends called him “Barbaroux”, because he resembled that representative of the people. |
| <a id="c03p061"></a>"Viens, lui dit Gamelin, j’ai à te parler d’une affaire importante. | “Come with me,” Gamelin said. “I need to speak to you about an important matter.” |
| <a id="c03p062"></a>— Laisse-moi!" répondit vivement Desmahis. | “Leave me alone!” Desmahis answered sharply. |
| <a id="c03p063"></a>Et il jeta quelques mots indistincts, en guettant le moment de s’élancer: | Watching for his moment to dash forward, he flung out a few indistinct words. |
| <a id="c03p064"></a>"Je suivais une femme divine, en chapeau de paille, une ouvrière de modes, ses cheveux blonds sur le dos: cette maudite charrette m’en a séparé.... Elle a passé devant, elle est déjà au bout du pont." | “I was following a divine woman in a straw hat, a milliner, her fair hair down her back. That damned cart separated us[^c03n23]… She’s gone ahead; she’s already at the end of the bridge.” |
| <a id="c03p065"></a>Gamelin tenta de le retenir par son habit, jurant que la chose était d’importance. | Gamelin tried to hold him by his coat, insisting that the matter was important. |
| <a id="c03p066"></a>Mais Desmahis s’était déjà coulé à travers chevaux, gardes, sabres et torches et poursuivait la demoiselle de modes. | But Desmahis had already slipped through horses, guards, sabres and torches and was pursuing the milliner. |

### Notes

[^c03n01]: The shop sign echoes Molière’s Le Sicilien ou l’Amour peintre. The Louvre catalogues Laurent Cars’s engraving after Boucher for the 1734 Molière. The theatrical title thus connects the print trade, courtship and the encounter between painter and shopkeeper’s daughter. [S063](#S063)

[^c03n02]: The display mixes fashionable erotic scenes, urban entertainment, horses, balloons and antique subjects. Interpretively, it establishes a market of varied appetites before Gamelin arrives with a single moral and aesthetic programme. The French titles have been translated rather than silently replaced with catalogue variants. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n03]: Interpretive note: looking becomes a substitute for ownership. The ragged spectators’ appetite for images complicates any easy division between aristocratic luxury and popular virtue; the passage grants them pleasure without pretending that visual access removes their poverty. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n04]: Pontuseaux and vergeures are the wider and narrower marks made by a papermaking mould; a filigrane is a watermark. Élodie is examining the paper’s manufacture, not simply reading the printed note. These technical terms make her commercial competence visible. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n05]: The paragraph depicts an atmosphere in which commercial risk becomes political suspicion. Its sweeping account of foreign counterfeiting is retained as the narration presents it; no quantities or individual operations are independently certified here. “Our coasts” preserves the French narrative’s momentary national identification. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n06]: Interpretive note: the same manual labour produces both an object and a calculated effect on the spectator. Élodie’s differentiated performances of embroidery anticipate the chapter’s wider concern with images, audiences and the practical management of desire. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n07]: Chardin supplies the contrasting domestic pictorial register to the faun, nymph and bacchante. Interpretively, Élodie’s appearance is not exhausted by either category: the narration imagines exuberant physical life held within the modest costume of household work. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n08]: Gamelin’s aesthetic prescription and political morality use the same opposition between regeneration and servitude. His condemnation belongs to his character. The translation preserves the emphatic exclusiveness rather than turning the speech into a neutral account of changing artistic fashion. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n09]: Une grecque is the angular repeating ornament also called a meander. Its straight turns make it an appropriate example in Gamelin’s argument for reducing the scarf’s curving decorative design to an austere geometry. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n10]: In Phèdre, Aricia loves Hippolytus partly for the challenge of subduing his proud resistance to love; she also anticipates suffering from that resistance. France closely recalls her speech in Act II, scene 1, while placing its aristocratic tragic language beside Élodie’s practical courtship. [S064](#S064)

[^c03n11]: This supplies the incriminating commercial detail behind Blaise’s later claim to have furnished patriotic cavalry supplies. Interpretively, the mention of unsuitable or adulterated fodder prevents his patriotic self-description from being read without reference to profit. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n12]: The circumlocution avoids naming a church or priest as guarantor of the imagined union. Élodie considers a private commitment sanctioned by the creator and by Gamelin’s character; this is her proposed arrangement, not a description of a completed legal marriage. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n13]: The comparison turns the familiar image of faithful waiting into a flirtatious proposal: Élodie will unpick work done without Évariste, inviting him to replace it with his own design. The immediate point is her active courtship rather than patient passivity. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n14]: Athenaeus preserves drinking songs celebrating Harmodius and Aristogeiton, with the sword concealed or wreathed in myrtle and the killing of the tyrant linked to Athenian equality. Gamelin’s floral pattern therefore carries a political charge beneath its courtship function. [S065](#S065)

[^c03n15]: The precise future date marks Gamelin’s claim as a prophecy made from within 1793. For France’s later readers, the survival and reputation of the painters expose the limits of that certainty. The date is retained rather than converted into a narrator’s retrospective judgement. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n16]: Marsyas’ punishment is flaying after a contest with Apollo. The British Museum’s ancient representation shows him tied to a tree awaiting it. Gamelin invokes artistic authority to imagine exemplary bodily punishment: the language of aesthetic purity has acquired an executioner. [S066](#S066)

[^c03n17]: The French loi de cœur combines a legal-political abstraction with a familiar card suit. Retaining this slightly strange English formulation makes Blaise’s subsequent mockery intelligible. Fasces are bundles of rods, here functioning as the cards’ surrounding emblem. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n18]: Jean-Démosthène Dugourc’s revolutionary cards are documented objects, not merely Blaise’s invention. The BnF records a 1793 thirty-two-card woodcut pack replacing kings, queens and jacks with Genius, Liberty and Equality, with Law above them. [S067](#S067)

[^c03n19]: Interpretive note: Blaise’s advice repeats the artistic subject Gamelin has rejected. Neither commercial success nor moral seriousness automatically guarantees artistic quality: the novel has already shown the weakness of Gamelin’s earlier erotic canvases. The return to this offer closes the argument about the market. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n20]: À la lanterne refers to hanging from a street lamp or its supporting structure. The translation spells out the violence concealed in the short French formula; the phrase is one item in Blaise’s deliberately exhausting catalogue. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n21]: France names the imagined city without explaining or locating it. The translation retains Dicé rather than replacing the vision with an abstract “Justice”. Interpretively, the glowing city belongs to Gamelin’s imagination and contrasts with the immediate absence of bread. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n22]: The condemned person remains anonymous in the scene. No identity is supplied in the translation: the spectators substitute the allegation of starving the people for knowledge of the man. This indifference answers the sublime civic vision that immediately precedes the procession. [S056](#S056)

[^c03n23]: Interpretive note: Desmahis experiences the execution procession as an obstacle to a pursuit of pleasure. France lets political death and erotic distraction occupy the same public space without making either man deliver a moral commentary on the juxtaposition. [S056](#S056)

<a id="chapter-04"></a>

## IV

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c04p001"></a>Il était dix heures du matin. Le soleil d’avril trempait de lumière les tendres feuilles des arbres. Allégé par l’orage de la nuit, l’air avait une douceur délicieuse. A longs intervalles, un cavalier, passant sur l’allée des Veuves, rompait le silence de la solitude. Au bord de l’allée ombreuse, contre la chaumière de *La Belle Lilloise*, sur un banc de bois, Évariste attendait Élodie. Depuis le jour où leurs doigts s’étaient rencontrés sur le linon de l’écharpe, où leurs souffles s’étaient mêlés, il n’était plus revenu à l'*Amour peintre*. Pendant toute une semaine, son orgueilleux stoïcisme et sa timidité, qui devenait sans cesse plus farouche, l’avaient tenu éloigné d’Élodie. Il lui avait écrit une lettre grave, sombre, ardente, dans laquelle, exposant les griefs dont il chargeait le citoyen Blaise et taisant son amour, dissimulant sa douleur, il annonçait sa résolution de ne plus retourner au magasin d’estampes et montrait à suivre cette résolution plus de fermeté que n’en pouvait approuver une amante. | It was ten in the morning. The April sun soaked the trees’ tender leaves in light. Cleared by the night’s storm, the air was deliciously mild. At long intervals a rider passing along the Allée des Veuves broke the silence of the deserted place. On a wooden bench beside the shady avenue, against the cottage of *La Belle Lilloise*, Évariste waited for Élodie. Since the day their fingers had met on the lawn of the scarf and their breaths had mingled, he had not returned to *Love the Painter*. For a whole week his proud stoicism[^c04n01] and his increasingly fierce shyness had kept him away from her. He had written her a grave, sombre, ardent letter setting out his grievances against Citizen Blaise, concealing his love and suppressing his pain. He announced his decision never to return to the print shop and displayed more firmness in his intention than a woman in love could approve. |
| <a id="c04p002"></a>D’un naturel contraire, Élodie, encline à défendre son bien en toute occasion, songea tout de suite à rattraper son ami. Elle pensa d’abord à l’aller voir chez lui, dans l’atelier de la place de Thionville. Mais, le sachant d’humeur chagrine, jugeant, par sa lettre, qu’il avait l’âme irritée, craignant qu’il n’enveloppât dans la même rancune la fille et le père et ne s’étudiât à ne la plus revoir, elle pensa meilleur de lui donner un rendez-vous sentimental et romanesque auquel il ne pourrait se dérober, où elle aurait tout loisir de persuader et de plaire, où la solitude conspirerait avec elle pour le charmer et le vaincre. | Élodie, of a contrary nature and inclined to defend what was hers on every occasion, immediately thought of recovering her beloved. At first she considered visiting him at his studio on the Place de Thionville. But knowing his gloomy disposition, judging from his letter that his feelings were inflamed, and fearing he might include daughter and father in the same resentment and deliberately avoid seeing her again, she thought it better to arrange a sentimental, romantic meeting which he could not evade. There she would have ample time to persuade and please, and solitude would conspire with her to charm and conquer him. |
| <a id="c04p003"></a>Il y avait alors, dans tous les jardins anglais et sur toutes les promenades à la mode, des chaumières construites par de savants architectes, qui flattaient ainsi les goûts agrestes des citadins. La chaumière de *La Belle Lilloise*, occupée par un limonadier, appuyait sa feinte indigence sur les débris artistement imités d’une vieille tour, afin d’unir au charme villageois la mélancolie des ruines. Et, comme s’il n’eût point suffi, pour émouvoir les âmes sensibles, d’une chaumière et d’une tour écroulée, le limonadier avait élevé sous un saule un tombeau, une colonne surmontée d’une urne funèbre et qui portait cette inscription: "Cléonice à son fidèle Azor." Chaumières, ruines, tombeaux: à la veille de périr, l’aristocratie avait élevé dans les parcs héréditaires ces symboles de pauvreté, d’abolition et de mort. Et maintenant les citadins patriotes se plaisaient à boire, à danser, à aimer dans de fausses chaumières, à l’ombre de faux cloîtres faussement ruinés et parmi de faux tombeaux, car ils étaient les uns comme les autres amants de la nature et disciples de Jean-Jacques et ils avaient pareillement des cœurs sensibles et pleins de philosophie. | At that time every English garden and fashionable promenade had thatched cottages built by learned architects[^c04n02] to flatter city dwellers’ rustic tastes. The cottage of *La Belle Lilloise*, occupied by a seller of refreshments, propped its sham poverty against the artfully imitated remains of an old tower, uniting village charm with the melancholy of ruins. As though a cottage and a fallen tower were not enough to move sensitive souls, the proprietor had erected a tomb beneath a willow: a column crowned with a funeral urn, bearing the inscription “Cléonice to her faithful Azor”. Cottages, ruins, tombs: on the eve of its destruction the aristocracy had raised these symbols of poverty, extinction and death in its hereditary parks. Now patriotic townspeople enjoyed drinking, dancing and making love in false cottages, in the shadow of false cloisters falsely ruined[^c04n03], and among false tombs. For both groups were lovers of nature and disciples of Jean-Jacques, and both had sensitive hearts full of philosophy. |
| <a id="c04p004"></a>Arrivé au rendez-vous avant l’heure fixée, Évariste attendait, et, comme au balancier d’une horloge, il mesurait le temps aux battements de son cœur. Une patrouille passa, conduisant des prisonniers. Dix minutes après, une femme tout habillée de rose, un bouquet de fleurs à la main, selon l’usage, accompagnée d’un cavalier en tricorne, habit rouge, veste et culotte rayés, se glissèrent dans la chaumière, tous deux si semblables aux galants de l’ancien régime qu’il fallait bien croire, avec le citoyen Blaise, qu’il y a dans les hommes des caractères que les révolutions ne changent point. | Having arrived before the appointed time, Évariste waited, measuring time by his heartbeat as though by a clock’s pendulum. A patrol passed, escorting prisoners. Ten minutes later a woman dressed entirely in pink, a bouquet in her hand according to custom, slipped into the cottage with a gentleman wearing a three-cornered hat, a red coat, and striped waistcoat and breeches. Both so closely resembled the lovers of the old regime that one had to agree with Citizen Blaise that certain human characteristics are unchanged by revolutions. |
| <a id="c04p005"></a>Quelques instants plus tard, venue de Rueil ou de Saint-Cloud, une vieille femme, qui portait au bout du bras une boîte cylindrique, peinte de couleurs vives, alla s’asseoir sur le banc où attendait Gamelin. Elle avait posé devant elle sa boîte, dont le couvercle portait une aiguille pour tirer les sorts. Car la pauvre femme offrait, dans les jardins, la chance aux petits enfants. C’était une marchande de "plaisirs", vendant sous un nom nouveau une antique pâtisserie, car, soit que le terme immémorial d'"oublie" donnât l’idée importune d’oblation et de redevance, soit qu’on s’en fût lassé par caprice, les "oublies" s’appelaient alors des "plaisirs". | A little later an old woman coming from Rueil or Saint-Cloud, a brightly painted cylindrical box hanging from her arm, sat on the bench where Gamelin waited. She set her box in front of her. Its lid had a pointer for drawing lots, for the poor woman offered little children games of chance in the gardens. She was a seller of “pleasures”, an ancient pastry under a new name: perhaps the immemorial term oublie suggested the unwelcome notions of oblation and dues, or perhaps people had simply tired of it on a whim, but oublies were now called plaisirs[^c04n04]. |
| <a id="c04p006"></a>La vieille essuya, d’un coin de son tablier, la sueur de son front et exhala ses plaintes au ciel, accusant Dieu d’injustice quand il faisait une dure vie à ses créatures. Son homme tenait un bouchon, au bord de la rivière, à Saint-Cloud, et elle montait tous les jours aux Champs-Élysées, agitant sa cliquette et criant: "Voilà le plaisir, mesdames!" Et de tout ce travail ils ne tiraient pas de quoi soutenir leur vieillesse. | The old woman wiped the sweat from her forehead with a corner of her apron and breathed her complaints to heaven, accusing God of injustice for making his creatures’ lives so hard. Her man kept a little tavern by the river at Saint-Cloud, and every day she came up to the Champs-Élysées, shaking her clapper and crying, “Pleasures, ladies!” Yet all that work brought them too little to support their old age. |
| <a id="c04p007"></a>Voyant le jeune homme du banc disposé à la plaindre, elle exposa abondamment la cause de ses maux. C’était la république qui, en dépouillant les riches, ôtait aux pauvres le pain de la bouche. Et il n’y avait pas à espérer un meilleur état de choses. Elle connaissait, au contraire, à plusieurs signes, que les affaires ne feraient qu’empirer. A Nanterre, une femme avait accouché d’un enfant à tête de vipère; la foudre était tombée sur l’église de Rueil et avait fondu la croix du clocher; on avait aperçu un loup-garou dans le bois de Chaville. Des hommes masqués empoisonnaient les sources et jetaient dans l’air des poudres qui donnaient des maladies.... | Seeing that the young man on the bench was disposed to pity her, she expansively explained the cause of her troubles. By stripping the rich, the Republic took bread from the mouths of the poor. There was no hope of improvement. On the contrary, various signs told her things would only get worse. At Nanterre a woman had given birth to a child with a viper’s head[^c04n05]; lightning had struck Rueil church and melted the cross on its steeple; a werewolf had been seen in the woods of Chaville. Masked men were poisoning springs and throwing powders into the air that spread disease… |
| <a id="c04p008"></a>Évariste vit Élodie qui sautait de voiture. Il courut à elle. Les yeux de la jeune femme brillaient dans l’ombre transparente de son chapeau de paille; ses lèvres, aussi rouges que les œillets qu’elle tenait à la main, souriaient. Une écharpe de soie noire, croisée sur la poitrine, se nouait sur le dos. Sa robe jaune faisait voir les mouvements rapides des genoux et découvrait les pieds chaussés de souliers plats. Les hanches étaient presque entièrement dégagées: car la Révolution avait affranchi la taille des citoyennes; cependant la jupe, enflée encore sous les reins, déguisait les formes en les exagérant et voilait la réalité sous son image amplifiée. | Évariste saw Élodie leap down from a carriage. He ran to her. Her eyes shone in the transparent shade of her straw hat; her lips, as red as the carnations in her hand, were smiling. A black silk scarf crossed her breast and tied behind her back. Her yellow dress revealed her knees’ quick movements and exposed her feet in flat shoes. Her hips were almost entirely unencumbered, for the Revolution had liberated women citizens’ waists[^c04n06]. Yet the skirt, still puffed out below the small of her back, disguised the body’s shapes by exaggerating them, veiling reality beneath its enlarged image. |
| <a id="c04p009"></a>Il voulut parler et ne put trouver ses mots, et se reprocha cet embarras qu’Élodie préférait au plus doux accueil. Elle remarqua aussi et tint pour un bon signe qu’il avait noué sa cravate avec plus d’art qu’à l’ordinaire. Elle lui tendit la main. | He tried to speak and could find no words. He reproached himself for an embarrassment which Élodie preferred to the sweetest welcome. She also noticed, and took as a good sign, that he had tied his cravat more artfully than usual. She held out her hand. |
| <a id="c04p010"></a>"Je voulais vous voir, dit-elle, causer avec vous. Je n’ai pas répondu à votre lettre: elle m’a déplu; je ne vous y ai pas retrouvé. Elle aurait été plus aimable, si elle avait été plus naturelle. Ce serait faire tort à votre caractère et à votre esprit que de croire que vous ne voulez pas retourner à l'*Amour peintre* parce que vous y avez eu une altercation légère sur la politique, avec un homme beaucoup plus âgé que vous. Soyez sûr que vous n’avez nullement à craindre que mon père vous reçoive mal, quand vous reviendrez chez nous. Vous ne le connaissez pas: il ne se rappelle ni ce qu’il vous a dit, ni ce que vous lui avez répondu. Je n’affirme pas qu’il existe une grande sympathie entre vous deux; mais il est sans rancune. Je vous le dis franchement, il ne s’occupe pas beaucoup de vous... ni de moi. Il ne pense qu’à ses affaires et à ses plaisirs." | “I wanted to see you,” she said, “to talk to you. I didn’t answer your letter: I disliked it; I didn’t recognise you in it. It would have been kinder if it had been more natural. It would insult your character and intelligence to suppose you won’t return to *Love the Painter* because of a slight political disagreement with a man much older than you. You can be certain there’s no danger of my father receiving you badly when you come back. You don’t know him: he remembers neither what he said to you nor what you answered. I’m not claiming there’s much sympathy between you, but he bears no grudges. Frankly, he doesn’t concern himself much with you… or with me. He thinks only of his business and his pleasures.” |
| <a id="c04p011"></a>Elle s’achemina vers les bosquets de la chaumière, où il la suivit avec quelque répugnance, parce qu’il savait que c’était le rendez-vous des amours vénales et des tendresses éphémères. Elle choisit la table la plus cachée. | She walked towards the cottage’s arbours. He followed with some reluctance, knowing the place was a meeting ground for purchased love and passing tenderness. She chose the most secluded table. |
| <a id="c04p012"></a>"Que j’ai de choses à vous dire, Évariste! L’amitié a des droits: vous me permettez d’en user? Je vous parlerai beaucoup de vous... et un peu de moi, si vous le voulez bien." | “I have so much to tell you, Évariste! Friendship has its rights[^c04n07]: will you let me exercise them? I’ll talk a great deal about you… and a little about myself, if you don’t mind.” |
| <a id="c04p013"></a>Le limonadier ayant apporté une carafe et des verres, elle versa elle-même à boire, en bonne ménagère; puis elle lui conta son enfance, elle lui dit la beauté de sa mère, qu’elle aimait à célébrer, par piété filiale et comme l’origine de sa propre beauté; elle vanta la vigueur de ses grands-parents, car elle avait l’orgueil de son sang bourgeois. Elle conta comment, ayant perdu à seize ans cette mère adorable, elle avait vécu sans tendresse et sans appui. Elle se peignit telle qu’elle était, vive, sensible, courageuse, et elle ajouta: | When the proprietor had brought a carafe and glasses, she poured the drinks herself, like a good housewife. Then she told him about her childhood, describing her mother’s beauty, which she liked to celebrate out of filial piety and as the source of her own. She praised her grandparents’ vigour, proud as she was of her bourgeois blood. She told him how, having lost this adored mother at sixteen, she had lived without tenderness or support. She painted herself as she was: lively, sensitive and courageous. Then she added: |
| <a id="c04p014"></a>"Évariste, j’ai passé une jeunesse trop mélancolique et trop solitaire pour ne pas savoir le prix d’un cœur comme le vôtre, et je ne renoncerai pas de moi-même et sans efforts, je vous en avertis, à une sympathie sur laquelle je croyais pouvoir compter et qui m’était chère." | “Évariste, I spent too melancholy and lonely a youth not to know the value of a heart like yours. I warn you, I won’t willingly or without a struggle give up an affection I thought I could rely on, and which was dear to me.” |
| <a id="c04p015"></a>Évariste la regarda tendrement: | Évariste looked at her tenderly. |
| <a id="c04p016"></a>"Se peut-il, Élodie, que je ne vous sois pas indifférent? Puis-je croire?..." | “Can it be, Élodie, that you care for me? Can I believe…?” |
| <a id="c04p017"></a>Il s’arrêta, de peur d’en trop dire et d’abuser par là d’une amitié si confiante. | He stopped, afraid of saying too much and so abusing so trusting a friendship. |
| <a id="c04p018"></a>Elle lui tendit une petite main honnête, qui sortait à demi des longues manches étroites garnies de dentelle. Son sein se soulevait en longs soupirs. | She held out a small, honest hand[^c04n08], half emerging from its long, narrow, lace-trimmed sleeve. Her breast rose with long sighs. |
| <a id="c04p019"></a>"Attribuez-moi, Évariste, tous les sentiments que vous voulez que j’aie pour vous, et vous ne vous tromperez pas sur les dispositions de mon cœur. | “Believe I feel whatever you wish me to feel for you, Évariste, and you won’t be mistaken about my heart.” |
| <a id="c04p020"></a>— Élodie, Élodie, ce que vous dites là, le répéterez-vous encore quand vous saurez...." | “Élodie, Élodie, will you still say that when you know…?” |
| <a id="c04p021"></a>Il hésita. | He hesitated. |
| <a id="c04p022"></a>Elle baissa les yeux. | She lowered her eyes. |
| <a id="c04p023"></a>Il acheva plus bas: | He finished more quietly: |
| <a id="c04p024"></a>"... que je vous aime?" | “…that I love you?” |
| <a id="c04p025"></a>En entendant ces derniers mots, elle rougit: c’était de plaisir. Et, tandis que ses yeux exprimaient une tendre volupté, malgré elle, un sourire comique soulevait un coin de ses lèvres. Elle songeait: | At these last words she blushed with pleasure. While her eyes expressed tender sensuality, an amused smile involuntarily lifted one corner of her mouth. She was thinking: |
| <a id="c04p026"></a>"Et il croit s’être déclaré le premier!... et il craint peut-être de me fâcher!..." | “And he thinks he declared himself first[^c04n09]!… Perhaps he’s even afraid of upsetting me!” |
| <a id="c04p027"></a>Et elle lui dit avec bonté: | Then she said kindly: |
| <a id="c04p028"></a>"Vous ne l’aviez donc pas vu, mon ami, que je vous aimais?" | “Hadn’t you seen, my dear, that I loved you?” |
| <a id="c04p029"></a>Ils se croyaient seuls au monde. Dans son exaltation, Évariste leva les yeux vers le firmament étincelant de lumière et d’azur: | They believed themselves alone in the world. In his exaltation Évariste looked up at the heavens blazing with light and blue. |
| <a id="c04p030"></a>"Voyez: le ciel nous regarde! Il est adorable et bienveillant comme vous, ma bien-aimée; il a votre éclat, votre douceur, votre sourire." | “Look: the sky is watching us! It’s adorable and kindly like you, my beloved; it has your radiance, your gentleness, your smile.” |
| <a id="c04p031"></a>Il se sentait uni à la nature entière, il l’associait à sa joie, à sa gloire. A ses yeux, pour célébrer ses fiançailles, les fleurs des marronniers s’allumaient comme des candélabres, les torches gigantesques des peupliers s’enflammaient. | He felt united with all nature and made it share his joy and glory. To his eyes, celebrating his betrothal, the chestnut blossoms lit up like candelabra and the poplars’ gigantic torches burst into flame. |
| <a id="c04p032"></a>Il se réjouissait de sa force et de sa grandeur. Elle, plus tendre et aussi plus fine, plus souple et plus ductile, se donnait l’avantage de la faiblesse et, aussitôt après l’avoir conquis, se soumettait à lui; maintenant qu’elle l’avait mis sous sa domination, elle reconnaissait en lui le maître, le héros, le dieu, brûlait d’obéir, d’admirer et de s’offrir. Sous l’ombrage du bosquet, il lui donna un long baiser ardent sous lequel elle renversa la tête, et, dans les bras d’Évariste, elle sentit toute sa chair se fondre comme une cire. | He rejoiced in his strength and greatness. More tender, and also more subtle, more supple and yielding, she gave herself the advantage of weakness[^c04n10]. No sooner had she conquered him than she submitted to him. Now that she had brought him under her dominion, she acknowledged him as master, hero and god, burning to obey, admire and offer herself. In the arbour’s shade he gave her a long, ardent kiss beneath which she threw her head back, and in Évariste’s arms she felt all her flesh melt like wax. |
| <a id="c04p033"></a>Ils s’entretinrent longtemps encore d’eux-mêmes, oubliant l’univers. Évariste exprimait surtout des idées vagues et pures, qui jetaient Élodie dans le ravissement. Élodie disait des choses douces, utiles et particulières. Puis, quand elle jugea qu’elle ne pouvait tarder davantage, elle se leva avec décision, donna à son ami les trois œillets rouges fleuris à sa fenêtre et sauta lestement dans le cabriolet qui l’avait amenée. C’était une voiture de place peinte en jaune, très haute sur roues, qui n’avait certes rien d’étrange, non plus que le cocher. Mais Gamelin ne prenait pas de voitures et l’on n’en prenait guère autour de lui. De la voir sur ces grandes roues rapides, il eut un serrement de cœur et se sentit assailli d’un douloureux pressentiment: par une sorte d’hallucination tout intellectuelle, il lui semblait que le cheval de louage emportait Élodie au-delà des choses actuelles et du temps présent vers une cité riche et joyeuse, vers des demeures de luxe et de plaisirs où il ne pénétrerait jamais. | They talked about themselves for a long time, forgetting the universe. Évariste chiefly expressed pure, vague ideas which transported Élodie. Élodie said sweet, useful and particular things[^c04n11]. Then, deciding she could stay no longer, she rose resolutely, gave her beloved the three red carnations that had flowered at her window, and sprang lightly into the cabriolet that had brought her. It was a hired carriage painted yellow and set very high on its wheels, with nothing remarkable about either it or its driver. But Gamelin did not take carriages, nor did many people around him. The sight of her on those great, swift wheels made his heart contract and assailed him with a painful foreboding. In a kind of wholly inward hallucination, he felt that the hired horse was carrying Élodie beyond present things and present time, towards a rich, joyful city, towards luxurious homes of pleasure which he would never enter. |
| <a id="c04p034"></a>La voiture disparut. Le trouble d’Évariste se dissipa; mais il lui restait une sourde angoisse et il sentait que les heures de tendresse et d’oubli qu’il venait de vivre, il ne les revivrait plus. | The carriage vanished. Évariste’s disturbance passed, but a dull anguish remained, and he felt that he would never again live through the hours of tenderness and oblivion he had just known. |
| <a id="c04p035"></a>Il passa par les Champs-Élysées, où des femmes en robes claires cousaient ou brodaient, assises sur des chaises de bois, tandis que leurs enfants jouaient sous les arbres. Une marchande de plaisirs, portant sa caisse en forme de tambour, lui rappela la marchande de plaisirs de l’allée des Veuves, et il lui sembla qu’entre ces deux rencontres tout un âge de sa vie s’était écoulé. Il traversa la place de la Révolution. Dans le jardin des Tuileries, il entendit gronder au loin l’immense rumeur des grands jours, ces voix unanimes que les ennemis de la Révolution prétendaient s’être tues pour jamais. Il hâta le pas dans la clameur grandissante, gagna la rue Honoré et la trouva couverte d’une foule d’hommes et de femmes, qui criaient: "Vive la République! Vive la Liberté!" Les murs des jardins, les fenêtres, les balcons, les toits étaient pleins de spectateurs qui agitaient des chapeaux et des mouchoirs. Précédé d’un sapeur qui faisait place au cortège, entouré d’officiers municipaux, de gardes nationaux, de canonniers, de gendarmes, de hussards, s’avançait lentement, sur les têtes des citoyens, un homme au teint bilieux, le front ceint d’une couronne de chêne, le corps enveloppé d’une vieille lévite verte à collet d’hermine. Les femmes lui jetaient des fleurs. Il promenait autour de lui le regard perçant de ses yeux jaunes, comme si, dans cette multitude enthousiaste, il cherchait encore des ennemis du peuple à dénoncer, des traîtres à punir. Sur son passage, Gamelin, tête nue, mêlant sa voix à cent mille voix, cria: | He crossed the Champs-Élysées, where women in light-coloured dresses sat sewing or embroidering on wooden chairs while their children played under the trees. A seller of pleasures[^c04n12] carrying her drum-shaped box reminded him of the seller of pleasures in the Allée des Veuves; it seemed that an entire age of his life had passed between those two encounters. He crossed the Place de la Révolution. In the Tuileries gardens he heard the distant rumble of the immense clamour of great days, those unanimous voices which the Revolution’s enemies claimed had fallen silent for ever. Hurrying into the growing uproar, he reached the Rue Honoré and found it covered with men and women crying “Long live the Republic! Long live Liberty!” The garden walls, windows, balconies and roofs were filled with spectators waving hats and handkerchiefs. Preceded by a sapper clearing the way, surrounded by municipal officials, National Guards, artillerymen, gendarmes and hussars, a man slowly advanced above the citizens’ heads. His complexion was sallow, his forehead crowned with oak, his body wrapped in an old green long coat with an ermine collar. Women threw him flowers. He swept his piercing yellow eyes round him as though still seeking, in that enthusiastic multitude, enemies of the people to denounce, traitors to punish. As he passed, Gamelin, bareheaded, joined his voice to a hundred thousand voices and cried: |
| <a id="c04p036"></a>"Vive Marat!" | “Long live Marat!”[^c04n13] |
| <a id="c04p037"></a>Le triomphateur entra comme le Destin dans la salle de la Convention. Tandis que la foule s’écoulait lentement, Gamelin, assis sur une borne de la rue Honoré, contenait de sa main les battements de son cœur. Ce qu’il venait de voir le remplissait d’une émotion sublime et d’un enthousiasme ardent. | The conqueror entered the Convention’s hall like Fate. As the crowd slowly dispersed, Gamelin sat on a stone post in the Rue Honoré, pressing his hand against his beating heart. What he had just seen filled him with sublime emotion and burning enthusiasm. |
| <a id="c04p038"></a>Il vénérait, chérissait Marat qui, malade, les veines en feu, dévoré d’ulcères, épuisait le reste de ses forces au service de la République, et, dans sa pauvre maison, ouverte à tous, l’accueillait les bras ouverts, lui parlait avec le zèle du bien public, l’interrogeait parfois sur les desseins des scélérats. Il admirait que les ennemis du juste, en conspirant sa perte, eussent préparé son triomphe; il bénissait le tribunal révolutionnaire qui, en acquittant l’Ami du peuple, avait rendu à la Convention le plus zélé et le plus pur de ses législateurs. Ses yeux revoyaient cette tête brûlée de fièvre, ceinte de la couronne civique, ce visage empreint d’un vertueux orgueil et d’un impitoyable amour, cette face ravagée, décomposée, puissante, cette bouche crispée, cette large poitrine, cet agonisant robuste qui, du haut du char vivant de son triomphe, semblait dire à ses concitoyens: "Soyez, à mon exemple, patriotes jusqu’à la mort." | He venerated and cherished Marat, who, sick, his veins on fire, consumed by ulcers, exhausted his remaining strength in the Republic’s service. In his poor house, open to everyone, Marat welcomed him with open arms, spoke to him with passionate concern for the public good, and sometimes asked him about the villains’ designs. Gamelin marvelled that the just man’s enemies, plotting his destruction, had prepared his triumph. He blessed the Revolutionary Tribunal, which, by acquitting the Friend of the People, had restored to the Convention its most zealous and purest legislator. He saw again the fever-burnt head crowned with the civic wreath, the face stamped with virtuous pride and merciless love[^c04n14], that ravaged, disintegrating, powerful face, that tightened mouth, that broad chest, that robust dying man who, from the summit of the living chariot of his triumph, seemed to tell his fellow citizens, “Follow my example: be patriots until death.” |
| <a id="c04p039"></a>La rue était déserte, la nuit la couvrait de son ombre; l’allumeur de lanternes passait avec son falot, et Gamelin murmurait: | The street was deserted, night covered it with shadow, and the lamplighter passed carrying his lantern, while Gamelin murmured: |
| <a id="c04p040"></a>"Jusqu’à la mort!..." | “Until death!…” |

### Notes

[^c04n01]: Stoicism here names Gamelin’s ideal of self-command rather than documenting his adherence to a philosophical school. Interpretively, pride and shyness make the same renunciation look at once principled and afraid; Élodie proceeds by refusing that description of their situation. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n02]: Eighteenth-century landscape gardens deliberately composed apparently natural scenery with artificial buildings and picturesque features. Versailles’ account of English gardens describes this artifice. France’s satire concerns cultivated rusticity, not an actual return to peasant poverty. [S068](#S068)

[^c04n03]: The emphatic repetition of faux is preserved. Interpretively, the republican public inherits the aristocracy’s manufactured melancholy as well as its landscape fashion: political change has not abolished the tastes it enjoys. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n04]: Oublies are thin wafers. The narrator connects their old name with oblation and dues, while explicitly allowing mere caprice as an alternative explanation for the new name. “Pleasures” retains the literal sense of plaisirs, which returns at a later emotional turning point. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n05]: The old woman’s catalogue consists of reported portents, poisoning rumours and a werewolf. These are her explanations of distress, not facts endorsed by the narrator. The translation leaves their cumulative urgency intact without turning them into verified supernatural events. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n06]: The French affranchi, “freed”, applies political emancipation to fashionable dress. Interpretively, the sentence immediately complicates that liberation: clothing still reshapes and conceals the body, rather than simply revealing a newly natural form. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n07]: Élodie uses the language of friendship to obtain the declaration of love she wants. The appeal to rights gently echoes the book’s public vocabulary while allowing her to direct an intimate conversation without openly naming its goal. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n08]: Honnête gives the physical gesture a moral appearance. This is not a denial of Élodie’s sexual experience; the previous chapter has already distinguished her sincerity of feeling from conventional innocence. “Honest” preserves that distinction rather than substituting “chaste”. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n09]: The reader has access to Élodie’s private judgement as well as Gamelin’s declaration. The difference between their understandings fulfils the strategy she explained to herself in Chapter III; the narration gives her pleasure and amusement without making her affection insincere. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n10]: France’s paired inversions—conquest/submission, dominion/obedience—must remain simultaneous. Interpretively, Élodie’s willingness to yield is also a way of directing the relationship; the paragraph resists a single straightforward distribution of strength. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n11]: The contrast with Évariste’s pure, vague ideas is explicitly built into the sentence. Interpretively, their differences concern modes of attention as much as temperament: Élodie keeps hold of particulars and practical time while he enlarges love into a universal event. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n12]: This second appearance of the wafer seller closes the interval of courtship. The repeated literal name links the pastry, the imagined availability of enjoyment and Gamelin’s feeling that an entire lifetime has passed; translating it consistently keeps the connection audible. [S056](#S056)

[^c04n13]: Marat was carried to the Convention after his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 24 April 1793. The Musée Carnavalet identifies this event in its catalogue of Raffet’s later depiction. That date anchors the public procession without requiring every preceding fictional scene to follow a documentary calendar. [S069](#S069)

[^c04n14]: Impitoyable amour joins devotion and pitilessness in the face Gamelin reveres. The phrase should retain its contradiction. Interpretively, the concluding vow transfers the intensity of the love scene into a political attachment whose object is already described as dying. [S056](#S056)

<a id="chapter-05"></a>

## V

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c05p001"></a>A neuf heures du matin, Évariste trouva dans le jardin du Luxembourg Élodie qui l’attendait sur un banc. | At nine in the morning Évariste found Élodie waiting for him on a bench in the Luxembourg gardens. |
| <a id="c05p002"></a>Depuis un mois qu’ils avaient échangé leurs aveux d’amour, ils se voyaient tous les jours, à l'*Amour peintre* ou à l’atelier de la place de Thionville, très tendrement, et toutefois avec une réserve qu’imposait à leur intimité le caractère d’un amant grave et vertueux, déiste et bon citoyen, qui, prêt à s’unir à sa chère maîtresse devant la loi ou devant Dieu seul, selon les circonstances, ne le voulait faire qu’au grand jour et publiquement. Élodie reconnaissait tout ce que cette résolution avait d’honorable; mais, désespérant d’un mariage que tout rendait impossible et se refusant à braver les convenances sociales, elle envisageait au-dedans d’elle-même une liaison que le secret eût rendue décente jusqu’à ce que la durée l’eût rendue respectable. Elle pensait vaincre, un jour, les scrupules d’un amant trop respectueux; et, ne voulant pas tarder à lui faire des révélations nécessaires, elle lui avait demandé une heure d’entretien dans le jardin désert, près du couvent des Chartreux. | In the month since they had confessed their love, they had seen each other every day, at *Love the Painter* or in the studio on the Place de Thionville. Their meetings were very tender, yet their intimacy remained restrained by the character of a grave and virtuous lover, a deist and a good citizen. Ready to unite with his beloved before the law or before God alone, according to circumstances, he would do so only openly and publicly. Élodie recognised all that was honourable in this resolve. But despairing of a marriage made impossible by everything, and refusing to defy social propriety, she privately contemplated an affair which secrecy would make decent until time made it respectable[^c05n01]. She thought she would one day overcome the scruples of a lover who was too respectful. Wishing to delay no longer the necessary revelations, she had asked him for an hour’s conversation in the deserted garden near the Carthusian convent. |
| <a id="c05p003"></a>Elle le regarda d’un air de tendresse et de franchise, lui prit la main, le fit asseoir à son côté et lui parla avec recueillement: | She looked at him with tenderness and candour, took his hand, made him sit beside her and spoke solemnly: |
| <a id="c05p004"></a>"Je vous estime trop pour rien vous cacher, Évariste. Je me crois digne de vous, je ne le serais pas si je ne vous disais pas tout. Entendez-moi et soyez mon juge. Je n’ai à me reprocher aucune action vile, basse ou seulement intéressée. J’ai été faible et crédule.... Ne perdez pas de vue, mon ami, les circonstances difficiles dans lesquelles j’étais placée. Vous le savez: je n’avais plus de mère; mon père, encore jeune, ne songeait qu’à ses amusements et ne s’occupait pas de moi. J’étais sensible; la nature m’avait douée d’un cœur tendre et d’une âme généreuse; et, bien qu’elle ne m’eût pas refusé un jugement ferme et sain, le sentiment alors l’emportait en moi sur la raison. Hélas! il l’emporterait encore aujourd’hui, s’ils ne s’accordaient tous deux, Évariste, pour me donner à vous entièrement et à jamais!" | “I esteem you too much to hide anything from you, Évariste. I believe I’m worthy of you; I wouldn’t be if I didn’t tell you everything. Hear me and be my judge. I have no vile, base or even self-interested action to reproach myself with. I was weak and credulous… Don’t forget, my dear, the difficult circumstances in which I found myself. You know: I had no mother any more; my father, still young, thought only of his amusements and took no interest in me. I was sensitive. Nature had given me a tender heart and a generous soul; and although she had not denied me sound, firm judgement, feeling then prevailed over reason. Alas, it would prevail even now if both did not agree, Évariste, in giving me to you wholly and for ever!” |
| <a id="c05p005"></a>Elle s’exprimait avec mesure et fermeté. Ses paroles étaient préparées; depuis longtemps elle avait résolu de faire sa confession, parce qu’elle était franche, parce qu’elle se plaisait à imiter Jean-Jacques et parce qu’elle se disait raisonnablement: "Évariste saura, quelque jour, des secrets dont je ne suis pas seule dépositaire; il vaut mieux qu’un aveu, dont la liberté est toute à ma louange, l’instruise de ce qu’il aurait appris un jour à ma honte." Tendre comme elle était et docile à la nature, elle ne se sentait pas très coupable et sa confession en était moins pénible; elle comptait bien, d’ailleurs, ne dire que le nécessaire. | She spoke with restraint and firmness. Her words were prepared. She had long resolved to make her confession because she was candid, because she liked to imitate Jean-Jacques, and because she reasonably told herself, “One day Évariste will learn secrets of which I’m not the only keeper. Better that a voluntary confession, entirely to my credit, should tell him what he would otherwise learn to my shame.” Tender as she was, and obedient to nature, she felt no great guilt, which made her confession less painful. Besides, she fully intended to say only what was necessary[^c05n02]. |
| <a id="c05p006"></a>"Ah! soupira-t-elle, que n’êtes-vous venu à moi, cher Évariste, à ces moments où j’étais seule, abandonnée?..." | “Ah!” she sighed. “Why didn’t you come to me then, dear Évariste, when I was alone and abandoned?” |
| <a id="c05p007"></a>Gamelin avait pris à la lettre la demande que lui avait faite Élodie d’être son juge. Préparé de nature et par éducation littéraire à l’exercice de la justice domestique, il s’apprêtait à recevoir les aveux d’Élodie. | Gamelin had taken literally Élodie’s request that he be her judge. Prepared by nature and literary education to exercise domestic justice[^c05n03], he readied himself to receive her confession. |
| <a id="c05p008"></a>Comme elle hésitait, il lui fit signe de parler. | When she hesitated, he signed to her to speak. |
| <a id="c05p009"></a>Elle dit très simplement: | She said quite simply: |
| <a id="c05p010"></a>"Un jeune homme, qui parmi de mauvaises qualités en avait de bonnes et ne montrait que celles-là, me trouva quelque attrait et s’occupa de moi avec une assiduité qui surprenait chez lui: il était à la fleur de la vie, plein de grâce et lié avec des femmes charmantes qui ne se cachaient point de l’adorer. Ce ne fut pas par sa beauté ni même par son esprit qu’il m’intéressa.... Il sut me toucher en me témoignant de l’amour, et je crois qu’il m’aimait vraiment. Il fut tendre, empressé. Je ne demandai d’engagements qu’à son cœur, et son cœur était mobile.... Je n’accuse que moi; c’est ma confession que je fais, et non la sienne. Je ne me plains pas de lui, puisqu’il m’est devenu étranger. Ah! je vous jure, Évariste, il est pour moi comme s’il n’avait jamais été!" | “A young man, who had good qualities among his bad ones and showed only the good, found me attractive and attended to me with a constancy surprising in him. He was in the flower of youth, full of grace, and intimate with charming women who made no secret of adoring him. It wasn’t his beauty or even his wit that interested me… He knew how to touch me by showing me love, and I believe he truly loved me. He was tender and attentive. I asked for no pledge except from his heart, and his heart was changeable… I blame only myself; it’s my confession I’m making, not his. I have no complaint against him, since he has become a stranger to me. Ah, I swear to you, Évariste, for me it’s as if he had never existed!” |
| <a id="c05p011"></a>Elle se tut. Gamelin ne répondit rien. Il croisait les bras; son regard était fixe et sombre. Il songeait en même temps à sa maîtresse et à sa sœur Julie. Julie aussi avait écouté un amant; mais, bien différente, pensait-il, de la malheureuse Élodie, elle s’était fait enlever, non point dans l’erreur d’un cœur sensible, mais pour trouver, loin des siens, le luxe et le plaisir. En sa sévérité, il avait condamné sa sœur et il inclinait à condamner sa maîtresse. | She fell silent. Gamelin said nothing. His arms were crossed, his gaze fixed and sombre. He thought of his beloved and his sister Julie at the same time. Julie too had listened to a lover. But unlike unhappy Élodie, he thought, she had let herself be carried off not through the error of a sensitive heart, but to find luxury and pleasure far from her family. In his severity he had condemned his sister, and he was inclined to condemn his beloved. |
| <a id="c05p012"></a>Élodie reprit d’une voix très douce: | Élodie went on very gently: |
| <a id="c05p013"></a>"J’étais imbue de philosophie; je croyais que les hommes étaient naturellement honnêtes. Mon malheur fut d’avoir rencontré un amant qui n’était pas formé à l’école de la nature et de la morale, et que les préjugés sociaux, l’ambition, l’amour-propre, un faux point d’honneur avaient fait égoïste et perfide." | “I was steeped in philosophy. I believed men were naturally honest. My misfortune was to meet a lover who had not been formed in the school of nature and morality[^c05n04], whom social prejudices, ambition, self-love and a false sense of honour had made selfish and treacherous.” |
| <a id="c05p014"></a>Ces paroles calculées produisirent l’effet voulu. Les yeux de Gamelin s’adoucirent. Il demanda: | These calculated words had the desired effect. Gamelin’s eyes softened. He asked: |
| <a id="c05p015"></a>"Qui était votre séducteur? Est-ce que je le connais? | “Who was your seducer? Do I know him?” |
| <a id="c05p016"></a>— Vous ne le connaissez pas. | “You don’t know him.” |
| <a id="c05p017"></a>— Nommez-le-moi." | “Tell me his name.” |
| <a id="c05p018"></a>Elle avait prévu cette demande et était résolue à ne pas la satisfaire. | She had foreseen this request and was determined not to satisfy it. |
| <a id="c05p019"></a>Elle donna ses raisons. | She gave her reasons. |
| <a id="c05p020"></a>"Épargnez-moi, je vous prie. Pour vous comme pour moi, j’en ai déjà trop dit." | “Spare me, please. For your sake as well as mine, I’ve already said too much.” |
| <a id="c05p021"></a>Et, comme il insistait: | As he insisted, she added: |
| <a id="c05p022"></a>"Dans l’intérêt sacré de notre amour, je ne vous dirai rien qui précise à votre esprit cet... étranger. Je ne veux pas jeter un spectre à votre jalousie; je ne veux pas mettre une ombre importune entre vous et moi. Ce n’est pas quand j’ai oublié cet homme que je vous le ferai connaître." | “For the sacred interests of our love, I won’t tell you anything that gives this… stranger a definite shape in your mind. I don’t want to give your jealousy a ghost, or put a troubling shadow between us. Now that I’ve forgotten the man, I won’t make him known to you.” |
| <a id="c05p023"></a>Gamelin la pressa de lui livrer le nom du séducteur: c’est le terme qu’il employait obstinément, car il ne doutait pas qu’Élodie n’eût été séduite, trompée, abusée. Il ne concevait même pas qu’il en eût pu être autrement, et qu’elle eût obéi au désir, à l’irrésistible désir, écouté les conseils intimes de la chair et du sang; il ne concevait pas que cette créature voluptueuse et tendre, cette belle victime, se fût offerte; il fallait, pour contenter son génie, qu’elle eût été prise par force ou par ruse, violentée, précipitée dans des pièges tendus sous tous ses pas. Il lui faisait des questions mesurées dans les termes, mais précises, serrées, gênantes. Il lui demandait comment s’était formée cette liaison, si elle avait été longue ou courte, tranquille ou troublée, et de quelle manière elle s’était rompue. Et il revenait sans cesse sur les moyens qu’avait employés cet homme pour la séduire, comme s’il avait dû en employer d’étranges et d’inouïs. Toutes ces questions, il les fit en vain. Avec une obstination douce et suppliante, elle se taisait, la bouche serrée et les yeux gros de larmes. | Gamelin pressed her to reveal the seducer’s name. He persisted in using that word, for he had no doubt[^c05n05] that Élodie had been seduced, deceived and abused. He could not even conceive that it might have been otherwise: that she had obeyed desire, irresistible desire, and listened to the intimate counsels of flesh and blood. He could not conceive that this tender, voluptuous creature, this beautiful victim, had offered herself. To satisfy his cast of mind, she must have been taken by force or guile, violated, thrown into traps laid at every step. He asked questions measured in their wording but precise, close and embarrassing. He wanted to know how the affair had begun, whether it had been long or short, peaceful or troubled, and how it had ended. He returned endlessly to the means the man had used to seduce her, as though they must have been strange and unheard-of. All his questions were in vain. With gentle, pleading obstinacy, her lips pressed together and her eyes swollen with tears, she kept silent. |
| <a id="c05p024"></a>Pourtant, Évariste ayant demandé où était à présent cet homme, elle répondit: | Yet when Évariste asked where the man was now, she answered: |
| <a id="c05p025"></a>"Il a quitté le royaume." | “He’s left the kingdom.” |
| <a id="c05p026"></a>Elle se reprit vivement: | She quickly corrected herself: |
| <a id="c05p027"></a>"... la France. | “…France.”[^c05n06] |
| <a id="c05p028"></a>— Un émigré!" s’écria Gamelin. | “An émigré!” cried Gamelin. |
| <a id="c05p029"></a>Elle le regarda, muette, à la fois rassurée et attristée de le voir se créer lui-même une vérité conforme à ses passions politiques, et donner à sa jalousie gratuitement une couleur jacobine. | She looked at him without speaking, both reassured and saddened to see him invent for himself a truth in keeping with his political passions, giving his jealousy a Jacobin colouring without cause. |
| <a id="c05p030"></a>En fait, l’amant d’Élodie était un petit clerc de procureur très joli garçon, chérubin saute-ruisseau, qu’elle avait adoré et dont le souvenir après trois ans lui donnait encore une chaleur dans le sein. Il recherchait les femmes riches et âgées: il quitta Élodie pour une dame expérimentée qui récompensait ses mérites. Entré, après la suppression des offices, à la mairie de Paris, il était maintenant un dragon sans-culotte et le greluchon d’une ci-devant. | In fact Élodie’s lover had been a very handsome young attorney’s clerk, a cherubic errand boy whom she had adored and whose memory still warmed her breast after three years. He sought out rich, older women; he had left Élodie for an experienced lady who rewarded his merits. After the abolition of the legal offices he had entered the Paris municipal administration. He was now a sans-culotte dragoon and the lover of a woman of the former nobility[^c05n07]. |
| <a id="c05p031"></a>"Un noble! un émigré! répétait Gamelin, qu’elle se gardait bien de détromper, n’ayant jamais souhaité qu’il sût toute la vérité. Et il t’a lâchement abandonnée?" | “A nobleman! An émigré!” Gamelin repeated. Élodie took care not to disabuse him, never having wanted him to know the whole truth. “And he abandoned you like a coward?” |
| <a id="c05p032"></a>Elle inclina la tête. | She bowed her head. |
| <a id="c05p033"></a>Il la pressa sur son cœur: | He pressed her to his heart. |
| <a id="c05p034"></a>"Chère victime de la corruption monarchique, mon amour te vengera de cet infâme. Puisse le ciel me le faire rencontrer! Je saurai le reconnaître!" | “Dear victim of monarchical corruption, my love will avenge you on that wretch. May heaven bring him across my path! I’ll know him when I see him[^c05n08]!” |
| <a id="c05p035"></a>Elle détourna la tête, tout ensemble attristée et souriante, et déçue. Elle l’aurait voulu plus intelligent des choses de l’amour, plus naturel, plus brutal. Elle sentait qu’il ne pardonnait si vite que parce qu’il avait l’imagination froide et que la confidence qu’elle venait de lui faire n’éveillait en lui aucune de ces images qui torturent les voluptueux, et qu’enfin il ne voyait dans cette séduction qu’un fait moral et social. | She turned her head aside, sad and smiling at once, and disappointed. She would have liked him to understand love better, to be more natural, more brutal. She felt he forgave so quickly only because his imagination was cold: her confession had awakened none of those images that torture sensual people. In the end he saw the seduction merely as a moral and social fact. |
| <a id="c05p036"></a>Ils s’étaient levés et suivaient les vertes allées du jardin. Il lui disait que, d’avoir souffert, il l’en estimait plus. Élodie n’en demandait pas tant; mais, tel qu’il était, elle l’aimait, et elle admirait le génie des arts qu’elle voyait briller en lui. | They had risen and were walking through the garden’s green avenues. He told her he esteemed her the more for having suffered. Élodie asked for no such thing; but she loved him as he was and admired the artistic genius she saw shining in him. |
| <a id="c05p037"></a>Au sortir du Luxembourg, ils rencontrèrent des attroupements dans la rue de l’Égalité et tout autour du Théâtre de la Nation, ce qui n’était point pour les surprendre: depuis quelques jours une grande agitation régnait dans les sections les plus patriotes; on y dénonçait la faction d’Orléans et les complices de Brissot, qui conjuraient, disait-on, la ruine de Paris et le massacre des républicains. Et Gamelin lui-même avait signé, peu auparavant, la pétition de la Commune qui demandait l’exclusion des Vingt et un. | Leaving the Luxembourg, they encountered gatherings in the Rue de l’Égalité and all round the Théâtre de la Nation. This was hardly surprising: for several days there had been great agitation in the most patriotic sections. There the Orléans faction and Brissot’s accomplices were being denounced for plotting, it was said, the ruin of Paris and the massacre of republicans. Gamelin himself had recently signed the Commune’s petition demanding the exclusion of the Twenty-one[^c05n09]. |
| <a id="c05p038"></a>Près de passer sous l’arcade qui reliait le théâtre à la maison voisine, il leur fallut traverser un groupe de citoyens en carmagnole que haranguait, du haut de la galerie, un jeune militaire beau comme l’Amour de Praxitèle sous son casque de peau de panthère. Ce soldat charmant accusait l’Ami du peuple d’indolence. Il disait: | As they were about to pass beneath the arch joining the theatre to the neighbouring house, they had to cross a group of citizens in carmagnoles. A young soldier harangued them from the gallery above, beautiful as Praxiteles’ Eros beneath his pantherskin helmet. This charming soldier accused the Friend of the People of idleness. He was saying: |
| <a id="c05p039"></a>"Tu dors, Marat, et les fédéralistes nous forgent des fers!" | “You’re asleep, Marat, while the federalists forge chains for us!” |
| <a id="c05p040"></a>A peine Élodie eut-elle tourné les yeux sur lui: | Élodie had scarcely looked up at him before she said sharply: |
| <a id="c05p041"></a>"Venez, Évariste!" fit-elle vivement. | “Come, Évariste!” |
| <a id="c05p042"></a>La foule, disait-elle, l’effrayait, et elle craignait de s’évanouir dans la presse. | The crowd frightened her, she said; she feared she would faint in the crush. |
| <a id="c05p043"></a>Ils se quittèrent sur la place de la Nation, en se jurant un amour éternel. | They parted on the Place de la Nation, swearing eternal love. |
| <a id="c05p044"></a>Ce matin-là, de bonne heure, le citoyen Brotteaux avait fait à la citoyenne Gamelin le présent magnifique d’un chapon. C’eût été de sa part une imprudence de dire comment il se l’était procuré: car il le tenait d’une dame de la Halle à qui, sur la pointe Eustache, il servait parfois de secrétaire, et l’on savait que les dames de la Halle nourrissaient des sentiments royalistes et correspondaient avec les émigrés. La citoyenne Gamelin avait reçu le chapon d’un cœur reconnaissant. On ne voyait guère de telles pièces alors: les vivres enchérissaient. Le peuple craignait la famine; les aristocrates, disait-on, la souhaitaient, les accapareurs la préparaient. | Early that morning Citizen Brotteaux had made Citizen Gamelin the magnificent gift of a capon. It would have been imprudent to say how he had obtained it, for it came from a market woman for whom he sometimes acted as secretary at the Pointe Eustache. The market women were known to harbour royalist feelings and correspond with émigrés. Citizen Gamelin had received the capon gratefully. Such birds were seldom seen now: food was growing dearer. The people feared famine; the aristocrats, it was said[^c05n10], wished for it; the hoarders were preparing it. |
| <a id="c05p045"></a>Le citoyen Brotteaux, prié de manger sa part du chapon au dîner de midi, se rendit à cette invitation et félicita son hôtesse de la suave odeur de cuisine qu’on respirait chez elle. Et, de fait, l’atelier du peintre sentait le bouillon gras. | Invited to eat his share of the capon at the midday meal, Citizen Brotteaux accepted and complimented his hostess on the delicious cooking smells in her home. The painter’s studio did indeed smell of rich stock. |
| <a id="c05p046"></a>"Vous êtes bien honnête, monsieur, répondit la bonne dame. Pour préparer l’estomac à recevoir votre chapon, j’ai fait une soupe aux herbes avec une couenne de lard et un gros os de bœuf. Il n’y a rien qui embaume un potage comme un os à moelle. | “You’re very kind, Monsieur,” the good woman replied. “To prepare our stomachs for your capon, I’ve made herb soup with a bacon rind and a large beef bone. Nothing perfumes a soup like a marrowbone.” |
| <a id="c05p047"></a>— Cette maxime est louable, citoyenne, répliqua le vieux Brotteaux. Et vous ferez sagement de remettre demain, après-demain et tout le reste de la semaine, ce précieux os dans la marmite, qu’il ne manquera point de parfumer. La sibylle de Panzoust procédait de la sorte: elle faisait un potage de choux verts avec une couenne de lard jaune et un vieil savorados. Ainsi nomme-t-on dans son pays, qui est aussi le mien, l’os médullaire si savoureux et succulent. | “That is a commendable maxim, Citizen,” old Brotteaux replied. “You would be wise to put that precious bone back into the pot tomorrow, the day after and all the rest of the week: it won’t fail to flavour it. The Sibyl of Panzoust[^c05n11] did just that. She made green cabbage soup with a rind of yellow bacon and an old savorados. In her country, which is mine too, that’s what they call the savoury, succulent marrowbone.” |
| <a id="c05p048"></a>— Cette dame dont vous parlez, monsieur, fit la citoyenne Gamelin, n’était-elle pas un peu regardante, de faire servir si longtemps le même os? | “Wasn’t that lady you mention, Monsieur,” said Citizen Gamelin, “a little close-fisted, using the same bone for so long?” |
| <a id="c05p049"></a>— Elle menait petit train, répondit Brotteaux. Elle était pauvre, bien que prophétesse." | “She lived in a small way,” Brotteaux answered. “She was poor, although a prophetess.” |
| <a id="c05p050"></a>A ce moment, Évariste Gamelin rentra, tout ému des aveux qu’il venait de recevoir et se promettant de connaître le séducteur d’Élodie, pour venger en même temps sur lui la République et son amour. | At that moment Évariste Gamelin returned, deeply stirred by the confession he had just heard and resolved to discover Élodie’s seducer, to avenge both the Republic and his love on him. |
| <a id="c05p051"></a>Après les politesses ordinaires, le citoyen Brotteaux reprit le fil de son discours: | After the usual courtesies, Citizen Brotteaux took up the thread of his discourse. |
| <a id="c05p052"></a>"Il est rare que ceux qui font métier de prédire l’avenir s’enrichissent. On s’aperçoit trop vite de leurs supercheries. Leur imposture les rend haïssables. Mais il faudrait les détester bien davantage s’ils annonçaient vraiment l’avenir. Car la vie d’un homme serait intolérable, s’il savait ce qui lui doit arriver. Il découvrirait des maux futurs, dont il souffrirait par avance, et il ne jouirait plus des biens présents, dont il verrait la fin. L’ignorance est la condition nécessaire du bonheur des hommes, et il faut reconnaître que, le plus souvent, ils la remplissent bien. Nous ignorons de nous presque tout; d’autrui, tout. L’ignorance fait notre tranquillité; le mensonge, notre félicité." | “Those who make a profession of predicting the future seldom grow rich. Their tricks are discovered too soon. Their imposture makes them hateful. Yet they ought to be hated much more if they really foretold the future. A man’s life would be intolerable if he knew what was to happen to him. He would discover future evils and suffer them in advance, and no longer enjoy present blessings because he would see their end. Ignorance is a necessary condition of human happiness, and we must acknowledge that most of the time people fulfil it very well. We know almost nothing of ourselves; of others, nothing. Ignorance makes our peace; falsehood, our bliss[^c05n12].” |
| <a id="c05p053"></a>La citoyenne Gamelin mit la soupe sur la table, dit le *Benedicite*, fit asseoir son fils et son hôte, et commença de manger debout, refusant la place que le citoyen Brotteaux lui offrait à côté de lui, car elle savait, disait-elle, à quoi la politesse l’obligeait. | Citizen Gamelin put the soup on the table, said the *Benedicite*, seated her son and her guest, and began eating on her feet. She refused the place Citizen Brotteaux offered beside him, for she knew, she said, what politeness required of her. |

### Notes

[^c05n01]: Élodie distinguishes immediate social discretion from the respectability acquired by duration. Interpretively, her practical ethics differ from Gamelin’s demand for public principle without implying that she is incapable of fidelity or a lasting attachment. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n02]: The narrator places preparation and candour together. Élodie proposes to control how a true disclosure is received, not to deliver an exhaustive account. The phrase marks the limit of her promised confession before the interrogation begins. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n03]: The legal vocabulary is deliberate and anticipatory: Élodie invites judgement, and Gamelin turns a lover’s confidence into the receipt of evidence. The passage concerns his disposition before any later judicial office; the translation avoids replacing justice with mere “advice”. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n04]: The narrator immediately calls these words calculated and records their success. Interpretively, Élodie chooses the explanatory framework Gamelin can accept, translating sexual history into the moral-political language of nature corrupted by society. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n05]: The paragraph explicitly separates Gamelin’s certainty from the narrator’s account of desire. His questions accumulate detail while excluding a possible explanation in advance. This is the text’s stated limitation of his understanding, not evidence that Élodie was necessarily coerced. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n06]: Her correction from royaume, “kingdom”, to France exposes the political danger of an inherited expression. It does not establish the absent lover’s rank or whereabouts: Gamelin himself supplies the unsupported conclusion “émigré”. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n07]: Greluchon denotes the young lover of a woman maintained by someone else, rather than a legal husband. The dictionary’s older social meaning is stronger than “admirer”; here his revolutionary military identity coexists with an attachment to a former noblewoman. [S070](#S070)

[^c05n08]: Interpretive note: this assurance has no identifying evidence behind it. Gamelin has just been denied the man’s name and has supplied his own social category. The promise binds his private jealousy to his political belief while leaving the reader aware of the factual gap. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n09]: The supplied French reads Vingt et un here, whereas the opening chapter’s petition concerns twenty-two members. Both numbers are retained. They should not be silently harmonised, particularly where the novel’s shifting political groupings and compressed chronology resist a single simple count. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n10]: The passage alternates material fact—rising food prices and a gift of poultry—with claims about collective intentions. The qualification applied to aristocrats’ wishes is kept; it prevents the narrator’s presentation of rumours from becoming a verified assertion about an entire class. [S056](#S056)

[^c05n11]: Brotteaux recalls Chapter XVII of Rabelais’ Tiers Livre: the poorly nourished prophetess cooks green cabbage with yellow bacon rind and an old savorados. The University of Tours’ transcription verifies the unusual word and ingredients. The literary reminiscence arises directly from the household’s meal. [S071](#S071)

[^c05n12]: Brotteaux’s conclusion follows an episode in which partial disclosure and false inference preserve a couple’s immediate happiness. Interpretively, the chapter tests his maxim through that juxtaposition; it does not require readers to endorse falsehood as a universal moral rule. [S056](#S056)

<a id="chapter-06"></a>

## VI

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c06p001"></a>Dix heures du matin. Pas un souffle d’air. C’était le mois de juillet le plus chaud qu’on eût connu. Dans l’étroite rue de Jérusalem, une centaine de citoyens de la section faisaient la queue à la porte du boulanger, sous la surveillance de quatre gardes nationaux qui, l’arme au repos, fumaient leur pipe. | Ten in the morning. Not a breath of air. It was the hottest July anyone had known. In the narrow Rue de Jérusalem, a hundred citizens of the section queued outside the baker’s, watched by four National Guards smoking their pipes with their weapons at rest. |
| <a id="c06p002"></a>La Convention nationale avait décrété le *maximum*: aussitôt grains, farine avaient disparu. Comme les Israélites au désert, les Parisiens se levaient avant le jour s’ils voulaient manger. Tous ces gens, serrés les uns contre les autres, hommes, femmes, enfants, sous un ciel de plomb fondu, qui chauffait les pourritures des ruisseaux et exaltait les odeurs de sueur et de crasse, se bousculaient, s’interpellaient, se regardaient avec tous les sentiments que les êtres humains peuvent éprouver les uns pour les autres, antipathie, dégoût, intérêt, désir, indifférence. On avait appris, par une expérience douloureuse, qu’il n’y avait pas de pain pour tout le monde: aussi les derniers venus cherchaient-ils à se glisser en avant; ceux qui perdaient du terrain se plaignaient et s’irritaient et invoquaient vainement leur droit méprisé. Les femmes jouaient avec rage des coudes et des reins pour conserver leur place ou en gagner une meilleure. Si la presse devenait plus étouffante, des cris s’élevaient: "Ne poussez pas!" Et chacun protestait, se disant poussé soi-même. | The National Convention had decreed the *maximum*[^c06n01]: grain and flour had immediately disappeared. Like the Israelites in the desert, Parisians rose before dawn if they wanted to eat. Under a sky of molten lead that heated the rotting gutters and intensified the smells of sweat and dirt, all these people—men, women and children packed against one another—jostled, shouted and looked at each other with every feeling human beings can have for one another: antipathy, disgust, interest, desire, indifference. Painful experience had taught them there was not enough bread for everyone, so latecomers tried to slip forward; those who lost ground complained, grew angry and vainly appealed to their disregarded rights. Women furiously wielded elbows and hips to keep their place or gain a better one. When the crush became more suffocating, cries went up: “Don’t push!” Everyone protested that they themselves were being pushed. |
| <a id="c06p003"></a>Pour éviter ces désordres quotidiens, les commissaires délégués par la section avaient imaginé d’attacher à la porte du boulanger une corde que chacun tenait à son rang; mais les mains trop rapprochées se rencontraient sur la corde et entraient en lutte. Celui qui la quittait ne parvenait point à la reprendre. Les mécontents ou les plaisants la coupaient, et il avait fallu y renoncer. | To prevent these daily disorders, the commissioners delegated by the section had thought of fastening a rope to the baker’s door, which everyone held at their place in the line. But hands pressed too close together met on the rope and began to fight. Anyone who let go could not get hold of it again. Malcontents or jokers cut it, and the scheme had to be abandoned. |
| <a id="c06p004"></a>Dans cette queue, on suffoquait, on croyait mourir, on faisait des plaisanteries, on lançait des propos grivois, on jetait des invectives aux aristocrates et aux fédéralistes, auteurs de tout le mal. Quand un chien passait, des plaisants l’appelaient Pitt. Parfois retentissait un large soufflet, appliqué par la main d’une citoyenne sur la joue d’un insolent, tandis que, pressée par son voisin, une jeune servante, les yeux mi-clos et la bouche entrouverte, soupirait mollement. A toute parole, à tout geste, à toute attitude propre à mettre en éveil l’humeur grivoise des aimables Français, un groupe de jeunes libertins entonnait le *Ça ira*, malgré les protestations d’un vieux jacobin, indigné que l’on compromît en de sales équivoques un refrain qui exprimait la foi républicaine dans un avenir de justice et de bonheur. | In the queue people suffocated, thought they were dying, joked, made bawdy remarks and hurled abuse at the aristocrats and federalists responsible for all the trouble. Whenever a dog passed, wags called it Pitt. Sometimes a ringing slap sounded as a citizen’s hand struck an insolent man’s cheek, while, pressed by her neighbour, a young maidservant sighed softly, her eyes half closed and her mouth half open. At any word, gesture or attitude capable of awakening the amiable French people’s bawdy humour, a group of young rakes struck up *Ça ira*[^c06n02], despite the protests of an old Jacobin, indignant that a refrain expressing republican faith in a future of justice and happiness should be compromised by filthy double meanings. |
| <a id="c06p005"></a>Son échelle sous le bras, un afficheur vint coller sur un mur, en face de la boulangerie, un avis de la Commune rationnant la viande de boucherie. Des passants s’arrêtaient pour lire la feuille encore toute gluante. Une marchande de choux, qui cheminait sa hotte sur le dos, se mit à dire de sa grosse voix cassée: | A billposter, his ladder under his arm, came to paste a notice from the Commune on the wall opposite the bakery, announcing the rationing of butcher’s meat. Passers-by stopped to read the still-sticky sheet. A cabbage seller walking by with a basket on her back began saying in her loud, cracked voice: |
| <a id="c06p006"></a>"Ils sont partis, les beaux bœufs! ratissons-nous les boyaux." | “The fine oxen have gone! We can scrape our guts clean.” |
| <a id="c06p007"></a>Tout à coup une telle bouffée de puanteur ardente monta d’un égout, que plusieurs furent pris de nausées; une femme se trouva mal et fut remise évanouie à deux gardes nationaux qui la portèrent à quelques pas de là, sous une pompe. On se bouchait le nez; une rumeur grondait; des paroles s’échangeaient, pleines d’angoisse et d’épouvante. On se demandait si c’était quelque animal enterré là, ou bien un poison mis par malveillance, ou plutôt un massacré de Septembre, noble ou prêtre, oublié dans une cave du voisinage. | Suddenly such a blast of hot stench rose from a drain that several people felt sick. A woman fainted and was handed unconscious to two National Guards, who carried her a few steps away beneath a pump. People held their noses; a rumour rumbled through the line, and words full of anguish and dread passed from mouth to mouth. Was some animal buried there, or poison maliciously planted, or rather one of those massacred in September[^c06n03], a nobleman or priest forgotten in a neighbouring cellar? |
| <a id="c06p008"></a>"On en a donc mis là? | “Did they put some there, then?” |
| <a id="c06p009"></a>— On en a mis partout! | “They put them everywhere!” |
| <a id="c06p010"></a>— Ce doit être un de ceux du Châtelet. Le 2, j’en ai vu trois cents en tas sur le Pont au Change." | “It must be one of those from the Châtelet. On the second I saw three hundred in a heap on the Pont au Change.” |
| <a id="c06p011"></a>Les Parisiens craignaient la vengeance de ces ci-devant qui, morts, les empoisonnaient. | Parisians feared the vengeance of these former masters, poisoning them even in death. |
| <a id="c06p012"></a>Évariste Gamelin vint prendre la queue: il avait voulu éviter à sa vieille mère les fatigues d’une longue station. Son voisin, le citoyen Brotteaux, l’accompagnait, calme, souriant, son Lucrèce dans la poche béante de sa redingote puce. | Évariste Gamelin joined the queue, wishing to spare his old mother the fatigue of standing so long. His neighbour Citizen Brotteaux accompanied him, calm and smiling, his Lucretius in the gaping pocket of his puce frock coat. |
| <a id="c06p013"></a>Le bon vieillard vanta cette scène comme une bambochade digne du pinceau d’un moderne Téniers. | The kindly old man praised the scene as a low-life genre picture[^c06n04] worthy of a modern Teniers’ brush. |
| <a id="c06p014"></a>"Ces portefaix et ces commères, dit-il, sont plus plaisants que les Grecs et les Romains si chers aujourd’hui à nos peintres. Pour moi, j’ai toujours goûté la manière flamande." | “These porters and gossips,” he said, “are more entertaining than the Greeks and Romans our painters love so much today. For my part, I’ve always enjoyed the Flemish manner.” |
| <a id="c06p015"></a>Ce qu’il ne rappelait point, par sagesse et bon goût, c’est qu’il avait possédé une galerie de tableaux hollandais que le seul cabinet de M. de Choiseul égalait pour le nombre et le choix des peintures. | What wisdom and good taste kept him from mentioning was that he had owned a gallery of Dutch paintings equalled in number and quality only by Monsieur de Choiseul’s collection. |
| <a id="c06p016"></a>"Il n’y a de beau que l’antique, répondit le peintre, et ce qui en est inspiré: mais je vous accorde que les bambochades de Téniers, de Steen ou d’Ostade valent mieux que les fanfreluches de Watteau, de Boucher ou de Van Loo: l’humanité y est enlaidie, mais non point avilie comme par un Baudouin ou un Fragonard." | “Only antiquity and what it inspires are beautiful,” the painter replied. “But I grant you that the genre scenes of Teniers, Steen or Ostade are worth more than the fripperies of Watteau, Boucher or Van Loo. Humanity is made ugly in them, but not debased as it is by a Baudouin or a Fragonard.” |
| <a id="c06p017"></a>Un aboyeur passa, criant: | A street crier passed, shouting: |
| <a id="c06p018"></a>"*Le Bulletin du Tribunal révolutionnaire!*... la liste des condamnés! | “*The Bulletin of the Revolutionary Tribunal!*… The list of the condemned!” |
| <a id="c06p019"></a>— Ce n’est point assez d’un tribunal révolutionnaire, dit Gamelin. Il en faut un dans chaque ville.... Que dis-je? dans chaque commune, dans chaque canton. Il faut que tous les pères de famille, que tous les citoyens s’érigent en juges. Quand la nation se trouve sous le canon des ennemis et sous le poignard des traîtres, l’indulgence est parricide. Quoi! Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux insurgées, la Corse révoltée, la Vendée en feu, Mayence et Valenciennes tombées au pouvoir de la coalition, la trahison dans les campagnes, dans les villes, dans les camps, la trahison siégeant sur les bancs de la Convention nationale, la trahison assise, une carte à la main, dans les conseils de guerre de nos généraux!... Que la guillotine sauve la patrie! | “One Revolutionary Tribunal isn’t enough,” said Gamelin. “We need one in every town… What am I saying? In every commune, in every canton. Every father of a family, every citizen, must set himself up as a judge. When the nation lies beneath the enemy’s guns and the traitor’s dagger, indulgence is parricide[^c06n05]. What! Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux in insurrection, Corsica in revolt, the Vendée ablaze, Mainz and Valenciennes fallen to the coalition; treachery in the countryside, in towns, in the camps, treachery sitting on the benches of the National Convention, treachery seated with a map in its hand in our generals’ councils of war! Let the guillotine save the country!” |
| <a id="c06p020"></a>— Je n’ai pas d’objection essentielle à faire contre la guillotine, répliqua le vieux Brotteaux. La nature, ma seule maîtresse et ma seule institutrice, ne m’avertit en effet d’aucune manière que la vie d’un homme ait quelque prix; elle enseigne au contraire, de toutes sortes de manières, qu’elle n’en a aucun. L’unique fin des êtres semble de devenir la pâture d’autres êtres destinés à la même fin. Le meurtre est de droit naturel: en conséquence la peine de mort est légitime, à la condition qu’on ne l’exerce ni par vertu ni par justice, mais par nécessité ou pour en tirer quelque profit. Cependant il faut que j’aie des instincts pervers, car je répugne à voir couler le sang, et c’est une dépravation que toute ma philosophie n’est pas encore parvenue à corriger. | “I have no fundamental objection to the guillotine,” old Brotteaux replied. “Nature, my only mistress and teacher, gives me no indication whatever that a man’s life has any value. On the contrary, she teaches me in all manner of ways that it has none. Beings seem to have no purpose but to become food for other beings destined for the same end. Murder is sanctioned by natural right; consequently the death penalty is legitimate, provided it is inflicted neither from virtue nor from justice, but from necessity or to obtain some advantage. Yet I must have perverse instincts, because I shrink from seeing blood flow, and all my philosophy has not yet managed to correct this depravity[^c06n06].” |
| <a id="c06p021"></a>— Les républicains, reprit Évariste, sont humains et sensibles. Il n’y a que les despotes qui soutiennent que la peine de mort est un attribut nécessaire de l’autorité. Le peuple souverain l’abolira un jour. Robespierre l’a combattue, et avec lui tous les patriotes; la loi qui la supprime ne saurait être trop tôt promulguée. Mais elle ne devra être appliquée que lorsque le dernier ennemi de la République aura péri sous le glaive de la loi." | “Republicans,” Évariste continued, “are humane and sensitive. Only despots maintain that the death penalty is a necessary attribute of authority. The sovereign people will abolish it one day. Robespierre opposed it[^c06n07], and all the patriots with him. The law suppressing it cannot be promulgated too soon. But it must not be applied until the Republic’s last enemy has perished beneath the sword of the law.” |
| <a id="c06p022"></a>Gamelin et Brotteaux avaient maintenant derrière eux des retardataires, et parmi ceux-là plusieurs femmes de la section; entre autres une belle grande tricoteuse, en fanchon et en sabots, portant un sabre en bandoulière, une jolie fille blonde, ébouriffée, dont le fichu était très chiffonné, et une jeune mère qui, maigre et pâle, donnait le sein à un enfant malingre. | Gamelin and Brotteaux now had latecomers behind them, among them several women from the section: a handsome, tall knitter in a kerchief cap and wooden shoes, a sabre slung across her; a pretty, dishevelled blonde girl whose fichu was badly crumpled; and a thin, pale young mother suckling a sickly child. |
| <a id="c06p023"></a>L’enfant, qui ne trouvait plus de lait, criait, mais ses cris étaient faibles et les sanglots l’étouffaient. Pitoyablement petit, le teint blême et brouillé, les yeux enflammés, sa mère le contemplait avec une sollicitude douloureuse. | Finding no more milk, the child cried, but its cries were feeble and sobs choked it. Pitifully small, its complexion wan and blotchy, its eyes inflamed, it was watched by its mother with painful concern. |
| <a id="c06p024"></a>"Il est bien jeune, dit Gamelin en se retournant vers le malheureux nourrisson, qui gémissait contre son dos, dans la presse étouffante des derniers arrivés. | “He’s very young,” said Gamelin, turning towards the wretched infant moaning against his back in the stifling crush of latecomers. |
| <a id="c06p025"></a>— Il a six mois, le pauvre amour!... Son père est à l’armée: il est de ceux qui ont repoussé les Autrichiens à Condé. Il se nomme Dumonteil (Michel), commis drapier de son état. Il s’est enrôlé, dans un théâtre qu’on avait dressé devant l’hôtel de ville. Le pauvre ami voulait défendre sa patrie et voir du pays.... Il m’écrit de prendre patience. Mais comment voulez-vous que je nourrisse Paul... (c’est Paul qu’il se nomme)... puisque je ne peux pas me nourrir moi-même? | “He’s six months, the poor darling! His father’s in the army, one of those who drove the Austrians back at Condé. His name is Dumonteil (Michel)[^c06n08], a draper’s clerk by trade. He enlisted on a stage they’d put up in front of the town hall. The poor dear wanted to defend his country and see the world… He writes telling me to be patient. But how am I to feed Paul—that’s his name, Paul—when I can’t feed myself?” |
| <a id="c06p026"></a>— Ah! s’écria la jolie fille blonde, nous en avons encore pour une heure, et il faudra, ce soir, recommencer la même cérémonie à la porte de l’épicière. On risque la mort pour avoir trois œufs et un quarteron de beurre. | “Ah!” cried the pretty blonde girl. “We’ve another hour of this, and tonight we’ll have to go through the same ceremony again outside the grocer’s. You risk death for three eggs and a quarter-pound of butter.” |
| <a id="c06p027"></a>— Du beurre, soupira la citoyenne Dumonteil, voilà trois mois que je n’en ai vu!" | “Butter!” sighed Citizen Dumonteil. “I haven’t seen any for three months.” |
| <a id="c06p028"></a>Et le chœur des femmes se lamenta sur la rareté et la cherté des vivres, jeta des malédictions aux émigrés et voua à la guillotine les commissaires de sections qui donnaient à des femmes dévergondées, au prix de honteuses faveurs, des poulardes et des pains de quatre livres. On sema des histoires alarmantes de bœufs noyés dans la Seine, de sacs de farine vidés dans les égouts, de pains jetés dans les latrines.... C’étaient les affameurs royalistes, rolandins, brissotins, qui poursuivaient l’extermination du peuple de Paris. | The women’s chorus lamented the scarcity and cost of food, cursed the émigrés and consigned to the guillotine the section commissioners who supplied fat hens and four-pound loaves to loose women in return for shameful favours. Alarming stories spread[^c06n09]: oxen drowned in the Seine, sacks of flour emptied into sewers, loaves thrown into privies… Royalists, Rolandists and Brissotins were the starvers seeking to exterminate the people of Paris. |
| <a id="c06p029"></a>Tout à coup la jolie fille blonde, au fichu chiffonné, poussa des cris comme si elle avait le feu à ses jupes, qu’elle secouait violemment et dont elle retournait les poches, proclamant qu’on lui avait volé sa bourse. | Suddenly the pretty blonde girl with the crumpled fichu screamed as though her skirts were on fire. She shook them violently, turned out their pockets and proclaimed that her purse had been stolen. |
| <a id="c06p030"></a>Au bruit de ce larcin, une grande indignation souleva ce menu peuple, qui avait pillé les hôtels du faubourg Saint-Germain et envahi les Tuileries sans rien emporter, artisans et ménagères, qui eussent de bon cœur brûlé le château de Versailles, mais se fussent crus déshonorés s’ils y avaient dérobé une épingle. Les jeunes libertins risquèrent sur la mésaventure de la belle enfant quelques méchantes plaisanteries, aussitôt étouffées sous la rumeur publique. On parlait déjà de pendre le voleur à la lanterne. On entamait une enquête tumultueuse et partiale. La grande tricoteuse, montrant du doigt un vieillard soupçonné d’être un moine défroqué, jurait que c’était "le capucin" qui avait fait le coup. La foule, aussitôt persuadée, poussa des cris de mort. | News of the theft filled these ordinary people with indignation: artisans and housewives who had plundered the mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and invaded the Tuileries without taking anything away[^c06n10], who would gladly have burnt the Château de Versailles but felt dishonoured had they stolen a pin from it. The young rakes ventured a few nasty jokes about the pretty girl’s misfortune, immediately drowned in the public uproar. People were already talking of hanging the thief from a lamp-post. A tumultuous, partial inquiry began. Pointing at an old man suspected of being an unfrocked monk, the tall knitter swore “the Capuchin” had done it. Instantly persuaded, the crowd cried for his death. |
| <a id="c06p031"></a>Le vieillard si vivement dénoncé à la vindicte publique se tenait fort modestement devant le citoyen Brotteaux. Il avait toute l’apparence, à vrai dire, d’un ci-devant religieux. Son air était assez vénérable, bien qu’altéré par le trouble que causaient à ce pauvre homme les violences de la foule et le souvenir encore vif des journées de Septembre. La crainte qui se peignait sur son visage le rendait suspect au populaire, qui croit volontiers que seuls les coupables ont peur de ses jugements, comme si la précipitation inconsidérée avec laquelle il les rend ne devait pas effrayer jusqu’aux plus innocents. | The old man so vehemently denounced to public vengeance stood very modestly in front of Citizen Brotteaux. He did indeed look like a former religious. His appearance was venerable enough, though altered by the agitation that the crowd’s violence and the still-vivid memory of the September days caused this poor man. The fear painted on his face made him suspect to the populace, which readily believes that only the guilty fear its judgements, as though the heedless haste with which it delivers them ought not to terrify even the most innocent[^c06n11]. |
| <a id="c06p032"></a>Brotteaux s’était donné pour loi de ne jamais contrarier le sentiment populaire, surtout quand il se montrait absurde et féroce, "parce qu’alors, disait-il, la voix du peuple était la voix de Dieu". Mais Brotteaux était inconséquent: il déclara que cet homme, qu’il fût capucin ou ne le fût point, n’avait pu dérober la citoyenne, dont il ne s’était pas approché un seul moment. | Brotteaux had made it a rule never to oppose popular feeling, especially when it showed itself absurd and ferocious, “because then,” he said, “the voice of the people was the voice of God”. But Brotteaux was inconsistent[^c06n12]: he declared that this man, Capuchin or not, could not have robbed the citizen, since he had never once gone near her. |
| <a id="c06p033"></a>La foule conclut que celui qui défendait le voleur était son complice, et l’on parlait maintenant de traiter avec rigueur les deux malfaiteurs, et, quand Gamelin se porta garant de Brotteaux, les plus sages parlèrent de l’envoyer avec les deux autres à la section. | The crowd concluded that anyone defending the thief was his accomplice. There was now talk of treating both criminals severely; and when Gamelin vouched for Brotteaux, the wisest suggested sending him to the section with the other two. |
| <a id="c06p034"></a>Mais la jolie fille s’écria tout à coup joyeusement qu’elle avait retrouvé sa bourse. Aussitôt elle fut couverte de huées et menacée d’être fessée publiquement, comme une nonne. | But the pretty girl suddenly cried joyfully that she had found her purse. At once she was overwhelmed with jeers and threatened with a public spanking, like a nun. |
| <a id="c06p035"></a>"Monsieur, dit le religieux à Brotteaux, je vous remercie d’avoir pris ma défense. Mon nom importe peu, mais je vous dois de vous le dire: je me nomme Louis de Longuemare. Je suis un régulier, en effet; mais non pas un capucin, comme l’ont dit ces femmes. Il s’en faut de tout: je suis clerc régulier de l’ordre des Barnabites, qui donna des docteurs et des saints en foule à l’Église. Ce n’est point assez d’en faire remonter l’origine à saint Charles Borromée: on doit considérer comme son véritable fondateur l’apôtre saint Paul, dont il porte le monogramme dans ses armoiries. J’ai dû quitter mon couvent devenu le siège de la section du Pont-Neuf et porter un habit séculier. | “Monsieur,” the religious said to Brotteaux, “I thank you for taking my part. My name matters little, but I owe it to you to tell it: I am Louis de Longuemare. I am indeed a member of a religious order, but not a Capuchin, as those women said. Far from it. I am a Clerk Regular of the Barnabite order, which has given the Church a multitude of doctors and saints. It is not enough to trace its origins to Saint Charles Borromeo; its true founder must be considered the Apostle Saint Paul[^c06n13], whose monogram it bears in its arms. I was obliged to leave my convent, now the headquarters of the Pont-Neuf section, and wear secular clothes.” |
| <a id="c06p036"></a>— Mon Père, dit Brotteaux, en examinant la souquenille de M. de Longuemare, votre habit témoigne suffisamment que vous n’avez pas renié votre état: à le voir, on croirait que vous avez réformé votre ordre plutôt que vous ne l’avez quitté. Et vous vous exposez bénévolement, sous ces dehors austères, aux injures d’une populace impie. | “Father,” said Brotteaux, examining Monsieur de Longuemare’s threadbare coat, “your clothes sufficiently testify that you haven’t renounced your calling. Looking at them, one would think you had reformed your order rather than left it. With this austere exterior you expose yourself quite gratuitously to the insults of an impious rabble.” |
| <a id="c06p037"></a>— Je ne puis pourtant pas, répondit le religieux, porter un habit bleu, comme un danseur! | “But I can hardly wear a blue coat like a dancing master!” the religious replied. |
| <a id="c06p038"></a>— Mon Père, ce que je dis de votre habit est pour rendre hommage à votre caractère et vous mettre en garde contre les dangers que vous courez. | “Father, my remarks about your clothes pay tribute to your character and warn you of the dangers you run.” |
| <a id="c06p039"></a>— Monsieur, il conviendrait, tout au contraire, de m’encourager à confesser ma foi. Car je ne suis que trop enclin à craindre le péril. J’ai quitté mon habit, monsieur, ce qui est une manière d’apostasie; j’aurais voulu du moins ne pas quitter la maison où Dieu m’accorda durant tant d’années la grâce d’une vie paisible et cachée. J’obtins d’y demeurer; et j’y gardai ma cellule, tandis qu’on transformait l’église et le cloître en une sorte de petit hôtel de ville qu’ils nommaient la section. Je vis, monsieur, je vis marteler les emblèmes de la sainte vérité; je vis le nom de l’apôtre Paul remplacé par un bonnet de forçat. Parfois même j’assistai aux conciliabules de la section, et j’y entendis exprimer d’étonnantes erreurs. Enfin je quittai cette demeure profanée et j’allai vivre de la pension de cent pistoles que me fait l’Assemblée dans une écurie dont on a réquisitionné les chevaux pour le service des armées. Là je dis la messe devant quelques fidèles, qui y viennent attester l’éternité de l’Église de Jésus-Christ. | “On the contrary, Monsieur, you ought to encourage me to confess my faith. For I am only too inclined to fear danger. I have taken off my habit, Monsieur, which is a kind of apostasy. I would at least have liked not to leave the house where God granted me so many years of peaceful, hidden life. I obtained permission to stay and kept my cell while they turned the church and cloister into a sort of little town hall which they called the section. I saw, Monsieur, I saw them hammer away the emblems of holy truth. I saw the Apostle Paul’s name replaced by a convict’s cap[^c06n14]. Sometimes I even attended the section’s secret councils and heard astonishing errors expressed there. At last I left that profaned dwelling and went to live on the pension of a hundred pistoles granted me by the Assembly, in a stable whose horses had been requisitioned for the armies. There I say Mass before a few of the faithful, who come to attest the eternity of the Church of Jesus Christ.” |
| <a id="c06p040"></a>— Moi, mon Père, répondit l’autre, si vous voulez le savoir, je me nomme Brotteaux et fus jadis publicain. | “As for me, Father,” the other answered, “if you wish to know, my name is Brotteaux, and I was once a publican[^c06n15].” |
| <a id="c06p041"></a>— Monsieur, répliqua le Père Longuemare, je savais, par l’exemple de saint Matthieu, qu’on peut attendre une bonne parole d’un publicain. | “Monsieur,” Father Longuemare replied, “Saint Matthew’s example taught me that one may expect a good word from a publican.” |
| <a id="c06p042"></a>— Mon Père, vous êtes trop honnête. | “Father, you’re too kind.” |
| <a id="c06p043"></a>— Citoyen Brotteaux, dit Gamelin, admirez ce bon peuple plus affamé de justice que de pain: chacun ici était prêt à quitter sa place pour châtier le voleur. Ces hommes, ces femmes si pauvres, soumis à tant de privations, sont d’une probité sévère, et ne peuvent tolérer un acte malhonnête. | “Citizen Brotteaux,” said Gamelin, “admire these good people, hungrier for justice than for bread. Everyone here was ready to leave their place to punish the thief. These men and women, so poor, subjected to so many privations, are scrupulously honest and cannot tolerate a dishonest act.” |
| <a id="c06p044"></a>— Il faut convenir, répondit Brotteaux, que, dans leur grande envie de pendre le larron, ces gens-ci eussent fait un mauvais parti à ce bon religieux, à son défenseur et au défenseur de son défenseur. Leur avarice même et l’amour égoïste qu’ils portent à leur bien les y poussaient: le larron, en s’attaquant à l’un d’eux, les menaçait tous; ils se préservaient en le punissant.... Au reste, il est probable que la plupart de ces manouvriers et de ces ménagères sont probes et respectueux du bien d’autrui. Ces sentiments leur ont été inculqués dès l’enfance par leurs père et mère qui les ont suffisamment fessés, et leur ont fait entrer les vertus par le cul." | “We must admit,” Brotteaux replied, “that in their great eagerness to hang the thief these people would have dealt roughly with this good religious, his defender and his defender’s defender. Their very greed and selfish love of their possessions drove them to it: by attacking one of them, the thief threatened them all; in punishing him they were protecting themselves… Besides, most of these labourers and housewives are probably honest and respect other people’s property. Those feelings were instilled in them from childhood by fathers and mothers who spanked them sufficiently and drove virtue into them through the arse[^c06n16].” |
| <a id="c06p045"></a>Gamelin ne cacha pas au vieux Brotteaux qu’un tel langage lui semblait indigne d’un philosophe. | Gamelin did not conceal from old Brotteaux that he thought such language unworthy of a philosopher. |
| <a id="c06p046"></a>"La vertu, dit-il, est naturelle à l’homme: Dieu en a déposé le germe dans le cœur des mortels." | “Virtue,” he said, “is natural to man. God has planted its seed in mortal hearts.” |
| <a id="c06p047"></a>Le vieux Brotteaux était athée et tirait de son athéisme une source abondante de délices. | Old Brotteaux was an atheist and drew abundant delight from his atheism. |
| <a id="c06p048"></a>"Je vois, citoyen Gamelin, que, révolutionnaire pour ce qui est de la terre, vous êtes, quant au ciel, conservateur et même réacteur. Robespierre et Marat le sont autant que vous. Et je trouve singulier que les Français, qui ne souffrent plus de roi mortel, s’obstinent à en garder un immortel, beaucoup plus tyrannique et féroce. Car qu’est-ce que la Bastille et même la chambre ardente, auprès de l’enfer? L’humanité copie ses dieux sur ses tyrans, et vous, qui rejetez l’original, vous gardez la copie! | “I see, Citizen Gamelin, that though a revolutionary in earthly matters, in heavenly ones you are conservative and even reactionary. Robespierre and Marat are as much so as you. I find it strange that the French, who will no longer tolerate a mortal king, insist on keeping an immortal one, far more tyrannical and ferocious. What are the Bastille and even the burning chamber[^c06n17] compared with hell? Humanity copies its gods from its tyrants, and you reject the original while keeping the copy!” |
| <a id="c06p049"></a>— Oh! citoyen! s’écria Gamelin, n’avez-vous pas honte de tenir ce langage? et pouvez-vous confondre les sombres divinités conçues par l’ignorance et la peur avec l’Auteur de la nature? La croyance en un Dieu bon est nécessaire à la morale. L’Être suprême est la source de toutes les vertus, et l’on n’est pas républicain si l’on ne croit en Dieu. Robespierre le savait bien, qui fit enlever de la salle des Jacobins ce buste du philosophe Helvétius, coupable d’avoir disposé les Français à la servitude en leur enseignant l’athéisme.... J’espère, du moins, citoyen Brotteaux, que, lorsque la République aura institué le culte de la Raison, vous ne refuserez pas votre adhésion à une religion si sage. | “Oh, Citizen!” cried Gamelin. “Aren’t you ashamed to speak like that? Can you confuse the dark divinities conceived by ignorance and fear with the Author of nature? Belief in a good God is necessary to morality. The Supreme Being is the source of every virtue, and no one who disbelieves in God is a republican. Robespierre knew it well when he had that bust of the philosopher Helvétius removed from the Jacobins’ hall, guilty of preparing the French for servitude by teaching them atheism… At least I hope, Citizen Brotteaux, that when the Republic institutes the cult of Reason[^c06n18] you won’t withhold your adherence to so wise a religion.” |
| <a id="c06p050"></a>— J’ai l’amour de la raison, je n’en ai pas le fanatisme, répondit Brotteaux. La raison nous guide et nous éclaire; quand vous en aurez fait une divinité, elle vous aveuglera et vous persuadera des crimes." | “I love reason; I have no fanaticism for it,” Brotteaux replied. “Reason guides and enlightens us. Once you make it a divinity, it will blind you[^c06n19] and persuade you to commit crimes.” |
| <a id="c06p051"></a>Et Brotteaux continua de raisonner, les pieds dans le ruisseau, ainsi qu’il le faisait naguère dans un de ces fauteuils dorés du baron d’Holbach, qui, selon son expression, servaient de fondement à la philosophie naturelle: | Brotteaux went on reasoning with his feet in the gutter, just as he had formerly done in one of Baron d’Holbach’s gilded armchairs, which, as he put it, provided natural philosophy with its foundations. |
| <a id="c06p052"></a>"Jean-Jacques Rousseau, dit-il, qui montra quelques talents, surtout en musique, était un jean-fesse qui prétendait tirer sa morale de la nature et qui la tirait en réalité des principes de Calvin. La nature nous enseigne à nous entre-dévorer et elle nous donne l’exemple de tous les crimes et de tous les vices que l’état social corrige ou dissimule. On doit aimer la vertu; mais il est bon de savoir que c’est un simple expédient imaginé par les hommes pour vivre commodément ensemble. Ce que nous appelons la morale n’est qu’une entreprise désespérée de nos semblables contre l’ordre universel, qui est la lutte, le carnage et l’aveugle jeu de forces contraires. Elle se détruit elle-même, et, plus j’y pense, plus je me persuade que l’univers est enragé. Les théologiens et les philosophes, qui font de Dieu l’auteur de la nature et l’architecte de l’univers, nous le font paraître absurde et méchant. Ils le disent bon, parce qu’ils le craignent, mais ils sont forcés de convenir qu’il agit d’une façon atroce. Ils lui prêtent une malignité rare même chez l’homme. Et c’est par là qu’ils le rendent adorable sur la terre. Car notre misérable race ne vouerait pas un culte à des Dieux justes et bienveillants, dont elle n’aurait rien à craindre; elle ne garderait point de leurs bienfaits une reconnaissance inutile. Sans le purgatoire et l’enfer, le bon Dieu ne serait qu’un pauvre sire. | “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” he said, “who showed some talent, particularly in music, was a worthless fellow who claimed to draw his morality from nature and actually drew it from Calvin’s principles. Nature teaches us to devour one another and sets us the example of every crime and vice that social life corrects or conceals. We ought to love virtue, but it is well to know that it is merely an expedient devised by human beings to live comfortably together. What we call morality is only our fellow creatures’ desperate enterprise against the universal order, which is struggle, carnage and the blind play of opposing forces. It destroys itself; the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the universe is rabid[^c06n20]. The theologians and philosophers who make God the author of nature and architect of the universe make him appear absurd and wicked. They call him good because they fear him, but are obliged to admit that he acts atrociously. They attribute to him a malignity rare even among men. And that is how they make him worshipped on earth. For our wretched race would not worship just and benevolent gods from whom it had nothing to fear; it would not preserve a useless gratitude for their benefits. Without purgatory and hell, the good Lord would be a poor thing.” |
| <a id="c06p053"></a>— Monsieur, dit le Père Longuemare, ne parlez point de la nature: vous ne savez ce que c’est. | “Monsieur,” said Father Longuemare, “don’t speak of nature: you don’t know what it is.” |
| <a id="c06p054"></a>— Pardieu, je le sais aussi bien que vous, mon Père! | “By God, I know as well as you do, Father!” |
| <a id="c06p055"></a>— Vous ne pouvez pas le savoir, puisque vous n’avez pas de religion et que la religion seule nous enseigne ce qu’est la nature, en quoi elle est bonne et comment elle a été dépravée. Au reste, ne vous attendez pas à ce que je vous réponde: Dieu ne m’a donné, pour réfuter vos erreurs, ni la chaleur du langage ni la force de l’esprit. Je craindrais de ne vous fournir, par mon insuffisance, que des occasions de blasphème et des causes d’endurcissement, et, lorsque je sens un vif désir de vous servir, je ne recueillerais pour tout fruit de mon indiscrète charité que...." | “You cannot know, since you have no religion, and religion alone teaches us what nature is, in what it is good, and how it has been corrupted. Besides, don’t expect me to answer you. God has given me neither eloquence nor intellectual strength to refute your errors. I should fear that my inadequacy would merely offer you occasions for blasphemy and reasons to harden your heart; and though I feel a keen desire to serve you, the only fruit I would gather from my indiscreet charity would be…” |
| <a id="c06p056"></a>Ce propos fut interrompu par une immense clameur qui, partie de la tête de la colonne, avertit la file entière des affamés que la boulangerie ouvrait ses portes. On commença d’avancer mais avec une extrême lenteur. Un garde national de service faisait entrer les acheteurs, un par un. Le boulanger, sa femme et son garçon étaient assistés dans la vente des pains par deux commissaires civils qui, un ruban tricolore au bras gauche, s’assuraient que le consommateur appartenait à la section et qu’on ne lui délivrait que la part proportionnelle aux bouches qu’il avait à nourrir. | His words were interrupted by an immense shout from the head of the column, announcing to the whole line of hungry people that the bakery was opening. They began advancing, but extremely slowly. A National Guard on duty let the buyers in one by one. The baker, his wife and his boy were assisted in selling the bread by two civil commissioners with tricolour ribbons on their left arms. These made sure that each customer belonged to the section and received only the portion proportionate to the mouths he had to feed. |
| <a id="c06p057"></a>Le citoyen Brotteaux faisait de la recherche du plaisir la fin unique de la vie: il estimait que la raison et les sens, seuls juges en l’absence des Dieux, n’en pouvaient concevoir une autre. Or, trouvant dans les propos du peintre un peu trop de fanatisme et dans ceux du religieux un peu trop de simplicité pour y prendre grand plaisir, cet homme sage, afin de conformer sa conduite à sa doctrine dans les conjonctures présentes, et charmer l’attente encore longue, tira de la poche béante de sa redingote puce son Lucrèce, qui demeurait ses plus chères délices et son vrai contentement. La reliure de maroquin rouge était écornée par l’usage et le citoyen Brotteaux en avait prudemment gratté les armoiries, les trois îlots d’or achetés à beaux deniers comptants par le traitant son père. Il ouvrit le livre à l’endroit où le poète philosophe, qui veut guérir les hommes des vains troubles de l’amour, surprend une femme entre les bras de ses servantes dans un état qui offenserait tous les sens d’un amant. Le citoyen Brotteaux lut ces vers, non toutefois sans jeter les yeux sur la nuque dorée de sa jolie voisine ni sans respirer avec volupté la peau moite de cette petite souillon. Le poète Lucrèce n’avait qu’une sagesse; son disciple Brotteaux en avait plusieurs. | Citizen Brotteaux made the pursuit of pleasure life’s sole purpose. In the absence of the gods, he believed reason and the senses, its only judges, could conceive no other. Finding a little too much fanaticism in the painter’s conversation and a little too much simplicity in the religious’s to take great pleasure in either, this wise man, to make his conduct accord with his doctrine in the present circumstances and enliven the still-long wait, drew his Lucretius from the gaping pocket of his puce frock coat. It remained his dearest delight and true contentment. The red morocco binding was worn at the corners, and Citizen Brotteaux had prudently scraped away the coat of arms: three golden islets bought for good hard cash by his tax-contractor father. He opened the book where the poet-philosopher, seeking to cure men of love’s vain torments, catches a woman among her maids in a condition that would offend all a lover’s senses. Citizen Brotteaux read these verses, yet not without glancing at his pretty neighbour’s golden nape or voluptuously breathing the damp skin of this little slattern. The poet Lucretius had only one wisdom; his disciple Brotteaux had several[^c06n21]. |
| <a id="c06p058"></a>Il lisait, faisant deux pas tous les quarts d’heure. A son oreille, réjouie par les cadences graves et nombreuses de la muse latine, jaillissait en vain la criaillerie des commères sur l’enchérissement du pain, du sucre, du café, de la chandelle et du savon. C’est ainsi qu’il atteignit avec sérénité le seuil de la boulangerie. Derrière lui, Évariste Gamelin voyait au-dessus de sa tête la gerbe dorée sur la grille de fer qui fermait l’imposte. | He read, taking two steps every quarter of an hour. The women’s clamour about the rising price of bread, sugar, coffee, candles and soap broke in vain against his ear, delighted by the Latin muse’s grave and flowing cadences. Thus he reached the bakery’s threshold serenely. Behind him Évariste Gamelin saw above his head the golden sheaf on the iron grille closing the fanlight. |
| <a id="c06p059"></a>A son tour, il entra dans la boutique: les paniers, les casiers étaient vides; le boulanger lui délivra le seul morceau de pain qui restât et qui ne pesait pas deux livres. Évariste paya, et l’on ferma la grille sur ses talons, de peur que le peuple en tumulte n’envahît la boulangerie. Mais ce n’était pas à craindre: ces pauvres gens, instruits à l’obéissance par leurs antiques oppresseurs et par leurs libérateurs du jour, s’en furent, la tête basse et traînant la jambe. | In his turn he entered the shop. The baskets and shelves were empty; the baker gave him the only piece of bread left, which did not weigh two pounds. Évariste paid, and the grille was shut on his heels for fear that the tumultuous crowd might invade the bakery. There was no danger of that: these poor people, schooled in obedience by their ancient oppressors and their present liberators, went away heads lowered, dragging their feet. |
| <a id="c06p060"></a>Gamelin, comme il atteignait le coin de la rue, vit assise sur une borne la citoyenne Dumonteil, son nourrisson dans ses bras. Elle était sans mouvement, sans couleur, sans larmes, sans regard. L’enfant lui suçait le doigt avidement. Gamelin se tint un moment devant elle, timide, incertain. Elle ne semblait pas le voir. | At the street corner Gamelin saw Citizen Dumonteil seated on a stone post, her infant in her arms. She had no movement, no colour, no tears, no gaze. The child sucked her finger hungrily. Gamelin stood before her for a moment, shy and uncertain. She did not seem to see him. |
| <a id="c06p061"></a>Il balbutia quelques mots, puis tira son couteau de sa poche, un eustache à manche de corne, coupa son pain par le milieu et en mit la moitié sur les genoux de la jeune mère, qui regarda, étonnée; mais il avait déjà tourné le coin de la rue. | He stammered a few words, then took his knife from his pocket, a horn-handled eustache, cut his bread in half and laid one half in the young mother’s lap[^c06n22]. She looked up in astonishment, but he had already turned the street corner. |
| <a id="c06p062"></a>Rentré chez lui, Évariste trouva sa mère assise à la fenêtre, qui reprisait des bas. Il lui mit gaiement son reste de pain dans la main. | At home Évariste found his mother sitting at the window darning stockings. He cheerfully put his remaining bread in her hand. |
| <a id="c06p063"></a>"Vous me pardonnerez, ma bonne mère: fatigué d’être si longtemps sur mes jambes, épuisé de chaleur, dans la rue, en rentrant à la maison, bouchée par bouchée, j’ai mangé la moitié de notre ration. Il reste à peine votre part." | “You’ll forgive me, dear Mother. I was tired from standing so long and exhausted by the heat. Walking home through the streets, mouthful by mouthful, I ate half our ration. There’s scarcely your share left.” |
| <a id="c06p064"></a>Et il fit mine de secouer les miettes sur sa veste. | He made a show of brushing crumbs from his coat. |

### Notes

[^c06n01]: The word denotes a legally fixed maximum price, here for grain and flour, rather than an upper limit on the quantity a person might buy. The narration immediately turns from the decree to disappearance from sale; the separate meat notice below concerns rationing. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n02]: The refrain means “It will be all right” or “All will be well”. Its hopeful civic sense, prominent in Trubert’s song in Chapter I, is set against the young men’s sexual double meanings. Retaining the French title distinguishes the song from ordinary dialogue. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n03]: The speakers recall the prison killings of September 1792. A contemporary print catalogued by the Musée Carnavalet depicts killings at the Châtelet and Bicêtre. Their hypothesis about a concealed body is nevertheless a rumour inside the scene, not a documented explanation of the smell. [S072](#S072)

[^c06n04]: Bambochade is a painting of familiar, rustic or lower-class scenes. Brotteaux converts immediate hunger, dirt and quarrelling into a proposed artistic subject, in opposition to Gamelin’s Greeks and Romans. “Low-life” describes the genre’s social subjects, not a narrator’s judgement of their moral worth. [S073](#S073)

[^c06n05]: The metaphor makes the nation a parent whose killers are protected by leniency. Interpretively, this family language turns restraint into a crime before any individual case is heard, preparing the reversal in Gamelin’s later praise of summary popular justice. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n06]: Brotteaux ironically calls his reluctance to see blood a failure of philosophical consistency. His argument grants nature no automatic moral authority, yet his physical compassion survives it. The apparent endorsement of killing must be read with the sentence’s self-cancelling comic turn. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n07]: Robespierre took the abolitionist side in the Constituent Assembly’s 1791 death-penalty debate, as the Assemblée nationale’s historical account records. Gamelin’s final condition nevertheless postpones abolition until the last republican enemy is dead, retaining the conflict between his principle and proposed practice. [S074](#S074)

[^c06n08]: The surname-first form, with the given name in parentheses, is retained as part of the administrative precision of the mother’s identification. Her account sets the soldier’s wish to defend his country beside the equally ordinary wish to travel. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n09]: The rumours connect shortages to intentional destruction and designate political groups as starvers. The translation retains their circulation as reports and does not turn the crowd’s accusations into independent findings about the food supply. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n10]: The source itself juxtaposes piller, “plunder”, with a claim that nothing was taken. That unstable moral distinction is preserved rather than repaired: the crowd regards revolutionary destruction and private theft differently. The narrator’s account becomes sharper when the alleged thief proves innocent. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n11]: The narrator directly rejects fear as a reliable sign of guilt. Interpretively, the bread queue becomes a miniature tribunal: suspicion, public certainty and threat of punishment precede inquiry, while the innocent man’s understandable terror is used against him. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n12]: His humane intervention breaks the rule of prudence he has just been said to follow. The irony parallels his earlier admission that disgust at bloodshed resists his philosophy: he repeatedly acts better than a rigorously applied maxim might require. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n13]: The Barnabites’ own history identifies Anthony Mary Zaccaria, with his associates, as the order’s sixteenth-century founder and records papal approval in 1533. Longuemare’s account is a character’s devotional genealogy, not a precise institutional foundation history; his reference to Charles Borromeo is retained. [S075](#S075)

[^c06n14]: Longuemare describes the revolutionary emblem from his hostile religious perspective. Chapter I described the same occupation of the Barnabite church through republican imagery. The differing terms are retained instead of forcing both descriptions into the same ideological vocabulary. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n15]: Publicain here means tax collector or tax contractor, not an innkeeper. The older English word preserves Longuemare’s biblical response: Matthew 9:9 presents Matthew at the tax office before Jesus calls him. [S076](#S076)

[^c06n16]: The blunt cul deliberately drags the argument about the natural origin of virtue down to bodily discipline. The coarse register is retained; Gamelin’s next objection depends partly on its breach of what he thinks a philosopher ought to sound like. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n17]: Chambre ardente names an exceptional royal judicial chamber. Brotteaux’s comparison gathers earthly coercion and eternal punishment into one argument. “Burning chamber” preserves the literal force in his list rather than substituting a modern court name. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n18]: The source’s conversation moves between a good creator, the Supreme Being and a projected cult of Reason. These expressions have not been silently harmonised into a single historical programme: the passage presents Gamelin’s own combination of religious and republican convictions. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n19]: The answer reverses the usual metaphor of reason as enlightenment: the institution of a divinity can make the illuminating faculty itself an instrument of blindness. Interpretively, Brotteaux distinguishes using reason from granting an abstraction an unlimited claim on conduct. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n20]: Enragé evokes a world both mad and ferociously destructive. Brotteaux’s speech denies that natural processes provide a benevolent moral example. It remains a character’s polemical view; Longuemare’s reply immediately disputes his competence to define nature. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n21]: Interpretively, the narrator catches the reader of a cure for erotic illusion enjoying the nearby woman’s body. The gentle exposure of inconsistency prevents Brotteaux’s pleasure-seeking from becoming an entirely disembodied doctrine, just as earlier his compassion escaped his rule of prudence. [S056](#S056)

[^c06n22]: Gamelin acts here with immediate compassion rather than a speech or theory. His return home and invented excuse complete the act by concealing it. Interpretively, the episode preserves the gentle son remembered in Chapter II alongside the punitive convictions he has expressed in the queue. [S056](#S056)

<a id="chapter-07"></a>

## VII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c07p001"></a>Usant d’une très vieille façon de dire, la citoyenne veuve Gamelin l’avait annoncé: "A force de manger des châtaignes, nous deviendrons châtaignes." Ce jour-là, 13 juillet, elle et son fils avaient dîné, à midi, d’une bouillie de châtaignes. Comme ils achevaient cet austère repas, une dame poussa la porte et emplit soudain l’atelier de son éclat et de ses parfums. Évariste reconnut la citoyenne Rochemaure. Croyant qu’elle se trompait de porte et cherchait le citoyen Brotteaux, son ami d’autrefois, il pensait déjà lui indiquer le grenier du ci-devant ou appeler Brotteaux, pour épargner à une femme élégante de grimper par une échelle de meunier; mais il parut dès l’abord que c’était au citoyen Évariste Gamelin qu’elle avait affaire, car elle se déclara heureuse de le rencontrer et de se dire sa servante. | Citizen Widow Gamelin had foretold it in a very old turn of phrase: “If we go on eating chestnuts, we’ll turn into chestnuts.” That day, 13 July[^c07n01], she and her son had eaten chestnut porridge for their midday meal. As they were finishing this austere fare, a lady pushed open the door and suddenly filled the studio with her splendour and perfumes. Évariste recognised Citizen Rochemaure. Thinking she had mistaken the door and was looking for Citizen Brotteaux, her old friend, he was already considering directing her to the former nobleman’s attic or calling Brotteaux down to spare an elegant woman the climb up a miller’s ladder. But it was immediately clear that she had business with Citizen Évariste Gamelin: she declared herself delighted to find him and to call herself his servant. |
| <a id="c07p002"></a>Ils n’étaient point tout à fait étrangers l’un à l’autre: ils s’étaient vus plusieurs fois dans l’atelier de David, dans une tribune de l’assemblée, aux Jacobins, chez le restaurateur Vénua: elle l’avait remarqué pour sa beauté, sa jeunesse, son air intéressant. | They were not complete strangers. They had met several times in David’s studio, in a gallery at the Assembly, at the Jacobins and at Vénua’s restaurant. His beauty, youth and interesting air had caught her attention. |
| <a id="c07p003"></a>Portant un chapeau enrubanné comme un mirliton et empanaché comme le couvre-chef d’un représentant en mission, la citoyenne Rochemaure était emperruquée, fardée, mouchetée, musquée, la chair fraîche encore sous tant d’apprêts: ces artifices violents de la mode trahissaient la hâte de vivre et la fièvre de ces jours terribles aux lendemains incertains. Son corsage à grands revers et à grandes basques, tout reluisant d’énormes boutons d’acier, était rouge sang, et l’on ne pouvait discerner, tant elle se montrait à la fois aristocrate et révolutionnaire, si elle portait les couleurs des victimes ou celles du bourreau. Un jeune militaire, un dragon, l’accompagnait. | Her hat ribboned like a mirliton and plumed like the headgear of a representative on mission, Citizen Rochemaure was wigged, rouged, patched and musked, her flesh still fresh beneath so much preparation. These violent artifices of fashion betrayed the haste to live and the fever of those terrible days with their uncertain tomorrows. Her bodice, with its broad lapels and long skirts, glittering all over with enormous steel buttons, was blood-red. So aristocratic and revolutionary did she appear at once that one could not tell whether she wore the colours of victims or of the executioner[^c07n02]. A young soldier, a dragoon, accompanied her. |
| <a id="c07p004"></a>La longue canne de nacre à la main, grande, belle, ample, la poitrine généreuse, elle fit le tour de l’atelier, et, approchant de ses yeux gris son lorgnon d’or à deux branches, elle examina les toiles du peintre, souriant, se récriant, portée à l’admiration par la beauté de l’artiste, et flattant pour être flattée. | Tall, beautiful and full-bodied, with a generous bosom, she went round the studio carrying a long mother-of-pearl cane. Raising her gold double eyeglass to her grey eyes, she examined the canvases, smiling and exclaiming, disposed to admiration by the artist’s beauty and flattering in order to be flattered. |
| <a id="c07p005"></a>"Qu’est-ce, demanda la citoyenne, que ce tableau si noble et si touchant d’une femme douce et belle près d’un jeune malade?" | “What is this noble and touching picture,” the citizen asked, “of a gentle, beautiful woman beside a sick young man?” |
| <a id="c07p006"></a>Gamelin répondit qu’il fallait y voir *Oreste veillé par Électre sa sœur*, et que, s’il l’avait pu achever, ce serait peut-être son moins mauvais ouvrage. | Gamelin replied that it represented *Orestes Watched Over by His Sister Electra*, and that had he been able to finish it, it might have been his least bad work. |
| <a id="c07p007"></a>"Le sujet, ajouta-t-il, est tiré de l'*Oreste* d’Euripide. J’avais lu, dans une traduction déjà ancienne de cette tragédie, une scène qui m’avait frappé d’admiration: celle où la jeune Électre, soulevant son frère sur son lit de douleur, essuie l’écume qui lui souille la bouche, écarte de ses yeux les cheveux qui l’aveuglent et prie ce frère chéri d’écouter ce qu’elle lui va dire dans le silence des Furies.... En lisant et relisant cette traduction, je sentais comme un brouillard qui me voilait les formes grecques et que je ne pouvais dissiper. Je m’imaginais le texte original plus nerveux et d’un autre accent. Éprouvant un vif désir de m’en faire une idée exacte, j’allai prier M. Gail, qui professait alors le grec au Collège de France (c’était en 91), de m’expliquer cette scène mot à mot. Il me l’expliqua comme je le lui demandais et je m’aperçus que les anciens sont beaucoup plus simples et plus familiers qu’on ne se l’imagine. Ainsi, Électre dit à Oreste: "Frère chéri, que ton sommeil m’a causé de joie! Veux-tu que je t’aide à te soulever?" Et Oreste répond: "Oui, aide-moi, prends-moi, et essuie ces restes d’écume attachés autour de ma bouche et de mes yeux. Mets ta poitrine contre la mienne et écarte de mon visage ma chevelure emmêlée: car elle me cache les yeux...." Tout plein de cette poésie si jeune et si vive, de ces expressions naïves et fortes, j’esquissai le tableau que vous voyez, citoyenne." | “The subject,” he added, “comes from Euripides’ *Orestes*[^c07n03]. In an already old translation of that tragedy I had read a scene which filled me with admiration: young Electra raises her brother from his bed of pain, wipes the foam soiling his mouth, brushes the hair from his blinded eyes and asks her beloved brother to listen to what she will say while the Furies are silent… Reading and rereading the translation, I felt a kind of mist veiling the Greek forms which I could not dispel. I imagined the original text more sinewy, with a different accent. Eager for an exact understanding of it, I went to ask Monsieur Gail[^c07n04], then teaching Greek at the Collège de France—this was in ’91—to explain the scene word by word. He did as I asked, and I discovered that the ancients are far simpler and more familiar than we imagine. Electra says to Orestes, ‘Dear brother, how glad your sleep has made me! Shall I help you sit up?’ And Orestes answers, ‘Yes, help me, take hold of me, and wipe away this remaining foam round my mouth and eyes. Put your breast against mine and brush the tangled hair from my face, for it hides my eyes…’ Full of this young, vivid poetry, these simple, powerful expressions, I sketched the picture you see, Citizen.” |
| <a id="c07p008"></a>Le peintre, qui, d’ordinaire, parlait si discrètement de ses œuvres, ne tarissait pas sur celle-là. Encouragé par un signe que lui fit la citoyenne Rochemaure en soulevant son lorgnon, il poursuivit: | The painter, ordinarily so reserved about his works, could not stop talking about this one. Encouraged by a gesture Citizen Rochemaure made as she raised her eyeglass, he continued: |
| <a id="c07p009"></a>"Hennequin a traité en maître les fureurs d’Oreste. Mais Oreste nous émeut encore plus dans sa tristesse que dans ses fureurs. Quelle destinée que la sienne! C’est par piété filiale, par obéissance à des ordres sacrés qu’il a commis ce crime dont les Dieux doivent l’absoudre, mais que les hommes ne pardonneront jamais. Pour venger la justice outragée, il a renié la nature, il s’est fait inhumain, il s’est arraché les entrailles. Il reste fier sous le poids de son horrible et vertueux forfait.... C’est ce que j’aurais voulu montrer dans ce groupe du frère et de la sœur." | “Hennequin treated Orestes’ fury masterfully. But Orestes moves us still more in his sadness than in his fury. What a destiny! It is from filial piety, in obedience to sacred commands, that he has committed the crime which the gods must absolve but men will never forgive. To avenge outraged justice he has denied nature, made himself inhuman, torn out his own entrails. He remains proud beneath the weight of his horrible and virtuous crime[^c07n05]… That is what I wanted to show in this group of brother and sister.” |
| <a id="c07p010"></a>Il s’approcha de la toile et la regarda avec complaisance. | He went up to the canvas and looked at it fondly. |
| <a id="c07p011"></a>"Certaines parties, dit-il, sont à peu près terminées; la tête et le bras d’Oreste, par exemple. | “Some parts,” he said, “are almost finished: Orestes’ head and arm, for example.” |
| <a id="c07p012"></a>— C’est un morceau admirable.... Et Oreste vous ressemble, citoyen Gamelin. | “It’s an admirable passage… And Orestes looks like you, Citizen Gamelin.” |
| <a id="c07p013"></a>— Vous trouvez?" fit le peintre avec un sourire grave. | “Do you think so?” the painter said with a grave smile. |
| <a id="c07p014"></a>Elle prit la chaise que Gamelin lui tendait. Le jeune dragon se tint debout à son côté, la main sur le dossier de la chaise où elle était assise. A quoi l’on pouvait voir que la Révolution était accomplie, car, sous l’ancien régime, un homme n’eût jamais, en compagnie, touché seulement du doigt le siège où se trouvait une dame, formé par l’éducation aux contraintes, parfois assez rudes, de la politesse, estimant d’ailleurs que la retenue gardée dans la société donne un prix singulier à l’abandon secret et que, pour perdre le respect, il fallait l’avoir. | She took the chair Gamelin offered. The young dragoon stood beside her, his hand on the back of the chair in which she sat. That alone showed the Revolution was accomplished: under the old regime a man in company would never have laid even a finger on a lady’s chair. Education had trained him in the sometimes harsh constraints of politeness; he also believed that restraint in society gave a singular value to secret abandon, and that to lose respect one must first possess it[^c07n06]. |
| <a id="c07p015"></a>Louise Masché de Rochemaure, fille d’un lieutenant des chasses du roi, veuve d’un procureur et, durant vingt ans, fidèle amie du financier Brotteaux des Ilettes, avait adhéré aux principes nouveaux. On l’avait vue, en juillet 1790, bêcher la terre du Champ de Mars. Son penchant décidé pour les puissances l’avait portée facilement des feuillants aux girondins et aux montagnards, tandis qu’un esprit de conciliation, une ardeur d’embrassement et un certain génie d’intrigue l’attachaient encore aux aristocrates et aux contre-révolutionnaires. C’était une personne très répandue, fréquentant guinguettes, théâtres, traiteurs à la mode, tripots, salons, bureaux de journaux, antichambres de comités. La Révolution lui apportait nouveautés, divertissements, sourires, joies, affaires, entreprises fructueuses. Nouant des intrigues politiques et galantes, jouant de la harpe, dessinant des paysages, chantant des romances, dansant des danses grecques, donnant à souper, recevant de jolies femmes, comme la comtesse de Beaufort et l’actrice Descoings, tenant toute la nuit table de trente et un et de biribi et faisant rouler la rouge et la noire, elle trouvait encore le temps d’être pitoyable à ses amis. Curieuse, agissante, brouillonne, frivole, connaissant les hommes, ignorant les foules, aussi étrangère aux opinions qu’elle partageait qu’à celles qu’il lui fallait répudier, ne comprenant absolument rien à ce qui se passait en France, elle se montrait entreprenante, hardie et toute pleine d’audace par ignorance du danger et par une confiance illimitée dans le pouvoir de ses charmes. | Louise Masché de Rochemaure, daughter of an officer of the king’s hunts, widow of a public prosecutor and for twenty years the faithful friend of the financier Brotteaux des Ilettes, had embraced the new principles. In July 1790 she had been seen digging earth on the Champ de Mars. Her marked inclination towards power had carried her easily from the Feuillants to the Girondins and the Montagnards[^c07n07], while a conciliatory spirit, an eagerness to embrace and a certain genius for intrigue still bound her to aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries. She was a person with many connections, frequenting pleasure gardens, theatres, fashionable restaurants, gambling dens, drawing rooms, newspaper offices and committee antechambers. The Revolution brought her novelties, amusements, smiles, joys, business and profitable enterprises. Weaving political and amorous intrigues, playing the harp, drawing landscapes, singing romances, dancing Greek dances, giving suppers, receiving pretty women such as the Comtesse de Beaufort and the actress Descoings, keeping games of thirty-one and biribi going all night and running games of red and black, she still found time to show compassion to her friends. Curious, active, meddlesome and frivolous, knowing individuals and ignorant of crowds, as alien to the opinions she shared as to those she had to repudiate, understanding absolutely nothing of what was happening in France, she was enterprising, bold and full of daring through ignorance of danger and unlimited confidence in the power of her charms. |
| <a id="c07p016"></a>Le militaire qui l’accompagnait était dans la fleur de la jeunesse. Un casque de cuivre garni d’une peau de panthère, et la crête ornée de chenille ponceau, ombrageait sa tête de chérubin et répandait sur son dos une longue et terrible crinière. Sa veste rouge, en façon de brassière, se gardait de descendre jusqu’aux reins pour n’en pas cacher l’élégante cambrure. Il portait à la ceinture un énorme sabre, dont la poignée en bec d’aigle resplendissait. Une culotte à pont, d’un bleu tendre, moulait les muscles élégants de ses jambes, et des soutaches d’un bleu sombre dessinaient leurs riches arabesques sur ses cuisses. Il avait l’air d’un danseur costumé pour quelque rôle martial et galant, dans *Achille à Scyros* ou *les Noces d’Alexandre*, par un élève de David attentif à serrer la forme. | The soldier accompanying her was in the flower of youth. A brass helmet trimmed with pantherskin, its crest ornamented with scarlet chenille, shaded his cherubic head and shed a long, terrible mane down his back. His short red jacket carefully stopped above his waist so as not to hide its elegant curve. An enormous sabre hung at his belt, its eagle-beak hilt gleaming. Pale-blue fall-front breeches moulded the elegant muscles of his legs, and dark-blue braid traced rich arabesques across his thighs. He looked like a dancer dressed for some martial, amorous role in *Achilles on Scyros* or *The Marriage of Alexander* by a pupil of David intent on closely following the body’s form. |
| <a id="c07p017"></a>Gamelin se rappelait confusément l’avoir déjà vu. C’était en effet le militaire qu’il avait rencontré, quinze jours auparavant, haranguant le peuple sur les galeries du Théâtre de la Nation. | Gamelin vaguely remembered seeing him before. He was indeed the soldier he had met a fortnight earlier haranguing the people from the galleries of the Théâtre de la Nation. |
| <a id="c07p018"></a>La citoyenne Rochemaure le nomma: | Citizen Rochemaure named him: |
| <a id="c07p019"></a>"Le citoyen Henry, membre du Comité révolutionnaire de la section des Droits de l’Homme." | “Citizen Henry[^c07n08], a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Droits de l’Homme section.” |
| <a id="c07p020"></a>Elle l’avait toujours dans ses jupes, miroir d’amour et certificat vivant de civisme. | She always kept him at her skirts, a mirror of love and a living certificate of civic loyalty[^c07n09]. |
| <a id="c07p021"></a>La citoyenne félicita Gamelin de ses talents et lui demanda s’il ne consentirait pas à dessiner une carte pour une marchande de modes à qui elle s’intéressait. Il y traiterait un sujet approprié: une femme essayant une écharpe devant une psyché, par exemple, ou une jeune ouvrière portant sous son bras un carton à chapeau. | The citizen congratulated Gamelin on his talent and asked whether he would agree to design a card[^c07n10] for a milliner in whom she took an interest. He would treat a suitable subject: a woman trying on a scarf before a full-length mirror, for instance, or a young workwoman carrying a hatbox under her arm. |
| <a id="c07p022"></a>Comme capables d’exécuter un petit ouvrage de ce genre, on lui avait parlé du fils Fragonard, du jeune Ducis et aussi d’un nommé Prudhomme; mais elle préférait s’adresser au citoyen Évariste Gamelin. Toutefois elle n’en vint, sur cet article, à rien de précis, et l’on sentait qu’elle avait mis cette commande en avant uniquement pour engager la conversation. En effet, elle était venue pour tout autre chose. Elle réclamait du citoyen Gamelin un bon office: sachant qu’il connaissait le citoyen Marat, elle venait lui demander de l’introduire chez l’Ami du peuple, avec qui elle désirait avoir un entretien. | People had mentioned Fragonard’s son, young Ducis and someone called Prudhomme as capable of executing a small work of this kind, but she preferred to approach Citizen Évariste Gamelin. Yet she arrived at nothing definite on this subject, and one sensed she had put forward the commission merely to open the conversation. In fact she had come for something quite different. She wanted a favour: knowing he was acquainted with Citizen Marat, she asked him to introduce her to the Friend of the People, with whom she wished to speak. |
| <a id="c07p023"></a>Gamelin répondit qu’il était un trop petit personnage pour la présenter à Marat, et que, du reste, elle n’avait que faire d’un introducteur: Marat, bien qu’accablé d’occupations, n’était pas l’homme invisible qu’on avait dit. | Gamelin replied that he was too insignificant a person to present her to Marat, and that in any case she needed no introduction. Though overwhelmed with work, Marat was not the invisible man people had described. |
| <a id="c07p024"></a>Et Gamelin ajouta: | Gamelin added: |
| <a id="c07p025"></a>"Il vous recevra, citoyenne, si vous êtes malheureuse: car son grand cœur le rend accessible à l’infortune et pitoyable à toutes les souffrances. Il vous recevra si vous avez quelque révélation à lui faire intéressant le salut public: il a voué ses jours à démasquer les traîtres." | “He will receive you if you are unhappy, Citizen, for his great heart makes him accessible to misfortune and compassionate towards every suffering. He will receive you if you have some revelation concerning public safety to make: he has devoted his days to unmasking traitors.” |
| <a id="c07p026"></a>La citoyenne Rochemaure répondit qu’elle serait heureuse de saluer en Marat un citoyen illustre, qui avait rendu de grands services au pays, qui était capable d’en rendre de plus grands encore, et qu’elle souhaitait mettre ce législateur en rapport avec des hommes bien intentionnés, des philanthropes favorisés par la fortune et capables de lui fournir des moyens nouveaux de satisfaire son ardent amour de l’humanité. | Citizen Rochemaure replied that she would be happy to greet in Marat an illustrious citizen who had rendered great services to his country and could render greater still. She wished to bring this legislator into contact with well-intentioned men, philanthropists favoured by fortune and able to provide him with new means of satisfying his ardent love of humanity. |
| <a id="c07p027"></a>"Il est désirable, ajouta-t-elle, de faire coopérer les riches à la prospérité publique." | “It is desirable,” she added, “to make the rich cooperate in public prosperity.” |
| <a id="c07p028"></a>De vrai, la citoyenne avait promis au banquier Morhardt de le faire dîner avec Marat. | In truth, the citizen had promised the banker Morhardt to arrange a dinner with Marat. |
| <a id="c07p029"></a>Morhardt, Suisse comme l’Ami du peuple, avait lié partie avec plusieurs députés à la Convention, Julien (de Toulouse), Delaunay (d’Angers) et l’ex-capucin Chabot pour spéculer sur les actions de la Compagnie des Indes. Le jeu, très simple, consistait à faire tomber ces actions à six cent cinquante livres par des motions spoliatrices, afin d’en acheter le plus grand nombre possible à ce prix et de les relever ensuite à quatre mille ou cinq mille livres par des motions rassurantes. Mais Chabot, Julien, Delaunay étaient percés à jour. On suspectait Lacroix, Fabre d’Églantine et même Danton. L’homme de l’agio, le baron de Batz, cherchait de nouveaux complices à la Convention et conseillait au banquier Morhardt de voir Marat. | Morhardt, Swiss like the Friend of the People, had formed a partnership with several Convention deputies—Julien of Toulouse, Delaunay of Angers and the former Capuchin Chabot—to speculate in shares of the Compagnie des Indes. The game was very simple: to drive the shares down to six hundred and fifty livres with confiscatory motions[^c07n11], buy as many as possible at that price, then raise them to four or five thousand livres with reassuring motions. But Chabot, Julien and Delaunay had been seen through. Lacroix, Fabre d’Églantine and even Danton were suspected. The master speculator, Baron de Batz, sought new accomplices in the Convention and advised the banker Morhardt to approach Marat. |
| <a id="c07p030"></a>Cette pensée des agioteurs contre-révolutionnaires n’était pas aussi étrange qu’elle semblait tout d’abord. Toujours ces gens-là s’efforçaient de se liguer avec les puissances du jour, et, par sa popularité, par sa plume, par son caractère, Marat était une puissance formidable. Les girondins sombraient; les dantonistes, battus par la tempête, ne gouvernaient plus. Robespierre, l’idole du peuple, était d’une probité jalouse, soupçonneux et ne se laissait point approcher. Il importait de circonvenir Marat, de s’assurer sa bienveillance pour le jour où il serait dictateur, et tout présageait qu’il le deviendrait: sa popularité, son ambition, son empressement à recommander les grands moyens. Et peut-être, après tout, que Marat rétablirait l’ordre, les finances, la prospérité. Plusieurs fois il s’était élevé contre les énergumènes qui renchérissaient sur lui de patriotisme; depuis quelque temps, il dénonçait les démagogues presque autant que les modérés. Après avoir excité le peuple à pendre les accapareurs dans leur boutique pillée, il exhortait les citoyens au calme et à la prudence; il devenait un homme de gouvernement. | This idea of the counter-revolutionary speculators was not as strange as it first appeared. Such men always tried to ally themselves with the powers of the day, and through his popularity, his pen and his character Marat was a formidable power. The Girondins were sinking; the Dantonists, battered by the storm, no longer steered. Robespierre, the people’s idol, was jealously honest, suspicious and unapproachable. They must get round Marat and secure his goodwill against the day when he became dictator[^c07n12]. Everything foretold that he would: his popularity, his ambition, his readiness to recommend drastic measures. And perhaps Marat would, after all, restore order, sound finances and prosperity. Several times he had attacked fanatics who outdid him in patriotism; lately he denounced demagogues almost as much as moderates. After inciting the people to hang hoarders in their plundered shops, he exhorted citizens to calm and caution. He was becoming a man of government. |
| <a id="c07p031"></a>Malgré certains bruits qu’on semait sur lui comme sur tous les autres hommes de la Révolution, ces écumeurs d’or ne le croyaient pas corruptible, mais ils le savaient vaniteux et crédule: ils espéraient le gagner par des flatteries et surtout par une familiarité condescendante, qu’ils croyaient de leur part la plus séduisante des flatteries. Ils comptaient, grâce à lui, souffler le froid et le chaud sur toutes les valeurs qu’ils voudraient acheter et revendre, et le pousser à servir leurs intérêts en croyant n’agir que dans l’intérêt public. | Despite certain rumours spread about him, as about every other man of the Revolution, these gold-skimmers did not believe him corruptible. But they knew him to be vain and credulous, and hoped to win him through flattery, above all through a condescending familiarity[^c07n13] which they considered the most seductive flattery they could offer. Through him they expected to blow hot and cold on any securities they wished to buy and sell, and to push him into serving their interests while believing he acted solely in the public interest. |
| <a id="c07p032"></a>Grande appareilleuse, bien qu’elle fût encore dans l’âge des amours, la citoyenne Rochemaure s’était donné la mission de réunir le législateur journaliste au banquier, et sa folle imagination lui représentait l’homme des caves, aux mains encore rougies du sang de Septembre, engagé dans le parti des financiers dont elle était l’agent, jeté par sa sensibilité même et sa candeur en plein agio, dans ce monde, qu’elle chérissait, d’accapareurs, de fournisseurs, d’émissaires de l’étranger, de croupiers et de femmes galantes. | A great go-between, though still herself of an age for love, Citizen Rochemaure had undertaken to bring legislator-journalist and banker together. Her wild imagination pictured the man of cellars, his hands still reddened by September’s blood, drawn into the financiers’ party for which she acted, plunged by his very sensibility and innocence into speculation, into that world she cherished of hoarders, contractors, foreign agents, croupiers and courtesans. |
| <a id="c07p033"></a>Elle insista pour que le citoyen Gamelin la conduisît chez l’Ami du peuple, qui habitait non loin, dans la rue des Cordeliers, près de l’église. Après avoir fait un peu de résistance, le peintre céda au vœu de la citoyenne. | She insisted that Citizen Gamelin take her to the Friend of the People, who lived nearby in the Rue des Cordeliers, close to the church. After some resistance the painter yielded to her wish. |
| <a id="c07p034"></a>Le dragon Henry, invité à se joindre à eux, refusa, alléguant qu’il entendait garder sa liberté, même à l’égard du citoyen Marat, qui, sans doute, avait rendu des services à la République, mais maintenant faiblissait: n’avait-il pas, dans sa feuille, conseillé la résignation au peuple de Paris? | Invited to join them, the dragoon Henry refused. He meant, he said, to preserve his freedom, even towards Citizen Marat, who had undoubtedly served the Republic but was now weakening. Had he not advised the people of Paris to submit to their lot in his paper? |
| <a id="c07p035"></a>Et le jeune Henry, d’une voix mélodieuse, avec de longs soupirs, déplora la République trahie par ceux en qui elle avait mis son espoir: Danton repoussant l’idée d’un impôt sur les riches, Robespierre s’opposant à la permanence des sections, Marat dont les conseils pusillanimes brisaient l’élan des citoyens. | In his melodious voice, with long sighs, young Henry deplored the Republic’s betrayal by those in whom it had placed its hopes: Danton rejecting a tax on the rich, Robespierre opposing permanent sittings of the sections, Marat whose timid counsels broke the citizens’ momentum. |
| <a id="c07p036"></a>"Oh! s’écria-t-il, que ces hommes paraissent faibles auprès de Leclerc et de Jacques Roux!... Roux! Leclerc! vous êtes les vrais amis du peuple!" | “Oh!” he cried. “How feeble those men appear beside Leclerc and Jacques Roux!… Roux! Leclerc! You are the true friends of the people!” |
| <a id="c07p037"></a>Gamelin n’entendit point ces propos, qui l’eussent indigné: il était allé dans la pièce voisine passer son habit bleu. | Gamelin did not hear these remarks, which would have outraged him: he had gone into the adjoining room to put on his blue coat. |
| <a id="c07p038"></a>"Vous pouvez être fière de votre fils, dit la citoyenne Rochemaure à la citoyenne Gamelin. Il est grand par le talent et par le caractère." | “You may be proud of your son,” Citizen Rochemaure told Citizen Gamelin. “He is great in talent and character.” |
| <a id="c07p039"></a>La citoyenne veuve Gamelin donna, en réponse, un bon témoignage de son fils, sans toutefois s’enorgueillir de lui devant une dame de haut parage, car elle avait appris dans son enfance que le premier devoir des petits est l’humilité envers les grands. Elle était encline à se plaindre, n’en ayant que trop sujet et trouvant dans ses plaintes un soulagement à ses peines. Elle révélait abondamment ses maux à ceux qu’elle croyait capables de les soulager, et madame de Rochemaure lui semblait de ceux-là. Aussi, mettant à profit l’instant favorable, elle conta tout d’une haleine la détresse de la mère et du fils, qui tous deux mouraient de faim. On ne vendait plus de tableaux: la Révolution avait tué le commerce comme avec un couteau. Les vivres étaient rares et hors de prix.... | Citizen Widow Gamelin answered with a good account of her son, though without boasting before a high-born lady: she had learnt in childhood that the first duty of the small was humility towards the great[^c07n14]. She was inclined to complain, having only too much cause and finding relief for her troubles in complaint. She freely revealed her distress to those she thought able to relieve it, and Madame de Rochemaure seemed one of them. Taking advantage of the favourable moment, she told in a single breath of mother and son’s destitution: both were starving. Pictures no longer sold; the Revolution had killed trade as cleanly as with a knife. Food was scarce and ruinously dear… |
| <a id="c07p040"></a>Et la bonne dame expédiait ses lamentations avec toute la volubilité de ses lèvres molles et de sa langue épaisse, afin de les avoir dépêchées toutes quand reparaîtrait son fils, dont la fierté n’eût point approuvé de telles plaintes. Elle s’efforçait d’émouvoir dans le moins de temps possible une dame qu’elle jugeait riche et répandue, et de l’intéresser au sort de son enfant. Et elle sentait que la beauté d’Évariste conspirait avec elle pour attendrir une femme bien née. | The good woman hurried her lamentations out with all the fluency of her slack lips and thick tongue, to have them finished before her son returned, for his pride would not have approved such complaints. She strove to move, in as little time as possible, a lady she believed rich and influential, and interest her in her child’s fate. She felt that Évariste’s beauty was conspiring with her to soften a well-born woman’s heart. |
| <a id="c07p041"></a>En effet, la citoyenne Rochemaure montra de la sensibilité: elle s’émut à l’idée des souffrances d’Évariste et de sa mère et rechercha les moyens de les adoucir. Elle ferait acheter les ouvrages du peintre par des hommes riches de ses amis. | Citizen Rochemaure did indeed show sensibility. She was moved by the thought of Évariste’s and his mother’s sufferings and sought ways to relieve them. She would have the painter’s works bought by wealthy friends. |
| <a id="c07p042"></a>"Car, dit-elle en souriant, il y a encore de l’argent en France, mais il se cache." | “For there is still money in France,” she said, smiling, “but it hides.” |
| <a id="c07p043"></a>Mieux encore: puisque l’art était perdu, elle procurerait à Évariste un emploi chez Morhardt ou chez les frères Perregaux, ou une place de commis chez un fournisseur aux armées. | Better still: since art was done for, she would find Évariste employment with Morhardt or the Perregaux brothers, or a clerk’s place with an army contractor. |
| <a id="c07p044"></a>Puis elle songea que ce n’était pas cela qu’il fallait à un homme de ce caractère; et, après un moment de réflexion, elle fit signe qu’elle avait trouvé: | Then she reflected that this was not what a man of his character needed. After a moment’s thought she made a sign that she had found it. |
| <a id="c07p045"></a>"Il reste à nommer plusieurs jurés au Tribunal révolutionnaire. Juré, magistrat, voilà ce qui convient à votre fils. Je suis en relation avec les membres du Comité de Salut public; je connais Robespierre l’aîné; son frère soupe très souvent chez moi. Je leur parlerai. Je ferai parler à Montané, à Dumas, à Fouquier." | “There are still several jurors to appoint to the Revolutionary Tribunal. A juror, a magistrate[^c07n15]—that is what would suit your son. I am in touch with members of the Committee of Public Safety. I know the elder Robespierre; his brother very often sups with me. I shall speak to them. I’ll have someone speak to Montané, Dumas and Fouquier.” |
| <a id="c07p046"></a>La citoyenne Gamelin, émue et reconnaissante, mit un doigt sur sa bouche: Évariste rentrait dans l’atelier. | Moved and grateful, Citizen Gamelin put a finger to her lips: Évariste was returning to the studio. |
| <a id="c07p047"></a>Il descendit avec la citoyenne Rochemaure l’escalier sombre, dont les degrés de bois et de carreaux étaient recouverts d’une crasse antique. | He went down with Citizen Rochemaure through the dark staircase, its wooden and tiled steps covered in ancient grime. |
| <a id="c07p048"></a>Sur le Pont-Neuf, où le soleil, déjà bas, allongeait l’ombre du piédestal qui avait porté le Cheval de Bronze et que pavoisaient maintenant les couleurs de la nation, une foule d’hommes et de femmes du peuple écoutaient, par petits groupes, des citoyens qui parlaient à voix basse. La foule, consternée, gardait un silence coupé par intervalles de gémissements et de cris de colère. Beaucoup s’en allaient d’un pas rapide vers la rue de Thionville, ci-devant rue Dauphine; Gamelin, s’étant glissé dans un de ces groupes, entendit que Marat venait d’être assassiné. | On the Pont-Neuf the already low sun lengthened the shadow of the pedestal that had borne the Bronze Horse[^c07n16] and now displayed the nation’s colours. A crowd of working men and women stood in little groups listening to citizens speaking quietly. Dismayed, they kept a silence broken at intervals by groans and angry cries. Many hurried towards the Rue de Thionville, formerly the Rue Dauphine. Slipping into one of the groups, Gamelin heard that Marat had just been assassinated. |
| <a id="c07p049"></a>Peu à peu la nouvelle se confirmait et se précisait: il avait été assassiné dans sa baignoire, par une femme venue exprès de Caen pour commettre ce crime. | Little by little the news became definite and more precise: he had been murdered in his bath by a woman who had come expressly from Caen to commit the crime. |
| <a id="c07p050"></a>Certains croyaient qu’elle s’était enfuie; mais la plupart disaient qu’elle avait été arrêtée. | Some believed she had escaped, but most said she had been arrested. |
| <a id="c07p051"></a>Ils étaient là, tous, comme un troupeau sans berger. | They were all there like a flock without a shepherd. |
| <a id="c07p052"></a>Ils songeaient: | They thought: |
| <a id="c07p053"></a>"Marat, sensible, humain, bienfaisant, Marat n’est plus là pour nous guider, lui qui ne s’est jamais trompé, qui devinait tout, qui osait tout révéler!... Que faire, que devenir? Nous avons perdu notre conseiller, notre défenseur, notre ami." Ils savaient d’où venait le coup, et qui avait dirigé le bras de cette femme. Ils gémissaient: | “Marat, sensitive, humane, benevolent, is no longer here to guide us, he who was never wrong, who divined everything and dared reveal everything!… What are we to do, what will become of us? We’ve lost our counsellor, our defender, our friend.” They knew where the blow had come from and who had guided the woman’s arm. They moaned: |
| <a id="c07p054"></a>"Marat a été frappé par les mains criminelles qui veulent nous exterminer. Sa mort est le signal de l’égorgement de tous les patriotes." | “Marat was struck by the criminal hands that mean to exterminate us. His death is the signal for the slaughter of all patriots.” |
| <a id="c07p055"></a>On rapportait diversement les circonstances de cette mort tragique et les dernières paroles de la victime; on faisait des questions sur l’assassin, dont on savait seulement que c’était une jeune femme envoyée par les traîtres fédéralistes. Montrant les ongles et les dents, les citoyennes vouaient la criminelle au supplice et, trouvant la guillotine trop douce, réclamaient pour ce monstre le fouet, la roue, l’écartèlement, et imaginaient des tortures nouvelles. | Accounts of the tragic death’s circumstances and the victim’s last words varied. People asked about the assassin, knowing only that she was a young woman sent by the federalist traitors. Showing their nails and teeth, women citizens consigned the criminal to torment. Finding the guillotine too gentle, they demanded whipping, the wheel and quartering[^c07n17] for this monster, and imagined new tortures. |
| <a id="c07p056"></a>Des gardes nationaux en armes traînaient à la section un homme à l’air résolu. Ses vêtements étaient en lambeaux; des filets de sang coulaient sur sa face pâle. On l’avait surpris disant que Marat avait mérité son sort en provoquant sans cesse au pillage et au meurtre. Et ç’avait été à grand-peine que les miliciens l’avaient soustrait à la fureur populaire. On le désignait du doigt comme un complice de l’assassin, et des menaces de mort s’élevaient sur son passage. | Armed National Guards dragged a resolute-looking man towards the section. His clothes were in tatters; threads of blood ran down his pale face. He had been caught saying that Marat deserved his fate for continually inciting pillage and murder. The militiamen had rescued him from popular fury only with great difficulty. Fingers pointed him out as the assassin’s accomplice, and death threats rose as he passed. |
| <a id="c07p057"></a>Gamelin restait stupide de douleur. De maigres larmes séchaient dans ses yeux ardents. A sa douleur filiale se mêlaient une sollicitude patriotique et une piété populaire qui le déchiraient. | Gamelin remained numb with grief. A few scant tears dried in his burning eyes. With his filial sorrow mingled a patriotic anxiety and a devotion to the people that tore him apart. |
| <a id="c07p058"></a>Il songeait: | He thought: |
| <a id="c07p059"></a>"Après Le Peltier, après Bourdon, Marat!... Je reconnais le sort des patriotes: massacrés au Champ de Mars, à Nancy, à Paris, ils périront tous." Et il songeait au traître Wimpfen qui naguère encore, à la tête d’une horde de soixante mille royalistes, marchait sur Paris, et qui, s’il n’avait été arrêté à Vernon par les braves patriotes, eût mis à feu et à sang la ville héroïque et condamnée. | “After Le Peltier, after Bourdon[^c07n18], Marat!… I recognise the patriots’ fate: massacred on the Champ de Mars, at Nancy, in Paris, they will all perish.” He thought of the traitor Wimpfen, who so recently had marched on Paris at the head of a horde of sixty thousand royalists[^c07n19]. Had the brave patriots not stopped him at Vernon, he would have put the heroic, doomed city to fire and sword. |
| <a id="c07p060"></a>Et combien de périls encore, combien de projets criminels, combien de trahisons, que la sagesse et la vigilance de Marat pouvaient seules connaître et déjouer! Qui saurait après lui dénoncer Custine oisif dans le camp de César et refusant de débloquer Valenciennes, Biron inactif dans la Basse-Vendée, laissant prendre Saumur et assiéger Nantes, Dillon trahissant la patrie dans l’Argonne?... | And how many dangers remained, how many criminal projects, how many betrayals that only Marat’s wisdom and vigilance could discover and defeat! Who after him would know how to denounce Custine idling in the Camp de César and refusing to relieve Valenciennes, Biron inactive in the lower Vendée, allowing Saumur to be taken and Nantes besieged, Dillon betraying his country in the Argonne?… |
| <a id="c07p061"></a>Cependant, autour de lui, de moment en moment, grandissait la clameur sinistre: | Yet round him, moment by moment, the sinister clamour grew: |
| <a id="c07p062"></a>"Marat est mort; les aristocrates l’ont tué!" | “Marat is dead! The aristocrats have killed him!” |
| <a id="c07p063"></a>Comme, le cœur gros de douleur, de haine et d’amour, il s’en allait rendre un hommage funèbre au martyr de la liberté, une vieille paysanne qui portait la coiffe limousine s’approcha de lui et lui demanda si ce monsieur Marat, qui avait été assassiné, n’était pas monsieur le curé Mara, de Saint-Pierre-de-Queyroix. | As he went, his heart heavy with grief, hatred and love, to pay his funeral tribute to liberty’s martyr, an old peasant woman wearing a Limousin cap approached and asked whether the murdered Monsieur Marat was Monsieur le Curé Mara[^c07n20] of Saint-Pierre-de-Queyroix. |

### Notes

[^c07n01]: The date is 13 July 1793, the day Marat was assassinated. The Louvre’s account of David’s image identifies that date and sets it beside Le Peltier’s earlier martyr image. Here the visit’s intended destination will already have been overtaken by the public event. [S077](#S077)

[^c07n02]: The undecidable red costume joins Rochemaure’s aristocratic and revolutionary associations. Interpretively, her visual brilliance does not settle political identity: the very sign that seems emphatic remains ambiguous. The uncertainty belongs to the narrator’s description. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n03]: France explicitly locates the painting’s subject in Euripides’ tragedy, not the separate Electra plays. The scene makes bodily care and suffering central to Gamelin’s admiration; the translated quotations here follow the French wording embedded in the novel. [S078](#S078)

[^c07n04]: Jean-Baptiste Gail was appointed deputy professor of Greek at the Collège de France in 1791 and titular professor in 1792. This fits the year Gamelin specifies. The named teacher gives the fictional painter’s encounter with ancient language a concrete historical setting. [S079](#S079)

[^c07n05]: The contradiction is explicit: filial duty and sacred command require an act human judgement cannot forgive. Interpretively, Gamelin’s account of Orestes projects the collision of justice and humanity that the novel is building around his own ambitions. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n06]: The narrator measures political transformation through intimate etiquette rather than a constitutional change. The closing paradox distinguishes public restraint from private abandon. It should not be flattened into a simple claim that the past was either wholly refined or wholly repressed. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n07]: The sequence records successive changes of political company, not a developed account of beliefs. The narration attributes them to her attraction to power and then says she understands none of the opinions involved. The faction names remain distinct. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n08]: This is the handsome soldier seen near the theatre in Chapter V. Gamelin’s vague recognition and the earlier scene’s visual details are part of the evidence offered to the reader; the translation does not insert recognition or knowledge he has not acquired. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n09]: Henry functions simultaneously as erotic companion and political credential. Interpretively, the certificate metaphor converts a person into proof of an allegiance, while the narrator has already shown how unstable Rochemaure’s political attachments are. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n10]: The carte is a commercial card for a milliner, with an illustrative trade subject, rather than another playing card. The modest commission lets Rochemaure open a conversation about something quite different; preserving the distinction avoids confusing it with Gamelin’s previous scheme. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n11]: The proposed price manipulation depends on political motions that threaten or reassure the company’s investors. These are the novel’s stated speculative arrangements. The note explains the mechanism within the story without treating every alleged partnership and motive as an independently verified historical finding. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n12]: This is a calculation made by the speculators about Marat’s possible future, not an office he holds or an outcome the narrator says occurred. Their plan’s dependence on the man whose death is approaching supplies the chapter’s immediate dramatic irony. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n13]: The financiers’ supposed instrument is not a straightforward cash bribe but social inclusion that they imagine irresistible. Interpretively, the passage makes vanity a potential conduit between private advantage and a public figure who believes he serves only general interests. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n14]: The mother’s learned social deference survives her republican son’s principles. Her purposeful complaint is also practical care: she tries to obtain help he would be too proud to request. The description therefore contains both inherited hierarchy and maternal resourcefulness. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n15]: The proposal emerges from social patronage and a conversation about poverty. Interpretively, Rochemaure identifies judicial service as employment suited to Gamelin’s character before he is even present to hear it. The text ties an institutional appointment to a private material need. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n16]: The equestrian statue of Henri IV stood by the Pont-Neuf at the approach to the Place Dauphine. The city’s account records its removal during the Revolution. France uses the remaining pedestal as another visible site where national emblems replace royal ones. [S055](#S055)

[^c07n17]: The demanded punishments return to forms of bodily torment associated with the old regime, including those recalled in the mother’s account of Damiens in Chapter II. Interpretively, revolutionary grief invokes the cruelty that the new punishment was supposed to simplify. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n18]: The probable reference is to Léonard Bourdon, injured in an Orléans confrontation in March 1793, not killed. His later career is recorded in the Assemblée nationale biography. This identification is an editorial inference; Gamelin’s sequence has not been silently corrected. [S080](#S080)

[^c07n19]: The number is retained as part of Gamelin’s fearful reconstruction. This edition does not independently endorse it as the strength of a documented force: his thought enlarges the threat to Paris while putting the latest death into a single narrative of persecution. [S056](#S056)

[^c07n20]: The final question breaks the crowd’s assumption that Marat’s significance is universally understood. Interpretively, the near-identical surname and the provincial priest reintroduce a small, local world alongside Gamelin’s supposedly all-embracing public drama. [S056](#S056)

<a id="chapter-08"></a>

## VIII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c08p001"></a>La veille de la fête, par un soir tranquille et clair, Élodie, au bras d’Évariste, se promenait sur le champ de la Fédération. Des ouvriers achevaient en hâte d’élever des colonnes, des statues, des temples, une montagne, un autel. Des symboles gigantesques, l’Hercule populaire brandissant sa massue, la Nature abreuvant l’univers à ses mamelles inépuisables, se dressaient soudain dans la capitale en proie à la famine, à la terreur, écoutant si l’on n’entendait pas sur la route de Meaux les canons autrichiens. La Vendée réparait son échec devant Nantes par des victoires audacieuses. Un cercle de fer, de flammes et de haine entourait la grande cité révolutionnaire. Et cependant elle recevait avec magnificence, comme la souveraine d’un vaste empire, les députés des assemblées primaires qui avaient accepté la constitution. Le fédéralisme était vaincu: la République une, indivisible, vaincrait tous ses ennemis. | On the eve of the festival[^c08n01], in a quiet, clear evening, Élodie walked on the Champ de la Fédération with her arm in Évariste’s. Workmen were hurriedly finishing columns, statues, temples, a mountain and an altar. Gigantic symbols—Hercules the people’s champion brandishing his club, Nature giving the universe drink from her inexhaustible breasts[^c08n02]—rose suddenly in the capital, gripped by famine and terror, listening for Austrian cannon on the road to Meaux. The Vendée was making good its failure before Nantes with daring victories. A ring of iron, flame and hatred surrounded the great revolutionary city. Yet she received, magnificently as the sovereign of a vast empire, the delegates of the primary assemblies that had accepted the constitution. Federalism was defeated: the Republic, one and indivisible, would overcome all her enemies. |
| <a id="c08p002"></a>Étendant le bras sur la plaine populeuse: | Stretching his arm over the crowded plain, Évariste said: |
| <a id="c08p003"></a>"C’est là, dit Évariste, que, le 17 juillet 91, l’infâme Bailly fit fusiller le peuple au pied de l’autel de la patrie. Le grenadier Passavant, témoin du massacre, rentra dans sa maison, déchira son habit, s’écria: "J’ai juré de mourir avec la liberté; elle n’est plus: je meurs." Et il se brûla la cervelle." | “There, on 17 July ’91, the infamous Bailly had the people shot at the foot of the altar of the fatherland. The grenadier Passavant, who witnessed the massacre, went home, tore his coat and cried, ‘I swore to die with liberty. She is no more: I die.’ And he blew his brains out.” |
| <a id="c08p004"></a>Cependant les artistes et les bourgeois paisibles examinaient les préparatifs de la fête, et on lisait sur leurs visages un amour de la vie aussi morne que leur vie elle-même: les plus grands événements, en entrant dans leur esprit, se rapetissaient à leur mesure et devenaient insipides comme eux. Chaque couple allait, portant dans ses bras ou traînant par la main ou faisant courir devant lui des enfants qui n’étaient pas plus beaux que leurs parents et ne promettaient pas de devenir plus heureux, et qui donneraient la vie à d’autres enfants aussi médiocres qu’eux en joie et en beauté. Et parfois l’on voyait une jeune fille grande et belle qui sur son passage inspirait aux jeunes hommes un généreux désir, aux vieillards le regret de la douce vie. | Meanwhile artists and peaceable bourgeois inspected the preparations. Their faces showed a love of life as dreary as their lives themselves: the greatest events, entering their minds, shrank to their measure and became as insipid as they were. Every couple carried children in their arms, dragged them by the hand or let them run ahead: children no more beautiful than their parents, promising no greater happiness, who would give life to other children as mediocre as themselves in joy and beauty. Sometimes a tall, beautiful girl appeared, inspiring generous desire in the young men as she passed, and in the old regret for the sweetness of life. |
| <a id="c08p005"></a>Près de l’École militaire, Évariste montra à Élodie des statues égyptiennes dessinées par David d’après des modèles romains de l’époque d’Auguste. Ils entendirent alors un vieux Parisien poudré s’écrier: | Near the École Militaire, Évariste showed Élodie Egyptian statues which David had designed after Roman models from the age of Augustus. They heard a powdered old Parisian exclaim: |
| <a id="c08p006"></a>"On se croirait sur les bords du Nil!" | “You’d think we were on the banks of the Nile!” |
| <a id="c08p007"></a>Depuis trois jours qu’Élodie n’avait vu son ami, de graves événements s’étaient passés à l'*Amour peintre*. Le citoyen Blaise avait été dénoncé au Comité de sûreté générale pour fraudes dans les fournitures. Heureusement que le marchand d’estampes était connu dans sa section: le Comité de surveillance de la section des Piques s’était porté garant de son civisme auprès du Comité de sûreté générale et l’avait pleinement justifié. | In the three days since Élodie had seen her beloved, serious events had occurred at *Love the Painter*. Citizen Blaise had been denounced to the Committee of General Security[^c08n03] for fraudulent supplies. Fortunately, the print seller was known in his section: the Surveillance Committee of the Piques section had vouched for his civic loyalty to the Committee of General Security and completely cleared him. |
| <a id="c08p008"></a>Ayant conté cet événement avec émotion, Élodie ajouta: | Having told the story with emotion, Élodie added: |
| <a id="c08p009"></a>"Nous sommes tranquilles maintenant, mais l’alerte a été chaude. Il s’en est fallu de peu que mon père n’ait été mis en prison. Si le danger avait duré quelques heures de plus, je serais allée vous demander, Évariste, de faire auprès de vos amis influents des démarches en sa faveur." | “We’re at peace now, but it was a sharp alarm. My father very nearly went to prison. If the danger had lasted a few hours longer, I would have come to ask you, Évariste, to intercede for him with your influential friends.” |
| <a id="c08p010"></a>Évariste ne répondit pas. Élodie fut bien loin de mesurer la profondeur de ce silence. | Évariste did not answer. Élodie was far from measuring the depth of that silence[^c08n04]. |
| <a id="c08p011"></a>Ils allèrent, la main dans la main, le long des berges de la Seine. Ils se disaient leur mutuelle tendresse dans le langage de Julie et de Saint-Preux: le bon Jean-Jacques leur donnait les moyens de peindre et d’orner leur amour. | Hand in hand, they walked along the banks of the Seine. They spoke of their mutual tenderness in the language of Julie and Saint-Preux: good Jean-Jacques gave them the means to paint and adorn their love. |
| <a id="c08p012"></a>La municipalité avait accompli ce prodige de faire régner pour un jour l’abondance dans la ville affamée. Une foire s’était installée sur la place des Invalides, au bord de la rivière: des marchands vendaient, dans des baraques, des saucissons, des cervelas, des andouilles, des jambons couverts de lauriers, des gâteaux de Nanterre, des pains d’épices, des crêpes, des pains de quatre livres, de la limonade et du vin. Il y avait aussi des boutiques où l’on vendait des chansons patriotiques, des cocardes, des rubans tricolores, des bourses, des chaînes de laiton et toutes sortes de menus joyaux. S’arrêtant à l’étalage d’un humble bijoutier, Évariste choisit une bague en argent où l’on voyait en relief la tête de Marat entortillée d’un foulard. Et il la passa au doigt d’Élodie. | The municipality had performed the miracle of making abundance reign for a day in the starving city. A fair had been set up on the Place des Invalides, beside the river. In booths merchants sold dried sausages, cervelats, tripe sausages, hams covered in bay leaves, Nanterre cakes, gingerbread, crêpes, four-pound loaves, lemonade and wine. Other stalls sold patriotic songs, cockades, tricolour ribbons, purses, brass chains and every sort of small trinket. Stopping before a humble jeweller’s display, Évariste chose a silver ring[^c08n05] with a raised head of Marat wrapped in a kerchief. He slipped it on Élodie’s finger. |
| <a id="c08p013"></a>Gamelin se rendit, ce soir-là, rue de l’Arbre-Sec, chez la citoyenne Rochemaure, qui l’avait mandé pour affaire pressante. Il la trouva dans sa chambre à coucher, étendue sur une chaise longue, en déshabillé galant. | That evening Gamelin went to the Rue de l’Arbre-Sec to see Citizen Rochemaure, who had summoned him on urgent business. He found her in her bedroom, stretched on a chaise longue in an alluring state of undress. |
| <a id="c08p014"></a>Tandis que l’attitude de la citoyenne exprimait une voluptueuse langueur, autour d’elle tout disait ses grâces, ses jeux, ses talents: une harpe près du clavecin entrouvert; une guitare dans un fauteuil; un métier à broder où était montée une étoffe de satin; sur la table, une miniature ébauchée, des papiers, des livres; une bibliothèque en désordre comme ravagée par une belle main aussi avide de connaître que de sentir. Elle lui donna sa main à baiser et lui dit: | While the citizen’s posture expressed voluptuous languor, everything round her spoke of her graces, pleasures and accomplishments: a harp beside a half-open harpsichord; a guitar in an armchair; an embroidery frame holding a piece of satin; on the table, a miniature begun, papers and books; a disorderly bookcase, as though ravaged by a beautiful hand as eager to know as to feel. She gave him her hand to kiss and said: |
| <a id="c08p015"></a>"Salut, citoyen juré!... Aujourd’hui même, Robespierre l’aîné m’a remis une lettre en votre faveur pour le président Herman, une lettre très bien tournée, qui disait à peu près: "Je vous indique le citoyen Gamelin, recommandable par ses talents et par son patriotisme. Je me suis fait un devoir de vous annoncer un patriote qui a des principes et une conduite ferme dans la ligne révolutionnaire. Vous ne négligerez pas l’occasion d’être utile à un républicain...." J’ai porté sans débrider cette lettre au président Herman, qui m’a reçue avec une politesse exquise et a aussitôt signé votre nomination. C’est chose faite." | “Greetings, Citizen Juror! This very day the elder Robespierre gave me a letter in your favour for President Herman, a beautifully turned letter saying something like[^c08n06], ‘I recommend Citizen Gamelin to your notice for his talents and patriotism. I have considered it my duty to bring before you a patriot of principles whose conduct is firm in the revolutionary line. You will not neglect the opportunity to be useful to a republican…’ I took the letter straight to President Herman without drawing rein. He received me with exquisite courtesy and immediately signed your appointment. It is done.” |
| <a id="c08p016"></a>Gamelin, après un moment de silence: | After a moment’s silence Gamelin said: |
| <a id="c08p017"></a>"Citoyenne, dit-il, bien que je n’aie pas un morceau de pain à donner à ma mère, je jure sur mon honneur que je n’accepte les fonctions de juré que pour servir la République et la venger de tous ses ennemis." | “Citizen, although I haven’t a piece of bread to give my mother, I swear on my honour that I accept the duties of a juror only to serve the Republic and avenge her on all her enemies.” |
| <a id="c08p018"></a>La citoyenne jugea le remerciement froid et le compliment sévère. Elle soupçonna Gamelin de manquer de grâce. Mais elle aimait trop la jeunesse pour ne pas lui pardonner quelque âpreté. Gamelin était beau: elle lui trouvait du mérite. "On le façonnera", songea-t-elle. Et elle l’invita à ses soupers: elle recevait, chaque soir, après le théâtre. | The citizen thought his thanks cold and his compliment severe. She suspected Gamelin of lacking charm. But she loved youth too much not to forgive it a little harshness. Gamelin was handsome; she found merit in him. “We’ll shape him,” she thought. She invited him to her suppers: she received every evening after the theatre. |
| <a id="c08p019"></a>"Vous rencontrerez chez moi des gens d’esprit et de talent: Elleviou, Talma, le citoyen Vigée, qui tourne les bouts-rimés avec une habileté merveilleuse. Le citoyen François nous a lu sa *Paméla*, qu’on répète en ce moment au Théâtre de la Nation. Le style en est élégant et pur, comme tout ce qui sort de la plume du citoyen François. La pièce est touchante: elle nous a fait verser des larmes. C’est la jeune Lange qui tiendra le rôle de Paméla. | “You’ll meet people of wit and talent here: Elleviou, Talma, Citizen Vigée, who composes bouts-rimés[^c08n07] with marvellous skill. Citizen François read us his *Pamela*[^c08n08], which they’re rehearsing now at the Théâtre de la Nation. Its style is elegant and pure, like everything from Citizen François’s pen. The play is touching; it made us weep. Young Lange will play Pamela.” |
| <a id="c08p020"></a>— Je m’en rapporte à votre jugement, citoyenne, répondit Gamelin. Mais le Théâtre de la Nation est peu national. Et il est fâcheux pour le citoyen François que ses ouvrages soient portés sur ces planches avilies par les vers misérables de Laya: on n’a pas oublié le scandale de *L’Ami des Lois*.... | “I defer to your judgement, Citizen,” Gamelin replied. “But the Théâtre de la Nation is scarcely national. It is unfortunate for Citizen François that his works should appear on boards debased by Laya’s wretched verses. We haven’t forgotten the scandal of *The Friend of the Laws*.” |
| <a id="c08p021"></a>— Citoyen Gamelin, je vous abandonne Laya: il n’est pas de mes amis." | “Citizen Gamelin, I leave Laya to you. He is no friend of mine.” |
| <a id="c08p022"></a>Ce n’était point par bonté pure que la citoyenne avait employé son crédit à faire nommer Gamelin à un poste envié: après ce qu’elle avait fait et ce que d’aventure il adviendrait qu’elle fît pour lui, elle comptait se l’attacher étroitement et s’assurer un appui auprès d’une justice à laquelle elle pouvait avoir affaire, un jour ou l’autre, car enfin elle envoyait beaucoup de lettres en France et à l’étranger, et de telles correspondances étaient alors suspectes. | It was not from pure kindness that the citizen had used her influence to have Gamelin appointed to an envied post. After what she had done, and whatever she might happen to do for him later, she expected to bind him closely to her and secure support in a court[^c08n09] with which she might have dealings sooner or later. After all, she sent many letters both within France and abroad, and such correspondence was suspect in those days. |
| <a id="c08p023"></a>"Allez-vous souvent au théâtre, citoyen?" | “Do you often go to the theatre, Citizen?” |
| <a id="c08p024"></a>A ce moment, le dragon Henry, plus charmant que l’enfant Bathylle, entra dans la chambre. Deux énormes pistolets étaient passés dans sa ceinture. | At that moment the dragoon Henry, more charming than young Bathyllus, came into the bedroom. Two enormous pistols were tucked into his belt. |
| <a id="c08p025"></a>Il baisa la main de la belle citoyenne, qui lui dit: | He kissed the beautiful citizen’s hand. She said: |
| <a id="c08p026"></a>"Voilà le citoyen Évariste Gamelin pour qui j’ai passé la journée au Comité de sûreté générale et qui ne m’en sait point de gré. Grondez-le. | “Here is Citizen Évariste Gamelin, for whom I’ve spent the day at the Committee of General Security, and who shows me no gratitude at all. Scold him.” |
| <a id="c08p027"></a>— Ah! citoyenne, s’écria le militaire, vous venez de voir nos législateurs aux Tuileries. Quel spectacle affligeant! Les représentants d’un peuple libre devraient-ils siéger sous les lambris d’un despote? Les mêmes lustres allumés naguère sur les complots de Capet et les orgies d’Antoinette éclairent aujourd’hui les veilles de nos législateurs. Cela fait frémir la nature. | “Ah, Citizen!” cried the soldier. “You’ve just seen our legislators at the Tuileries. What a distressing spectacle! Should a free people’s representatives sit beneath a despot’s panelling? The same chandeliers lit for Capet’s plots and Antoinette’s orgies now illuminate our legislators’ vigils. It makes nature shudder.” |
| <a id="c08p028"></a>— Mon ami, félicitez le citoyen Gamelin, répondit-elle; il est nommé juré au Tribunal révolutionnaire. | “My dear, congratulate Citizen Gamelin,” she answered. “He has been appointed a juror at the Revolutionary Tribunal.” |
| <a id="c08p029"></a>— Mes compliments, citoyen! fit Henry. Je suis heureux de voir un homme de ton caractère investi de ces fonctions. Mais, à vrai dire, j’ai peu de confiance en cette justice méthodique, créée par les modérés de la Convention, en cette Némésis débonnaire qui ménage les conspirateurs, épargne les traîtres, ose à peine frapper les fédéralistes et craint d’appeler l’Autrichienne à sa barre. Non, ce n’est pas le Tribunal révolutionnaire qui sauvera la République. Ils sont bien coupables, ceux qui, dans la situation désespérée où nous sommes, ont arrêté l’élan de la justice populaire! | “My compliments, Citizen!” said Henry. “I’m happy to see a man of your character entrusted with those duties. But to tell the truth, I have little confidence in that methodical justice created by the Convention’s moderates, that mild Nemesis[^c08n10] which handles conspirators gently, spares traitors, scarcely dares strike federalists and fears to summon the Austrian woman before its bar. No, the Revolutionary Tribunal won’t save the Republic. Those who checked the momentum of popular justice in our desperate situation are deeply guilty!” |
| <a id="c08p030"></a>— Henry, dit la citoyenne Rochemaure, passez-moi ce flacon...." | “Henry,” said Citizen Rochemaure, “pass me that bottle…” |
| <a id="c08p031"></a>En rentrant chez lui, Gamelin trouva sa mère et le vieux Brotteaux qui faisaient une partie de piquet à la lueur d’une chandelle fumeuse. La citoyenne annonçait sans vergogne "tierce au roi". | Returning home, Gamelin found his mother and old Brotteaux playing piquet by the light of a smoking candle. Without shame the citizen was announcing “a sequence of three to the king[^c08n11]”. |
| <a id="c08p032"></a>Apprenant que son fils était juré, elle l’embrassa avec transports, songeant que c’était pour l’un et l’autre beaucoup d’honneur et que désormais tous deux mangeraient tous les jours. | Learning that her son was a juror, she embraced him ecstatically, thinking what an honour it was for both of them and that henceforth they would eat every day. |
| <a id="c08p033"></a>"Je suis heureuse et fière d’être la mère d’un juré, dit-elle. C’est une belle chose que la justice, et la plus nécessaire de toutes: sans justice, les faibles seraient vexés à chaque instant. Et je crois que tu jugeras bien, mon Évariste: car, dès l’enfance, je t’ai trouvé juste et bienveillant en toutes choses. Tu ne pouvais souffrir l’iniquité et tu t’opposais selon tes forces à la violence. Tu avais pitié des malheureux, et c’est là le plus beau fleuron d’un juge.... Mais, dis-moi, Évariste, comment êtes-vous habillés dans ce grand tribunal?" | “I’m happy and proud to be a juror’s mother,” she said. “Justice is a fine thing, and the most necessary of all. Without it the weak would be oppressed at every turn. And I believe you’ll judge well, my Évariste, because from childhood I’ve found you just and kindly in everything. You couldn’t bear injustice, and resisted violence as far as your strength allowed. You pitied the unfortunate, and that is a judge’s finest ornament… But tell me, Évariste, how are you dressed in that great tribunal?” |
| <a id="c08p034"></a>Gamelin lui répondit que les juges se coiffaient d’un chapeau à plumes noires, mais que les jurés n’avaient point de costume uniforme, qu’ils portaient leur habit ordinaire. | Gamelin told her the judges wore hats with black feathers, but jurors had no uniform costume: they wore their ordinary clothes. |
| <a id="c08p035"></a>"Il vaudrait mieux, répliqua la citoyenne, qu’ils portassent la robe et la perruque: ils en paraîtraient plus respectables. Bien que vêtu le plus souvent avec négligence, tu es beau et tu pares tes habits; mais la plupart des hommes ont besoin de quelque ornement pour paraître considérables: il vaudrait mieux que les jurés eussent la robe et la perruque." | “It would be better,” the citizen replied, “if they wore gowns and wigs. They’d look more respectable. Though you usually dress carelessly, you’re handsome and adorn your clothes; but most men need some ornament to seem important. It would be better if jurors wore gowns and wigs.” |
| <a id="c08p036"></a>La citoyenne avait ouï dire que les fonctions de juré au Tribunal rapportaient quelque chose; elle ne se tint pas de demander si l’on y gagnait de quoi vivre honnêtement, car un juré, disait-elle, doit faire bonne figure dans le monde. | The citizen had heard that service as a juror at the Tribunal brought in something. She could not resist asking whether one earned enough for a decent living there, since a juror, she said, ought to make a good appearance in the world. |
| <a id="c08p037"></a>Elle apprit avec satisfaction que les jurés recevaient une indemnité de dix-huit livres par séance et que la multitude des crimes contre la sûreté de l’État les obligerait à siéger très souvent. | She learnt with satisfaction that jurors received an allowance of eighteen livres per sitting[^c08n12], and that the multitude of crimes against state security would oblige them to sit very often. |
| <a id="c08p038"></a>Le vieux Brotteaux ramassa les cartes, se leva et dit à Gamelin: | Old Brotteaux gathered up the cards, rose and said to Gamelin: |
| <a id="c08p039"></a>"Citoyen, vous êtes investi d’une magistrature auguste et redoutable. Je vous félicite de prêter les lumières de votre conscience à un tribunal plus sûr et moins faillible peut-être que tout autre, parce qu’il recherche le bien et le mal, non point en eux-mêmes et dans leur essence, mais seulement par rapport à des intérêts tangibles et à des sentiments manifestes. Vous aurez à vous prononcer entre la haine et l’amour, ce qui se fait spontanément, non entre la vérité et l’erreur, dont le discernement est impossible au faible esprit des hommes. Jugeant d’après les mouvements de vos cœurs, vous ne risquerez pas de vous tromper, puisque le verdict sera bon pourvu qu’il contente les passions qui sont votre loi sacrée. Mais, c’est égal, si j’étais de votre président, je ferais comme Bridoie, je m’en rapporterais au sort des dés. En matière de justice, c’est encore le plus sûr." | “Citizen, you have been invested with an august and formidable office. I congratulate you on lending the light of your conscience to a tribunal surer and perhaps less fallible than any other, because it seeks good and evil not in themselves and in their essence, but only in relation to tangible interests and manifest feelings. You will have to decide between hatred and love, which happens spontaneously, rather than truth and error, which weak human minds cannot distinguish. Judging by the movements of your hearts, you will run no risk of being mistaken, since a verdict will be good provided it satisfies the passions that are your sacred law. Even so, if I were your president I would do as Bridoie did and rely on a throw of the dice[^c08n13]. In matters of justice, that is still the safest course.” |

### Notes

[^c08n01]: The imagery points to the festival of unity and indivisibility on 10 August 1793. A contemporary print catalogued by the Musée Carnavalet shows its successive stations, including Nature as Isis, Liberty, the defeat of federalism and the altar of the fatherland, designed and programmed by David. [S081](#S081)

[^c08n02]: The Fountain of Regeneration represented Nature at the Bastille during the 10 August festival. The BnF records contemporary images of it. France sets the allegory of limitless nourishment against the capital’s actual famine; the contradiction is explicit in the opening paragraph. [S082](#S082)

[^c08n03]: This national body is distinct from the local section’s Surveillance Committee, which provides the testimonial in the same sentence. Keeping both names separate makes the path of accusation and protection visible rather than collapsing the bodies into a single committee. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n04]: The narrative records a silence whose meaning Élodie cannot measure, without giving a new explicit statement of Gamelin’s intentions. Interpretively, their tenderness no longer guarantees that a plea for her father would override his political judgement. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n05]: Marat’s image becomes an intimate gift. Interpretively, the head wrapped in a kerchief brings the new public martyr into the couple’s private bond, just as the festival manufactures civic symbols on a monumental scale. The text does not call this a formal wedding ring. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n06]: Rochemaure presents an approximate recollection of a letter, not its documentary transcription. The translation preserves that qualification; neither the phrasing nor the appointment procedure should be cited as an archival letter by Robespierre. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n07]: A verse game in which supplied rhyme words are worked into a poem; the subject can ordinarily be chosen freely. The term identifies a social performance of literary skill, not a named poetic metre. [S083](#S083)

[^c08n08]: François de Neufchâteau’s play starred Mademoiselle Lange at the Théâtre de la Nation, as the Comédie-Française’s biography confirms. Its political reception later contributed to the theatre’s suppression. The chapter’s reference to rehearsals is retained rather than silently adjusted to a documentary performance calendar. [S084](#S084)

[^c08n09]: The narrator explicitly supplies the private calculation beneath the patronage. Her kindness is not denied, but it coexists with an expectation of future protection from the justice system. Gamelin’s profession of pure public service therefore has a different meaning for his patron. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n10]: Nemesis personifies retribution. Henry’s demand for something more forceful than organised judicial procedure places pressure on Gamelin from a self-styled position of greater revolutionary severity. The source’s comparison of the Tribunal to a gentle avenger is deliberately incongruous. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n11]: The king remains in the ordinary vocabulary of the card game despite Gamelin’s project to replace royal figures. Interpretively, this domestic play quietly recalls his earlier conflict with Blaise about how far political regeneration can remake habits. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n12]: The stated allowance is retained as part of the mother’s calculation, without a modern money equivalent. Interpretively, the final connection between frequent crimes and regular income makes the economic benefit of judicial service unsettlingly explicit. [S056](#S056)

[^c08n13]: Bridoie is the spelling used by France for Rabelais’ judge Bridoye. In Tiers Livre XXXIX the judge explains his decisions by judicial dice. Brotteaux’s suggestion contrasts random judgement with a system made infallible simply by defining correctness as satisfaction of its own passions. [S085](#S085)

<a id="chapter-09"></a>

## IX

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c09p001"></a>Évariste Gamelin devait entrer en fonctions le 14 septembre, lors de la réorganisation du Tribunal, divisé désormais en quatre sections, avec quinze jurés pour chacune. Les prisons regorgeaient; l’accusateur public travaillait dix-huit heures par jour. Aux défaites des armées, aux révoltes des provinces, aux conspirations, aux complots, aux trahisons, la Convention opposait la terreur. Les Dieux avaient soif. | Évariste Gamelin was to take up his duties on 14 September, when the Tribunal was reorganised into four divisions, with fifteen jurors in each. The prisons were overflowing; the public prosecutor worked eighteen hours a day. Against the defeats of the armies, the rebellions in the provinces, conspiracies, plots and betrayals, the Convention set terror. The gods were thirsty.[^c09n01] |
| <a id="c09p002"></a>La première démarche du nouveau juré fut de faire une visite de déférence au président Herman, qui le charma par la douceur de son langage et l’aménité de son commerce. Compatriote et ami de Robespierre, dont il partageait les sentiments, il laissait voir un cœur sensible et vertueux. Il était tout pénétré de ces sentiments humains, trop longtemps étrangers au cœur des juges et qui font la gloire éternelle d’un Dupaty et d’un Beccaria. Il se félicitait de l’adoucissement des mœurs qui s’était manifesté, dans l’ordre judiciaire, par la suppression de la torture et des supplices ignominieux ou cruels. Il se réjouissait de voir la peine de mort, autrefois prodiguée et servant naguère encore à la répression des moindres délits, devenue plus rare, et réservée aux grands crimes. Pour sa part, comme Robespierre, il l’eût volontiers abolie, en tout ce qui ne touchait pas à la sûreté publique. Mais il eût cru trahir l’État en ne punissant pas de mort les crimes commis contre la souveraineté nationale. | The new juror’s first step was to pay a visit of respect to President Herman, who charmed him with his gentle speech and agreeable manners. A fellow native of Robespierre’s province and his friend, sharing his sentiments, he revealed a sensitive and virtuous heart. He was deeply imbued with those humane feelings, so long alien to the hearts of judges, which are the everlasting glory of men such as Dupaty and Beccaria[^c09n02]. He welcomed the softening of manners that had found expression in the courts through the abolition of torture and of degrading or cruel punishments. He rejoiced to see the death penalty, once used so lavishly and until recently still employed to punish the slightest offences, becoming rarer and reserved for serious crimes. Like Robespierre, he would willingly have abolished it himself in everything that did not concern public safety. But he would have thought himself a traitor to the State had he failed to punish crimes against national sovereignty with death. |
| <a id="c09p003"></a>Tous ses collègues pensaient ainsi: la vieille idée monarchique de la raison d’État inspirait le Tribunal révolutionnaire. Huit siècles de pouvoir absolu avaient formé ses magistrats, et c’est sur les principes du droit divin qu’il jugeait les ennemis de la liberté. | All his colleagues thought as he did: the old monarchical idea of reasons of state inspired the Revolutionary Tribunal. Eight centuries of absolute power had formed its magistrates, and it judged the enemies of liberty according to the principles of divine right[^c09n03]. |
| <a id="c09p004"></a>Évariste Gamelin se présenta, le même jour, devant l’accusateur public, le citoyen Fouquier, qui le reçut dans le cabinet où il travaillait avec son greffier. C’était un homme robuste, à la voix rude, aux yeux de chat, qui portait sur sa large face grêlée, sur son teint de plomb, l’indice des ravages que cause une existence sédentaire et recluse aux hommes vigoureux, faits pour le grand air et les exercices violents. Les dossiers montaient autour de lui comme les murs d’un sépulcre, et, visiblement, il aimait cette paperasserie terrible qui semblait vouloir l’étouffer. Ses propos étaient d’un magistrat laborieux, appliqué à ses devoirs et dont l’esprit ne sortait pas du cercle de ses fonctions. Son haleine échauffée sentait l’eau-de-vie qu’il prenait pour se soutenir et qui ne semblait pas monter à son cerveau, tant il y avait de lucidité dans ses propos constamment médiocres. | 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 cat’s eyes; his broad, pockmarked face and leaden complexion bore the signs of the damage a sedentary, secluded existence inflicts on vigorous men made for the open air and strenuous exercise. Files rose about him like the walls of a tomb, and he clearly loved this terrible paperwork that seemed bent on smothering him. His conversation was that of a hardworking magistrate, attentive to his duties, whose mind never strayed beyond the bounds of his office. His hot breath smelt of the brandy he drank to keep himself going, and which seemed never to go to his head, so lucid were his unfailingly commonplace remarks. |
| <a id="c09p005"></a>Il vivait dans un petit appartement du Palais avec sa jeune femme, qui lui avait donné deux jumeaux. Cette jeune femme, la tante Henriette et la servante Pélagie composaient toute sa maison. Il se montrait doux et bon envers ces femmes. Enfin, c’était un homme excellent dans sa famille et dans sa profession, sans beaucoup d’idées et sans aucune imagination. | He lived in a small apartment in the Palais with his young wife, who had borne him twins. This young woman, Aunt Henriette and the servant Pélagie made up his entire household. He was gentle and kind to these women. In short, he was an excellent man both at home and in his profession, with few ideas and no imagination. |
| <a id="c09p006"></a>Gamelin ne put se défendre de remarquer avec quelque déplaisir combien ces magistrats de l’ordre nouveau ressemblaient d’esprit et de façons aux magistrats de l’ancien régime. Et c’en étaient: Herman avait exercé les fonctions d’avocat général au conseil d’Artois; Fouquier était un ancien procureur au Châtelet. Ils avaient gardé leur caractère. Mais Évariste Gamelin croyait à la palingénésie révolutionnaire. | Gamelin could not help noticing, with some displeasure, how closely these magistrates of the new order resembled those of the ancien régime in their minds and manners. And that was what they were: Herman had served as advocate-general to the Council of Artois; Fouquier had been an attorney at the Châtelet. Their characters had remained the same. But Évariste Gamelin believed in revolutionary rebirth[^c09n04]. |
| <a id="c09p007"></a>En quittant le parquet, il traversa la galerie du Palais et s’arrêta devant les boutiques où toutes sortes d’objets étaient exposés avec art. Il feuilleta, à l’étalage de la citoyenne Ténot, des ouvrages historiques, politiques, et philosophiques: *Les Chaînes de l’Esclavage*; *Essai sur le Despotisme*; *Les Crimes des Reines*. "A la bonne heure! songea-t-il, ce sont des écrits républicains!" et il demanda à la librairie si elle vendait beaucoup de ces livres-là. Elle secoua la tête: | 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 works of history, politics and philosophy: *The Chains of Slavery*[^c09n05]; *Essay on Despotism*; *The Crimes of Queens*. “That’s more like it!” he thought. “These are republican writings!” He asked the bookseller whether she sold many such books. She shook her head. |
| <a id="c09p008"></a>"On ne vend que des chansons et des romans." | “Nothing sells but songs and novels.” |
| <a id="c09p009"></a>Et tirant un petit volume d’un tiroir: | Then, taking a small volume from a drawer, she added: |
| <a id="c09p010"></a>"Voici, ajouta-t-elle, quelque chose de bon." | “Here’s something good.” |
| <a id="c09p011"></a>Évariste lut le titre: *La Religieuse en chemise*. | Évariste read the title: *The Nun in Her Shift*[^c09n06]. |
| <a id="c09p012"></a>Il trouva devant la boutique voisine Philippe Desmahis qui, superbe et tendre parmi les eaux de senteur, les poudres et les sachets de la citoyenne Saint-Jorre, assurait la belle marchande de son amour, lui promettait de lui faire son portrait et lui demandait un moment d’entretien dans le jardin des Tuileries, le soir. Il était beau. La persuasion coulait de ses lèvres et jaillissait de ses yeux. La citoyenne Saint-Jorre l’écoutait en silence et, prête à le croire, baissait les yeux. | Outside the next shop he found Philippe Desmahis, magnificent and tender among Citizen Saint-Jorre’s scented waters, powders and sachets, assuring the pretty shopkeeper of his love, promising to paint her portrait and asking for a few moments’ conversation 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, on the point of believing him, lowered her gaze. |
| <a id="c09p013"></a>Pour se familiariser avec les terribles fonctions dont il était investi, le nouveau juré voulut, mêlé au public, assister à un jugement du tribunal. Il gravit l’escalier où un peuple immense était assis comme dans un amphithéâtre et il pénétra dans l’ancienne salle du Parlement de Paris. | To familiarise himself with the terrible duties entrusted to him, the new juror decided 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. |
| <a id="c09p014"></a>On s’étouffait pour voir juger quelque général. Car alors, comme disait le vieux Brotteaux, "la Convention, à l’exemple du gouvernement de Sa Majesté britannique, faisait passer en jugement les généraux vaincus, à défaut des généraux traîtres, qui, ceux-ci, ne se laissaient point juger. Ce n’est point, ajoutait Brotteaux, qu’un général vaincu soit nécessairement criminel, car de toute nécessité il en faut un dans chaque bataille. Mais il n’est rien comme de condamner à mort un général pour donner du cœur aux autres...." | People were being crushed in their eagerness to see some general tried. For at that time, as old Brotteaux used to say, “the Convention, following the example of His Britannic Majesty’s government, tried defeated generals for want of traitorous ones, who took good care not to stand trial. Not,” Brotteaux added, “that a defeated general is necessarily a criminal, since every battle must inevitably have one. But there’s nothing like sentencing a general to death to put heart into the others[^c09n07]…” |
| <a id="c09p015"></a>Il en avait déjà passé plusieurs sur le fauteuil de l’accusé, de ces militaires légers et têtus, cervelles d’oiseau dans des crânes de bœuf. Celui-là n’en savait guère plus sur les sièges et les batailles qu’il avait conduits, que les magistrats qui l’interrogeaient: l’accusation et la défense se perdaient dans les effectifs, les objectifs, les munitions, les marches et les contremarches. Et la foule des citoyens qui suivaient ces débats obscurs et interminables voyaient derrière le militaire imbécile la patrie ouverte et déchirée, souffrant mille morts; et, du regard et de la voix, ils pressaient les jurés, tranquilles à leur banc, d’assener leur verdict comme un coup de massue sur les ennemis de la République. | Several of these frivolous, obstinate soldiers had already passed through the accused’s chair: birds’ brains in oxen’s skulls. This one knew scarcely more about the sieges and battles he had conducted than the magistrates questioning him. Prosecution and defence lost themselves among troop strengths, objectives, ammunition, marches and countermarches. Behind the witless soldier, the crowd of citizens following these obscure and interminable proceedings saw their country laid open and torn apart, suffering a thousand deaths. With their eyes and voices they urged the jurors, sitting quietly on their bench, to bring down their verdict like a club upon the enemies of the Republic. |
| <a id="c09p016"></a>Évariste le sentait ardemment: ce qu’il fallait frapper en ce misérable, c’étaient les deux monstres affreux qui déchiraient la Patrie: la révolte et la défaite. Il s’agissait bien, vraiment, de savoir si ce militaire était innocent ou coupable! Quand la Vendée reprenait courage, quand Toulon se livrait à l’ennemi, quand l’armée du Rhin reculait devant les vainqueurs de Mayence, quand l’armée du Nord, retirée au camp de César, pouvait être enlevée en un coup de main par les Impériaux, les Anglais, les Hollandais, maîtres de Valenciennes, ce qu’il importait, c’était d’instruire les généraux à vaincre ou à mourir. En voyant ce soudard infirme et abêti, qui, à l’audience, se perdait dans ses cartes comme il s’était perdu là-bas dans les plaines du Nord, Gamelin, pour ne pas crier avec le public: "A mort!" sortit précipitamment de la salle. | Évariste felt it passionately: what had to be struck down in this wretch were the two hideous monsters tearing the country apart—rebellion and defeat. As if it 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 falling back before the victors of Mainz, when the Army of the North, withdrawn to Caesar’s Camp, might be carried off by a sudden attack from the Imperial forces, the English and the Dutch, masters of Valenciennes, what mattered was to teach generals to win or die. At the sight of this infirm, stupefied old campaigner losing himself in his maps at the hearing as he had lost himself out there on the northern plains, Gamelin hurried from the chamber to keep himself from shouting “Death!” with the crowd. |
| <a id="c09p017"></a>A l’assemblée de la section, le nouveau juré reçut les félicitations du président Olivier, qui lui fit jurer sur le vieux maître-autel des Barnabites, transformé en autel de la patrie, d’étouffer dans son âme, au nom sacré de l’humanité, toute faiblesse humaine. | At the section assembly, the new juror received the congratulations of President Olivier, who made him swear upon the Barnabites’ old high altar, now transformed into an altar of the fatherland, that in humanity’s sacred name he would stifle every human weakness[^c09n08] in his soul. |
| <a id="c09p018"></a>Gamelin, la main levée, prit à témoin de son serment les mânes augustes de Marat, martyr de la liberté, dont le buste venait d’être posé contre un pilier de la ci-devant église, en face du buste de Le Peltier. | With his hand raised, Gamelin called as witness to his oath the august shade of Marat, martyr of liberty, whose bust had just been placed against a pillar of the former church, opposite Le Peltier’s. |
| <a id="c09p019"></a>Quelques applaudissements retentirent, mêlés à des murmures. L’assemblée était agitée. A l’entrée de la nef, un groupe de sectionnaires armés de piques vociférait. | A few rounds 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 shouting. |
| <a id="c09p020"></a>"Il est antirépublicain, dit le président, de porter des armes dans une réunion d’hommes libres." | “It is contrary to republican principles,” said the president, “to carry weapons into a gathering of free men.” |
| <a id="c09p021"></a>Et il ordonna de déposer aussitôt les fusils et les piques dans la ci-devant sacristie. | He ordered them to leave their muskets and pikes in the former sacristy at once. |
| <a id="c09p022"></a>Un bossu, l’œil vif et les lèvres retroussées, le citoyen Beauvisage, du comité de vigilance, vint occuper la chaire devenue la tribune et surmontée d’un bonnet rouge. | A hunchback with bright eyes and curled lips, Citizen Beauvisage of the Vigilance Committee, came to occupy the pulpit that had become the speakers’ platform, surmounted by a red cap. |
| <a id="c09p023"></a>"Les généraux nous trahissent, dit-il, et livrent nos armées à l’ennemi. Les Impériaux poussent des partis de cavalerie autour de Péronne et de Saint-Quentin, Toulon a été livré aux Anglais, qui y débarquent quatorze mille hommes. Les ennemis de la République conspirent au sein même de la Convention. Dans la capitale, d’innombrables complots sont ourdis pour délivrer l’Autrichienne. Au moment que je parle, le bruit court que le fils Capet, évadé du Temple, est porté en triomphe à Saint-Cloud: on veut relever en sa faveur le trône du tyran. L’enchérissement des vivres, la dépréciation des assignats sont l’effet des manœuvres accomplies dans nos foyers, sous nos yeux, par les agents de l’étranger. Au nom du salut public, je somme le citoyen juré d’être impitoyable pour les conspirateurs et les traîtres." | “The generals are betraying us,” he said, “and delivering our armies to the enemy. The Imperial forces are sending cavalry parties around Péronne and Saint-Quentin; Toulon has been handed over to the English, who are landing fourteen thousand men there. The enemies of the Republic are conspiring within the Convention itself. In the capital, countless plots are being hatched to free the Austrian woman. At this very moment a rumour is circulating that the Capet boy[^c09n09] has escaped from the Temple and is being carried in triumph through Saint-Cloud: they want to restore the tyrant’s throne for him. The rising cost of food and the depreciation of assignats result from the manoeuvres of foreign agents, carried out in our very homes, before our eyes. In the name of public safety, I call upon the citizen juror to show no mercy to conspirators and traitors.” |
| <a id="c09p024"></a>Tandis qu’il descendait de la tribune, des voix s’élevaient dans l’assemblée: "A bas le Tribunal révolutionnaire! A bas les modérés!" | As he stepped down from the platform, voices rose in the assembly: “Down with the Revolutionary Tribunal! Down with the moderates!” |
| <a id="c09p025"></a>Gras et le teint fleuri, le citoyen Dupont aîné, menuisier sur la place de Thionville, monta à la tribune, désireux, disait-il, d’adresser une question au citoyen juré. Et il demanda à Gamelin quelle serait son attitude dans l’affaire des Brissotins et de la veuve Capet. | Plump and rosy-faced, Citizen Dupont the elder, carpenter in the Place de Thionville, mounted the platform, wishing, he said, to put a question to the citizen juror. He asked Gamelin what position he would take in the cases of the Brissotins and the Widow Capet. |
| <a id="c09p026"></a>Évariste était timide et ne savait point parler en public. Mais l’indignation l’inspira. Il se leva, pâle, et dit d’une voix sourde: | Évariste was shy and had no skill in public speaking. But indignation inspired him. He rose, pale, and said in a low voice: |
| <a id="c09p027"></a>"Je suis magistrat. Je ne relève que de ma conscience. Toute promesse que je vous ferais serait contraire à mon devoir. Je dois parler au Tribunal et me taire partout ailleurs. Je ne vous connais plus. Je suis juge: je ne connais ni amis ni ennemis." | “I am a magistrate. I answer only to my conscience. Any promise I made you would be contrary to my duty. I must speak in the Tribunal and be silent everywhere else. I no longer know you. I am a judge: I know neither friends nor enemies.” |
| <a id="c09p028"></a>L’assemblée, diverse, incertaine et flottante, comme toutes les assemblées, approuva. Mais le citoyen Dupont aîné revint à la charge; il ne pardonnait pas à Gamelin d’occuper une place qu’il avait lui-même convoitée. | The assembly, divided, uncertain and wavering like all assemblies, approved. But Citizen Dupont the elder returned to the attack: he could not forgive Gamelin for occupying a position he had coveted himself. |
| <a id="c09p029"></a>"Je comprends, dit-il, j’approuve même les scrupules du citoyen juré. On le dit patriote: c’est à lui de voir si sa conscience lui permet de siéger dans un tribunal destiné à détruire les ennemis de la République et résolu à les ménager. Il est des complicités auxquelles un bon citoyen doit se soustraire. N’est-il pas avéré que plusieurs jurés de ce tribunal se sont laissé corrompre par l’or des accusés, et que le président Montané a perpétré un faux pour sauver la tête de la fille Corday?" | “I understand,” he said, “and even approve the citizen juror’s scruples. He is said to be a patriot: it is for him to decide whether his conscience allows him to sit in a tribunal intended to destroy the enemies of the Republic and determined to spare them. There are forms of complicity a good citizen must avoid. Is it not established that several jurors of this tribunal have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the accused’s gold, and that President Montané committed forgery[^c09n10] to save the Corday girl’s head?” |
| <a id="c09p030"></a>A ces mots, la salle retentit d’applaudissements vigoureux. Les derniers éclats en montaient encore aux voûtes, quand Fortuné Trubert monta à la tribune. Il avait beaucoup maigri, en ces derniers mois. Sur son visage pâle, des pommettes rouges perçaient la peau; ses paupières étaient enflammées et ses prunelles vitreuses. | At these words the hall resounded with vigorous applause. Its last echoes were still rising to the vaults when Fortuné Trubert mounted the platform. He had grown much thinner in recent months. Red cheekbones seemed to pierce the skin of his pale face; his eyelids were inflamed and his eyes glassy. |
| <a id="c09p031"></a>"Citoyens, dit-il d’une voix faible et un peu haletante, étrangement pénétrante; on ne peut suspecter le Tribunal révolutionnaire sans suspecter en même temps la Convention et le Comité de Salut public dont il émane. Le citoyen Beauvisage nous a alarmés en nous montrant le président Montané altérant la procédure en faveur d’un coupable. Que n’a-t-il ajouté, pour notre repos, que, sur la dénonciation de l’accusateur public, Montané a été destitué et emprisonné?... Ne peut-on veiller au salut public sans jeter partout la suspicion? N’y a-t-il plus de talents ni de vertus à la Convention? Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just ne sont-ils pas des hommes honnêtes? Il est remarquable que les propos les plus violents sont tenus par des individus qu’on n’a jamais vus combattre pour la République! Ils ne parleraient pas autrement s’ils voulaient la rendre haïssable. Citoyens, moins de bruit et plus de besogne! C’est avec des canons, et non avec des criailleries, que l’on sauvera la France. La moitié des caves de la section n’ont pas encore été fouillées. Plusieurs citoyens détiennent encore des quantités considérables de bronze. Nous rappelons aux riches que les dons patriotiques sont pour eux la meilleure des assurances. Je recommande à votre libéralité les filles et les femmes de nos soldats qui se couvrent de gloire à la frontière et sur la Loire. L’un d’eux, le hussard Pommier (Augustin), précédemment apprenti sommelier, rue de Jérusalem, le 10 du mois dernier, devant Condé, menant des chevaux boire, fut assailli par six cavaliers autrichiens: il en tua deux et ramena les autres prisonniers. Je demande que la section déclare que Pommier (Augustin) a fait son devoir." | “Citizens,” he said in a weak, slightly breathless voice, strangely penetrating, “you cannot cast suspicion on the Revolutionary Tribunal without also casting suspicion on the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety from which it derives its authority. Citizen Beauvisage[^c09n11] has alarmed us with his picture of President Montané altering the proceedings in a guilty person’s favour. Why did he not add, to set our minds at rest, that on the public prosecutor’s denunciation Montané was dismissed and imprisoned?… Can we not watch over public safety without spreading suspicion everywhere? Is there no longer any talent or virtue in the Convention? Are Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-Just not honest men? It is remarkable that the most violent speeches come from people who have never been seen fighting for the Republic! They could speak no differently if they wished to make it hateful. Citizens, less noise and more work! Cannon will save France, not shouting. Half the cellars in the section have still not been dug up. Several citizens still hold considerable quantities of bronze. We remind the rich that patriotic donations are their best insurance. I commend to your generosity the daughters and wives of our soldiers, who are covering themselves with glory at the frontier and on the Loire. One of them, the hussar Pommier (Augustin), formerly an apprentice wine steward in the Rue de Jérusalem, was taking horses to water outside Condé on the tenth of last month when six Austrian cavalrymen attacked him: he killed two and brought the others back as prisoners. I ask the section to declare that Pommier (Augustin) has done his duty.” |
| <a id="c09p032"></a>Ce discours fut applaudi et les sectionnaires se séparèrent aux cris de: "Vive la République!" | This speech was applauded, and the section members dispersed to cries of “Long live the Republic!” |
| <a id="c09p033"></a>Demeuré seul dans la nef avec Trubert, Gamelin lui serra la main: | Left alone in the nave with Trubert, Gamelin shook his hand. |
| <a id="c09p034"></a>"Merci. Comment vas-tu? | “Thank you. How are you?” |
| <a id="c09p035"></a>— Moi, très bien, très bien!" répondit Trubert, en crachant, avec un hoquet, du sang dans son mouchoir. "La République a beaucoup d’ennemis au-dehors et au-dedans; et notre section en compte, pour sa part, un assez grand nombre. Ce n’est pas avec des criailleries mais avec du fer et des lois qu’on fonde les empires.... Bonsoir, Gamelin: j’ai quelques lettres à écrire." | “Me? Very well, very well!” Trubert replied, coughing blood into his handkerchief with a convulsive gasp. “The Republic has many enemies abroad and at home, and our section has its fair share. Empires are founded with iron and laws[^c09n12], not shouting… Good evening, Gamelin: I have a few letters to write.” |
| <a id="c09p036"></a>Et il s’en alla, son mouchoir sur les lèvres, dans la ci-devant sacristie. | With his handkerchief against his lips, he went away into the former sacristy. |
| <a id="c09p037"></a>La citoyenne veuve Gamelin, sa cocarde désormais mieux ajustée à sa coiffe, avait pris, du jour au lendemain, une gravité bourgeoise, une fierté républicaine et le digne maintien qui sied à la mère d’un citoyen juré. Le respect de la justice, dans lequel elle avait été nourrie, l’admiration que, depuis l’enfance, lui inspiraient la robe et la simarre, la sainte terreur qu’elle avait toujours éprouvée à la vue de ces hommes à qui Dieu lui-même cède sur la terre son droit de vie et de mort, ces sentiments lui rendaient auguste, vénérable et saint ce fils que naguère elle croyait encore presque un enfant. Dans sa simplicité, elle concevait la continuité de la justice à travers la Révolution aussi fortement que les législateurs de la Convention concevaient la continuité de l’État dans la mutation des régimes, et le Tribunal révolutionnaire lui apparaissait égal en majesté à toutes les juridictions anciennes qu’elle avait appris à révérer. | Citizen Widow Gamelin, her cockade now more neatly fitted to her cap, had assumed overnight a bourgeois gravity, a republican pride and the dignified bearing proper to the mother of a citizen juror. The respect for justice in which she had been brought up, the admiration inspired in her since childhood by the gown and the magistrate’s robes, the holy terror she had always felt at the sight of men to whom God himself yields his earthly power of life and death—these feelings made august, venerable and sacred the son whom until recently she had still regarded as almost a child. In her simplicity she understood the continuity of justice through the Revolution as firmly as the legislators of the Convention understood the continuity of the State through changes of regime; the Revolutionary Tribunal seemed to her equal in majesty to all the old jurisdictions she had learnt to revere. |
| <a id="c09p038"></a>Le citoyen Brotteaux montrait au jeune magistrat de l’intérêt mêlé de surprise et une déférence forcée. Comme la citoyenne veuve Gamelin, il considérait la continuité de la justice à travers les régimes; mais, au rebours de cette dame, il méprisait les tribunaux révolutionnaires à l’égal des cours de l’ancien régime. N’osant exprimer ouvertement sa pensée, et ne pouvant se résoudre à se taire, il se jetait dans des paradoxes que Gamelin comprenait tout juste assez pour en soupçonner l’incivisme. | Citizen Brotteaux showed the young magistrate an interest mingled with surprise and a forced deference. Like Citizen Widow Gamelin, he recognised the continuity of justice through successive regimes; but, unlike that lady, he despised revolutionary tribunals as much as he did the courts of the ancien régime. Not daring to express his thoughts openly, yet unable to bring himself to remain silent, he took refuge in paradoxes that Gamelin understood just well enough to suspect their want of civic loyalty. |
| <a id="c09p039"></a>"L’auguste tribunal où vous allez bientôt siéger, lui dit-il une fois, a été institué par le Sénat français pour le salut de la République; et ce fut certes une pensée vertueuse de nos législateurs que de donner des juges à leurs ennemis. J’en conçois la générosité, mais je ne la crois pas politique. Il eût été plus habile à eux, il me semble, de frapper dans l’ombre leurs plus irréconciliables adversaires et de gagner les autres par des dons ou des promesses. Un tribunal frappe avec lenteur et fait moins de mal que de peur: il est surtout exemplaire. L’inconvénient du vôtre est de réconcilier tous ceux qu’il effraie et de faire ainsi d’une cohue d’intérêts et de passions contraires un grand parti capable d’une action commune et puissante. Vous semez la peur: c’est la peur plus que le courage qui enfante les héros; puissiez-vous, citoyen Gamelin, ne pas voir un jour éclater contre vous des prodiges de peur!" | “The august tribunal in which you will soon take your seat,” he once told him, “was established by the French Senate[^c09n13] to save the Republic. It was certainly a virtuous thought on our legislators’ part to give their enemies judges. I understand its generosity, but I do not think it wise policy. It would have been more skilful, it seems to me, to strike down their most irreconcilable opponents in secret and win the others over with gifts or promises. A tribunal strikes slowly and does less harm than it inspires fear: above all, it sets an example. The disadvantage of yours is that it reconciles everyone it frightens, turning a rabble of conflicting interests and passions into a great party capable of powerful, concerted action. You sow fear: it is fear, more than courage, that breeds heroes. May you never see, Citizen Gamelin, what prodigies of fear may one day be unleashed against you!” |
| <a id="c09p040"></a>Le graveur Desmahis, amoureux, cette semaine-là, d’une fille du Palais-Égalité, la brune Flora, une géante, avait trouvé pourtant cinq minutes pour féliciter son camarade et lui dire qu’une telle nomination honorait grandement les beaux-arts. | The engraver Desmahis, in love that week with a girl from the Palais-Égalité, the dark-haired Flora, a giantess, had nevertheless found five minutes to congratulate his friend and tell him that such an appointment did great honour to the fine arts. |
| <a id="c09p041"></a>Élodie elle-même, bien qu’à son insu elle détestât toute chose révolutionnaire, et qui craignait les fonctions publiques comme les plus dangereuses rivales qui pussent lui disputer le cœur de son amant, la tendre Élodie subissait l’ascendant d’un magistrat appelé à se prononcer dans des affaires capitales. D’ailleurs la nomination d’Évariste aux fonctions de juré produisait autour d’elle des effets heureux, dont sa sensibilité trouvait à se réjouir: le citoyen Jean Blaise vint dans l’atelier de la place de Thionville embrasser le juré avec un débordement de mâle tendresse. | Even Élodie—though without knowing it she detested everything revolutionary, and feared public duties as the most dangerous rivals that might dispute her lover’s heart with her—even tender Élodie felt the authority of a magistrate called upon to decide matters of life and death. Besides, Évariste’s appointment as a juror was producing happy effects around her in which her tender heart could rejoice: Citizen Jean Blaise came to the studio in the Place de Thionville to embrace the juror with an outpouring of manly affection. |
| <a id="c09p042"></a>Comme tous les contre-révolutionnaires, il éprouvait de la considération pour les puissances de la République, et, depuis qu’il avait été dénoncé pour fraude dans les fournitures de l’armée, le Tribunal révolutionnaire lui inspirait une crainte respectueuse. Il se voyait personnage de trop d’apparence et mêlé à trop d’affaires pour goûter une sécurité parfaite: le citoyen Gamelin lui paraissait un homme à ménager. Enfin on était bon citoyen, ami des lois. | Like all counter-revolutionaries, he felt respect for the powers of the Republic, and since he had been denounced for fraud in army supplies, the Revolutionary Tribunal inspired him with reverent fear. He considered himself too conspicuous a figure and involved in too many enterprises to feel entirely secure: Citizen Gamelin seemed a man to keep on good terms with. After all, one was a good citizen, a friend of the laws. |
| <a id="c09p043"></a>Il tendit la main au peintre magistrat, se montra cordial et patriote, favorable aux arts et à la liberté. Gamelin, généreux, serra cette main largement tendue. | He held out his hand to the painter-magistrate, showed himself cordial and patriotic, well disposed towards art and liberty. Generous-hearted, Gamelin clasped the hand so freely offered. |
| <a id="c09p044"></a>"Citoyen Évariste Gamelin, dit Jean Blaise, je fais appel à votre amitié et à vos talents. Je vous emmène demain pour quarante-huit heures à la campagne: vous dessinerez et nous causerons." | “Citizen Évariste Gamelin,” said Jean Blaise, “I appeal to your friendship and your talents. Tomorrow I am taking you into the country for forty-eight hours: you shall draw, and we shall talk.” |
| <a id="c09p045"></a>Plusieurs fois, chaque année, le marchand d’estampes faisait une promenade de deux ou trois jours en compagnie de peintres qui dessinaient, sur ses indications, des paysages et des ruines. Saisissant avec habileté ce qui pouvait plaire au public, il rapportait de ces tournées des morceaux qui, terminés dans l’atelier et gravés avec esprit, faisaient des estampes à la sanguine ou en couleurs, dont il tirait bon profit. D’après ces croquis, il faisait exécuter aussi des dessus de portes et des trumeaux qui se vendaient autant et mieux que les ouvrages décoratifs d’Hubert Robert. | Several times a year the print dealer made an excursion of two or three days with painters who, under his direction, drew landscapes and ruins. With his skilful grasp of what would appeal to the public, he brought back works from these outings which, finished in the studio and engraved with spirit, became prints in sanguine or in colour that earned him a handsome profit. From these sketches he also had overdoors and decorative wall panels made, which sold as well as, or better than, Hubert Robert’s[^c09n14] decorative works. |
| <a id="c09p046"></a>Cette fois, il voulait emmener le citoyen Gamelin pour esquisser des fabriques d’après nature, tant le juré avait pour lui grandi le peintre. Deux autres artistes étaient de la partie, le graveur Desmahis, qui dessinait bien, et l’obscur Philippe Dubois, qui travaillait excellemment dans le genre de Robert. Selon la coutume, la citoyenne Élodie, avec sa camarade la citoyenne Hasard, accompagnait les artistes. Jean Blaise, qui savait unir au souci de ses intérêts le soin de ses plaisirs, avait aussi invité à cette promenade la citoyenne Thévenin, actrice du Vaudeville, qui passait pour sa bonne amie. | This time he wanted to take Citizen Gamelin to sketch architectural features[^c09n15] from nature, so much had the juror increased the painter’s stature in his eyes. Two other artists were to join them: the engraver Desmahis, who drew well, and the obscure Philippe Dubois, who worked excellently in Robert’s manner. As usual, Citizen Élodie and her friend Citizen Hasard were to accompany 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 mistress. |

### Notes

[^c09n01]: The sentence repeats the novel’s governing image: political justice is offered as a sacrifice to powers whose appetite cannot be satisfied. Here the administrative reorganisation and overflowing prisons make that metaphor institutional. This is an interpretive reading of France’s title and wording. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n02]: Cesare Beccaria’s arguments against capital punishment helped launch the eighteenth-century abolitionist campaign. France places that humane inheritance beside Herman’s exception for political offences: the advocate of milder justice can still consider execution indispensable to the State. The juxtaposition, rather than a verdict on all reformers, produces the irony. [S087](#S087)

[^c09n03]: France expressly makes revolutionary justice the heir of royal absolutism. The paradox is structural: a new sovereign invokes an inherited necessity of state. The same argument returns later through Widow Gamelin’s reverence and Brotteaux’s contempt, opposite emotions directed at the same continuity. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n04]: The French is palingénésie révolutionnaire. Palingénésie means rebirth or regeneration, with philosophical associations extending beyond an ordinary change of government. Gamelin believes that the Revolution can remake people inwardly, despite the magistrates’ surviving habits and careers. [S088](#S088)

[^c09n05]: Marat’s Les Chaînes de l’esclavage analyses the mechanisms of despotism; Mirabeau’s Essai sur le despotisme likewise predates the Republic. Gamelin judges their republican value from their subjects, while the bookseller’s sales reveal a different reading public. [S089](#S089) [S090](#S090)

[^c09n06]: La Religieuse en chemise is the alternative title of Vénus dans le cloître, an erotic dialogue published under the name Abbé Du Prat. Its attribution and early publication history are disputed. The title abruptly exchanges republican edification for the pleasures the bookseller knows will sell. [S091](#S091)

[^c09n07]: Brotteaux’s argument recalls chapter XXIII of Voltaire’s Candide, where an admiral is executed ‘pour encourager les autres’. France transfers the logic from the British navy to revolutionary generals. The allusion identifies a recurring political practice rather than making a defeated officer’s guilt self-evident. [S092](#S092)

[^c09n08]: The oath requires Gamelin to suppress human feeling in humanity’s name. Its location on a Christian altar turned into an altar of the fatherland continues the novel’s presentation of revolutionary conviction through religious language and ritual. The contradiction is France’s own, preserved here without explanation in the dialogue. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n09]: The Capet boy is Louis XVI’s son, confined in the Temple; the ‘Austrian woman’ is Marie-Antoinette. Their reduction to a surname or foreign origin strips away royal titles. Beauvisage explicitly reports the escape as a rumour, which the narrative does not authenticate. [S086](#S086) [S093](#S093)

[^c09n10]: Montané presided over Charlotte Corday’s trial after she killed Marat. The surviving verdict questions ask about criminal and premeditated intention; controversy concerned the omission of counter-revolutionary intention. Dupont’s claim that Montané meant to save her head is partisan accusation, not the editor’s conclusion: she was convicted and executed. [S094](#S094) [S095](#S095)

[^c09n11]: The preceding accusation against Montané was spoken by Dupont, not Beauvisage. The French nevertheless names Beauvisage in Trubert’s reply. This attribution has been retained rather than silently corrected. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n12]: Trubert’s antithesis draws a distinction between noisy denunciation and the material and legal means of power. His insistence on work, cast against his bleeding and exhaustion, gives patriotic commitment a dignity the chapter withholds from opportunists. This is a reading of the scene, not a diagnosis of his illness. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n13]: Brotteaux uses a classical designation for the Convention, not the name of a separate republican chamber. His warning that fear breeds heroes reverses the exemplary purpose of terror: persecution may unite people whom their interests would otherwise divide. [S086](#S086)

[^c09n14]: Hubert Robert (1733–1808) was celebrated for landscapes and architectural ruins and also worked as a designer of gardens and decorative ensembles. Blaise’s commercial comparison belongs to that market for picturesque scenes. Robert’s cultivated art is reduced here to a profitable, reproducible manner. [S096](#S096) [S097](#S097)

[^c09n15]: Fabriques in landscape art are buildings or architectural structures used within a composition, often picturesque or ruinous ones. They are not factories. The preceding trumeaux are decorative wall panels, including painted or mirrored panels; ‘overdoors’ are painted decorations above doorways. [S098](#S098) [S097](#S097)

<a id="chapter-10"></a>

## X

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c10p001"></a>Le samedi, à sept heures du matin, le citoyen Blaise, en bicorne noir, gilet écarlate, culotte de peau, bottes jaunes à revers, cogna du manche de sa cravache à la porte de l’atelier. La citoyenne veuve Gamelin s’y trouvait en honnête conversation avec le citoyen Brotteaux, tandis qu’Évariste nouait devant un petit morceau de glace sa haute cravate blanche. | On Saturday, at seven in the morning, Citizen Blaise, in a black bicorne, scarlet waistcoat, leather breeches and yellow boots with turned-down tops, knocked on the studio door with the handle of his riding crop. Citizen Widow Gamelin was inside, engaged in respectable conversation with Citizen Brotteaux, while Évariste tied his high white cravat before a small piece of looking-glass. |
| <a id="c10p002"></a>"Bon voyage, monsieur Blaise! dit la citoyenne. Mais, puisque vous allez peindre des paysages, emmenez donc monsieur Brotteaux, qui est peintre. | “A pleasant journey, Monsieur Blaise!” said the citizen. “But since you’re going to paint landscapes, why not take Monsieur Brotteaux? He’s a painter.” |
| <a id="c10p003"></a>— Eh bien! dit Jean Blaise, citoyen Brotteaux, venez avec nous." | “Well, then,” said Jean Blaise, “Citizen Brotteaux, come with us.” |
| <a id="c10p004"></a>Quand il se fut assuré qu’il ne serait point importun, Brotteaux, d’humeur sociable et ami des divertissements, accepta. | Once he had made sure that he would not be imposing, Brotteaux, who was sociable and fond of amusement, accepted. |
| <a id="c10p005"></a>La citoyenne Élodie avait monté les quatre étages pour embrasser la citoyenne veuve Gamelin, qu’elle appelait sa bonne mère. Elle était tout de blanc vêtue et sentait la lavande. | Citizen Élodie had climbed the four flights to kiss Citizen Widow Gamelin, whom she called her dear mother. She was dressed entirely in white and smelt of lavender. |
| <a id="c10p006"></a>Une vieille berline de voyage, à deux chevaux, la capote abaissée, attendait sur la place. Rose Thévenin se tenait au fond avec Julienne Hasard. Élodie fit prendre la droite à la comédienne, s’assit à gauche, et mit la mince Julienne entre elles deux. Brotteaux se plaça en arrière, vis-à-vis de la citoyenne Thévenin; Philippe Dubois, vis-à-vis de la citoyenne Hasard; Évariste, vis-à-vis d’Élodie. Quant à Philippe Desmahis, il dressait son torse athlétique sur le siège, à la gauche du cocher, qu’il étonnait en lui contant qu’en un certain pays d’Amérique les arbres portaient des andouilles et des cervelas. | An old travelling carriage, drawn by two horses, waited in the square with its hood lowered. Rose Thévenin was sitting inside with Julienne Hasard. Élodie gave the actress the right-hand seat, sat down on the left and placed slender Julienne between them. Brotteaux took the backward-facing seat opposite Citizen Thévenin; Philippe Dubois sat opposite Citizen Hasard; Évariste opposite Élodie. As for Philippe Desmahis, he held his athletic torso erect on the box, to the driver’s left, astonishing him with an account of a country in America where sausages and saveloys grew on trees. |
| <a id="c10p007"></a>Le citoyen Blaise, excellent cavalier, faisait la route à cheval et prenait les devants pour n’avoir pas la poussière de la berline. | Citizen Blaise, an excellent horseman, rode on horseback and kept ahead to escape the carriage’s dust. |
| <a id="c10p008"></a>A mesure que les roues brûlaient le pavé du faubourg, les voyageurs oubliaient leurs soucis; et, à la vue des champs, des arbres, du ciel, leurs pensées devinrent riantes et douces. Élodie songea qu’elle était née pour élever des poules auprès d’Évariste, juge de paix dans un village, au bord d’une rivière, près d’un bois. Les ormeaux du chemin fuyaient sur leur passage. A l’entrée des villages, les mâtins s’élançaient de biais contre la voiture et aboyaient aux jambes des chevaux, tandis qu’un grand épagneul couché en travers de la chaussée se levait à regret; les poules voletaient éparses et, pour fuir, traversaient la route; les oies, en troupe serrée, s’éloignaient lentement. Les enfants barbouillés regardaient passer l’équipage. La matinée était chaude, le ciel clair. La terre gercée attendait la pluie. Ils mirent pied à terre près de Villejuif. Comme ils traversaient le bourg, Desmahis entra chez une fruitière pour acheter des cerises dont il voulait rafraîchir les citoyennes. La marchande était jolie: Desmahis ne reparaissait plus. Philippe Dubois l’appela par le surnom que ses amis lui donnaient communément: | As the wheels sped over the paving of the suburb, the travellers forgot their cares; at the sight of fields, trees and sky, their thoughts grew cheerful and tender. Élodie thought that she had been born to keep hens[^c10n01] beside Évariste, a village justice of the peace, by a river near a wood. The elms along the road fled past them. At the entrances to villages, mastiffs darted sideways at the carriage, barking at the horses’ legs, while a large spaniel lying across the roadway rose reluctantly. Hens fluttered away in all directions and crossed the road to escape; geese moved slowly off in a close-packed flock. Grubby children watched the equipage pass. The morning was warm, the sky clear. The cracked earth waited for rain. They got down near Villejuif. As they crossed the village, Desmahis went into a fruit seller’s to buy cherries with which to refresh the women. The shopkeeper was pretty: Desmahis failed to reappear. Philippe Dubois called him by the nickname his friends commonly used. |
| <a id="c10p009"></a>"Hé! Barbaroux!... Barbaroux!" | “Hey! Barbaroux!… Barbaroux!” |
| <a id="c10p010"></a>A ce nom exécré, les passants dressèrent l’oreille et des visages parurent à toutes les fenêtres. Et, quand ils virent sortir de chez la fruitière un jeune et bel homme, la veste ouverte, le jabot flottant sur une poitrine athlétique, et portant sur ses épaules un panier de cerises et son habit au bout d’un bâton, le prenant pour le girondin proscrit, des sans-culottes l’appréhendèrent violemment et l’eussent conduit à la municipalité malgré ses protestations indignées, si le vieux Brotteaux, Gamelin et les trois jeunes femmes n’eussent attesté que le citoyen se nommait Philippe Desmahis, graveur en taille-douce et bon jacobin. Encore fallut-il que le suspect montrât sa carte de civisme qu’il portait sur lui, par grand hasard, étant fort négligent de ces choses. A ce prix, il échappa aux mains des villageois patriotes sans autre dommage qu’une de ses manchettes de dentelle, qu’on lui avait arrachée; mais la perte était légère. Il reçut même les excuses des gardes nationaux qui l’avaient serré le plus fort et qui parlaient de le porter en triomphe à la municipalité. | At that execrated name, passers-by pricked up their ears and faces appeared at every window. When a handsome young man emerged from the fruit seller’s, his waistcoat open, his shirt-frill loose over an athletic chest, carrying a basket of cherries on his shoulders and his coat on the end of a stick, some sans-culottes took him for the outlawed Girondin[^c10n02] and seized him roughly. Despite his indignant protests, they would have dragged him to the municipal offices had old Brotteaux, Gamelin and the three young women not testified that the citizen’s name was Philippe Desmahis, that he was an engraver in intaglio and a good Jacobin. Even then the suspect had to show his certificate of civic loyalty, which by great good luck he had with him, careless as he was about such things. On these terms he escaped the patriotic villagers with no worse damage than the loss of a lace cuff they had torn off, a slight enough injury. He even received apologies from the National Guardsmen who had gripped him hardest, and who now talked of carrying him in triumph to the municipal offices. |
| <a id="c10p011"></a>Libre, entouré des citoyennes Élodie, Rose et Julienne, Desmahis jeta à Philippe Dubois, qu’il n’aimait pas et qu’il soupçonnait de perfidie, un sourire amer, et, le dominant de toute la tête: | Free again, surrounded by Citizens Élodie, Rose and Julienne, Desmahis gave Philippe Dubois—whom he disliked and suspected of malice—a bitter smile, and, towering a head above him, said: |
| <a id="c10p012"></a>"Dubois, si tu m’appelles encore Barbaroux, je t’appellerai Brissot; c’est un petit homme épais et ridicule, les cheveux gras, la peau huileuse, les mains gluantes. On ne doutera pas que tu ne sois l’infâme Brissot, l’ennemi du peuple; et les républicains, saisis à ta vue d’horreur et de dégoût, te pendront à la prochaine lanterne.... Tu entends?" | “Dubois, if you call me Barbaroux again, I’ll call you Brissot: a squat, ridiculous little man, with greasy hair, oily skin and clammy hands. No one will doubt that you’re the infamous Brissot, the enemy of the people, and the republicans, filled with horror and disgust at the sight of you, will hang you from the nearest lamp-post[^c10n03]… Do you understand?” |
| <a id="c10p013"></a>Le citoyen Blaise, qui venait de faire boire son cheval, assura qu’il avait arrangé l’affaire, quoiqu’il apparût à tous qu’elle avait été arrangée sans lui. | Citizen Blaise, who had just watered his horse, assured them that he had settled the matter, though everyone could see that it had been settled without him. |
| <a id="c10p014"></a>On remonta en voiture. En route, Desmahis apprit au cocher que, dans cette plaine de Longjumeau, plusieurs habitants de la lune étaient tombés autrefois, qui, par la forme et la couleur, approchaient de la grenouille, mais étaient d’une taille bien plus élevée. Philippe Dubois et Gamelin parlaient de leur art. Dubois, élève de Regnault, était allé à Rome. Il avait vu les tapisseries de Raphaël, qu’il mettait au-dessus de tous les chefs-d’œuvre. Il admirait le coloris du Corrège, l’invention d’Annibal Carrache et le dessin du Dominiquin, mais ne trouvait rien de comparable, pour le style, aux tableaux de Pompeio Battoni. Il avait fréquenté, à Rome, M. Ménageot et madame Lebrun, qui tous deux s’étaient déclarés contre la Révolution: aussi n’en parlait-il pas. Mais il vantait Angelica Kauffmann, qui avait le goût pur et connaissait l’antique. | They climbed back into the carriage. On the way, Desmahis informed the driver that several inhabitants of the moon had once fallen upon this plain of Longjumeau: in shape and colour they resembled frogs, but they were much taller. Philippe Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art. Dubois, a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome. He had seen Raphael’s tapestries[^c10n04], which he placed above every other masterpiece. He admired Correggio’s colour, Annibale Carracci’s invention and Domenichino’s drawing, but found nothing comparable in style to Pompeio Battoni’s paintings. In Rome he had frequented Monsieur Ménageot and Madame Lebrun, both of whom had declared against the Revolution, so he did not mention them. But he praised Angelica Kauffmann, who had pure taste and knew antiquity. |
| <a id="c10p015"></a>Gamelin déplorait qu’à l’apogée de la peinture française, si tardive, puisqu’elle ne datait que de Lesueur, de Claude et de Poussin et correspondait à la décadence des écoles italienne et flamande, eût succédé un si rapide et profond déclin. Il en rapportait les causes aux mœurs publiques et à l’Académie, qui en était l’expression. Mais l’Académie venait d’être heureusement supprimée et, sous l’influence des principes nouveaux, David et son école créaient un art digne d’un peuple libre. Parmi les jeunes peintres, Gamelin mettait sans envie au premier rang Hennequin et Topino-Lebrun. Philippe Dubois préférait Regnault, son maître, à David et fondait sur le jeune Gérard l’espoir de la peinture. | Gamelin deplored the swift and profound decline that had followed the flowering of French painting, itself so late, since it dated only from Lesueur, Claude and Poussin and coincided with the decay of the Italian and Flemish schools. He attributed its causes to public morals and to the Academy, which expressed them. Happily, however, the Academy had just been abolished, and under the influence of the new principles David and his school were creating an art worthy of a free people. Among young painters Gamelin ungrudgingly gave first place to Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun. Philippe Dubois preferred his master Regnault to David and rested his hopes for painting on the young Gérard. |
| <a id="c10p016"></a>Élodie complimentait la citoyenne Thévenin sur sa toque de velours rouge et sa robe blanche. Et la comédienne félicitait ses deux compagnes de leurs toilettes et leur indiquait les moyens de faire mieux encore: c’était, à son avis, de retrancher sur les ornements. | Élodie complimented Citizen Thévenin on her red velvet cap and white dress. The actress in turn praised her two companions’ clothes and told them how they might do still better: by reducing the trimming, in her opinion. |
| <a id="c10p017"></a>"On n’est jamais assez simplement mise, disait-elle. Nous apprenons cela au théâtre où le vêtement doit laisser voir toutes les attitudes. C’est là sa beauté, il n’en veut point d’autre. | “One can never dress simply enough,” she said. “We learn that in the theatre, where clothes must allow every movement to show. That is their beauty; they need no other.” |
| <a id="c10p018"></a>— Vous dites bien, ma belle, répondait Élodie. Mais rien n’est plus coûteux en toilette que la simplicité. Et ce n’est pas toujours par mauvais goût que nous mettons des fanfreluches; c’est quelquefois par économie." | “You’re quite right, my dear,” Élodie replied. “But nothing in dress costs more than simplicity. It isn’t always bad taste that makes us wear frills; sometimes it’s economy.” |
| <a id="c10p019"></a>Elles parlèrent avec intérêt des modes de l’automne, robes unies, tailles courtes. | They talked eagerly of the autumn fashions: plain dresses, high waists. |
| <a id="c10p020"></a>"Tant de femmes s’enlaidissent en suivant la mode! dit la Thévenin. On devrait s’habiller selon sa forme. | “So many women make themselves ugly by following fashion!” said Thévenin. “One ought to dress to suit one’s figure.” |
| <a id="c10p021"></a>— Il n’y a de beau que les étoffes roulées sur le corps et drapées, dit Gamelin. Tout ce qui a été taillé et cousu est affreux." | “Only fabric wound about the body and draped is beautiful,” said Gamelin. “Everything cut and sewn is hideous.” |
| <a id="c10p022"></a>Ces pensées, mieux placées dans un livre de Winckelmann que dans la bouche d’un homme qui parle à des Parisiennes, furent rejetées avec le mépris de l’indifférence. | These ideas, better suited to a book by Winckelmann[^c10n05] than to the lips of a man talking to Parisian women, were dismissed with the contempt of indifference. |
| <a id="c10p023"></a>"On fait pour l’hiver, dit Élodie, des douillettes à la laponne, en florence et en sicilienne, et des redingotes à la Zulime, à taille ronde, qui se ferment par un gilet à la turque. | “For winter,” said Élodie, “they’re making Lapland-style padded gowns in florence and sicilienne, and Zulime riding coats with round waists, fastened with a Turkish waistcoat.” |
| <a id="c10p024"></a>— Ce sont des cache-misère, dit la Thévenin. Cela se vend tout fait. J’ai une petite couturière qui travaille comme un ange et qui n’est pas chère: je vous l’enverrai, ma chérie." | “They’re makeshifts,” said Thévenin. “They’re sold ready-made. I have a little dressmaker who works like an angel and isn’t expensive: I’ll send her to you, darling.” |
| <a id="c10p025"></a>Et les paroles volaient, légères et pressées, déployant, soulevant les fins tissus, florence rayé, pékin uni, sicilienne, gaze, nankin. | And their words flew, light and quick, unfolding and lifting fine fabrics: striped florence, plain pekin, sicilienne, gauze, nankeen[^c10n06]. |
| <a id="c10p026"></a>Et le vieux Brotteaux, en les écoutant, songeait avec une volupté mélancolique à ces voiles d’une saison jetés sur des formes charmantes, qui durent peu d’années et renaissent éternellement comme les fleurs des champs. Et ses regards, qui allaient de ces trois jeunes femmes aux bleuets et aux coquelicots du sillon, se mouillaient de larmes souriantes. | Listening to them, old Brotteaux thought with melancholy pleasure of these veils of a season[^c10n07], thrown over lovely forms that last a few years and are eternally reborn like the flowers of the fields. His eyes, passing from the three young women to the cornflowers and poppies in the furrow, grew moist with smiling tears. |
| <a id="c10p027"></a>Ils arrivèrent à Orangis vers les neuf heures et s’arrêtèrent à l’auberge de la Cloche, où les époux Poitrine logeaient à pied et à cheval. Le citoyen Blaise, qui avait rafraîchi sa toilette, tendit la main aux citoyennes. Après avoir commandé le dîner pour midi, précédés de leurs boîtes, de leurs cartons, de leurs chevalets et de leurs parasols, que portait un petit gars du village, ils s’en furent à pied, par les champs, vers le confluent de l’Orge et de l’Yvette, en ces lieux charmants d’où l’on découvre la plaine verdoyante de Longjumeau et que bordent la Seine et les bois de Sainte-Geneviève. | They reached Orangis at about nine and stopped at the Bell Inn, where Monsieur and Madame Poitrine offered lodging for travellers and their horses. Citizen Blaise, who had freshened his appearance, held out a hand to the women. After ordering dinner for noon, they set off on foot across the fields towards the meeting of the Orge and the Yvette, in those delightful places overlooking the green plain of Longjumeau, bounded by the Seine and the woods of Sainte-Geneviève. A village boy went ahead carrying their paintboxes, portfolios, easels and parasols. |
| <a id="c10p028"></a>Jean Blaise, qui conduisait la troupe artiste, échangeait avec le ci-devant financier des propos facétieux où passaient sans ordre ni mesure Verboquet le Généreux, Catherine Cuissot qui colportait, les demoiselles Chaudron, le sorcier Galichet et les figures plus récentes de Cadet-Rousselle et de madame Angot. | Jean Blaise, leading the band of artists, exchanged jokes with the former financier, in which Verboquet the Generous, Catherine Cuissot the pedlar, the Chaudron sisters, Galichet the sorcerer and the more recent figures of Cadet-Rousselle and Madame Angot[^c10n08] appeared in no order and with no restraint. |
| <a id="c10p029"></a>Évariste, pris d’un amour soudain de la nature, en voyant des moissonneurs lier des gerbes, sentait ses yeux se gonfler de larmes; des rêves de concorde et d’amour emplissaient son cœur. Desmahis soufflait dans les cheveux des citoyennes les graines légères des pissenlits. Ayant toutes trois un goût de citadines pour les bouquets, elles cueillaient dans les prés le bouillon-blanc, dont les fleurs se serrent en épis autour de la tige, la campanule, portant suspendues en étages ses clochettes lilas tendre, les grêles rameaux de la verveine odorante, l’hièble, la menthe, la gaude, la mille-feuille, toute la flore champêtre de l’été finissant. Et, parce que Jean-Jacques avait mis la botanique à la mode parmi les filles des villes, elles savaient toutes trois des fleurs les noms et les amours. Comme les corolles délicates, alanguies de sécheresse, s’effeuillaient dans ses bras et tombaient en pluie à ses pieds, la citoyenne Élodie soupira: | Seized by a sudden love of nature, Évariste felt his eyes fill with tears at the sight of reapers binding sheaves; dreams of harmony and love filled his heart. Desmahis blew the light seeds of dandelions into the women’s hair. All three had a townswoman’s taste for bouquets and picked flowers in the meadows: great mullein, its blossoms clustered in spikes about the stem; bellflowers, hanging their pale lilac bells in tiers; the slender branches of lemon verbena; dwarf elder, mint, weld and yarrow—all the countryside’s flowers of late summer. And because Jean-Jacques had made botany fashionable among young women in towns, all three knew the flowers’ names and loves[^c10n09]. As the delicate corollas, languid with drought, shed their petals in her arms and rained down at her feet, Citizen Élodie sighed: |
| <a id="c10p030"></a>"Elles passent déjà, les fleurs!" | “The flowers are already passing!” |
| <a id="c10p031"></a>Tous se mirent à l’œuvre et s’efforcèrent d’exprimer la nature telle qu’ils la voyaient; mais chacun la voyait dans la manière d’un maître. En peu de temps Philippe Dubois eut troussé dans le genre de Hubert-Robert une ferme abandonnée, des arbres abattus, un torrent desséché. Évariste Gamelin trouvait au bord de l’Yvette les paysages du Poussin. Philippe Desmahis, devant un pigeonnier, travaillait dans la manière picaresque de Callot et de Duplessis. Le vieux Brotteaux, qui se piquait d’imiter les flamands, dessinait soigneusement une vache. Élodie esquissait une chaumière, et son amie Julienne, qui était fille d’un marchand de couleurs, lui faisait sa palette. Des enfants, collés contre elle, la regardaient peindre. Elle les écartait de son jour en les appelant moucherons et en leur donnant des berlingots. Et la citoyenne Thévenin, quand elle en trouvait de jolis, les débarbouillait, les embrassait et leur mettait des fleurs dans les cheveux. Elle les caressait avec une douceur mélancolique parce qu’elle n’avait pas la joie d’être mère, et aussi pour s’embellir par l’expression d’un tendre sentiment et pour exercer son art de l’attitude et du groupement. | They all set to work, trying to express nature as they saw it; but each saw it in a master’s manner[^c10n10]. In a short time Philippe Dubois had dashed off, in Hubert Robert’s style, an abandoned farm, felled trees and a dried-up torrent. Along the banks of the Yvette, Évariste Gamelin found Poussin’s landscapes. Faced with a dovecote, Philippe Desmahis worked in the picaresque manner of Callot and Duplessis. Old Brotteaux, who prided himself on imitating the Flemings, carefully drew a cow. Élodie sketched a cottage, and her friend Julienne, a colour merchant’s daughter, prepared her palette. Children crowded close against her to watch her paint. She moved them out of her light, calling them little flies and giving them boiled sweets. When Citizen Thévenin found pretty ones, she washed their faces, kissed them and put flowers in their hair. She caressed them with melancholy tenderness because she had not known the joy of motherhood, and also to make herself more beautiful through the expression of a tender feeling and to practise her art of poses and grouping. |
| <a id="c10p032"></a>Seule, elle ne dessinait ni ne peignait. Elle s’occupait d’apprendre un rôle et plus encore de plaire. Et, son cahier à la main, elle allait de l’un à l’autre, chose légère et charmante. "Pas de teint, pas de figure, pas de corps, pas de voix", disaient les femmes, et elle emplissait l’espace de mouvement, de couleur et d’harmonie. Fanée, jolie, lasse, infatigable, elle était les délices du voyage. D’humeur inégale et cependant toujours gaie, susceptible, irritable et pourtant accommodante et facile, la langue salée avec le ton le plus poli, vaine, modeste, vraie, fausse, délicieuse, si Rose Thévenin ne faisait pas bien ses affaires, si elle ne devenait point déesse, c’est que les temps étaient mauvais et qu’il n’y avait plus à Paris ni encens ni autels pour les Grâces. La citoyenne Blaise, qui en parlant d’elle faisait la grimace et l’appelait sa "belle-mère", ne pouvait la voir sans se rendre à tant de charmes. | She alone neither drew nor painted. She was occupied with learning a part, and still more with pleasing. Script in hand, she moved from one to another, a light, charming creature. “No complexion, no looks, no figure, no voice,” women said of her, and she filled the air with movement, colour and harmony. Faded, pretty, weary, tireless[^c10n11], she was the delight of the expedition. Of uneven temper yet always cheerful, touchy and irritable yet accommodating and easy, with a salty tongue and the most polished manner, vain, modest, true, false, delicious—if Rose Thévenin did not prosper, if she did not become a goddess, it was because times were bad and Paris had no incense or altars left for the Graces. Citizen Blaise, who grimaced when she spoke of her and called her her “stepmother”, could not see her without yielding to so many charms. |
| <a id="c10p033"></a>On répétait à Feydeau *Les Visitandines*; et Rose se félicitait d’y tenir un rôle plein de naturel. C’est le naturel qu’elle cherchait, qu’elle poursuivait, qu’elle trouvait. | They were rehearsing *Les Visitandines*[^c10n12] at the Feydeau, and Rose congratulated herself on having a part full of natural feeling. Naturalness was what she sought, pursued and found. |
| <a id="c10p034"></a>"Nous ne verrons donc point Paméla?" dit le beau Desmahis. | “So we shan’t see Paméla?” said handsome Desmahis. |
| <a id="c10p035"></a>Le Théâtre de la Nation était fermé et les comédiens envoyés aux Madelonnettes et à Pélagie. | The Théâtre de la Nation had been closed and its actors sent to the Madelonnettes and Pélagie[^c10n13]. |
| <a id="c10p036"></a>"Est-ce là la liberté?" s’écria la Thévenin levant au ciel ses beaux yeux indignés. | “Is that liberty?” Thévenin cried, raising her beautiful, indignant eyes to heaven. |
| <a id="c10p037"></a>"Les acteurs du Théâtre de la Nation, dit Gamelin, sont des aristocrates, et la pièce du citoyen François tend à faire regretter les privilèges de la noblesse. | “The actors of the Théâtre de la Nation,” said Gamelin, “are aristocrats, and Citizen François’s play encourages nostalgia for the privileges of the nobility.” |
| <a id="c10p038"></a>— Messieurs, dit la Thévenin, ne savez-vous entendre que ceux qui vous flattent?..." | “Gentlemen,” said Thévenin, “can you only bear to listen to people who flatter you?…” |
| <a id="c10p039"></a>Vers midi, chacun se sentant grand-faim, la petite troupe regagna l’auberge. | Towards noon they all felt very hungry, and the little party returned to the inn. |
| <a id="c10p040"></a>Évariste, auprès d’Élodie, lui rappelait en souriant les souvenirs de leurs premières rencontres: | Walking beside Élodie, Évariste smilingly recalled their first encounters. |
| <a id="c10p041"></a>"Deux oisillons étaient tombés du toit où ils nichaient sur le rebord de votre fenêtre. Vous les nourrissiez à la becquée; l’un d’eux vécut et prit sa volée. L’autre mourut dans le nid d’ouate que vous lui aviez fait. "C’était celui que j’aimais le mieux", avez-vous dit. Ce jour-là, vous portiez, Élodie, un nœud rouge dans les cheveux." | “Two nestlings had fallen from the roof where they nested on to your windowsill. You fed them by hand; one lived and flew away. The other died in the cotton-wool nest you had made for it. ‘That was the one I loved best,’ you said. You were wearing a red bow in your hair that day, Élodie.” |
| <a id="c10p042"></a>Philippe Dubois et Brotteaux, un peu en arrière des autres, parlaient de Rome où ils étaient allés tous deux, celui-ci en 72, l’autre vers les derniers jours de l’Académie. Et il souvenait encore au vieux Brotteaux de la princesse Mondragone, à qui il eût bien laissé entendre ses soupirs, sans le comte Altieri qui ne la quittait pas plus que son ombre. Philippe Dubois ne négligea pas de dire qu’il avait été prié à dîner chez le cardinal de Bernis et que c’était l’hôte le plus obligeant du monde. | Philippe Dubois and Brotteaux, a little behind the others, talked of Rome, where they had both been: Brotteaux in ’72, the other towards the Academy’s last days. Old Brotteaux still remembered Princess Mondragone, to whom he would gladly have made his sighs audible but for Count Altieri, who followed her as closely as her shadow. Philippe Dubois did not neglect to mention that he had been invited to dine with Cardinal de Bernis, the most obliging host in the world. |
| <a id="c10p043"></a>"Je l’ai connu, dit Brotteaux, et je puis dire sans me flatter que j’ai été durant quelque temps de ses plus familiers: il aimait à fréquenter la canaille. C’était un aimable homme et, bien qu’il fît métier de débiter des fables, il y avait dans son petit doigt plus de saine philosophie que dans la tête de tous vos jacobins qui veulent nous envertueuser et nous endéificoquer. Certes j’aime mieux nos simples théophages, qui ne savent ni ce qu’ils disent ni ce qu’ils font, que ces enragés barbouilleurs de lois, qui s’appliquent à nous guillotiner pour nous rendre vertueux et sages et nous faire adorer l’Être suprême, qui les a faits à son image. Au temps passé, je faisais dire la messe à la chapelle des Ilettes par un pauvre diable de curé qui disait après boire: "Ne médisons point des pécheurs: nous en vivons, prêtres indignes que nous sommes!" Convenez, monsieur, que ce croqueur d’orémus avait de saines maximes sur le gouvernement. Il en faudrait revenir là et gouverner les hommes tels qu’ils sont et non tels qu’on les voudrait être." | “I knew him,” said Brotteaux, “and I can say without flattering myself that for a time I was among his intimates: he liked to mix with riff-raff. He was a pleasant man, and though he made his living retailing fables, he had more sound philosophy in his little finger than all your Jacobins have in their heads, wanting to cram us with virtue and divinity[^c10n14]. I certainly prefer our simple god-eaters, who know neither what they say nor what they do, to these fanatical scribblers of laws who set about guillotining us to make us virtuous and wise and bring us to worship the Supreme Being, who made them in his own image. In the old days I used to have Mass said in the chapel at Les Ilettes by a poor devil of a priest who would say after a drink: ‘Let us not speak ill of sinners: we live off them, unworthy priests that we are!’ Admit, Monsieur, that this prayer-mumbler had sound principles of government. We ought to return to them and govern people as they are, rather than as we should like them to be.” |
| <a id="c10p044"></a>La Thévenin s’était rapprochée du vieux Brotteaux. Elle savait que cet homme avait mené grand train autrefois, et son imagination parait de ce brillant souvenir la pauvreté présente du ci-devant financier, qu’elle jugeait moins humiliante, étant générale et causée par la ruine publique. Elle contemplait en lui, curieusement et non sans respect, les débris d’un de ces généreux Crésus que célébraient en soupirant les comédiennes ses aînées. Et puis les manières de ce bonhomme en redingote puce si râpée et si propre lui plaisaient. | Thévenin had drawn closer to old Brotteaux. She knew that this man had once lived in great style, and her imagination clothed the former financier’s present poverty in that brilliant memory. She found his poverty less humiliating because it was general and caused by public ruin. With curiosity and not without respect, she contemplated in him the remains of one of those generous Croesuses her older fellow actresses celebrated with sighs. Besides, she liked the manners of this good man in his puce frock coat, so threadbare and so clean. |
| <a id="c10p045"></a>"Monsieur Brotteaux, lui dit-elle, on sait que jadis, dans un beau parc, par des nuits illuminées, vous vous glissiez dans des bosquets de myrtes avec des comédiennes et des danseuses, au son lointain des flûtes et des violons.... Hélas! elles étaient plus belles, n’est-ce pas, vos déesses de l’Opéra et de la Comédie-Française, que nous autres, pauvres petites actrices nationales? | “Monsieur Brotteaux,” she said, “we know that once, in a beautiful park on illuminated nights, you slipped into myrtle groves with actresses and dancers, to the distant sound of flutes and violins… Alas, your goddesses of the Opéra and the Comédie-Française were more beautiful, weren’t they, than we poor little national actresses?” |
| <a id="c10p046"></a>— Ne le croyez pas, mademoiselle, répondit Brotteaux, et sachez que s’il s’en fût rencontré en ce temps une semblable à vous, elle se serait promenée, seule, en souveraine et sans rivale, pour peu qu’elle l’eût souhaité, dans le parc dont vous voulez bien vous faire une idée si flatteuse...." | “Do not believe it, Mademoiselle,” Brotteaux replied. “Be assured that had there been anyone like you in those days, she would have walked alone, a sovereign without a rival, if she had so much as wished it, through the park of which you are kind enough to form so flattering an idea…” |
| <a id="c10p047"></a>L’hôtel de la Cloche était rustique. Une branche de houx pendait sur la porte charretière, qui donnait accès à une cour toujours humide où picoraient les poules. Au fond de la cour s’élevait l’habitation, composée d’un rez-de-chaussée et d’un étage, coiffée d’une haute toiture de tuiles moussues et dont les murs disparaissaient sous de vieux rosiers tout fleuris de roses. A droite, des quenouilles montraient leurs pointes au-dessus du mur bas du jardin. A gauche était l’écurie, avec un râtelier extérieur et une grange en colombage. Une échelle s’appuyait au mur. De ce côté encore, sous un hangar encombré d’instruments agricoles et de souches, du haut d’un vieux cabriolet, un coq blanc surveillait ses poules. La cour était fermée, de ce sens, par des étables devant lesquelles s’élevait, comme un tertre glorieux, un tas de fumier que, à cette heure, retournait de sa fourche une fille plus large que haute, les cheveux couleur de paille. Le purin qui remplissait ses sabots lavait ses pieds nus, dont on voyait se soulever par intervalles les talons jaunes comme du safran. Sa jupe troussée laissait à découvert la crasse de ses mollets énormes et bas. Tandis que Philippe Desmahis la regardait, surpris et amusé du jeu bizarre de la nature qui avait construit cette fille en largeur, l’hôtelier appela: | The Bell Inn was rustic. A holly branch hung above the cart entrance, which opened into an always-damp courtyard where hens pecked. At the back stood the house, with a ground floor and one storey above, crowned by a high roof of mossy tiles; its walls disappeared beneath old rose bushes laden with bloom. On the right, cone-trained fruit trees[^c10n15] showed their tips above the low garden wall. On the left were the stable, with a rack outside, and a half-timbered barn. A ladder leaned against the wall. On that side too, beneath a shed cluttered with farm implements and tree stumps, a white cock watched over his hens from the top of an old gig. The yard was enclosed on this side by cattle sheds; before them rose, like a glorious mound, a heap of manure which a girl broader than she was tall, with straw-coloured hair, was turning with her fork. Liquid manure filled her clogs and washed her bare feet, whose saffron-yellow heels could be seen lifting from time to time. Her tucked-up skirt exposed the filth on her enormous, short calves. While Philippe Desmahis watched her, surprised and amused by nature’s strange whim in building this girl sideways, the innkeeper called: |
| <a id="c10p048"></a>"Hé! la Tronche! va quérir de l’eau!" | “Hey, Tronche! Go and fetch some water!” |
| <a id="c10p049"></a>Elle se retourna et montra une face écarlate et une large bouche où manquait une palette. Il avait fallu la corne d’un taureau pour ébrécher cette puissante denture. Sa fourche à l’épaule, elle riait. Semblables à des cuisses, ses bras rebrassés étincelaient au soleil. | She turned, revealing a scarlet face and a broad mouth with a front tooth missing. It had taken a bull’s horn to chip that powerful set of teeth. With her fork on her shoulder, she laughed. Her arms, thick as thighs and bared above the elbow, gleamed in the sun. |
| <a id="c10p050"></a>La table était mise dans la salle basse, où les poulets achevaient de rôtir sous le manteau de la cheminée, garni de vieux fusils. Longue de plus de vingt pieds, la salle, blanchie à la chaux, n’était éclairée que par les vitres verdâtres de la porte et par une seule fenêtre, encadrée de roses, auprès de laquelle l’aïeule tournait son rouet. Elle portait une coiffe et un bavolet de dentelle du temps de la Régence. Les doigts noueux de ses mains tachées de terre tenaient la quenouille. Des mouches se posaient sur le bord de ses paupières, et elle ne les chassait pas. Dans les bras de sa mère, elle avait vu passer Louis XIV en carrosse. | The table was laid in the downstairs room, where chickens were finishing roasting beneath the chimney hood, hung with old guns. More than twenty feet long, the whitewashed room was lit only by the greenish panes of the door and a single rose-framed window beside which the grandmother sat at her spinning wheel. She wore a cap with a lace neck-frill dating from the Regency. The knotted fingers of her earth-stained hands held the distaff. Flies settled on the edges of her eyelids, and she did not drive them away. In her mother’s arms she had seen Louis XIV pass in his coach. |
| <a id="c10p051"></a>Il y avait soixante ans qu’elle avait fait le voyage de Paris. Elle conta d’une voix faible et chantante aux trois jeunes femmes debout devant elle qu’elle avait vu l’Hôtel de Ville, les Tuileries et la Samaritaine, et que, lorsqu’elle traversait le Pont-Royal, un bateau qui portait des pommes au marché du Mail s’était ouvert, que les pommes s’en étaient allées au fil de l’eau et que la rivière en était tout empourprée. | It was sixty years since she had made the journey to Paris. In a weak, singsong voice she told the three young women standing before her that she had seen the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries and the Samaritaine[^c10n16], and that as she crossed the Pont-Royal, a boat carrying apples to the market in the Mail had split open: the apples had floated away with the current, turning the whole river crimson. |
| <a id="c10p052"></a>Elle avait été instruite des changements survenus nouvellement dans le royaume, et surtout de la zizanie qu’il y avait entre les curés jureurs et ceux qui ne juraient point. Elle savait aussi qu’il y avait eu des guerres, des famines et des signes dans le ciel. Elle ne croyait point que le roi fût mort. On l’avait fait fuir, disait-elle, par un souterrain et l’on avait livré au bourreau, à sa place, un homme du commun. | She had heard about the recent changes in the kingdom, especially the quarrelling between priests who took the oath and priests who did not[^c10n17]. She also knew that there had been wars, famines and signs in the heavens. She did not believe the king was dead. They had helped him escape through a tunnel, she said, and handed over an ordinary man to the executioner in his place. |
| <a id="c10p053"></a>Aux pieds de l’aïeule, dans son moïse, le dernier-né des Poitrine, Jeannot, faisait ses dents. La Thévenin souleva le berceau d’osier et sourit à l’enfant, qui gémit faiblement, épuisé de fièvre et de convulsions. Il fallait qu’il fût bien malade, car on avait appelé le médecin, le citoyen Pelleport, qui, à la vérité, député suppléant à la Convention, ne faisait point payer ses visites. | At the grandmother’s feet, in his Moses basket, the youngest Poitrine child, Jeannot, was cutting his teeth. Thévenin lifted the wicker cradle and smiled at the child, who gave a feeble moan, exhausted by fever and convulsions. He must have been very ill, for they had sent for the doctor, Citizen Pelleport, who in truth, being a substitute deputy to the Convention, charged nothing for his visits. |
| <a id="c10p054"></a>La citoyenne Thévenin, enfant de la balle, était partout chez elle; mal contente de la façon dont la Tronche avait lavé la vaisselle, elle essuyait les plats, les gobelets et les fourchettes. Pendant que la citoyenne Poitrine faisait cuire la soupe, qu’elle goûtait en bonne hôtelière, Élodie coupait en tranches un pain de quatre livres encore chaud du four. Gamelin, en la voyant faire, lui dit: | Citizen Thévenin, born to the theatre, was at home everywhere. Dissatisfied with the way Tronche had washed up, she wiped the dishes, cups and forks. While Citizen Poitrine cooked the soup, tasting it like a good innkeeper, Élodie sliced a four-pound loaf still warm from the oven. Watching her, Gamelin said: |
| <a id="c10p055"></a>"J’ai lu, il y a quelques jours, un livre écrit par un jeune Allemand dont j’ai oublié le nom, et qui a été très bien mis en français. On y voit une belle jeune fille nommée Charlotte qui, comme vous, Élodie, taillait des tartines et, comme vous, les taillait avec grâce, et si joliment qu’à la voir faire le jeune Werther devint amoureux d’elle. | “A few days ago I read a book by a young German whose name I’ve forgotten[^c10n18], very well rendered into French. There is a beautiful girl in it named Charlotte who, like you, Élodie, cut slices of bread, and, like you, cut them gracefully—so prettily that young Werther fell in love with her as he watched.” |
| <a id="c10p056"></a>— Et cela finit par un mariage? demanda Élodie. | “And did it end in marriage?” Élodie asked. |
| <a id="c10p057"></a>— Non, répondit Évariste; cela finit par la mort violente de Werther." | “No,” Évariste replied. “It ended in Werther’s violent death.” |
| <a id="c10p058"></a>Ils dînèrent bien, car ils avaient grand-faim; mais la chère était médiocre. Jean Blaise s’en plaignit: il était très porté sur sa bouche et faisait de bien manger une règle de vie; et, sans doute, ce qui l’incitait à ériger sa gourmandise en système, c’était la disette générale. La Révolution avait dans toutes les maisons renversé la marmite. Le commun des citoyens n’avait rien à se mettre sous la dent. Les gens habiles qui, comme Jean Blaise, gagnaient gros dans la misère publique, allaient chez le traiteur où ils montraient leur esprit en s’empiffrant. Quant à Brotteaux qui, en l’an II de la Liberté, vivait de châtaignes et de croûtons de pain, il lui souvenait d’avoir soupé chez Grimod de la Reynière, à l’entrée des Champs-Élysées. Envieux de mériter le titre de fine gueule, devant les choux au lard de la femme Poitrine, il abondait en savantes recettes de cuisine et en bons préceptes gastronomiques. Et, comme Gamelin déclarait qu’un républicain méprise les plaisirs de la table, le vieux traitant, amateur d’antiquités, donnait au jeune Spartiate la vraie formule du brouet noir. | They ate well because they were very hungry, but the fare was mediocre. Jean Blaise complained: he was devoted to his palate and made good eating a rule of life; no doubt what prompted him to turn his gluttony into a system was the general scarcity. The Revolution had overturned the cooking pot in every household. Ordinary citizens had nothing to put between their teeth. Clever men like Jean Blaise, who made a great deal out of public misery, went to the cookshop and showed their intelligence by gorging themselves. As for Brotteaux, who in Year II of Liberty[^c10n19] lived on chestnuts and crusts of bread, he remembered supping at Grimod de la Reynière’s near the entrance to the Champs-Élysées. Eager to earn a reputation as a gourmet, he poured forth elaborate recipes and sound gastronomic principles over Madame Poitrine’s cabbage and bacon. And when Gamelin declared that a republican despised the pleasures of the table, the old tax farmer, a lover of antiquity, gave the young Spartan the true recipe for black broth. |
| <a id="c10p059"></a>Après le dîner, Jean Blaise, qui n’oubliait pas les affaires sérieuses, fit faire à son académie foraine des croquis et des esquisses de l’auberge, qu’il jugeait assez romantique dans son délabrement. Tandis que Philippe Desmahis et Philippe Dubois dessinaient les étables, la Tronche vint donner à manger aux cochons. Le citoyen Pelleport, officier de santé, qui sortait en même temps de la salle basse où il était venu porter ses soins au petit Poitrine, s’approcha des artistes et, après les avoir complimentés de leurs talents, qui honoraient la nation tout entière, il leur montra la Tronche au milieu des pourceaux. | After dinner Jean Blaise, who did not forget serious business, set his travelling academy to making sketches and studies of the inn, which he found romantically picturesque in its dilapidation. While Philippe Desmahis and Philippe Dubois drew the cattle sheds, Tronche came to feed the pigs. Citizen Pelleport, the health officer, was just leaving the downstairs room, where he had been attending the little Poitrine boy. He approached the artists and, after complimenting them on talents that honoured the whole nation, pointed to Tronche among the pigs. |
| <a id="c10p060"></a>"Vous voyez cette créature, dit-il, ce n’est pas une fille, comme vous pourriez le croire: c’est deux filles. Comprenez que je parle littéralement. Surpris du volume énorme de sa charpente osseuse, je l’ai examinée et me suis aperçu qu’elle avait la plupart des os en double: à chaque cuisse, deux fémurs soudés ensemble; à chaque épaule, deux humérus. Elle possède aussi des muscles en double. Ce sont, à mon sens, deux jumelles étroitement associées ou, pour mieux dire, fondues ensemble. Le cas est intéressant. Je l’ai signalé à monsieur Saint-Hilaire, qui m’en a su gré. C’est un monstre que vous voyez là, citoyens. Ces gens-ci l’appellent "la Tronche". Ils devraient dire "les Tronches": elles sont deux. La nature a de ces bizarreries.... Bonsoir, citoyens peintres! Nous aurons de l’orage, cette nuit...." | “You see that creature,” he said. “She is not one girl, as you might suppose: she is two girls. Understand that I mean this literally. Astonished by the enormous bulk of her skeleton, I examined her and discovered that most of her bones were doubled: two thighbones fused together in each thigh; two upper-arm bones at each shoulder. Her muscles are doubled too. In my opinion, she is a pair of twins[^c10n20] intimately joined or, rather, fused together. The case is interesting. I reported it to Monsieur Saint-Hilaire, who was grateful to me. You are looking at a monstrosity, citizens. These people call her ‘Tronche’. They ought to say ‘the Tronches’: there are two of them. Nature has these oddities… Good evening, citizen painters! We shall have a storm tonight…” |
| <a id="c10p061"></a>Après le souper aux chandelles, l’académie Blaise fit dans la cour de l’auberge, en compagnie d’un fils et d’une fille Poitrine, une partie de colin-maillard, à laquelle jeunes femmes et jeunes hommes mirent une vivacité que leur âge explique assez pour qu’on ne cherche pas si la violence et l’incertitude du temps n’excitait pas leur ardeur. Quand il fit tout à fait nuit, Jean Blaise proposa de jouer dans la salle basse aux jeux innocents. Élodie demanda la "chasse au cœur" qui fut acceptée de toute la compagnie. Sur les indications de la jeune fille, Philippe Desmahis traça à la craie sur les meubles, les portes et les murs sept cœurs, c’est-à-dire un de moins qu’il n’y avait de joueurs, car le vieux Brotteaux s’était mis obligeamment de la partie. On dansa en rond "La Tour, prends garde", et, sur un signal d’Élodie, chacun courut mettre la main sur un cœur. Gamelin, distrait et maladroit, les trouva tous pris: il donna un gage, le petit couteau acheté six sous à la foire Saint-Germain et qui avait coupé le pain pour la mère indigente. On recommença et ce furent tour à tour Blaise, Élodie, Brotteaux et la Thévenin qui ne trouvèrent pas de cœur et donnèrent chacun leur gage, une bague, un réticule, un petit livre relié en maroquin, un bracelet. Puis, les gages furent tirés au sort sur les genoux d’Élodie et chacun, pour racheter le sien, dut montrer ses talents de société, chanter une chanson ou dire des vers. Brotteaux récita le discours du patron de la France, au premier chant de *La Pucelle*: | After supper by candlelight, the Blaise academy played blind man’s buff in the inn yard with a son and daughter of the Poitrine family. The young men and women entered into it with a liveliness sufficiently explained by their age, without our needing to ask whether the violence and uncertainty of the times excited their ardour. When it was quite dark, Jean Blaise proposed innocent games in the downstairs room. Élodie asked for “hunt the heart”, and the whole company agreed. Following her instructions, Philippe Desmahis chalked seven hearts on the furniture, doors and walls: one fewer than the number of players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly joined in. They danced in a ring to “Tower, Take Care”, and at a signal from Élodie everyone ran to place a hand on a heart. Distracted and awkward, Gamelin found them all taken; he surrendered a forfeit, the little knife bought for six sous at the Saint-Germain fair, which had cut the bread for the destitute mother. They began again, and in turn Blaise, Élodie, Brotteaux and Thévenin failed to find a heart and each gave a forfeit: a ring, a reticule, a little book bound in morocco, a bracelet. Then the forfeits were drawn at random from Élodie’s lap, and to redeem their own each had to display a social accomplishment, sing a song or recite some verse. Brotteaux recited the speech of France’s patron saint in the first canto of *La Pucelle*: |
| <a id="c10p061a"></a>Je suis Denis et saint de mon métier,<br>J’aime la Gaule.... | I am Denis, a saint by trade;[^c10n21]<br>My love is Gaul… |
| <a id="c10p062"></a>Le citoyen Blaise, bien que moins lettré, donna sans hésiter la réponse de Richemond: | Citizen Blaise, though less well read, gave Richemond’s reply without hesitation: |
| <a id="c10p062a"></a>Monsieur le Saint, ce n’était pas la peine<br>D’abandonner le céleste domaine.... | Sir Saint, it was not worth your while<br>To leave the heavenly domain… |
| <a id="c10p063"></a>Tout le monde alors lisait et relisait avec délices le chef-d’œuvre de l’Arioste français; les hommes les plus graves souriaient des amours de Jeanne et de Dunois, des aventures d’Agnès et de Monrose et des exploits de l’âne ailé. Tous les hommes cultivés savaient par cœur les beaux endroits de ce poème divertissant et philosophique. Évariste Gamelin, lui-même, bien que d’humeur sévère, en prenant sur le giron d’Élodie son couteau de six liards, récita de bonne grâce l’entrée de Grisbourdon aux enfers. La citoyenne Thévenin chanta sans accompagnement la romance de Nina: *Quand le bien-aimé reviendra*. Desmahis chanta, sur l’air de *La Faridondaine*: | Everyone then read and reread with delight the masterpiece of the French Ariosto; the gravest men smiled at the loves of Jeanne and Dunois, the adventures of Agnès and Monrose and the exploits of the winged ass. Every cultivated man knew the finest passages of this amusing, philosophical poem by heart. Even Évariste Gamelin, severe as he was, took his six-liard knife[^c10n22] from Élodie’s lap and obligingly recited Grisbourdon’s descent into hell. Citizen Thévenin sang unaccompanied Nina’s romance: *When My Beloved Returns*[^c10n23]. Desmahis sang to the tune of *La Faridondaine*: |
| <a id="c10p063a"></a>Quelques-uns prirent le cochon<br>De ce bon saint Antoine,<br>Et, lui mettant un capuchon,<br>Ils en firent un moine.<br>Il n’en coûtait que la façon.... | Some people took the little pig<br>Of good Saint Anthony,<br>And, having dressed it in a hood,<br>Made it a monk, you see.<br>The making was the only fee… |
| <a id="c10p064"></a>Cependant Desmahis était soucieux. A cette heure, il aimait ardemment les trois femmes avec lesquelles il jouait au "gage touché", et il jetait à toutes trois des regards brûlants et doux. Il aimait la Thévenin pour sa grâce, sa souplesse, son art savant, ses œillades et sa voix qui allait au cœur; il aimait Élodie, qu’il sentait de nature abondante, riche et donnante; il aimait Julienne Hasard, malgré ses cheveux décolorés, ses cils blancs, ses taches de rousseur et son maigre corsage, parce que, comme ce Dunois dont parle Voltaire dans *La Pucelle*, il était toujours prêt, dans sa générosité, à donner à la moins jolie une marque d’amour, et d’autant plus qu’elle lui semblait, pour l’instant, la plus inoccupée et, partant, la plus accessible. Exempt de toute vanité, il n’était jamais sûr d’être agréé; il n’était jamais sûr non plus de ne l’être pas. Aussi s’offrait-il, à tout hasard. Profitant des rencontres heureuses du "gage touché", il tint quelques tendres propos à la Thévenin, qui ne s’en fâcha pas, mais n’y pouvait guère répondre sous le regard jaloux du citoyen Jean Blaise. Il parla plus amoureusement encore à la citoyenne Élodie, qu’il savait engagée avec Gamelin, mais il n’était pas assez exigeant pour vouloir un cœur à lui seul. Élodie ne pouvait l’aimer; mais elle le trouvait beau et elle ne réussit pas entièrement à le lui cacher. Enfin, il porta ses vœux les plus pressants à l’oreille de la citoyenne Hasard: elle y répondit par un air de stupeur qui pouvait exprimer une soumission abîmée aussi bien qu’une morne indifférence. Et Desmahis ne crut point qu’elle était indifférente. | Yet Desmahis was troubled. At that moment he ardently loved all three women with whom he was playing forfeits, and cast burning, tender glances at them all. He loved Thévenin for her grace, her suppleness, her accomplished art, her sidelong looks and her voice that went straight to the heart. He loved Élodie, whose nature he sensed to be abundant, rich and giving. He loved Julienne Hasard despite her colourless hair, white lashes, freckles and meagre bosom, because, like the Dunois of whom Voltaire speaks in *La Pucelle*, he was always ready in his generosity to offer the least pretty woman a token of love; all the more because just then she seemed the least occupied and therefore the most accessible. Free of all vanity, he was never sure he would be accepted; nor was he ever sure he would not. So he offered himself on the chance. Taking advantage of the happy encounters of the forfeits game, he whispered a few tender words to Thévenin, who was not offended but could scarcely answer beneath Citizen Jean Blaise’s jealous gaze. He spoke more lovingly still to Citizen Élodie, whom he knew to be attached to Gamelin; but he was not so exacting as to want a heart all to himself. Élodie could not love him, yet she found him handsome and did not entirely succeed in hiding it. Finally, he breathed his most urgent wishes into Citizen Hasard’s ear. She answered with a look of stupor that might have expressed abject submission as easily as dull indifference. And Desmahis did not believe she was indifferent. |
| <a id="c10p065"></a>Il n’y avait dans l’auberge que deux chambres à coucher, toutes deux au premier étage et sur le même palier. Celle de gauche, la plus belle, était tendue de papier à fleurs et ornée d’une glace grande comme la main, dont le cadre doré subissait l’offense des mouches depuis l’enfance de Louis XV. Là, sous un ciel d’indienne à ramages, se dressaient deux lits garnis d’oreillers de plume, d’édredons et de courtepointes. Cette chambre était réservée aux trois citoyennes. | The inn had only two bedrooms, both on the first floor and opening on to the same landing. The one on the left, the finer of the two, was hung with flowered paper and adorned with a mirror the size of a hand, whose gilded frame had suffered the attentions of flies since Louis XV’s childhood. There, beneath a canopy of patterned printed cotton, stood two beds furnished with feather pillows, eiderdowns and quilts. This room was reserved for the three women. |
| <a id="c10p066"></a>Quand vint l’heure de la retraite, Desmahis et la citoyenne Hasard, tenant à la main chacun son chandelier, se souhaitèrent le bonsoir sur le palier. Le graveur amoureux coula à la fille du marchand de couleurs un billet par lequel il la priait de le rejoindre, quand tout serait endormi, dans le grenier, qui se trouvait au-dessus de la chambre des citoyennes. | When bedtime came, Desmahis and Citizen Hasard, each holding a candlestick, wished one another goodnight on the landing. The amorous engraver slipped the colour merchant’s daughter a note asking her to join him, once everyone was asleep, in the attic above the women’s room. |
| <a id="c10p067"></a>Prévoyant et sage, il avait dans la journée étudié les êtres et exploré ce grenier, plein de bottes d’oignons, de fruits qui séchaient sous un essaim de guêpes, de coffres, de vieilles malles. Il y avait même vu un vieux lit de sangle boiteux et hors d’usage, à ce qu’il lui sembla, et une paillasse éventrée, où sautaient des puces. | Prudent and far-sighted, he had studied the layout during the day and explored this attic, full of bunches of onions, fruit drying beneath a swarm of wasps, chests and old trunks. He had even noticed a rickety old webbed bedstead, apparently out of use, and a torn straw mattress in which fleas were jumping. |
| <a id="c10p068"></a>En face de la chambre des citoyennes était une chambre à trois lits, assez petite, où devaient coucher, à leurs guises, les citoyens voyageurs. Mais Brotteaux, qui était sybarite, s’en était allé à la grange dormir dans le foin. Quant à Jean Blaise, il avait disparu, Dubois et Gamelin ne tardèrent pas à s’endormir. Desmahis se mit au lit; mais, quand le silence de la nuit eut, comme une eau dormante, recouvert la maison, le graveur se leva et monta l’escalier de bois, qui se mit à craquer sous ses pieds nus. La porte du grenier était entrebâillée. Il en sortait une chaleur étouffante et des senteurs âcres de fruits pourris. Sur un lit de sangle boiteux, la Tronche dormait, la bouche ouverte, la chemise relevée, les jambes écartées. Elle était énorme. Traversant la lucarne, un rayon de lune baignait d’azur et d’argent sa peau qui, entre des écailles de crasse et des éclaboussures de purin, brillait de jeunesse et de fraîcheur. Desmahis se jeta sur elle; réveillée en sursaut, elle eut peur et cria; mais, dès qu’elle comprit ce qu’on lui voulait, rassurée, elle ne témoigna ni surprise ni contrariété et feignit d’être encore plongée dans un demi-sommeil qui, en lui ôtant la conscience des choses, lui permettait quelque sentiment.... | Opposite the women’s room was a rather small room with three beds, where the male travellers were to sleep as they chose. But Brotteaux, being a sybarite, had gone to sleep in the hay in the barn. Jean Blaise had disappeared. Dubois and Gamelin soon fell asleep. Desmahis went to bed, but when the silence of night had covered the house like still water, he got up and climbed the wooden staircase, which creaked beneath his bare feet. The attic door stood ajar. Stifling heat and the acrid smell of rotten fruit came out. On a rickety webbed bedstead Tronche lay asleep, her mouth open, her shift raised, her legs apart. She was enormous. A shaft of moonlight through the skylight bathed her skin in blue and silver; between scales of filth and splashes of liquid manure, it shone with youth and freshness. Desmahis threw himself on her. Waking with a start, she was frightened and cried out; but once she understood what he wanted, she was reassured and showed neither surprise nor annoyance, pretending still to be sunk in a half-sleep which, by taking away her awareness of things, allowed her some feeling… |
| <a id="c10p069"></a>Desmahis rentra dans sa chambre, où il dormit jusqu’au jour d’un sommeil tranquille et profond. | Desmahis returned to his room and slept peacefully and deeply until morning. |
| <a id="c10p070"></a>Le lendemain, après une dernière journée de travail, l’académie promeneuse reprit le chemin de Paris. Quand Jean Blaise paya son hôte en assignats, le citoyen Poitrine se lamenta de ne plus voir que de "l’argent carré" et promit une belle chandelle au bougre qui ramènerait les jaunets. | The next day, after a final day’s work, the wandering academy set off back to Paris. When Jean Blaise paid his host in assignats, Citizen Poitrine lamented that he saw nothing now but “square money”, and promised a fine votive candle to the fellow who brought back the yellow coins. |
| <a id="c10p071"></a>Il offrit des fleurs aux citoyennes. Par son ordre, la Tronche, sur une échelle, en sabots et troussée, montrant au jour ses mollets crasseux et resplendissants, coupait infatigablement des roses aux rosiers grimpants qui couvraient la muraille. De ses larges mains les roses tombaient en pluie, en torrents, en avalanche, dans les jupes tendues d’Élodie, de Julienne et de la Thévenin. La berline en fut pleine. Tous, rentrant à la nuit, en apportèrent chez eux des brassées, et leur sommeil et leur réveil en fut tout parfumé. | He offered the women flowers. At his command Tronche, standing on a ladder in her clogs, her skirt tucked up, her filthy, gleaming calves exposed to daylight, tirelessly cut roses from the climbing bushes that covered the wall. From her broad hands the roses fell in rain, in torrents, in an avalanche[^c10n24], into the outspread skirts of Élodie, Julienne and Thévenin. They filled the carriage. Returning after dark, each took armfuls home, and their sleep and their waking were filled with the scent. |

### Notes

[^c10n01]: Élodie’s imagined village life temporarily domesticates Évariste’s public authority: the revolutionary juror becomes a justice of the peace. The scene briefly allows pastoral affection to seem compatible with his office, before the mistaken arrest shows that political danger has travelled into the country. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n02]: Charles Barbaroux, a Girondin deputy for the Bouches-du-Rhône, was proscribed after the Montagnard action of June 1793. A nickname based on Desmahis’s handsome appearance becomes potentially fatal. The mistaken identification is fictional; it illustrates the passage from visual resemblance to political certainty. [S100](#S100)

[^c10n03]: The threatened hanging turns Desmahis’s appearance into an improvised identity document. His answer to Dubois reverses the joke by imagining the same mechanism applied to an unflattering resemblance. The violence remains conditional, but the preceding arrest gives it immediate force. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n04]: The artists distinguish several standards of excellence: colour, invention, drawing and style. Their apparently personal judgements are formed through masters and schools, preparing for the later statement that each paints nature in another artist’s manner. This is an interpretation of France’s sequence rather than a ranking endorsed by the editor. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n05]: Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) made the study of ancient art central to a new history of artistic style. His admiration of antique beauty helped shape Neoclassical taste. Gamelin imports that learned ideal into a conversation whose participants have practical concerns about clothes and cost. [S101](#S101)

[^c10n06]: The passage keeps the period’s textile names rather than flattening them into generic ‘silk’. Their accumulating sounds matter as much as technical classification: the women’s speech appears to unfold the materials themselves, giving their expertise a sensuous authority distinct from Gamelin’s doctrine. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n07]: The changing fashions and the brief life of flowers allow Brotteaux to contemplate mortality without denying renewal. The sequence links tears, erotic feeling and the recurring forms of nature, an alternative to Gamelin’s demand for fixed ideals. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n08]: Madame Angot is the comic figure of a market woman raised to wealth. Her stage fame is especially associated with the Directory: Maillot’s Madame Angot ou la Poissarde parvenue was printed in Year V (1796–1797). France’s earlier setting compresses that later theatrical association into the party’s stock of popular jokes. [S102](#S102)

[^c10n09]: Rousseau’s Lettres élémentaires sur la botanique, begun in 1771 for a woman teaching her daughter, offered attentive observation of plants as a form of education. ‘Loves’ also evokes botanical reproduction. France’s urban flower-gatherers combine fashionable learning with an anticipation of the chapter’s erotic encounters. [S103](#S103)

[^c10n10]: The artists’ aspiration to represent what they see is qualified at once: their vision is already mediated by artistic models. Their landscapes, cow and cottage therefore become a gently comic survey of learned styles rather than an opposition between truthful nature and artificial painting. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n11]: The paired contradictions make Thévenin’s charm exceed the categories used to dismiss her. Her tenderness towards children is neither simply spontaneous nor simply false: France gives maternal longing and professional self-presentation room in the same gesture. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n12]: Les Visitandines is an opéra-comique by Louis-Benoît Picard with music by François Devienne. Its printed score records a first performance at the Feydeau on 7 July 1792. The convent subject belongs to the theatrical repertory whose continuing attraction cuts across the new political divisions. [S104](#S104) [S105](#S105)

[^c10n13]: François de Neufchâteau’s Paméla adapted a story descending from Richardson through Goldoni. Its alleged reactionary implications furnished a pretext for closing the Théâtre de la Nation and arresting its company in September 1793. The Madelonnettes and Sainte-Pélagie were places of imprisonment; Pélagie is France’s shortened name. [S106](#S106)

[^c10n14]: France makes Brotteaux coin the ungainly verbs envertueuser and endéificoquer. The English renders the coercive sense rather than inventing equally opaque vocabulary. His ‘god-eaters’ is a mocking reference to Eucharistic belief, extending his irreverence to the Catholicism he nevertheless finds more governable than political zeal. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n15]: The French quenouilles here means fruit trees pruned into a tapering, cone-like shape, not reeds or actual spinning distaffs. Later in the same inn scene the grandmother holds a literal quenouille, a distaff. The word moves between cultivated landscape and domestic work. [S107](#S107) [S108](#S108)

[^c10n16]: The grandmother means the water-pump building on the Pont-Neuf, a familiar landmark of the old city. Its name came from the sculpted biblical Samaritan woman. It should not be confused with the department store founded in the nineteenth century under the same name. [S109](#S109) [S110](#S110)

[^c10n17]: The division concerns the revolutionary religious oath and the conflict between sworn and refractory clergy. The grandmother’s account brings national transformation into village terms—quarrelling priests, war, hunger and portents—while her story of the king’s escape preserves royal survival as a consoling rumour. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n18]: The book is Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Gamelin recognises the scene of Charlotte cutting bread but remembers the author only as a young German. His comparison turns a domestic action into a literary courtship and lets the novel’s tragic ending enter the lovers’ conversation. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n19]: France writes l’an II de la Liberté, not ‘Year II of the Republic’. The wording is retained rather than silently converted into the later official calendar. The same sentence contrasts Brotteaux’s actual hunger with his remembered gastronomic status. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n20]: Pelleport’s explanation belongs to the character’s anatomical theory; it is not a medical finding endorsed by this edition. ‘Monstrosity’ retains the period’s classificatory vocabulary. The speech’s certainty, abrupt weather prediction and departure also turn learned explanation into a social performance. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n21]: The quoted lines come from the opening canto of Voltaire’s mock-heroic La Pucelle d’Orléans. Saint Denis, patron of France, intervenes in Joan of Arc’s story. The poem treats religious and national grandeur with erotic irreverence; its familiarity momentarily joins people whom political judgement separates. [S111](#S111)

[^c10n22]: Earlier the knife cost six sous; here the French calls it a couteau de six liards. The discrepancy is retained. The change does not affect the recognition of the same object, whose earlier act of charity is recalled during a frivolous game. [S099](#S099)

[^c10n23]: Quand le bien-aimé reviendra is the celebrated romance from Nicolas Dalayrac’s Nina ou la Folle par amour. It belongs to a sentimental operatic world different from the company’s comic Voltaire and anti-monastic song, widening the evening’s emotional register. [S112](#S112)

[^c10n24]: The final abundance answers the earlier flowers shedding in the drought. Roses pass from Tronche’s broad hands to the fashionable women’s skirts and perfume everyone’s private sleep. The physical world momentarily reconnects people whose social judgements have divided them. [S099](#S099)

<a id="chapter-11"></a>

## XI

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c11p001"></a>Le matin du 7 septembre, la citoyenne Rochemaure, se rendant chez le juré Gamelin, qu’elle voulait intéresser à quelque suspect de sa connaissance, rencontra sur le palier le ci-devant Brotteaux des Ilettes, qu’elle avait aimé dans les jours heureux. Brotteaux s’en allait porter douze douzaines de pantins de sa façon chez le marchand de jouets de la rue de la Loi. Et il s’était résolu, pour les porter plus aisément, à les attacher au bout d’une perche, selon les guises des vendeurs ambulants. Il en usait galamment avec toutes les femmes, même avec celles dont une longue habitude avait émoussé pour lui l’attrait, comme ce devait être le cas de madame de Rochemaure, à moins qu’assaisonnée par la trahison, l’absence, l’infidélité et l’embonpoint, il ne la trouvât appétissante. En tout cas, il l’accueillit sur le palier sordide, aux carreaux disjoints, comme autrefois sur les degrés du perron des Ilettes et la pria de lui faire l’honneur de visiter son grenier. Elle monta assez lestement l’échelle et se trouva sous une charpente dont les poutres penchantes portaient un toit de tuiles percé d’une lucarne. On ne pouvait s’y tenir debout. Elle s’assit sur la seule chaise qu’il y eût en ce réduit et, ayant promené un moment ses regards sur les tuiles disjointes, elle demanda, surprise et attristée: | On the morning of 7 September[^c11n01], Citizen Rochemaure, on her way to the juror Gamelin’s to enlist his interest in a suspect of her acquaintance, met the former Brotteaux des Ilettes on the landing. She had loved him in the happy days. Brotteaux was taking twelve dozen jumping jacks of his own making to the toy dealer in the Rue de la Loi. To carry them more easily he had decided to tie them to the end of a pole, as pedlars did. He treated all women gallantly, even those whose attraction long familiarity had dulled for him—as must have been the case with Madame de Rochemaure, unless betrayal, absence, infidelity and plumpness had seasoned her into something appetising. In any event, he received her on the squalid landing with its loose tiles as he had once received her on the steps of Les Ilettes[^c11n02], and begged her to honour him by visiting his attic. She climbed the ladder nimbly enough and found herself beneath sloping rafters supporting a tiled roof pierced by a skylight. There was no room to stand upright. She sat on the only chair in the little room and, after looking for a moment at the gaps between the tiles, asked in surprise and sadness: |
| <a id="c11p002"></a>"C’est là que vous habitez, Maurice? Vous n’avez guère à y craindre les importuns. Il faut être diable ou chat pour vous y trouver. | “Is this where you live, Maurice? You needn’t fear many unwelcome visitors. One would have to be a devil or a cat to find you here.” |
| <a id="c11p003"></a>— J’y ai peu d’espace, répondit le ci-devant. Et je ne vous cache pas que parfois il y pleut sur mon grabat. C’est un faible inconvénient. Et durant les nuits sereines j’y vois la lune, image et témoin des amours des hommes. Car la lune, madame, fut de tout temps attestée par les amoureux, et dans son plein, pâle et ronde, elle rappelle à l’amant l’objet de ses désirs. | “There is not much room,” the former financier replied. “And I won’t conceal from you that rain sometimes falls on my pallet. It is a small inconvenience. On clear nights I can see the moon, the image and witness of human love. For lovers have always called the moon to witness, Madame, and when she is full, pale and round[^c11n03], she reminds a lover of the object of his desires.” |
| <a id="c11p004"></a>— J’entends, dit la citoyenne. | “I understand,” said the citizen. |
| <a id="c11p005"></a>— En leur saison, poursuivit Brotteaux, les chats font un beau vacarme dans cette gouttière. Mais il faut pardonner à l’amour de miauler et de jurer sur les toits, quand il emplit de tourments et de crimes la vie des hommes." | “In their season,” Brotteaux continued, “the cats make a fine din in this gutter. But we must forgive love for mewing and swearing on the roofs when it fills human lives with torment and crime.” |
| <a id="c11p006"></a>Tous deux, ils avaient eu la sagesse de s’aborder comme des amis qui s’étaient quittés la veille pour s’en aller dormir; et, bien que devenus étrangers l’un à l’autre, ils s’entretenaient avec bonne grâce et familiarité. | Both had had the wisdom to greet one another like friends who had parted the night before to go to sleep; though they had become strangers, they talked with easy grace and familiarity. |
| <a id="c11p007"></a>Cependant, madame de Rochemaure paraissait soucieuse. La Révolution, qui avait été longtemps pour elle riante et fructueuse, lui apportait maintenant des soucis et des inquiétudes; ses soupers devenaient moins brillants et moins joyeux. Les sons de sa harpe n’éclaircissaient plus les visages sombres. Ses tables de jeu étaient abandonnées des plus riches pontes. Plusieurs de ses familiers, maintenant suspects, se cachaient; son ami, le financier Morhardt, était arrêté, et c’était pour lui qu’elle venait solliciter le juré Gamelin. Elle-même était suspecte. Des gardes nationaux avaient fait une perquisition chez elle, retourné les tiroirs de ses commodes, soulevé des lames de son parquet, donné des coups de baïonnette dans ses matelas. Ils n’avaient rien trouvé, lui avaient fait des excuses et bu son vin. Mais ils étaient passés fort près de sa correspondance avec un émigré, M. d’Expilly. Quelques amis qu’elle avait parmi les jacobins l’avaient avertie que le bel Henry, son greluchon, devenait compromettant par ses violences trop outrées pour paraître sincères. | Madame de Rochemaure nevertheless seemed troubled. The Revolution, so long cheerful and profitable for her, was now bringing cares and anxieties. Her suppers were becoming less brilliant and less merry. The sound of her harp no longer brightened gloomy faces. The richest gamblers had deserted her gaming tables. Several of her intimates, now suspects, were in hiding; her friend the financier Morhardt had been arrested, and it was on his behalf that she had come to petition the juror Gamelin. She was a suspect herself. National Guardsmen had searched her house, upended the drawers of her chests, lifted floorboards and thrust bayonets into her mattresses. They had found nothing, apologised and drunk her wine. But they had come very close to her correspondence with an émigré, Monsieur d’Expilly. Some friends among the Jacobins had warned her that handsome Henry, her favourite lover[^c11n04], was becoming a dangerous association: his violent opinions were too extravagant to seem sincere. |
| <a id="c11p008"></a>Les coudes sur les genoux et les poings dans les joues, songeuse, elle demanda à son vieil ami, assis sur la paillasse: | With her elbows on her knees and her fists against her cheeks, she thoughtfully asked her old friend, sitting on the straw mattress: |
| <a id="c11p009"></a>"Que pensez-vous de tout ceci, Maurice? | “What do you think of all this, Maurice?” |
| <a id="c11p010"></a>— Je pense que ces gens-ci donnent à un philosophe et à un amateur de spectacles ample matière à réflexion et à divertissement; mais qu’il serait meilleur pour vous, chère amie, que vous fussiez hors de France. | “I think these people give a philosopher and a lover of spectacles plenty to reflect on and be entertained by; but that you would be better off outside France, my dear friend.” |
| <a id="c11p011"></a>— Maurice, où cela nous mènera-t-il? | “Maurice, where will it lead us?” |
| <a id="c11p012"></a>— C’est ce que vous me demandiez, Louise, un jour, en voiture, au bord du Cher, sur le chemin des Ilettes, tandis que notre cheval, qui avait pris le mors aux dents, nous emportait d’un galop furieux. Que les femmes sont donc curieuses! Encore aujourd’hui vous voulez savoir où nous allons. Demandez-le aux tireuses de cartes. Je ne suis point devin, ma mie. Et la philosophie, même la plus saine, est d’un faible secours pour la connaissance de l’avenir. Ces choses finiront, car tout finit. On peut en prévoir diverses issues. La victoire de la coalition et l’entrée des alliés à Paris. Ils n’en sont pas loin; toutefois je doute qu’ils y arrivent. Ces soldats de la République se font battre avec une ardeur que rien ne peut éteindre. Il se peut que Robespierre épouse Madame Royale et se fasse nommer protecteur du royaume pendant la minorité de Louis XVII. | “That is what you asked me one day, Louise, in the carriage beside the Cher, on the way to Les Ilettes, while our horse, with the bit between its teeth, was carrying us off at a furious gallop. How inquisitive women are! Even now you want to know where we are going. Ask the fortune-tellers. I am no prophet, my dear, and even the soundest philosophy is of little help in knowing the future. These things will end, because everything ends. Several outcomes can be imagined. Victory for the coalition, and the allies entering Paris. They are not far away; still, I doubt they will get here. These republican soldiers get themselves beaten with an ardour nothing can extinguish. Robespierre may marry Madame Royale[^c11n05] and have himself made protector of the kingdom during Louis XVII’s minority.” |
| <a id="c11p013"></a>— Vous croyez? s’écria la citoyenne, impatiente de se mêler à cette belle intrigue. | “Do you think so?” cried the citizen, impatient to involve herself in so fine an intrigue. |
| <a id="c11p014"></a>— Il se peut encore, poursuivit Brotteaux, que la Vendée l’emporte et que le gouvernement des prêtres se rétablisse sur des monceaux de ruines et des amas de cadavres. Vous ne pouvez concevoir, chère amie, l’empire que garde le clergé sur la multitude des ânes.... Je voulais dire "des âmes"; la langue m’a fourché. Le plus probable, à mon sens, c’est que le Tribunal révolutionnaire amènera la destruction du régime qui l’a institué: il menace trop de têtes. Ceux qu’il effraie sont innombrables; ils se réuniront, et, pour le détruire, ils détruiront le régime. Je crois que vous avez fait nommer le jeune Gamelin à cette justice. Il est vertueux: il sera terrible. Plus j’y songe, ma belle amie, plus je crois que ce tribunal, établi pour sauver la République, la perdra. La Convention a voulu avoir, comme la royauté, ses Grands Jours, sa Chambre ardente, et pourvoir à sa sûreté par des magistrats nommés par elle et tenus dans sa dépendance. Mais que les Grands Jours de la Convention sont inférieurs aux Grands Jours de la monarchie, et sa Chambre ardente moins politique que celle de Louis XIV! Il règne dans le Tribunal révolutionnaire un sentiment de basse justice et de plate égalité qui le rendra bientôt odieux et ridicule et dégoûtera tout le monde. Savez-vous, Louise, que ce tribunal, qui va appeler à sa barre la reine de France et vingt et un législateurs, condamnait hier une servante coupable d’avoir crié: "Vive le roi!" avec une mauvaise intention et dans la pensée de détruire la République? Nos juges, tout de noir emplumés, travaillent dans le genre de ce Guillaume Shakespeare, si cher aux Anglais, qui introduit dans les scènes les plus tragiques de son théâtre de grossières bouffonneries. | “It is also possible,” Brotteaux continued, “that the Vendée will prevail and priestly government be re-established upon heaps of ruins and piles of corpses. You cannot conceive, my dear friend, the power the clergy still holds over the multitude of asses… I meant ‘souls’[^c11n06]; my tongue slipped. The likeliest thing, in my opinion, is that the Revolutionary Tribunal will bring down the regime that established it: it threatens too many heads. The people it frightens are innumerable; they will unite, and to destroy it they will destroy the regime. I believe it was you who had young Gamelin appointed to this court. He is virtuous: he will be terrible. The more I think about it, my beautiful friend, the more I believe that this tribunal, established to save the Republic, will ruin it. Like royalty, the Convention wanted its Grands Jours, its Chambre ardente[^c11n07], securing its safety through magistrates it appointed and kept dependent on itself. But how inferior the Convention’s Grands Jours are to those of the monarchy, and how much less politically shrewd its Chambre ardente is than Louis XIV’s! A spirit of petty justice and flat equality reigns in the Revolutionary Tribunal which will soon make it hateful and ridiculous and disgust everyone. Do you know, Louise, that this tribunal, which will summon the queen of France and twenty-one legislators before it, was yesterday sentencing a maidservant for having shouted ‘Long live the king!’ with evil intention and a design to destroy the Republic? Our judges, all decked in black feathers, work in the manner of that William Shakespeare so dear to the English, who introduces coarse buffoonery[^c11n08] into the most tragic scenes of his plays.” |
| <a id="c11p015"></a>— Eh bien, Maurice, demanda la citoyenne, êtes-vous toujours heureux en amour? | “Well, Maurice,” the citizen asked, “are you still fortunate in love?” |
| <a id="c11p016"></a>— Hélas! répondit Brotteaux, les colombes volent au blanc colombier et ne se posent plus sur la tour en ruines. | “Alas!” Brotteaux replied. “The doves fly to the white dovecote and no longer settle on the ruined tower.” |
| <a id="c11p017"></a>— Vous n’avez pas changé.... Au revoir, mon ami!" | “You haven’t changed… Goodbye, my friend!” |
| <a id="c11p018"></a>Ce soir-là, le dragon Henry, s’étant rendu, sans y être prié, chez madame de Rochemaure, la trouva qui cachetait une lettre sur laquelle il lut l’adresse du citoyen Rauline, à Vernon. C’était, il le savait, une lettre pour l’Angleterre. Rauline recevait par un postillon des messageries le courrier de madame de Rochemaure et le faisait porter à Dieppe par une marchande de marée. Un patron de barque le remettait, la nuit, à un navire britannique qui croisait sur la côte; un émigré, M. d’Expilly, le recevait à Londres et le communiquait, s’il le jugeait utile, au cabinet de Saint-James. | That evening the dragoon Henry, arriving uninvited at Madame de Rochemaure’s, found her sealing a letter on which he read Citizen Rauline’s address in Vernon. It was, he knew, a letter for England. A postilion on the mail coaches brought Madame de Rochemaure’s correspondence to Rauline, who had it taken to Dieppe by a fish seller. A boatman delivered it at night to a British ship cruising off the coast; an émigré, Monsieur d’Expilly, received it in London and, when he thought it useful, communicated it to the government at St James’s[^c11n09]. |
| <a id="c11p019"></a>Henry était jeune et beau: Achille n’unissait pas tant de grâce à tant de vigueur, quand il revêtit les armes que lui présentait Ulysse. Mais la citoyenne Rochemaure, sensible naguère aux charmes du jeune héros de la Commune, détournait de lui ses regards et sa pensée depuis qu’elle avait été avertie que, dénoncé aux jacobins comme un exagéré, ce jeune soldat pouvait la compromettre et la perdre. Henry sentait qu’il ne serait peut-être pas au-dessus de ses forces de ne plus aimer madame de Rochemaure; mais il lui déplaisait qu’elle ne le distinguât plus. Il comptait sur elle pour satisfaire à certaines dépenses auxquelles le service de la République l’avait engagé. Enfin, songeant aux extrémités où peuvent se porter les femmes et comment elles passent avec rapidité de la tendresse la plus ardente à la plus froide insensibilité et combien il leur est facile de sacrifier ce qu’elles ont chéri et de perdre ce qu’elles ont adoré, il soupçonna que cette ravissante Louise pourrait un jour le faire jeter en prison pour se débarrasser de lui. Sa sagesse lui conseillait de reconquérir cette beauté perdue. C’est pourquoi il était venu armé de tous ses charmes. Il s’approchait d’elle, s’éloignait, se rapprochait, la frôlait, la fuyait selon les règles de la séduction dans les ballets. Puis, il se jeta dans un fauteuil, et, de sa voix invincible, de sa voix qui parlait aux entrailles des femmes, il lui vanta la nature et la solitude et lui proposa en soupirant une promenade à Ermenonville. | Henry was young and handsome: Achilles had not united so much grace with so much strength when he put on the armour Ulysses brought him[^c11n10]. But Citizen Rochemaure, until recently responsive to the charms of the young hero of the Commune, had turned her eyes and thoughts from him since being warned that, denounced to the Jacobins as an extremist[^c11n11], this young soldier might compromise and ruin her. Henry felt it might not be beyond his powers to stop loving Madame de Rochemaure; but he disliked no longer being singled out by her. He was relying on her to meet certain expenses his service to the Republic had led him to incur. Reflecting, moreover, on the extremes to which women may go, how rapidly they pass from the most ardent tenderness to the coldest indifference, and how easily they sacrifice what they have cherished and ruin what they have adored, he suspected that this enchanting Louise might one day have him thrown into prison to be rid of him. Prudence advised him to reconquer his lost beauty. That was why he had come armed with all his charms. He approached her, moved away, approached again, brushed past her, fled her, according to the rules of seduction in a ballet. Then he threw himself into an armchair and, in his irresistible voice, the voice that spoke to women’s inmost flesh, praised nature and solitude and sighingly proposed an excursion to Ermenonville. |
| <a id="c11p020"></a>Cependant, elle tirait quelques accords de sa harpe et jetait autour d’elle des regards d’impatience et d’ennui. Soudain Henry se dressa sombre et résolu et lui annonça qu’il partait pour l’armée et serait dans quelques jours devant Maubeuge. | Meanwhile she struck a few chords on her harp and looked about her with impatience and boredom. Suddenly Henry rose, sombre and resolute, and announced that he was leaving for the army and would be outside Maubeuge in a few days. |
| <a id="c11p021"></a>Sans montrer ni doute ni surprise, elle l’approuva d’un signe de tête. | Showing neither doubt nor surprise, she nodded her approval. |
| <a id="c11p022"></a>"Vous me félicitez de cette décision? | “You congratulate me on this decision?” |
| <a id="c11p023"></a>— Je vous en félicite." | “I do.” |
| <a id="c11p024"></a>Elle attendait un nouvel ami qui lui plaisait infiniment et dont elle pensait tirer de grands avantages; tout autre chose que celui-ci: un Mirabeau ressuscité, un Danton décrotté et devenu fournisseur, un lion qui parlait de jeter tous les patriotes dans la Seine. A tout moment elle croyait entendre la sonnette et tressaillait. | She was expecting a new friend who pleased her immensely and from whom she hoped to gain great advantages: quite another sort of man—a Mirabeau risen from the dead, a Danton cleaned up and turned army contractor, a lion who talked of throwing all the patriots into the Seine. At every moment she thought she heard the bell and started. |
| <a id="c11p025"></a>Pour renvoyer Henry, elle se tut, bâilla, feuilleta une partition, et bâilla encore. Voyant qu’il ne s’en allait pas, elle lui dit qu’elle avait à sortir et passa dans son cabinet de toilette. | To send Henry away she fell silent, yawned, leafed through a score and yawned again. Seeing that he did not leave, she told him she had to go out and went into her dressing room. |
| <a id="c11p026"></a>Il lui criait d’une voix émue: | He called to her in an emotional voice: |
| <a id="c11p027"></a>"Adieu, Louise!... Vous reverrai-je jamais?" | “Goodbye, Louise!… Shall I ever see you again?” |
| <a id="c11p028"></a>Et ses mains fouillaient dans le secrétaire ouvert. | And his hands searched the open writing desk. |
| <a id="c11p029"></a>Dès qu’il fut dans la rue, il ouvrit la lettre adressée au citoyen Rauline et la lut avec intérêt. Elle contenait en effet un tableau curieux de l’état de l’esprit public en France. On y parlait de la reine, de la Thévenin, du Tribunal révolutionnaire, et maints propos confidentiels de ce bon Brotteaux des Ilettes y étaient rapportés. | As soon as he was in the street he opened the letter addressed to Citizen Rauline and read it with interest. It did indeed contain a curious picture of the state of public opinion in France. There was talk of the queen, Thévenin and the Revolutionary Tribunal, and many confidential remarks made by good old Brotteaux des Ilettes were reported in it. |
| <a id="c11p030"></a>Ayant achevé sa lecture et remis la lettre dans sa poche, il hésita quelques instants; puis, comme un homme qui a pris sa résolution et qui se dit que le plus tôt sera le mieux, il se dirigea vers les Tuileries et pénétra dans l’antichambre du Comité de sûreté générale. | Having finished reading and put the letter in his pocket, he hesitated for a few moments; then, like a man who has made up his mind and tells himself the sooner the better, he set off towards the Tuileries and entered the antechamber of the Committee of General Security[^c11n12]. |
| <a id="c11p031"></a>Ce jour-là, à trois heures de l’après-midi, Évariste Gamelin s’asseyait sur le banc des jurés en compagnie de quatorze collègues qu’il connaissait pour la plupart, gens simples, honnêtes et patriotes, savants, artistes ou artisans: un peintre comme lui, un dessinateur, tous deux pleins de talent, un chirurgien, un cordonnier, un ci-devant marquis, qui avait donné de grandes preuves de civisme, un imprimeur, de petits marchands, un échantillon enfin du peuple de Paris. Ils se tenaient là, dans leur habit ouvrier ou bourgeois, tondus à la Titus ou portant le catogan, le chapeau à cornes enfoncé sur les yeux ou le chapeau rond posé en arrière de la tête, ou le bonnet rouge cachant les oreilles. Les uns étaient vêtus de la veste, de l’habit et de la culotte, comme en l’ancien temps, les autres, de la carmagnole et du pantalon rayé à la façon des sans-culottes. Chaussés de bottes ou de souliers à boucles ou de sabots, ils présentaient sur leurs personnes toutes les diversités du vêtement masculin en usage alors. Ayant tous déjà siégé plusieurs fois, ils semblaient fort à l’aise à leur banc et Gamelin enviait leur tranquillité. Son cœur battait, ses oreilles bourdonnaient, ses yeux se voilaient et tout ce qui l’entourait prenait pour lui une teinte livide. | At three that afternoon Évariste Gamelin took his seat on the jurors’ bench with fourteen colleagues, most of whom he knew: simple, honest, patriotic people, scholars, artists or craftsmen—a painter like himself, a draughtsman, both talented, a surgeon, a cobbler, a former marquis who had given great proofs of civic loyalty, a printer and small shopkeepers; in short, a sample of the people of Paris. They sat there in their working or bourgeois clothes, their hair cropped in the Titus style or gathered in a queue, cocked hats pulled down over their eyes, round hats pushed back on their heads, or red caps covering their ears. Some wore waistcoats, coats and breeches as in the old days; others the carmagnole and striped trousers of the sans-culottes. Shod in boots, buckled shoes or clogs, they displayed in their persons all the varieties of men’s dress[^c11n13] then in use. All had sat several times before and seemed quite at ease on their bench; Gamelin envied their composure. His heart pounded, his ears rang, his sight grew dim and everything around him took on a livid hue. |
| <a id="c11p032"></a>Quand l’huissier annonça le Tribunal, trois juges prirent place sur une estrade assez petite, devant une table verte. Ils portaient un chapeau à cocarde, surmonté de grandes plumes noires, et le manteau d’audience avec un ruban tricolore d’où pendait sur leur poitrine une lourde médaille d’argent. Devant eux, au pied de l’estrade, siégeait le substitut de l’accusateur public, dans un costume semblable. Le greffier s’assit entre le Tribunal et le fauteuil vide de l’accusé. Gamelin voyait ces hommes différents de ce qu’il les avait vus jusque-là, plus beaux, plus graves, plus effrayants, bien qu’ils prissent des attitudes familières, feuilletant des papiers, appelant un huissier ou se penchant en arrière pour entendre quelque communication d’un juré ou d’un officier de service. | When the usher announced the court, three judges took their places on a rather small dais behind a green-covered table. They wore hats with cockades surmounted by great black plumes, and courtroom cloaks with tricolour ribbons from which heavy silver medals hung upon their chests. Before them, at the foot of the dais, sat the deputy public prosecutor in similar dress. The clerk sat between the court and the accused’s empty chair. Gamelin saw these men differently from the way he had seen them before: more handsome, more grave, more frightening, though their postures were familiar enough as they leafed through papers, called an usher or leaned back to hear something from a juror or an officer on duty. |
| <a id="c11p033"></a>Au-dessus des juges, les tables des Droits de l’Homme étaient suspendues; à leur droite et à leur gauche, contre les vieilles murailles féodales, les bustes de Le Peltier Saint-Fargeau et de Marat. En face du banc des jurés, au fond de la salle, s’élevait la tribune publique. Des femmes en garnissaient le premier rang, qui blondes, brunes ou grises, portaient toutes la haute coiffe dont le bavolet plissé leur ombrageait les joues; sur leur poitrine, auxquelles la mode donnait uniformément l’ampleur d’un sein nourricier, se croisait le fichu blanc ou se recourbait la bavette du tablier bleu. Elles tenaient les bras croisés sur le rebord de la tribune. Derrière elles on voyait, clairsemés sur les gradins, des citoyens vêtus avec cette diversité qui donnait alors aux foules un caractère étrange et pittoresque. A droite, vers l’entrée, derrière une barrière pleine, s’étendait un espace où le public se tenait debout. Cette fois, il y était peu nombreux. L’affaire dont cette section du Tribunal allait s’occuper n’intéressait qu’un petit nombre de spectateurs, et, sans doute, les autres sections, qui siégeaient en même temps, appelaient des causes plus émouvantes. | Above the judges hung the tablets of the Rights of Man; to right and left, against the old feudal walls, stood the busts of Le Peltier Saint-Fargeau and Marat. Opposite the jurors’ bench, at the back of the chamber, rose the public gallery. Its front row was filled with women who, blonde, dark-haired or grey, all wore the high cap whose pleated frill shaded their cheeks. Across their bosoms, uniformly given by fashion the fullness of a nursing breast, white fichus crossed or the bibs of blue aprons curved. Their folded arms rested on the edge of the gallery. Behind them citizens were scattered over the tiers, dressed with the variety that then gave crowds so strange and picturesque an appearance. On the right, towards the entrance, behind a solid barrier, was a space where the public stood. There were few people in it this time. The case this division of the Tribunal was to hear interested only a small number of spectators; doubtless the other divisions, sitting at the same time, had more stirring cases before them. |
| <a id="c11p034"></a>C’est ce qui rassurait un peu Gamelin dont le cœur, prêt à faiblir, n’aurait pu supporter l’atmosphère enflammée des grandes audiences. Ses yeux s’attachaient aux moindres détails: il remarquait le coton dans l’oreille du greffier et une tache d’encre sur le dossier du substitut. Il voyait, comme avec une loupe, les chapiteaux sculptés dans un temps où toute connaissance des ordres antiques était perdue et qui surmontaient les colonnes gothiques de guirlandes d’ortie et de houx. Mais ses regards revenaient sans cesse à ce fauteuil, d’une forme surannée, garni de velours d’Utrecht rouge, usé au siège et noirci aux bras. Des gardes nationaux en armes se tenaient à toutes les issues. | This reassured Gamelin a little: with his heart on the point of failing, he could not have borne the heated atmosphere of a great trial. His eyes fastened on the smallest details[^c11n14]. He noticed cotton wool in the clerk’s ear and an inkblot on the deputy prosecutor’s file. As though through a magnifying glass he saw the capitals, carved in a time when all knowledge of the ancient orders had been lost, crowning the Gothic columns with garlands of nettle and holly. But his eyes kept returning to the old-fashioned armchair, covered in red Utrecht velvet, worn at the seat and blackened on the arms. Armed National Guardsmen stood at every exit. |
| <a id="c11p035"></a>Enfin l’accusé parut, escorté de grenadiers, libre toutefois de ses membres comme le prescrivait la loi. C’était un homme d’une cinquantaine d’années, maigre, sec, brun, très chauve, les joues creuses, les lèvres minces et violacées, vêtu à l’ancienne mode d’un habit sang de bœuf. Sans doute parce qu’il avait la fièvre, ses yeux brillaient comme des pierreries et ses joues avaient l’air d’être vernies. Il s’assit. Ses jambes, qu’il croisait, étaient d’une maigreur excessive et ses grandes mains noueuses en faisaient tout le tour. Il se nommait Marie-Adolphe Guillergues et était prévenu de dilapidation dans les fourrages de la République. L’acte d’accusation mettait à sa charge des faits nombreux et graves, dont aucun n’était absolument certain. Interrogé, Guillergues nia la plupart de ces faits et expliqua les autres à son avantage. Son langage était précis et froid, singulièrement habile et donnait l’idée d’un homme avec lequel il n’est pas désirable de traiter une affaire. Il avait réponse à tout. Quand le juge lui faisait une question embarrassante, son visage restait calme et sa parole assurée, mais ses deux mains, réunies sur sa poitrine, se crispaient d’angoisse. Gamelin s’en aperçut et dit à l’oreille de son voisin, peintre comme lui: | At last the accused appeared, escorted by grenadiers but with his limbs unbound, as the law prescribed. He was a man of about fifty, thin, spare and dark, very bald, with hollow cheeks and thin, purplish lips, dressed in an old-fashioned oxblood coat. Probably because he had a fever, his eyes shone like jewels and his cheeks looked varnished. He sat down. His crossed legs were so excessively thin that his large, knotted hands encircled them completely. His name was Marie-Adolphe Guillergues, and he was charged with misappropriating the Republic’s fodder supplies. The indictment accused him of numerous serious acts, none of them absolutely established. Questioned, Guillergues denied most of them and explained the rest to his own advantage. His language was precise, cold and remarkably skilful, suggesting a man with whom one would not wish to do business. He had an answer to everything. When the judge put an awkward question, his face remained calm and his speech confident, but his hands, clasped upon his chest, clenched in anguish. Gamelin noticed and whispered to his neighbour, a painter like himself: |
| <a id="c11p036"></a>"Regardez ses pouces!" | “Look at his thumbs!” |
| <a id="c11p037"></a>Le premier témoin qu’on entendit apporta des faits accablants. C’est sur lui que reposait toute l’accusation. Ceux qui furent appelés ensuite se montrèrent, au contraire, favorables à l’accusé. Le substitut de l’accusateur public fut véhément, mais demeura dans le vague. Le défenseur parla avec un ton de vérité qui valut à l’accusé des sympathies qu’il n’avait pas su lui-même se concilier. L’audience fut suspendue et les jurés se réunirent dans la chambre des délibérations. Là, après une discussion obscure et confuse, ils se partageaient en deux groupes à peu près égaux en nombre. On vit d’un côté les indifférents, les tièdes, les raisonneurs, qu’aucune passion n’animait, et d’un autre côté ceux qui se laissaient conduire par le sentiment, se montraient peu accessibles à l’argumentation et jugeaient avec le cœur. Ceux-là condamnaient toujours. C’étaient les bons, les purs: ils ne songeaient qu’à sauver la République et ne s’embarrassaient point du reste. Leur attitude fit une forte impression sur Gamelin qui se sentait en communion avec eux. | The first witness to be heard gave damning evidence. The entire accusation rested on him. Those called afterwards, on the contrary, spoke in the accused’s favour. The deputy public prosecutor was vehement but remained vague. The defence counsel spoke with a ring of truth that won the accused sympathies he had not known how to win for himself. The hearing was suspended and the jurors withdrew to the deliberation room. There, after an obscure and confused discussion, they divided into two groups of almost equal size. On one side were the indifferent, the lukewarm, the reasoners, moved by no passion; on the other those who let feeling guide them, were little open to argument and judged with their hearts. These always convicted. They were the good, the pure[^c11n15]: they thought only of saving the Republic and did not trouble themselves about the rest. Their attitude made a powerful impression on Gamelin, who felt in communion with them. |
| <a id="c11p038"></a>"Ce Guillergues, songeait-il, est un adroit fripon, un scélérat qui a spéculé sur le fourrage de notre cavalerie. L’absoudre, c’est laisser échapper un traître, c’est trahir la patrie, vouer l’armée à la défaite." Et Gamelin voyait déjà les hussards de la République, sur leurs montures qui bronchaient, sabrés par la cavalerie ennemie.... "Mais si Guillergues était innocent?..." | “This Guillergues,” he thought, “is a cunning rogue, a villain who has speculated in our cavalry’s fodder. To acquit him is to let a traitor escape, betray the country and condemn the army to defeat.” Already Gamelin saw the Republic’s hussars on stumbling mounts, cut down by the enemy cavalry… “But what if Guillergues were innocent?…” |
| <a id="c11p039"></a>Il pensa tout à coup à Jean Blaise, soupçonné aussi d’infidélité dans les fournitures. Tant d’autres devaient agir comme Guillergues et Blaise, préparer la défaite, perdre la République! Il fallait faire un exemple. Mais si Guillergues était innocent?... | He suddenly thought of Jean Blaise, also suspected of dishonesty in supplies. So many others must be acting like Guillergues and Blaise, preparing defeat, ruining the Republic! An example must be made. But what if Guillergues were innocent?… |
| <a id="c11p040"></a>"Il n’y a pas de preuves, dit Gamelin, à haute voix. | “There is no proof,” Gamelin said aloud. |
| <a id="c11p041"></a>— Il n’y a jamais de preuves", répondit en haussant les épaules le chef du jury, un bon, un pur. | “There never is any proof,” the foreman replied with a shrug—a good man, one of the pure. |
| <a id="c11p042"></a>Finalement, il se trouva sept voix pour la condamnation et huit pour l’acquittement. | In the end there were seven votes for conviction and eight for acquittal. |
| <a id="c11p043"></a>Le jury rentra dans la salle et l’audience fut reprise. Les jurés étaient tenus de motiver leur verdict; chacun parla à son tour devant le fauteuil vide. Les uns étaient prolixes; les autres se contentaient d’un mot; il y en avait qui prononçaient des paroles inintelligibles. | The jury returned to the chamber and the hearing resumed. The jurors were required to give reasons for their verdict; each spoke in turn before the empty armchair. Some were long-winded; others contented themselves with a word; some spoke unintelligibly. |
| <a id="c11p044"></a>Quand vint son tour, Gamelin se leva et dit: | When his turn came, Gamelin rose and said: |
| <a id="c11p045"></a>"En présence d’un crime si grand que d’ôter aux défenseurs de la patrie les moyens de vaincre, on veut des preuves formelles que nous n’avons point." | “Faced with so great a crime as depriving the defenders of the country of the means to win, we require definite proof, and we do not have it.” |
| <a id="c11p046"></a>A la majorité des voix, l’accusé fut déclaré non coupable. | By a majority of votes, the accused was declared not guilty. |
| <a id="c11p047"></a>Guillergues fut ramené devant les juges, accompagné du murmure bienveillant des spectateurs qui lui annonçaient son acquittement. C’était un autre homme. La sécheresse de ses traits s’était fondue, ses lèvres s’étaient amollies. Il avait l’air vénérable; son visage exprimait l’innocence. Le président lut, d’une voix émue, le verdict qui renvoyait le prévenu; la salle éclata en applaudissements. Le gendarme qui avait amené Guillergues se précipita dans ses bras. Le président l’appela et lui donna l’accolade fraternelle. Les jurés l’embrassèrent. Gamelin pleurait à chaudes larmes. | Guillergues was brought back before the judges, accompanied by the spectators’ kindly murmur telling him of his acquittal. He was another man. The hardness of his features had melted, his lips had softened. He looked venerable; his face expressed innocence[^c11n16]. In a moved voice the president read the verdict discharging him, and the chamber burst into applause. The gendarme who had brought Guillergues rushed into his arms. The president called him forward and gave him the fraternal embrace. The jurors kissed him. Gamelin wept freely. |
| <a id="c11p048"></a>Dans la cour du Palais, illuminée des derniers rayons du jour, une multitude hurlante s’agitait. Les quatre sections du Tribunal avaient prononcé la veille trente condamnations à mort, et, sur les marches du grand escalier, des tricoteuses accroupies attendaient le départ des charrettes. Mais Gamelin, descendant les degrés dans le flot des jurés et des spectateurs, ne voyait rien, n’entendait rien que son acte de justice et d’humanité et les félicitations qu’il se donnait d’avoir reconnu l’innocence. Dans la cour, Élodie, toute blanche, en larmes et souriante, se jeta dans ses bras et y resta pâmée. Et, quand elle eut recouvré la voix, elle lui dit: | A howling multitude stirred in the courtyard of the Palais, lit by the day’s last rays. The Tribunal’s four divisions had passed thirty death sentences[^c11n17] the day before, and on the steps of the great staircase, crouching women knitters waited for the carts to leave. But Gamelin, descending amid the stream of jurors and spectators, saw and heard nothing but his own act of justice and humanity and his own congratulations on having recognised innocence. In the courtyard Élodie, all in white, tearful and smiling, threw herself into his arms and lay there in a swoon. When she recovered her voice, she said: |
| <a id="c11p049"></a>"Évariste, vous êtes beau, vous êtes bon, vous êtes généreux! Dans cette salle, le son de votre voix, mâle et douce, me traversait tout entière de ses ondes magnétiques. J’en étais électrisée. Je vous contemplais à votre banc. Je ne voyais que vous. Mais vous, mon ami, vous n’avez donc pas deviné ma présence? Rien ne vous a averti que j’étais là? Je me tenais dans la tribune, au second rang, à droite. Mon Dieu! qu’il est doux de faire le bien! Vous avez sauvé ce malheureux. Sans vous, c’en était fait de lui: il périssait. Vous l’avez rendu à la vie, à l’amour des siens. En ce moment, il doit vous bénir. Évariste, que je suis heureuse et fière de vous aimer!" | “Évariste, you are handsome, you are good, you are generous! In that chamber the sound of your voice, manly and gentle, sent magnetic waves through my whole body. I was electrified[^c11n18]. I gazed at you on your bench. I saw only you. But you, my friend—did you never guess I was there? Did nothing tell you? I was in the gallery, in the second row on the right. My God, how sweet it is to do good! You saved that unfortunate man. Without you he was done for: he would have died. You have restored him to life and his family’s love. He must be blessing you at this very moment. Évariste, how happy and proud I am to love you!” |
| <a id="c11p050"></a>Se tenant par le bras, serrés l’un contre l’autre, ils allaient par les rues, se sentant si légers qu’ils croyaient voler. | Arm in arm, pressed close together, they walked through the streets, feeling so light that they thought they were flying. |
| <a id="c11p051"></a>Ils allaient à l'*Amour peintre*. Arrivés à l’Oratoire: | They were going to *L’Amour peintre*. When they reached the Oratoire, Élodie said: |
| <a id="c11p052"></a>"Ne passons pas par le magasin", dit Élodie. | “Let’s not go through the shop.” |
| <a id="c11p053"></a>Elle le fit entrer par la porte cochère et monter avec elle à l’appartement. Sur le palier, elle tira de son réticule une grande clef de fer. | She brought him in through the carriage entrance and took him upstairs to the apartment. On the landing she drew a large iron key from her reticule. |
| <a id="c11p054"></a>"On dirait une clef de prison, fit-elle. Évariste, vous allez être mon prisonnier." | “It looks like a prison key,” she said. “Évariste, you are going to be my prisoner[^c11n19].” |
| <a id="c11p055"></a>Ils traversèrent la salle à manger et furent dans la chambre de la jeune fille. | They crossed the dining room and entered the young woman’s bedroom. |
| <a id="c11p056"></a>Évariste sentait sur ses lèvres la fraîcheur ardente des lèvres d’Élodie. Il la pressa dans ses bras. La tête renversée, les yeux mourants, les cheveux répandus, la taille ployée, à demi évanouie, elle lui échappa et courut pousser le verrou.... | On his lips Évariste felt the burning freshness of Élodie’s. He clasped her in his arms. Her head thrown back, her eyes languishing, her hair loose, her body bent, half fainting, she slipped from him and ran to shoot the bolt… |
| <a id="c11p057"></a>La nuit était déjà avancée quand la citoyenne Blaise ouvrit à son amant la porte de l’appartement et lui dit tout bas, dans l’ombre: | It was late at night when Citizen Blaise opened the apartment door for her lover and whispered to him in the darkness: |
| <a id="c11p058"></a>"Adieu, mon amour! C’est l’heure où mon père va rentrer. Si tu entends du bruit dans l’escalier, monte vite à l’étage supérieur et ne descends que quand il n’y aura plus de danger qu’on te voie. Pour te faire ouvrir la porte de la rue, frappe trois coups à la fenêtre de la concierge. Adieu, ma vie, adieu, mon âme!" | “Goodbye, my love! It’s time for my father to come home. If you hear a noise[^c11n20] on the stairs, hurry up to the next floor and don’t come down until there’s no danger of being seen. To have the street door opened, knock three times on the concierge’s window. Goodbye, my life; goodbye, my soul!” |
| <a id="c11p059"></a>Quand il se trouva dans la rue, il vit la fenêtre de la chambre d’Élodie s’entrouvrir et une petite main cueillir un œillet rouge qui tomba à ses pieds comme une goutte de sang. | Once he was in the street he saw Élodie’s bedroom window open a little and a small hand pick a red carnation, which fell at his feet like a drop of blood[^c11n21]. |

### Notes

[^c11n01]: The chapter dates Gamelin’s first sitting to 7 September, whereas Chapter IX says that he took office on 14 September. The discrepancy belongs to the French text; the translation preserves both dates rather than constructing a corrected chronology. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n02]: The former estate’s grand entrance and the attic’s ladder measure Brotteaux’s material fall. His ceremonious welcome remains the same: the passage makes courtesy, rather than possessions or political standing, the surviving element of his former identity. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n03]: Rochemaure understands the lunar comparison without requiring Brotteaux to explain its sexual suggestion. The narrator leaves the allusion discreetly suspended between the conventional moon of love poetry and the bodily object of the lover’s desire. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n04]: The French greluchon is more particular than ‘lover’: the Academy’s 1835 dictionary describes a woman’s secretly favoured lover while other lovers pay her. Henry’s financial dependence appears later, but the term itself chiefly marks sexual preference and an unequal economy. [S114](#S114)

[^c11n05]: Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, was known as Madame Royale. The proposed marriage to Robespierre is Brotteaux’s speculative scenario, not a statement that such a marriage was being negotiated. Louis XVII was the royalist designation for her imprisoned younger brother. [S115](#S115)

[^c11n06]: The French pun depends on the near resemblance of ânes, ‘asses’, and âmes, ‘souls’. Brotteaux presents the insult as a slip of the tongue while ensuring that Rochemaure hears both versions of his judgement on clerical influence. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n07]: The Grands Jours were extraordinary sessions of royal sovereign courts held away from their usual seats. The Chambre ardente associated with Louis XIV was the exceptional court of the poison affair. Brotteaux likens revolutionary justice to the monarchy’s instruments of political security. [S116](#S116) [S117](#S117)

[^c11n08]: Brotteaux’s objection to Shakespeare is itself a judgement of taste. He treats the mixture of tragic dignity and low comedy as an English peculiarity, while his comparison exposes the Tribunal’s equal jurisdiction over rulers and obscure servants. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n09]: The French cabinet de Saint-James designates the British government, through the royal court’s name. It does not mean that the letter was addressed to a modern cabinet office. The elaborate delivery route is the novel’s account of this particular correspondence. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n10]: The allusion is to the discovery of Achilles, disguised among the women on Skyros, when Ulysses brings weapons and exposes his martial instincts. Ancient representations survive, including the Louvre’s sarcophagus. The heroic comparison heightens the comedy of Henry’s calculated sexual display. [S118](#S118)

[^c11n11]: Exagéré literally suggests someone who goes to excess and here has a revolutionary political sense. It should not automatically be treated as membership of one fixed party: Rochemaure fears that Henry’s excessive militancy will make both his sincerity and her associations suspect. [S119](#S119)

[^c11n12]: The Convention’s Committee of General Security exercised political policing, investigating suspects and overseeing arrests. It was distinct from the Committee of Public Safety. Henry carries the intercepted letter into an institution capable of turning private correspondence into evidence against its writers and subjects. [S120](#S120)

[^c11n13]: The catalogue of coats, trousers, hats and footwear resists a single visual stereotype of revolutionary citizenship. The jury includes craftsmen, professional men and a former aristocrat: political virtue appears to unite people whose clothing continues to mark different habits and histories. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n14]: Cotton wool, an inkblot and worn upholstery arrest Gamelin’s attention before the evidence does. His trained visual acuity and bodily fear are intertwined; later, the accused’s moving thumbs will exert a similar pull on his judgement. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n15]: These apparently approving words introduce the jurors who always convict. France separates benevolent intention from the ability to judge evidence: the reasoners’ lack of passion, ordinarily a reproach, becomes a possible protection for the accused. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n16]: The verdict precedes the appearance of innocence. Guillergues’s face changes when fear recedes, and the spectators then read it as confirmation of their judgement. The narration leaves the reader to distinguish acquittal for want of proof from positive knowledge of innocence. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n17]: This number and the account of four simultaneously sitting divisions are retained as France gives them. Because the surrounding chapters supply conflicting September dates, this scene should not be used as a securely dated statistical record of the Tribunal’s business. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n18]: Élodie’s magnetic waves make the public performance of justice bodily and erotic. Her claim that Gamelin alone saved the prisoner also turns a narrow collective vote into the personal triumph of the man she loves. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n19]: The lovers translate the day’s judicial language into a consensual erotic game: the key, the prisoner and the bolt connect bedroom and court. This figurative captivity acquires a darker resonance as judicial imprisonment develops elsewhere in the novel. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n20]: Here Élodie uses the intimate French tu, after addressing Gamelin as vous in the courtyard. English ‘you’ cannot reproduce that grammatical change; its new intimacy is carried by the endearments and the scene that precedes it. [S113](#S113)

[^c11n21]: The red carnation closes the consummation scene with an image of bodily danger. It joins erotic fulfilment to the Tribunal’s violence without requiring the narrator to state an explicit prediction. [S113](#S113)

<a id="chapter-12"></a>

## XII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c12p001"></a>Un soir que le vieux Brotteaux portait douze douzaines de pantins au citoyen Caillou, rue de la Loi, le marchand de jouets, doux et poli d’ordinaire, lui fit, au milieu de ses poupées et de ses polichinelles, un accueil malgracieux. | One evening, when old Brotteaux brought twelve dozen jumping jacks to Citizen Caillou in the Rue de la Loi, the toy dealer, usually gentle and polite, received him ungraciously amid his dolls and Punches. |
| <a id="c12p002"></a>"Prenez garde, citoyen Brotteaux, lui dit-il, prenez garde! Ce n’est pas toujours le temps de rire; les plaisanteries ne sont pas toutes bonnes: un membre du Comité de sûreté de la section, qui a visité hier mon établissement, a vu vos pantins et les a trouvés contre-révolutionnaires. | “Take care, Citizen Brotteaux,” he said. “Take care! It isn’t always the time for laughter; some jokes are no good at all. A member of the section’s Security Committee[^c12n01] visited my establishment yesterday, saw your jumping jacks and found them counter-revolutionary.” |
| <a id="c12p003"></a>— Il se moquait! dit Brotteaux. | “He was joking!” said Brotteaux. |
| <a id="c12p004"></a>— Nenni, citoyen, nenni. C’est un homme qui ne plaisante pas. Il a dit qu’en ces petits bonshommes la représentation nationale était perfidement contrefaite, qu’on y reconnaissait notamment des caricatures de Couthon, de Saint-Just et de Robespierre, et il les a saisis. C’est une perte sèche pour moi, sans parler des périls où je suis exposé. | “No, Citizen, no. He is a man who does not joke. He said that these little fellows were a treacherous travesty of the nation’s representatives, that caricatures of Couthon, Saint-Just and Robespierre in particular could be recognised among them, and he seized them. It is a dead loss to me, to say nothing of the dangers I am exposed to.” |
| <a id="c12p005"></a>— Quoi! ces Arlequins, ces Gilles, ces Scaramouches, ces Colins et ces Colinettes, que j’ai peints tels que Boucher les peignait il y a cinquante ans, seraient des Couthon et des Saint-Just contrefaits? Il n’y a pas un homme sensé pour le prétendre. | “What! These Harlequins, Gilles, Scaramouches, Colins and Colinettes[^c12n02], which I have painted as Boucher painted them[^c12n03] fifty years ago, are supposed to be travesties of Couthon and Saint-Just? No sensible man could maintain such a thing.” |
| <a id="c12p006"></a>— Il est possible, reprit le citoyen Caillou, que vous ayez agi sans malice, bien qu’il faille toujours se défier d’un homme d’esprit comme vous. Mais le jeu est dangereux. En voulez-vous un exemple? Natoile, qui tient un petit théâtre aux Champs-Élysées, a été arrêté avant-hier pour incivisme, à cause qu’il faisait jouer la Convention par Polichinelle. | “It is possible,” Citizen Caillou went on, “that you acted without malice, though one must always mistrust a witty man like you. But it’s a dangerous game. Would you like an example? Natoile, who runs a little theatre in the Champs-Élysées, was arrested the day before yesterday for lack of civic loyalty, because he had Punch play the Convention.” |
| <a id="c12p007"></a>— Encore un coup, dit Brotteaux, en soulevant la toile qui recouvrait ses petits pendus, regardez ces masques et ces visages, sont-ce d’autres que des personnages de comédie et de bergerie? Comment vous êtes-vous laissé dire, citoyen Caillou, que je jouais la Convention nationale?" | “Once again,” said Brotteaux, lifting the cloth that covered his little hanged men[^c12n04], “look at these masks and faces. Aren’t they simply characters from comedies and pastorals? How could you let yourself be told, Citizen Caillou, that I was making fun of the National Convention?” |
| <a id="c12p008"></a>Brotteaux était surpris. Tout en accordant beaucoup à la sottise humaine, il n’eût pas cru qu’elle en vînt jamais à suspecter ses Scaramouches et ses Colinettes. Il protestait de leur innocence et de la sienne. Mais le citoyen Caillou ne voulait rien entendre. | Brotteaux was surprised. Though he allowed a great deal for human stupidity, he would never have believed it could go so far as to suspect his Scaramouches and Colinettes. He protested their innocence and his own. But Citizen Caillou would hear nothing. |
| <a id="c12p009"></a>"Citoyen Brotteaux, remportez vos pantins. Je vous estime, je vous honore, mais ne veux être ni blâmé ni inquiété à cause de vous. Je respecte la loi. J’entends rester bon citoyen et être traité comme tel. Bonsoir, citoyen Brotteaux; remportez vos pantins." | “Citizen Brotteaux, take your jumping jacks away. I esteem you, I honour you, but I do not wish to be censured or troubled on your account. I respect the law. I intend to remain a good citizen and to be treated as such. Good evening, Citizen Brotteaux. Take your jumping jacks away.” |
| <a id="c12p010"></a>Le vieux Brotteaux reprit le chemin de son logis, portant ses suspects sur l’épaule au bout d’une perche, et moqué par les enfants qui croyaient que c’était le marchand de mort-aux-rats. Ses pensées étaient tristes. Sans doute, il ne vivait pas seulement de ses pantins: il faisait des portraits à vingt sols, sous les portes cochères et dans un tonneau des halles, en compagnie des ravaudeuses, et beaucoup de jeunes garçons, qui partaient pour l’armée, voulaient laisser leur portrait à leur jeune maîtresse. Mais ces petits ouvrages lui donnaient un mal extrême, et il s’en fallait de beaucoup qu’il fît ses portraits aussi bien que ses pantins. Il servait parfois de secrétaire aux dames de la halle, mais c’était se mêler à des complots royalistes et les risques étaient gros. Il se rappela qu’il y avait dans la rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, proche la place ci-devant Vendôme, un autre marchand de jouets, nommé Joly, et il résolut d’aller dès le lendemain lui offrir ce que refusait le pusillanime Caillou. | Old Brotteaux set off home again with his suspects over his shoulder at the end of a pole, mocked by children who thought he was the rat-poison man. His thoughts were sad. Admittedly he did not live by his jumping jacks alone: he drew portraits for twenty sous[^c12n05], in carriage entrances and in a barrel at Les Halles alongside the women who mended clothes, and many young lads leaving for the army wanted to leave their portraits with their young sweethearts. But these little works cost him extreme trouble, and his portraits were very far from being as good as his jumping jacks. Sometimes he acted as secretary to the market women, but that meant becoming involved in royalist plots, and the risks were great. He remembered another toy dealer, Joly, in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, near the former Place Vendôme, and resolved to offer him the next day what the faint-hearted Caillou refused. |
| <a id="c12p011"></a>Une pluie fine vint à tomber. Brotteaux, qui en craignait l’injure pour ses pantins, hâta le pas. Comme il passait le Pont-Neuf, sombre et désert, et tournait le coin de la place de Thionville, il vit à la lueur d’une lanterne, sur une borne, un maigre vieillard qui semblait exténué de fatigue et de faim, et gardait encore un air vénérable. Il était vêtu d’une lévite déchirée, n’avait point de chapeau et semblait âgé de plus de soixante ans. S’étant approché de ce malheureux, Brotteaux reconnut le Père Longuemare, qu’il avait sauvé de la lanterne, six mois en çà, tandis qu’ils faisaient tous deux la queue devant la boulangerie de la rue de Jérusalem. Engagé envers ce religieux par un premier service, Brotteaux s’approcha de lui, s’en fit reconnaître pour le publicain qui s’était trouvé à son côté au milieu de la canaille, un jour de grande disette, et lui demanda s’il ne pourrait point lui être utile. | A fine rain began to fall. Fearing the damage it might do his jumping jacks, Brotteaux quickened his pace. As he crossed the dark, deserted Pont-Neuf and turned the corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the light of a lantern a thin old man on a bollard, apparently exhausted by fatigue and hunger, yet still retaining a venerable air. He wore a torn frock coat, had no hat and looked more than sixty years old. Approaching this unfortunate man, Brotteaux recognised Father Longuemare, whom he had saved from the lamp-post six months before, when they were both queuing outside the bakery in the Rue de Jérusalem. Bound to the religious by the service he had already done him, Brotteaux went up, made himself known as the tax-gatherer[^c12n06] who had stood beside him among the rabble on a day of great scarcity, and asked whether he could be of any use. |
| <a id="c12p012"></a>"Vous paraissez las, mon Père. Prenez une goutte de cordial." | “You look tired, Father. Take a drop of cordial.” |
| <a id="c12p013"></a>Et Brotteaux tira de la poche de sa redingote puce un petit flacon d’eau-de-vie, qui y était avec son Lucrèce. | And from the pocket of his puce greatcoat, where it lay beside his Lucretius, Brotteaux drew a small flask of brandy. |
| <a id="c12p014"></a>"Buvez. Et je vous aiderai à regagner votre domicile." | “Drink. And I’ll help you get home.” |
| <a id="c12p015"></a>Le Père Longuemare repoussa de la main le flacon et s’efforça de se lever. Mais il retomba sur sa borne. | Father Longuemare waved the flask away and tried to rise. But he fell back on his bollard. |
| <a id="c12p016"></a>"Monsieur, dit-il d’une voix faible, mais assurée, depuis trois mois j’habitais Picpus. Averti qu’on était venu m’arrêter chez moi, hier, à cinq heures de relevée, je ne suis pas rentré à mon domicile. Je n’ai point d’asile; j’erre dans les rues et suis un peu fatigué. | “Monsieur,” he said in a weak but steady voice, “I had been living at Picpus for three months. Warned that men had come to arrest me at my home yesterday at five in the afternoon, I did not return. I have no shelter; I wander the streets and am a little tired.” |
| <a id="c12p017"></a>— Eh bien, mon Père, fit Brotteaux, accordez-moi l’honneur de partager mon grenier. | “Well, Father,” said Brotteaux, “do me the honour of sharing my attic.” |
| <a id="c12p018"></a>— Monsieur, dit le Barnabite, vous entendez bien que je suis suspect. | “Monsieur,” said the Barnabite, “you must understand that I am a suspect.” |
| <a id="c12p019"></a>— Je le suis aussi, dit Brotteaux, et mes pantins le sont aussi, ce qui est le pis de tout. Vous les voyez exposés, sous cette mince toile, à la pluie fine qui nous morfond. Car, sachez, mon Père, qu’après avoir été publicain je fabrique des pantins pour subsister." | “So am I,” said Brotteaux, “and so are my jumping jacks, which is the worst of all. You see them exposed, beneath this thin cloth, to the fine rain that chills us to the bone. For you must know, Father, that after being a tax-gatherer I now make jumping jacks to live.” |
| <a id="c12p020"></a>Le Père Longuemare prit la main que lui tendait le ci-devant financier, et accepta l’hospitalité offerte. Brotteaux, en son grenier, lui servit du pain, du fromage et du vin, qu’il avait mis à rafraîchir dans sa gouttière, car il était sybarite. | Father Longuemare took the hand the former financier held out and accepted his hospitality. In his attic Brotteaux served him bread, cheese and wine, which he had put to cool in his gutter, for he was a sybarite[^c12n07]. |
| <a id="c12p021"></a>Ayant apaisé sa faim: | When he had satisfied his hunger: |
| <a id="c12p022"></a>"Monsieur, dit le Père Longuemare, je dois vous informer des circonstances qui ont amené ma fuite et m’ont jeté expirant sur cette borne où vous m’avez trouvé. Chassé de mon couvent, je vivais de la maigre rente que l’Assemblée m’avait faite; je donnais des leçons de latin et de mathématiques et j’écrivais des brochures sur la persécution de l’Église de France. J’ai même composé un ouvrage d’une certaine étendue, pour démontrer que le serment constitutionnel des prêtres est contraire à la discipline ecclésiastique. Les progrès de la Révolution m’ôtèrent tous mes élèves et je ne pouvais toucher ma pension faute d’avoir le certificat de civisme exigé par la loi. C’est ce certificat que j’allai demander à l’Hôtel de Ville, avec la conviction de le mériter. Membre d’un ordre institué par l’apôtre saint Paul lui-même, qui se prévalut du titre de citoyen romain, je me flattais de me conduire, à son imitation, en bon citoyen français, respectueux de toutes les lois humaines qui ne sont pas en opposition avec les lois divines. Je présentai ma requête à monsieur Colin, charcutier et officier municipal, préposé à la délivrance de ces sortes de cartes. Il m’interrogea sur mon état. Je lui dis que j’étais prêtre: il me demanda si j’étais marié, et, sur ma réponse que je ne l’étais pas, il me dit que c’était tant pis pour moi. Enfin, après diverses questions, il me demanda si j’avais prouvé mon civisme le 10 août, le 2 septembre et le 31 mai. "On ne peut donner de certificats", ajouta-t-il, "qu’à ceux qui ont prouvé leur civisme par leur conduite en ces trois occasions". Je ne pus lui faire une réponse qui le satisfît. Toutefois il prit mon nom et mon adresse et me promit de faire promptement une enquête sur mon cas. Il tint parole et c’est en conclusion de son enquête que deux commissaires du Comité de sûreté générale de Picpus, assistés de la force armée, se présentèrent à mon logis en mon absence pour me conduire en prison. Je ne sais de quel crime on m’accuse. Mais convenez qu’il faut plaindre monsieur Colin, dont l’esprit est assez troublé pour reprocher à un ecclésiastique de n’avoir pas montré son civisme le 10 août, le 2 septembre, le 31 mai. Un homme capable d’une telle pensée est bien digne de pitié. | “Monsieur,” Father Longuemare said, “I must tell you the circumstances that led to my flight and left me dying on the bollard where you found me. Driven from my monastery, I lived on the meagre allowance the Assembly had granted me; I gave lessons in Latin and mathematics and wrote pamphlets on the persecution of the Church in France. I even composed a work of some length to show that the priests’ constitutional oath[^c12n08] is contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The progress of the Revolution deprived me of all my pupils, and I could not draw my pension because I lacked the certificate of civic loyalty required by law. It was this certificate that I went to request at the Hôtel de Ville, convinced that I deserved it. As a member of an order instituted by the apostle Saint Paul himself[^c12n09], who invoked his standing as a Roman citizen[^c12n10], I flattered myself that, in imitation of him, I behaved as a good French citizen, respecting all human laws that do not conflict with divine laws. I presented my request to Monsieur Colin, a pork butcher and municipal officer responsible for issuing such cards. He questioned me about my occupation. I told him I was a priest; he asked whether I was married and, when I said I was not, told me that it was so much the worse for me. Finally, after various questions, he asked whether I had proved my civic loyalty on 10 August, 2 September and 31 May[^c12n11]. ‘Certificates can be given,’ he added, ‘only to those who have proved their civic loyalty by their conduct on those three occasions.’ I could give him no answer that satisfied him. Nevertheless he took my name and address and promised to investigate my case promptly. He kept his word, and it was as the conclusion of his investigation that two commissioners of the Picpus Committee of General Security, supported by armed men, came to my lodgings in my absence to take me to prison. I do not know what crime I am accused of. But you will agree that we must pity Monsieur Colin, whose mind is so troubled that he can reproach a churchman for not having shown his civic loyalty on 10 August, 2 September and 31 May. A man capable of such a thought is indeed worthy of pity.” |
| <a id="c12p023"></a>— Moi non plus, je n’ai point de certificat, dit Brotteaux. Nous sommes tous deux suspects. Mais vous êtes las. Couchez-vous, mon Père. Nous aviserons demain à votre sécurité." | “I have no certificate either,” said Brotteaux. “We are both suspects. But you are tired. Lie down, Father. Tomorrow we will consider how to keep you safe.” |
| <a id="c12p024"></a>Il donna le matelas à son hôte et garda pour lui la paillasse, que le religieux réclama par humilité, avec une telle instance qu’il fallut le satisfaire: il eût, sans cela, couché sur le carreau. | He gave his guest the mattress and kept the straw pallet for himself, but the religious, out of humility, demanded the pallet with such insistence that he had to be satisfied: otherwise he would have slept on the tiles. |
| <a id="c12p025"></a>Ayant terminé ces arrangements, Brotteaux souffla la chandelle par économie et par prudence. | When these arrangements were complete, Brotteaux blew out the candle, from economy and prudence. |
| <a id="c12p026"></a>"Monsieur, lui dit le religieux, je reconnais ce que vous faites pour moi; mais, hélas! il est de peu de conséquence pour vous que je vous en sache gré. Puisse Dieu vous en faire un mérite! Ce serait pour vous d’une conséquence infinie. Mais Dieu ne tient pas compte de ce qui n’est pas fait pour sa gloire et n’est que l’effort d’une vertu purement naturelle. C’est pourquoi je vous supplie, monsieur, de faire pour Lui ce que vous étiez porté à faire pour moi. | “Monsieur,” the religious said to him, “I acknowledge what you are doing for me; but alas, my gratitude is of little consequence to you. May God count it to your credit! That would be of infinite consequence to you. But God takes no account of what is not done for His glory and is merely the effort of a purely natural virtue[^c12n12]. That is why I beg you, Monsieur, to do for Him what you were moved to do for me.” |
| <a id="c12p027"></a>— Mon Père, répondit Brotteaux, ne vous donnez point de souci et ne m’ayez nulle reconnaissance. Ce que je fais en ce moment et dont vous exagérez le mérite, je ne le fais pas pour l’amour de vous: car, enfin, bien que vous soyez aimable, mon Père, je vous connais trop peu pour vous aimer. Je ne le fais pas non plus pour l’amour de l’humanité: car je ne suis pas aussi simple que Don Juan, pour croire, comme lui, que l’humanité a des droits; et ce préjugé, dans un esprit aussi libre que le sien, m’afflige. Je le fais par cet égoïsme qui inspire à l’homme tous les actes de générosité et de dévouement, en le faisant se reconnaître dans tous les misérables, en le disposant à plaindre sa propre infortune dans l’infortune d’autrui et en l’excitant à porter aide à un mortel semblable à lui par la nature et la destinée, jusque-là qu’il croit se secourir lui-même en le secourant. Je le fais encore par désœuvrement: car la vie est à ce point insipide qu’il faut s’en distraire à tout prix et que la bienfaisance est un divertissement assez fade qu’on se donne à défaut d’autres plus savoureux; je le fais par orgueil et pour prendre avantage sur vous; je le fais, enfin, par esprit de système et pour vous montrer de quoi un athée est capable. | “Father,” Brotteaux replied, “do not trouble yourself or feel any gratitude towards me. What I am doing now, and whose merit you exaggerate, I am not doing for love of you: for after all, though you are amiable, Father, I know you too little to love you. Nor am I doing it for love of humanity: for I am not so simple as Don Juan[^c12n13] as to believe, like him, that humanity has rights; and that prejudice in so free a mind as his distresses me. I do it from that selfishness which inspires all men’s acts of generosity and devotion, making a man recognise himself in everyone who suffers, disposing him to pity his own misfortune in the misfortune of others and urging him to help a mortal like himself in nature and destiny, until he believes that by helping the other he is helping himself. I do it from idleness too: for life is so insipid that one must distract oneself at any cost, and beneficence is a rather dull diversion one allows oneself for want of more savoury pleasures. I do it from pride, to gain an advantage over you; finally, I do it in support of my system of thought, to show you what an atheist is capable of.” |
| <a id="c12p028"></a>— Ne vous calomniez point, monsieur, répondit le Père Longuemare. J’ai reçu de Dieu plus de grâces qu’il ne vous en a accordées jusqu’à cette heure; mais je vaux moins que vous, et vous suis bien inférieur en mérites naturels. Permettez-moi cependant de prendre aussi sur vous un avantage. Ne me connaissant pas, vous ne pouvez m’aimer. Et moi, monsieur, sans vous connaître, je vous aime plus que moi-même: Dieu me l’ordonne." | “Do not slander yourself, Monsieur,” Father Longuemare replied. “I have received more graces from God than He has granted you until now; but I am worth less than you and am far inferior to you in natural merit. Allow me, however, to gain an advantage over you in my turn. Not knowing me, you cannot love me. But I, Monsieur, without knowing you, love you more than myself: God commands me to[^c12n14].” |
| <a id="c12p029"></a>Ayant ainsi parlé, le Père Longuemare s’agenouilla sur le carreau, et, après avoir récité ses prières, s’étendit sur sa paillasse et s’endormit paisiblement. | Having spoken thus, Father Longuemare knelt on the tiles and, after reciting his prayers, lay down on his straw pallet and peacefully fell asleep. |

### Notes

[^c12n01]: This is a local section committee, not the Convention’s national Committee of General Security encountered in Chapter XI. The toy dealer’s anxiety shows how suspicion can pass through neighbourhood institutions and enter ordinary commercial dealings. [S034](#S034)

[^c12n02]: The list mixes stock comic figures with the conventional names of pastoral shepherds and shepherdesses. Brotteaux’s defence rests on their familiar, apparently innocent repertory; the official’s interpretation turns inherited theatrical types into likenesses of living politicians. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n03]: Barbier’s chronicle of the 1746 jumping-jack craze specifically mentions figures painted by Boucher. Brotteaux’s claim thus has a historical basis. His defence nevertheless depends on inherited comic and pastoral imagery remaining innocent of contemporary political meanings. [S122](#S122)

[^c12n04]: The suspension strings briefly make the toys resemble executed bodies. Soon afterwards Brotteaux calls them ‘suspects’. France lets a comic object acquire the legal and physical vulnerability of its maker without abandoning the literal mechanics of the toy. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n05]: The French uses sols, an older form of sous. These are units of account, not a modern price equivalent. The payment is retained in its historical denomination; the passage’s contrast concerns the labour the portraits cost Brotteaux and the livelihood the toys had provided. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n06]: Publicain means a collector of taxes, with the biblical association of a socially despised occupation. Brotteaux uses it self-mockingly for his former financial career; the term also brings a scriptural vocabulary into his friendship with a priest. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n07]: The luxurious gesture consists only of cooling wine in a gutter. As with his formal attic hospitality, Brotteaux’s taste survives the loss of wealth and converts an improvised convenience into a small act of civilisation. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n08]: The Civil Constitution of the Clergy reorganised the French Church in 1790. Clergy were required to swear fidelity to the new constitutional order; refusal became a major division within the Church. Longuemare presents his resistance as obedience to ecclesiastical discipline. [S123](#S123)

[^c12n09]: Longuemare claims an apostolic founder, but the Barnabite order was founded in sixteenth-century Milan and approved in 1533. Saint Paul is its patron, not its historical founder. The character’s assertion is preserved; the order’s own history supplies the distinction. [S124](#S124)

[^c12n10]: In Acts 22:25–29 Paul invokes his Roman citizenship when threatened with a flogging without trial; the officials retreat. Longuemare appeals to this precedent to reconcile religious allegiance and civil rights, though his encounter with the municipality produces the opposite result. [S125](#S125)

[^c12n11]: The dates evoke the overthrow of the monarchy on 10 August 1792, the September 1792 prison massacres, and the rising against the Girondins beginning on 31 May 1793. Colin demands proof of militancy at moments whose violence makes the priest’s participation especially incongruous. [S126](#S126) [S127](#S127) [S128](#S128)

[^c12n12]: Longuemare distinguishes admirable human conduct from conduct directed towards God, on which he makes spiritual merit depend. The conversation does not erase this theological difference; hospitality and mutual esteem continue in its presence. [S121](#S121)

[^c12n13]: In Molière’s Dom Juan, III.2, the libertine gives a poor man money ‘for love of humanity’ after failing to make him swear. Brotteaux regards even this secular moral principle as an unnecessary belief, while his own conduct repeats the charitable act. [S129](#S129)

[^c12n14]: Each man offers his account of goodness as a friendly advantage over the other. Brotteaux’s theory of selfishness and Longuemare’s obedience to divine love produce the same practical result: a vulnerable stranger receives food and shelter. [S121](#S121)

<a id="chapter-13"></a>

## XIII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c13p001"></a>Évariste Gamelin siégeait au Tribunal pour la deuxième fois. Avant l’ouverture de l’audience il s’entretenait, avec ses collègues du jury, des nouvelles arrivées le matin. Il y en avait d’incertaines et de fausses; mais ce qu’on pouvait retenir était terrible. Les armées coalisées, maîtresses de toutes les routes, marchant d’ensemble, la Vendée victorieuse, Lyon insurgé, Toulon livré aux Anglais, qui y débarquaient quatorze mille hommes. | Évariste Gamelin was sitting in the Tribunal for the second time. Before the hearing opened, he discussed the news that had arrived that morning with his fellow jurors. Some of it was uncertain or false; but what could be accepted was terrible. The allied armies controlled all the roads and were advancing together; the Vendée was victorious, Lyon in revolt; Toulon had been handed over to the English[^c13n01], who were landing fourteen thousand men there. |
| <a id="c13p002"></a>C’était autant pour ces magistrats des faits domestiques que des événements intéressant le monde entier. Sûrs de périr si la patrie périssait, ils faisaient du salut public leur affaire propre. Et l’intérêt de la nation, confondu avec le leur, dictait leurs sentiments, leurs passions, leur conduite. | For these magistrates such things were as much domestic concerns as events affecting the entire world. Certain that they would perish if the country perished, they made public safety their own private business[^c13n02]. And the national interest, merged with their own, dictated their feelings, their passions and their conduct. |
| <a id="c13p003"></a>Gamelin reçut à son banc une lettre de Trubert, secrétaire du Comité de défense; c’était l’avis de sa nomination de commissaire des poudres et des salpêtres. | On his bench Gamelin received a letter from Trubert, secretary of the Defence Committee, notifying him of his appointment as commissioner for gunpowder and saltpetre. |
| <a id="c13p003a"></a>*Tu fouilleras toutes les caves de la section pour en extraire les substances nécessaires à la fabrication de la poudre. L’ennemi sera peut-être demain devant Paris: il faut que le sol de la patrie nous fournisse la foudre que nous lancerons à ses agresseurs. Je t’envoie ci-contre une instruction de la Convention relative au traitement des salpêtres. Salut et fraternité.* | *You will search every cellar in the section[^c13n03] to extract the substances needed to make gunpowder. The enemy may be outside Paris tomorrow: the soil of the country must supply the thunderbolt we shall hurl at its aggressors. I enclose an instruction from the Convention on the treatment of saltpetre. Greetings and fraternity.* |
| <a id="c13p004"></a>A ce moment, l’accusé fut introduit. C’était un des derniers de ces généraux vaincus que la Convention livrait au Tribunal, et le plus obscur. A sa vue, Gamelin frissonna: il croyait revoir ce militaire que, mêlé au public, il avait vu, trois semaines auparavant, juger et envoyer à la guillotine. C’était le même homme, l’air têtu, borné: ce fut le même procès. Il répondait d’une façon sournoise et brutale qui gâtait ses meilleures réponses. Ses chicanes, ses arguties, les accusations dont il chargeait ses subordonnés, faisaient oublier qu’il accomplissait la tâche respectable de défendre son honneur et sa vie. Dans cette affaire tout était incertain, contesté, position des armées, nombre des effectifs, munitions, ordres donnés, ordres reçus, mouvements des troupes: on ne savait rien. Personne ne comprenait rien à ces opérations confuses, absurdes, sans but, qui avaient abouti à un désastre, personne, pas plus le défenseur et l’accusé lui-même que l’accusateur, les juges et les jurés, et, chose étrange, personne n’avouait à autrui ni à soi-même qu’il ne comprenait pas. Les juges se plaisaient à faire des plans, à disserter sur la tactique et la stratégie; l’accusé trahissait ses dispositions naturelles pour la chicane. | At that moment the accused was brought in. He was one of the last of those defeated generals whom the Convention handed over to the Tribunal, and the most obscure. Gamelin shuddered at the sight of him: he seemed to be seeing again the officer whom, from among the spectators, he had watched being tried and sent to the guillotine three weeks earlier. It was the same man[^c13n04], with the same stubborn, narrow look; it was the same trial. His sly, brutal manner of answering spoiled his best replies. His quibbles, his sophistries and his accusations against his subordinates made one forget that he was performing the respectable task of defending his honour and his life. Everything in the case was uncertain, disputed: the armies’ positions, their strength, ammunition, orders given, orders received, troop movements—nothing was known. No one understood these confused, absurd, aimless operations that had ended in disaster: no one, neither counsel for the defence and the accused himself nor the prosecutor, judges and jurors. And strangely, no one admitted, to anyone else or to himself, that he did not understand. The judges enjoyed devising plans and discoursing on tactics and strategy; the accused betrayed his natural bent for wrangling. |
| <a id="c13p005"></a>On disputait sans fin. Et Gamelin, durant ces débats, voyait sur les âpres routes du Nord les caissons embourbés et les canons renversés dans les ornières, et, par tous les chemins, défiler en désordre les colonnes vaincues, tandis que la cavalerie ennemie débouchait de toutes parts par les défilés abandonnés. Et il entendait de cette armée trahie monter une immense clameur qui accusait le général. A la clôture des débats, l’ombre emplissait la salle, et la figure indistincte de Marat apparaissait comme un fantôme sur la tête du président. Le jury appelé à se prononcer était partagé. Gamelin d’une voix sourde, qui s’étranglait dans sa gorge, mais d’un ton résolu, déclara l’accusé coupable de trahison envers la République, et un murmure approbateur, qui s’éleva dans la foule, vint caresser sa jeune vertu. L’arrêt fut lu aux flambeaux, dont la lueur livide tremblait sur les tempes creuses du condamné où l’on voyait perler la sueur. A la sortie, sur les degrés où grouillait la foule des commères encocardées, tandis qu’il entendait murmurer son nom, que les habitués du Tribunal commençaient à connaître, Gamelin fut assailli par des tricoteuses qui, lui montrant le poing, réclamaient la tête de l’Autrichienne. | The arguments went on endlessly. During the hearing Gamelin saw the ammunition wagons mired on the rough roads of the North, the guns overturned in the ruts, the defeated columns streaming in disorder along every road, while enemy cavalry poured out on all sides through the abandoned passes. From that betrayed army he heard an immense clamour rising to accuse the general. When the hearing closed, shadow filled the chamber, and the indistinct figure of Marat appeared like a ghost above the president’s head. The jury, called on to give its verdict, was divided. In a muffled voice that caught in his throat, but with a resolute tone, Gamelin declared the accused guilty of treason against the Republic. An approving murmur rose from the crowd to caress his youthful virtue[^c13n05]. The sentence was read by torchlight, whose livid gleam trembled over the condemned man’s hollow temples, where beads of sweat could be seen. As he went out, on the steps swarming with women in cockades, hearing his name murmured by the Tribunal’s regular spectators who were beginning to know it, Gamelin was beset by women knitters who shook their fists at him and demanded the Austrian woman’s head. |
| <a id="c13p006"></a>Le lendemain, Évariste eut à se prononcer sur le sort d’une pauvre femme, la veuve Meyrion, porteuse de pain. Elle allait par les rues poussant une petite voiture et portant, pendue à sa taille, une planchette de bois blanc à laquelle elle faisait avec son couteau des coches qui représentaient le compte des pains qu’elle avait livrés. Son gain était de huit sous par jour. Le substitut de l’accusateur public se montra d’une étrange violence à l’égard de cette malheureuse, qui avait, paraît-il, crié: "Vive le roi!" à plusieurs reprises, tenu des propos contre-révolutionnaires dans les maisons où elle allait porter le pain de chaque jour, et trempé dans une conspiration qui avait pour objet l’évasion de la femme Capet. Interrogée par le juge, elle reconnut les faits qui lui étaient imputés; soit simplicité, soit fanatisme, elle professa des sentiments royalistes d’une grande exaltation et se perdit elle-même. | The next day Évariste had to decide the fate of a poor woman, Widow Meyrion, who delivered bread. She went through the streets pushing a little cart, with a small tally board of plain wood[^c13n06] hanging at her waist, on which she cut notches with her knife to record the loaves she had delivered. She earned eight sous a day. The deputy public prosecutor showed extraordinary violence towards this unfortunate woman, who had apparently shouted ‘Long live the king!’ several times, made counter-revolutionary remarks in the houses where she delivered the daily bread, and taken part in a conspiracy to free the woman Capet. Questioned by the judge, she acknowledged the acts she was charged with; whether from simple-mindedness or fanaticism, she professed royalist feelings of great intensity and brought about her own ruin. |
| <a id="c13p007"></a>Le Tribunal révolutionnaire faisait triompher l’égalité en se montrant aussi sévère pour les portefaix et les servantes que pour les aristocrates et les financiers. Gamelin ne concevait point qu’il en pût être autrement sous un régime populaire. Il eût jugé méprisant, insolent pour le peuple, de l’exclure du supplice. C’eût été le considérer, pour ainsi dire, comme indigne du châtiment. Réservée aux seuls aristocrates, la guillotine lui eût paru une sorte de privilège inique, Gamelin commençait à se faire du châtiment une idée religieuse et mystique, à lui prêter une vertu, des mérites propres. Il pensait qu’on doit la peine aux criminels et que c’est leur faire tort que de les en frustrer. Il déclara la femme Meyrion coupable et digne du châtiment suprême, regrettant seulement que les fanatiques qui l’avaient perdue, plus coupables qu’elle, ne fussent pas là pour partager son sort. | The Revolutionary Tribunal vindicated equality by being as severe towards porters and maidservants as towards aristocrats and financiers. Gamelin could not conceive that it might be otherwise under a popular regime. He would have thought it contemptuous and insolent towards the people to exclude them from execution. It would have been to consider them, so to speak, unworthy of punishment[^c13n07]. Reserved for aristocrats alone, the guillotine would have seemed to him a kind of unjust privilege. Gamelin was beginning to form a religious, mystical idea of punishment, to endow it with a virtue and merits of its own. He thought that punishment was owed to criminals and that to deprive them of it was to wrong them. He declared the woman Meyrion guilty and worthy of the supreme penalty, regretting only that the fanatics who had ruined her, guiltier than she, were not there to share her fate. |
| <a id="c13p008"></a>Évariste se rendait presque chaque soir aux Jacobins, qui se réunissaient dans l’ancienne chapelle des Dominicains, vulgairement nommés Jacobins, rue Honoré. Sur une cour, où s’élevait un arbre de la Liberté, un peuplier, dont les feuilles agitées rendaient un perpétuel murmure, la chapelle, d’un style pauvre et maussade, lourdement coiffée de tuiles, présentait son pignon nu, percé d’un œil-de-bœuf et d’une porte cintrée, que surmontait le drapeau aux couleurs nationales, coiffé du bonnet de la Liberté. Les Jacobins, ainsi que les Cordeliers et les Feuillants, avaient pris la demeure et le nom de moines dispersés. Gamelin, assidu naguère aux séances des Cordeliers, ne retrouvait pas chez les Jacobins les sabots, les carmagnoles, les cris des dantonistes. Dans le club de Robespierre régnait la prudence administrative et la gravité bourgeoise. Depuis que l’Ami du peuple n’était plus, Évariste suivait les leçons de Maximilien, dont la pensée dominait aux Jacobins et, de là, par mille sociétés affiliées, s’étendait sur toute la France. Pendant la lecture du procès-verbal, il promenait ses regards sur les murs nus et tristes, qui, après avoir abrité les fils spirituels du grand inquisiteur de l’hérésie, voyaient assemblés les zélés inquisiteurs des crimes contre la patrie. | Évariste went almost every evening to the Jacobins, who met in the former chapel of the Dominicans, commonly called Jacobins[^c13n08], in the Rue Honoré. Facing a courtyard where a liberty tree grew, a poplar whose stirring leaves made a perpetual murmur, the chapel, poor and sullen in style and heavily capped with tiles, presented its bare gable, pierced by a round window and an arched door. Above it hung the flag in the national colours, crowned with the cap of Liberty. Like the Cordeliers and the Feuillants, the Jacobins had taken both the dwelling and the name of dispersed monks. Gamelin, once a regular at the Cordeliers’ meetings, did not find among the Jacobins the clogs, the carmagnoles and the cries of the Dantonists. Administrative caution and bourgeois gravity reigned in Robespierre’s club. Since the Friend of the People was no more, Évariste followed the teachings of Maximilien, whose thought ruled the Jacobins and, from there, spread throughout France through a thousand affiliated societies. While the minutes were read, he let his eyes wander over the bare, gloomy walls which, after sheltering the spiritual sons of the great inquisitor of heresy[^c13n09], now saw the zealous inquisitors of crimes against the country assembled within them. |
| <a id="c13p009"></a>Là se tenait sans pompe et s’exerçait par la parole le plus grand des pouvoirs de l’État. Il gouvernait la cité, l’empire, dictait ses décrets à la Convention. Ces artisans du nouvel ordre de choses, si respectueux de la loi qu’ils demeuraient royalistes en 1791 et le voulaient être encore au retour de Varennes, par un attachement opiniâtre à la Constitution, amis de l’ordre établi, même après les massacres du Champ-de-Mars, et jamais révolutionnaires contre la révolution, étrangers aux mouvements populaires, nourrissaient dans leur âme sombre et puissante un amour de la patrie qui avait enfanté quatorze armées et dressé la guillotine. Évariste admirait en eux la vigilance, l’esprit soupçonneux, la pensée dogmatique, l’amour de la règle, l’art de dominer, une impériale sagesse. | Here, without pomp and through the exercise of speech, the greatest power in the State held its sessions. It governed the city and the empire, dictated the Convention’s decrees. These makers of the new order, so respectful of the law that they had remained royalists in 1791 and wished to remain so even after the return from Varennes, out of stubborn attachment to the Constitution; friends of the established order even after the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars[^c13n10]; never revolutionaries against the revolution; strangers to popular movements—these men nourished in their dark and powerful souls a love of country that had brought forth fourteen armies and raised the guillotine. Évariste admired their vigilance, their suspicious spirit, their dogmatic thought, their love of rules, their art of domination, their imperial wisdom. |
| <a id="c13p010"></a>Le public qui composait la salle ne faisait entendre qu’un frémissement unanime et régulier, comme le feuillage de l’arbre de la Liberté qui s’élevait sur le seuil. | The audience filling the chamber produced only a unanimous, regular rustle, like the foliage of the liberty tree standing at the entrance. |
| <a id="c13p011"></a>Ce jour-là, 11 vendémiaire, un homme jeune, le front fuyant, le regard perçant, le nez en pointe, le menton aigu, le visage grêlé, l’air froid, monta lentement à la tribune. Il était poudré à frimas et portait un habit bleu qui lui marquait la taille. Il avait ce maintien compassé, tenait cette allure mesurée qui faisait dire aux uns, en se moquant, qu’il ressemblait à un maître à danser et qui le faisait saluer par d’autres du nom d'"Orphée français". Robespierre prononça d’une voix claire un discours éloquent contre les ennemis de la République. Il frappa d’arguments métaphysiques et terribles Brissot et ses complices. Il parla longtemps, avec abondance, avec harmonie. Planant dans les sphères célestes de la philosophie, il lançait la foudre sur les conspirateurs qui rampaient sur le sol. | That day, 11 Vendémiaire, a young man with a receding forehead, piercing eyes, pointed nose and sharp chin, his face pockmarked, his manner cold, slowly mounted the tribune. His hair was thickly powdered and he wore a blue coat that showed his waist. He had that studied bearing, that measured gait, which made some mockingly say that he resembled a dancing master and others salute him as the ‘French Orpheus[^c13n11]’. In a clear voice Robespierre delivered an eloquent speech against the enemies of the Republic. He struck Brissot and his accomplices with terrible, metaphysical arguments. He spoke at length, fluently, harmoniously. Soaring through the heavenly spheres of philosophy, he hurled thunderbolts at the conspirators crawling on the earth. |
| <a id="c13p012"></a>Évariste entendit et comprit. Jusque-là, il avait accusé la Gironde de préparer la restauration de la monarchie ou le triomphe de la faction d’Orléans et de méditer la ruine de la ville héroïque qui avait délivré la France et qui délivrerait un jour l’univers. Maintenant, à la voix du sage, il découvrait des vérités plus hautes et plus pures; il concevait une métaphysique révolutionnaire, qui élevait son esprit au-dessus des grossières contingences, à l’abri des erreurs des sens, dans la région des certitudes absolues. Les choses sont par elles-mêmes mélangées et pleines de confusion; la complexité des faits est telle qu’on s’y perd. Robespierre les lui simplifiait, lui présentait le bien et le mal en des formules simples et claires. Fédéralisme, indivisibilité: dans l’unité et l’indivisibilité était le salut; dans le fédéralisme, la damnation. Gamelin goûtait la joie profonde d’un croyant qui sait le mot qui sauve et le mot qui perd. Désormais le Tribunal révolutionnaire, comme autrefois les tribunaux ecclésiastiques, connaîtrait du crime absolu, du crime verbal. Et, parce qu’il avait l’esprit religieux, Évariste recevait ces révélations avec un sombre enthousiasme; son cœur s’exaltait et se réjouissait à l’idée que désormais, pour discerner le crime et l’innocence, il possédait un symbole. Vous tenez lieu de tout, ô trésors de la foi! | Évariste heard and understood. Until then he had accused the Gironde of preparing the restoration of the monarchy or the triumph of the Orléans faction, and of plotting the ruin of the heroic city that had freed France and would one day free the universe. Now, at the sage’s voice, he discovered higher, purer truths; he apprehended a revolutionary metaphysics that raised his mind above gross contingencies, sheltered from the errors of the senses, into the realm of absolute certainties. Things in themselves are mixed and full of confusion; the complexity of facts is such that one loses one’s way among them. Robespierre simplified them for him, presenting good and evil in simple, clear formulas. Federalism, indivisibility[^c13n12]: in unity and indivisibility lay salvation; in federalism, damnation. Gamelin tasted the deep joy of a believer who knows the word that saves and the word that destroys. Henceforth the Revolutionary Tribunal, like the ecclesiastical courts of old, would take cognisance of absolute crime, of verbal crime. And because he had a religious cast of mind, Évariste received these revelations with a sombre enthusiasm; his heart exalted and rejoiced at the thought that henceforth he possessed a creed[^c13n13] by which to distinguish crime from innocence. You take the place of everything, O treasures of faith! |
| <a id="c13p013"></a>Le sage Maximilien l’éclairait aussi sur les intentions perfides de ceux qui voulaient égaliser les biens et partager les terres, supprimer la richesse et la pauvreté et établir pour tous la médiocrité heureuse. Séduit par leurs maximes, il avait d’abord approuvé leurs desseins qu’il jugeait conformes aux principes d’un vrai républicain. Mais Robespierre, par ses discours aux Jacobins, lui avait révélé leurs menées et découvert que ces hommes, dont les intentions paraissaient pures, tendaient à la subversion de la République, et n’alarmaient les riches que pour susciter à l’autorité légitime de puissants et implacables ennemis. En effet, sitôt la propriété menacée, la population tout entière, d’autant plus attachée à ses biens qu’elle en possédait peu, se retournait brusquement contre la République. Alarmer les intérêts, c’est conspirer. Sous apparence de préparer le bonheur universel et le règne de la justice, ceux qui proposaient comme un objet digne de l’effort des citoyens l’égalité et la communauté des biens étaient des traîtres et des scélérats plus dangereux que les fédéralistes. | The wise Maximilien also enlightened him on the treacherous intentions of those who wished to equalise possessions and divide the land, abolish wealth and poverty and establish a happy modest sufficiency for all. Seduced by their maxims, he had at first approved their designs, which he judged consistent with the principles of a true republican. But through his speeches at the Jacobins Robespierre had revealed their intrigues to him and shown that these men, whose intentions seemed pure, aimed at subverting the Republic, and alarmed the rich only to raise powerful and implacable enemies against the legitimate authority. Indeed, as soon as property was threatened, the entire population, all the more attached to its possessions for having so little, turned abruptly against the Republic. To alarm vested interests is to conspire[^c13n14]. Under the appearance of preparing universal happiness and the reign of justice, those who proposed equality and common ownership as an object worthy of the citizens’ efforts were traitors and villains more dangerous than the federalists. |
| <a id="c13p014"></a>Mais la plus grande révélation que lui eût apportée la sagesse de Robespierre, c’était les crimes et les infamies de l’athéisme. Gamelin n’avait jamais nié l’existence de Dieu; il était déiste et croyait à une providence qui veille sur les hommes; mais, s’avouant qu’il ne concevait que très indistinctement l’Être suprême et très attaché à la liberté de conscience, il admettait volontiers que d’honnêtes gens pussent, à l’exemple de Lamettrie, de Boulanger, du baron d’Holbach, de Lalande, d’Helvétius, du citoyen Dupuis, nier l’existence de Dieu, à la charge d’établir une morale naturelle et de retrouver en eux-mêmes les sources de la justice et les règles d’une vie vertueuse. Il s’était même senti en sympathie avec les athées, quand il les avait vus injuriés ou persécutés. Maximilien lui avait ouvert l’esprit et dessillé les yeux. Par son éloquence vertueuse, ce grand homme lui avait révélé le vrai caractère de l’athéisme, sa nature, ses intentions, ses effets; il lui avait démontré que cette doctrine, formée dans les salons et les boudoirs de l’aristocratie, était la plus perfide invention que les ennemis du peuple eussent imaginée pour le démoraliser et l’asservir; qu’il était criminel d’arracher du cœur des malheureux la pensée consolante d’une providence rémunératrice et de les livrer sans guide et sans frein aux passions qui dégradent l’homme et en font un vil esclave, et qu’enfin l’épicurisme monarchique d’un Helvétius conduisait à l’immoralité, à la cruauté, à tous les crimes. Et, depuis que les leçons d’un grand citoyen l’avaient instruit, il exécrait les athées, surtout lorsqu’ils l’étaient d’un cœur ouvert et joyeux, comme le vieux Brotteaux. | But the greatest revelation Robespierre’s wisdom had brought him concerned the crimes and infamies of atheism. Gamelin had never denied God’s existence; he was a deist[^c13n15] and believed in a providence that watched over men. Yet, admitting that he conceived the Supreme Being only very indistinctly, and strongly attached to freedom of conscience, he readily allowed that honest men might follow La Mettrie, Boulanger, Baron d’Holbach, Lalande, Helvétius and Citizen Dupuis in denying God’s existence, provided they established a natural morality and found within themselves the sources of justice and the rules of a virtuous life. He had even sympathised with atheists when he saw them insulted or persecuted. Maximilien had opened his understanding and unsealed his eyes. Through his virtuous eloquence this great man had revealed to him the true character of atheism, its nature, intentions and effects. He had demonstrated that this doctrine, formed in the salons and boudoirs of the aristocracy, was the most treacherous invention the people’s enemies had conceived[^c13n16] to demoralise and enslave them; that it was criminal to tear from the hearts of the unfortunate the consoling thought of a providence that rewarded virtue, and to abandon them, without guide or restraint, to the passions that degrade a man and make him a vile slave; and finally that the monarchical Epicureanism of a Helvétius led to immorality, cruelty and every crime. Since the lessons of a great citizen had instructed him, he abhorred atheists, especially when they were open-hearted and cheerful, like old Brotteaux. |
| <a id="c13p015"></a>Dans les jours qui suivirent, Évariste eut à juger, coup sur coup, un ci-devant convaincu d’avoir détruit des grains pour affamer le peuple, trois émigrés qui étaient revenus fomenter la guerre civile en France, deux filles du Palais-Égalité, quatorze conspirateurs bretons, femmes, vieillards, adolescents, maîtres et serviteurs. Le crime était avéré, la loi formelle. Parmi les coupables se trouvait une femme de vingt ans, parée des splendeurs de la jeunesse sous les ombres de sa fin prochaine, charmante. Un nœud bleu retenait ses cheveux d’or, son fichu de linon découvrait un cou blanc et flexible. | In the following days Évariste had to judge in quick succession a former aristocrat convicted of destroying grain to starve the people, three émigrés who had returned to foment civil war in France, two prostitutes from the Palais-Égalité, fourteen Breton conspirators—women, old men, adolescents, masters and servants. The crime was established, the law explicit. Among the guilty was a woman of twenty, adorned with all the splendours of youth beneath the shadows of her approaching end, enchanting. A blue ribbon held her golden hair; her lawn fichu revealed a white, supple neck. |
| <a id="c13p016"></a>Évariste opina constamment pour la mort, et tous les accusés, à l’exception d’un vieux jardinier, furent envoyés à l’échafaud. | Évariste invariably voted for death, and all the accused except an old gardener were sent to the scaffold. |
| <a id="c13p017"></a>La semaine suivante, Évariste et sa section fauchèrent quarante-cinq hommes et dix-huit femmes. | The following week Évariste and his division mowed down forty-five men and eighteen women. |
| <a id="c13p018"></a>Les juges du Tribunal révolutionnaire ne faisaient pas de distinction entre les hommes et les femmes, inspirés en cela par un principe aussi ancien que la justice même. Et, si le président Montané, touché par le courage et la beauté de Charlotte Corday, avait tenté de la sauver en altérant la procédure, et y avait perdu son siège, les femmes, le plus souvent, étaient interrogées sans faveur, d’après la règle commune à tous les tribunaux. Les jurés les craignaient, se défiaient de leurs ruses, de leur habitude de feindre, de leurs moyens de séduction. Égalant les hommes en courage, elles invitaient par là le Tribunal à les traiter comme les hommes. La plupart de ceux qui les jugeaient, médiocrement sensuels ou sensuels à leurs heures, n’en étaient nullement troublés. Ils condamnaient ou acquittaient ces femmes selon leur conscience, leurs préjugés, leur zèle, leur amour mol ou violent de la République. Elles se montraient presque toutes soigneusement coiffées et mises avec autant de recherche que leur permettait leur malheureux état. Mais il y en avait peu de jeunes, moins encore de jolies. La prison et les soucis les avaient flétries, le jour cru de la salle trahissait leur fatigue, leurs angoisses, accusait leurs paupières flétries, leur teint couperosé, leurs lèvres blanches et contractées. Pourtant le fatal fauteuil reçut plus d’une fois une femme jeune, belle dans sa pâleur, alors qu’une ombre funèbre, pareille aux voiles de la volupté, noyait ses regards. A cette vue, que des jurés se soient ou attendris ou irrités; que, dans le secret de ses sens dépravés, un de ces magistrats ait scruté les secrets les plus intimes de cette créature qu’il se représentait à la fois vivante et morte, et que, en remuant des images voluptueuses et sanglantes, il se soit donné le plaisir atroce de livrer au bourreau ce corps désiré, c’est ce que, peut-être, on doit taire, mais qu’on ne peut nier, si l’on connaît les hommes. Évariste Gamelin, artiste froid et savant, ne reconnaissait de beauté qu’à l’antique, et la beauté lui inspirait moins de trouble que de respect. Son goût classique avait de telles sévérités qu’il trouvait rarement une femme à son gré; il était insensible aux charmes d’un joli visage autant qu’à la couleur de Fragonard et aux formes de Boucher. Il n’avait jamais connu le désir que dans l’amour profond. | The judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal made no distinction between men and women, guided in this by a principle as old as justice itself. And if President Montané, touched by Charlotte Corday’s courage and beauty, had tried to save her by altering the procedure[^c13n17] and had lost his seat for it, women were most often questioned without favour, under the rule common to all courts. The jurors feared them, distrusted their tricks, their habit of pretending, their powers of seduction. Their courage equalled men’s, and thus invited the Tribunal to treat them like men. Most of those who judged them, little given to sensuality or sensual only at certain times, were not disturbed by them at all. They condemned or acquitted these women according to their conscience, their prejudices, their zeal, their mild or violent love of the Republic. Almost all appeared with their hair carefully dressed and their clothing as elaborate as their unhappy condition allowed. But few were young and fewer still pretty. Prison and care had withered them; the chamber’s harsh light betrayed their fatigue and anguish, accentuating their faded eyelids, their blotched complexions, their pale, contracted lips. Yet more than once the fatal armchair received a young woman, beautiful in her pallor[^c13n18], while a funereal shadow, like the veils of sensual pleasure, drowned her gaze. That at such a sight jurors may have been softened or enraged; that, in the secrecy of his depraved senses, one of these magistrates may have probed the most intimate secrets of this creature whom he pictured at once living and dead, and that, stirring voluptuous and bloody images within himself, he may have taken the atrocious pleasure of handing this desired body to the executioner—perhaps one ought to be silent about it, but one cannot deny it if one knows mankind. Évariste Gamelin, a cold and learned artist, recognised beauty only in the antique manner, and beauty inspired him less with disturbance than with respect. His classical taste was so severe that he rarely found a woman to his liking; he was as insensible to the charms of a pretty face as to Fragonard’s colour or Boucher’s forms. He had never known desire except in profound love. |
| <a id="c13p019"></a>Comme la plupart de ses collègues du Tribunal, il croyait les femmes plus dangereuses que les hommes. Il haïssait les ci-devant princesses, celles qu’il se figurait, dans ses songes pleins d’horreur, mâchant, avec Élisabeth et l’Autrichienne, des balles pour assassiner les patriotes; il haïssait même toutes ces belles amies des financiers, des philosophes et des hommes de lettres, coupables d’avoir joui des plaisirs des sens et de l’esprit et vécu dans un temps où il était doux de vivre. Il les haïssait sans s’avouer sa haine, et, quand il en avait quelqu’une à juger, il la condamnait par ressentiment, croyant la condamner avec justice pour le salut public. Et son honnêteté, sa pudeur virile, sa froide sagesse, son dévouement à l’État, ses vertus enfin, poussaient sous la hache des têtes touchantes. | Like most of his colleagues on the Tribunal, he thought women more dangerous than men. He hated the former princesses whom, in his dreams full of horror, he pictured chewing bullets[^c13n19] with Élisabeth and the Austrian woman to murder patriots. He even hated all those beautiful friends of financiers, philosophers and men of letters, guilty of having enjoyed the pleasures of the senses and the mind, and of having lived in a time when life was sweet. He hated them without admitting his hatred to himself, and when he had one of them to judge, he condemned her from resentment, believing that he condemned her justly for the public safety. And his honesty, his manly modesty, his cold wisdom, his devotion to the State—his virtues, in short—drove touching heads beneath the axe. |
| <a id="c13p020"></a>Mais qu’est ceci et que signifie ce prodige étrange? Naguère encore il fallait chercher les coupables, s’efforcer de les découvrir dans leur retraite et de leur tirer l’aveu de leur crime. Maintenant, ce n’est plus la chasse avec une multitude de limiers, la poursuite d’une proie timide: voici que de toutes parts s’offrent les victimes. Nobles, vierges, soldats, filles publiques se ruent sur le Tribunal, arrachent aux juges leur condamnation trop lente, réclament la mort comme un droit dont ils sont impatients de jouir. Ce n’est pas assez de cette multitude dont le zèle des délateurs a rempli les prisons et que l’accusateur public et ses acolytes s’épuisent à faire passer devant le Tribunal: il faut pourvoir encore au supplice de ceux qui ne veulent pas attendre. Et tant d’autres, encore plus prompts et plus fiers, enviant leur mort aux juges et aux bourreaux, se frappent de leur propre main! A la fureur de tuer répond la fureur de mourir. Voici, à la Conciergerie, un jeune militaire, beau, vigoureux, aimé; il a laissé dans la prison une amante adorable qui lui a dit: "Vis pour moi!" Il ne veut vivre ni pour elle, ni pour l’amour, ni pour la gloire. Il a allumé sa pipe avec son acte d’accusation. Et, républicain, car il respire la liberté par tous les pores, il se fait royaliste afin de mourir. Le Tribunal s’efforce de l’acquitter; l’accusé est le plus fort; juges et jurés sont obligés de céder. | But what is this, and what does this strange prodigy mean? Only recently the guilty had to be sought out, efforts made to discover them in their hiding places and extract confessions of their crimes. Now it is no longer a hunt with a multitude of bloodhounds, a pursuit of timid prey: victims offer themselves from every side. Noblemen, virgins, soldiers, prostitutes rush upon the Tribunal, wrest from the judges the sentence they are too slow to give, demand death as a right they are impatient to enjoy. It is not enough to deal with the multitude whom the zeal of informers has crowded into the prisons, and whom the public prosecutor and his acolytes exhaust themselves in bringing before the Tribunal: provision must also be made for the execution of those who will not wait. And so many others, still quicker and prouder, begrudging the judges and executioners their death, strike themselves down with their own hands! The fury to kill is answered by the fury to die[^c13n20]. Here, in the Conciergerie, is a young officer, handsome, vigorous, loved; he has left an adorable mistress in prison, who told him, ‘Live for me!’ He will not live for her, or for love, or for glory. He has lit his pipe with his indictment. A republican—for he breathes liberty through every pore—he makes himself a royalist in order to die. The Tribunal struggles to acquit him; the accused is the stronger; judges and jurors are obliged to yield. |
| <a id="c13p021"></a>L’esprit d’Évariste, naturellement inquiet et scrupuleux, s’emplissait, aux leçons des Jacobins et au spectacle de la vie, de soupçons et d’alarmes. A la nuit, en suivant, pour se rendre chez Élodie, les rues mal éclairées, il croyait, par chaque soupirail, apercevoir dans la cave la planche aux faux assignats; au fond de la boutique vide du boulanger ou de l’épicier il devinait des magasins regorgeant de vivres accaparés; à travers les vitres étincelantes des traiteurs, il lui semblait entendre les propos des agioteurs qui préparaient la ruine du pays en vidant des bouteilles de vin de Beaune ou de Chablis; dans les ruelles infectes, il apercevait les filles de joie prêtes à fouler aux pieds la cocarde nationale aux applaudissements de la jeunesse élégante; il voyait partout des conspirateurs et des traîtres. Et il songeait: "République! contre tant d’ennemis secrets ou déclarés, tu n’as qu’un secours. Sainte guillotine, sauve la patrie!..." | Évariste’s mind, naturally anxious and scrupulous, was filling with suspicions and alarms under the teachings of the Jacobins and the spectacle of life. At night, following the poorly lit streets on his way to Élodie’s, he thought he glimpsed through every cellar grating a plate for printing counterfeit assignats; at the back of the baker’s or grocer’s empty shop he divined warehouses overflowing with hoarded food; through the glittering windows of eating houses he seemed to hear the talk of speculators preparing the country’s ruin as they emptied bottles of Beaune or Chablis. In the foul lanes he saw prostitutes ready to trample the national cockade to the applause of fashionable young men. Everywhere he saw conspirators and traitors. And he thought: ‘Republic! Against so many enemies, secret or declared, you have only one recourse. Holy guillotine, save the country![^c13n21]…’ |
| <a id="c13p022"></a>Élodie l’attendait dans sa petite chambre bleue, au-dessus de l'*Amour peintre*. Pour l’avertir qu’il pouvait entrer, elle mettait sur le rebord de la fenêtre son petit arrosoir vert, près du pot d’œillets. Maintenant il lui faisait horreur, il lui apparaissait comme un monstre: elle avait peur de lui et elle l’adorait. Toute la nuit, pressés éperdument l’un contre l’autre, l’amant sanguinaire et la voluptueuse fille se donnaient en silence des baisers furieux. | Élodie waited for him in her little blue room above *L’Amour peintre*. To let him know he could come in, she put her little green watering can on the windowsill beside the pot of carnations. Now he horrified her; he seemed a monster to her: she was afraid of him and adored him[^c13n22]. All night, frantically clasping one another, the bloodthirsty lover and the voluptuous girl exchanged furious kisses in silence. |

### Notes

[^c13n01]: Toulon’s anti-Convention leaders admitted coalition forces in August 1793; the republican siege followed in September–December. France gives the news as the jurors receive it, expressly warning that reports may be uncertain or false. His fourteen thousand should not be treated as an independently verified troop total. [S130](#S130)

[^c13n02]: The phrase joins public duty to self-preservation. The judges’ fear is neither detached patriotism nor simple personal corruption: national survival and their own survival have become indistinguishable, narrowing their ability to judge supposed enemies. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n03]: Saltpetre was recovered from nitrate-bearing earth by leaching and concentrating the liquid. A Convention instruction of 4 December 1793 specifically describes cellar earth. That later document confirms the kind of work demanded here, but cannot simply be identified as Trubert’s enclosure. [S048](#S048)

[^c13n04]: The accused is another general, not the officer already executed. Gamelin’s impression collapses distinct defendants into one repeated figure of defeat; the apparent sameness of the trial replaces knowledge of its particular military facts. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n05]: The approving crowd supplies an emotional reward for conviction. ‘Caress’ makes public applause seductive, anticipating the connection between judicial performance and Élodie’s desire at the end of the chapter. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n06]: The planchette de bois blanc is an inexpensive wooden tally, not necessarily a board painted white. The cuts record deliveries. This material detail fixes the bread carrier’s work and low earnings before political accusations absorb her individual circumstances. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n07]: Gamelin turns equality before the law into entitlement to execution. Brotteaux had criticised the Tribunal’s indiscriminate reach in Chapter XI; here the same practice becomes, in Gamelin’s reasoning, the recognition of popular dignity. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n08]: The religious name derived from the Dominicans’ Paris establishment in the Rue Saint-Jacques. The political club met at a different Dominican house, in the Rue Saint-Honoré. France emphasises the inheritance of religious places and names before developing his comparison between political and religious orthodoxy. [S132](#S132) [S133](#S133)

[^c13n09]: The allusion is to Saint Dominic, founder of the order. The wording belongs to France’s polemical analogy: he makes the club’s political investigations succeed the former occupants’ pursuit of heresy. It should not be mistaken for a precise ecclesiastical office held in that building. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n10]: On 17 July 1791 authorities fired on demonstrators at the Champ-de-Mars who were seeking the king’s removal. The episode followed the royal family’s flight to Varennes and return. It marks a breach between public-order authorities and an emerging republican movement. [S134](#S134) [S135](#S135)

[^c13n11]: Orpheus, the mythical musician whose song could move his hearers, turns Robespierre’s measured eloquence into an almost enchanting power. The dancing-master comparison gives the same precision a comic interpretation; the narrator allows admiration and ridicule to coexist. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n12]: These terms function here as opposed articles of a political creed. France follows Gamelin’s growing desire for a formula that bypasses disputed evidence. The passage does not offer an impartial constitutional definition of federalism or prove that every Girondin shared one programme. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n13]: The French symbole has its theological meaning: a formal statement of belief, as in the Apostles’ Creed. Translating it merely as ‘symbol’ would obscure the passage’s sustained language of salvation, damnation, revelation and faith. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n14]: A compressed maxim turns the defence of property into a test of political loyalty. Gamelin’s earlier attraction to economic equality is overcome by his new dependence on Robespierre’s interpretation of intentions; apparently generous proposals can now be read as concealed treason. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n15]: Gamelin believes in God and providence without grounding that belief in a revealed creed or church. The distinction from atheism matters: his change here is not conversion from unbelief but the abandonment of tolerance towards unbelievers. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n16]: Robespierre did argue against making atheism a public political doctrine, famously calling it aristocratic. His speech also allowed individuals their own opinions. France’s passage concerns Gamelin’s reception of such arguments and its hardening into personal hatred, rather than a transcript of one speech. [S136](#S136)

[^c13n17]: The claim recalls the discussion of Montané in Chapter IX. The actual Corday verdict concerned her deliberate killing of Marat; the novel links Montané’s procedural intervention to an attempt to save her. That intention should remain attributed to France’s narrative, rather than added as an established judicial finding. [S094](#S094)

[^c13n18]: The narrator acknowledges the possibility of erotic sadism among judges, then distinguishes Gamelin’s cold classicism from that impulse. The distinction offers no acquittal of Gamelin: the following paragraph shows his virtues and resentments producing equally fatal decisions. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n19]: The image belongs explicitly to Gamelin’s horrified dreams and his conception of the royal women. The narrator does not present it here as an independently established act by Marie-Antoinette or Madame Élisabeth. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n20]: The narrative abruptly shifts into the present tense and a questioning, declamatory voice. Its catalogue of voluntary victims presents terror as a contagious relation between executioners and condemned, extending beyond the proceedings that Gamelin himself witnesses. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n21]: The invocation completes the movement from political belief to a language of worship. The instrument receives the appeal that a religious prayer would address to a protecting saint or deity; this is Gamelin’s thought, framed by his inability to see anything but conspiracy. [S131](#S131)

[^c13n22]: Élodie’s desire intensifies alongside her recognition of violence. The carnation pot recalls Chapter XI’s red flower, while the lovers’ silent, furious kisses replace the earlier language of gratitude for saving a life. [S131](#S131)

<a id="chapter-14"></a>

## XIV

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c14p001"></a>Levé dès l’aube, le Père Longuemare, ayant balayé la chambre, s’en alla dire sa messe dans une chapelle de la rue d’Enfer, desservie par un prêtre insermenté. Il y avait à Paris des milliers de retraites semblables, où le clergé réfractaire réunissait clandestinement de petits troupeaux de fidèles. La police des sections, bien que vigilante et soupçonneuse, fermait les yeux sur ces bercails cachés, de peur des ouailles irritées et par un reste de vénération pour les choses saintes. Le Barnabite fit ses adieux à son hôte, qui eut grand-peine à obtenir qu’il revînt dîner, et l’engagea enfin par la promesse que la chère ne serait ni abondante ni délicate. | Up at dawn, Father Longuemare swept the room, then went to say his Mass in a chapel in the Rue d’Enfer served by a priest who had refused the oath[^c14n01]. There were thousands of such refuges in Paris, where the refractory clergy secretly gathered little flocks of the faithful. Though vigilant and suspicious, the section police closed their eyes to these hidden folds, from fear of the angry sheep and a lingering reverence for holy things. The Barnabite took leave of his host, who had great difficulty persuading him to return for dinner and finally bound him by a promise that the food would be neither plentiful nor delicate. |
| <a id="c14p002"></a>Brotteaux, demeuré seul, alluma un petit fourneau de terre; puis, tout en préparant le dîner du religieux et de l’épicurien, il relisait Lucrèce et méditait sur la condition des hommes. | Left alone, Brotteaux lit a small earthenware stove; then, as he prepared dinner for the religious and the Epicurean, he reread Lucretius and meditated on the human condition. |
| <a id="c14p003"></a>Ce sage n’était pas surpris que des êtres misérables, vains jouets des forces de la nature, se trouvassent le plus souvent dans des situations absurdes et pénibles; mais il avait la faiblesse de croire que les révolutionnaires étaient plus méchants et plus sots que les autres hommes, en quoi il tombait dans l’idéologie. Au reste, il n’était point pessimiste et ne pensait pas que la vie fût tout à fait mauvaise. Il admirait la nature en plusieurs de ses parties, spécialement dans la mécanique céleste et dans l’amour physique et s’accommodait des travaux de la vie en attendant le jour prochain où il ne connaîtrait plus ni craintes ni désirs. | This sage was not surprised that miserable beings, mere playthings of nature’s forces, should most often find themselves in absurd and painful situations; but he had the weakness of believing that revolutionaries were more wicked and more foolish than other men, which was to lapse into ideology[^c14n02]. For the rest, he was no pessimist and did not think life altogether bad. He admired nature in several of its parts, especially in celestial mechanics and physical love, and accommodated himself to life’s labours while awaiting the approaching day when he would know neither fears nor desires. |
| <a id="c14p004"></a>Il coloria quelques pantins avec attention et fit une Zerline qui ressemblait à la Thévenin. Cette fille lui plaisait et son épicurisme louait l’ordre des atomes qui la composaient. | He carefully coloured a few jumping jacks and made a Zerlina who resembled Thévenin. He liked the girl, and his Epicureanism praised the arrangement of the atoms[^c14n03] composing her. |
| <a id="c14p005"></a>Ces soins l’occupèrent jusqu’au retour du Barnabite. | These occupations kept him busy until the Barnabite returned. |
| <a id="c14p006"></a>"Mon Père, fit-il en lui ouvrant la porte, je vous avais bien dit que notre repas serait maigre. Nous n’avons que des châtaignes. Encore s’en faut-il qu’elles soient bien assaisonnées. | “Father,” he said as he opened the door, “I told you our meal would be meagre. We have only chestnuts, and even those are far from well seasoned.” |
| <a id="c14p007"></a>— Des châtaignes! s’écria le Père Longuemare en souriant, il n’y a point de mets plus délicieux. Mon père, monsieur, était un pauvre gentilhomme limousin, qui possédait, pour tout bien, un pigeonnier en ruines, un verger sauvage et un bouquet de châtaigniers. Il se nourrissait, avec sa femme et ses douze enfants, de grosses châtaignes vertes, et nous étions tous forts et robustes. J’étais le plus jeune et le plus turbulent: mon père disait, par plaisanterie, qu’il faudrait m’envoyer à l’Amérique faire le flibustier.... Ah! monsieur, que cette soupe aux châtaignes est parfumée! Elle me rappelle la table couronnée d’enfants où souriait ma mère." | “Chestnuts!” Father Longuemare exclaimed with a smile. “There is no more delicious food. My father, Monsieur, was a poor Limousin gentleman whose only possessions were a ruined dovecote, a wild orchard and a clump of chestnut trees. He fed himself, his wife and his twelve children on big green chestnuts, and we were all strong and robust. I was the youngest and most turbulent: my father used to say in jest that I should have to be sent to America to become a buccaneer… Ah, Monsieur, how fragrant this chestnut soup is! It brings back the table ringed with children[^c14n04] and my mother smiling there.” |
| <a id="c14p008"></a>Le repas achevé, Brotteaux se rendit chez Joly, marchand de jouets rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, qui prit les pantins refusés par Caillou et en commanda non pas douze douzaines à la fois comme celui-ci, mais bien vingt-quatre douzaines pour commencer. | After the meal Brotteaux went to Joly, the toy dealer in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, who took the jumping jacks Caillou had refused and ordered not twelve dozen at a time, as the other had, but twenty-four dozen to begin with. |
| <a id="c14p009"></a>En atteignant la rue ci-devant Royale, Brotteaux vit sur la place de la Révolution étinceler un triangle d’acier entre deux montants de bois: c’était la guillotine. Une foule énorme et joyeuse de curieux se pressait autour de l’échafaud, attendant les charrettes pleines. Des femmes, portant l’éventaire sur le ventre, criaient les gâteaux de Nanterre. Les marchands de tisane agitaient leur sonnette; au pied de la statue de la Liberté, un vieillard montrait des gravures d’optique dans un petit théâtre surmonté d’une escarpolette où se balançait un singe. Des chiens, sous l’échafaud, léchaient le sang de la veille. Brotteaux rebroussa vers la rue Honoré. | On reaching the former Rue Royale, Brotteaux saw a steel triangle glittering between two wooden uprights in the Place de la Révolution: it was the guillotine. An immense, cheerful crowd[^c14n05] of spectators pressed around the scaffold, waiting for the full carts. Women with trays hanging before their bellies cried Nanterre cakes. The sellers of herbal drinks shook their bells; at the foot of the statue of Liberty an old man displayed optical views in a small peepshow topped by a swing on which a monkey swayed. Beneath the scaffold dogs licked up the previous day’s blood. Brotteaux turned back towards the Rue Honoré. |
| <a id="c14p010"></a>Rentré dans son grenier, où le Barnabite lisait son bréviaire, il essuya soigneusement la table et y mit sa boîte de couleurs ainsi que les outils et les matériaux de son état. | Back in his attic, where the Barnabite was reading his breviary, he carefully wiped the table and set out his paintbox with the tools and materials of his trade. |
| <a id="c14p011"></a>"Mon Père, dit-il, si vous ne jugez pas cette occupation indigne du sacré caractère dont vous êtes revêtu, aidez-moi, je vous prie, à fabriquer des pantins. Un sieur Joly m’en a fait, ce matin même, une assez grosse commande. Pendant que je peindrai ces figures déjà formées, vous me rendrez grand service en découpant des têtes, des bras, des jambes et des troncs sur les patrons que voici. Vous n’en sauriez trouver de meilleurs: ils sont d’après Watteau et Boucher. | “Father,” he said, “if you do not consider this occupation unworthy of your sacred character, help me make jumping jacks, I beg you. A certain Joly gave me quite a large order this very morning. While I paint these figures already cut out, you will do me a great service by cutting out heads, arms, legs and bodies[^c14n06] from these patterns. You could find none better: they are after Watteau and Boucher.” |
| <a id="c14p012"></a>— Je crois, en effet, monsieur, dit Longuemare, que Watteau et Boucher étaient propres à créer de tels brimborions: il eût mieux valu, pour leur gloire, qu’ils s’en fussent tenus à d’innocents pantins comme ceux-ci. Je serais heureux de vous aider, mais je crains de n’être pas assez habile pour cela." | “I do indeed think, Monsieur,” Longuemare said, “that Watteau and Boucher were well suited to creating such trifles: it would have been better for their reputations had they confined themselves to innocent jumping jacks like these. I should be happy to help you, but I fear I am not skilful enough.” |
| <a id="c14p013"></a>Le Père Longuemare avait raison de se défier de son adresse: après plusieurs essais malheureux, il fallut bien reconnaître que son génie n’était pas de découper à la pointe du canif, dans un mince carton, des contours agréables. Mais quand, à sa demande, Brotteaux lui eut donné de la ficelle et un passe-lacet, il se révéla très apte à douer de mouvement ces petits êtres qu’il n’avait su former, et à les instruire à la danse. Il avait bonne grâce à les essayer ensuite en faisant exécuter à chacun d’eux quelques pas de gavotte, et, quand ils répondaient à ses soins, un sourire glissait sur ses lèvres sévères. | Father Longuemare was right to distrust his dexterity: after several unsuccessful attempts they had to acknowledge that his genius did not lie in cutting pleasing outlines from thin cardboard with the point of a penknife. But when, at his request, Brotteaux gave him string and a bodkin, he proved very adept at endowing these little beings, which he had been unable to form, with movement, and teaching them to dance. He had a pleasant way of trying them afterwards, making each execute a few steps of a gavotte, and when they responded to his care, a smile slipped across his severe lips. |
| <a id="c14p014"></a>Une fois qu’il tirait en mesure la ficelle d’un Scaramouche: | Once, as he pulled a Scaramouche’s string in time: |
| <a id="c14p015"></a>"Monsieur, dit-il, ce petit masque me rappelle une singulière histoire. C’était en 1746: j’achevais mon noviciat, sous la direction du Père Magitot, homme âgé, de profond savoir et de mœurs austères. A cette époque, il vous en souvient peut-être, les pantins, destinés d’abord à l’amusement des enfants, exerçaient sur les femmes et même sur les hommes jeunes et vieux un attrait extraordinaire; ils faisaient fureur à Paris. Les boutiques des marchands à la mode en regorgeaient; on en trouvait chez les personnes de qualité, et il n’était pas rare de voir à la promenade et dans les rues un grave personnage faire danser son pantin. L’âge, le caractère, la profession du Père Magitot ne le gardèrent point de la contagion. Alors qu’il voyait chacun occupé à faire sauter un petit homme de carton, ses doigts éprouvaient des impatiences qui lui devinrent bientôt très importunes. Un jour que pour une affaire importante, qui intéressait l’ordre tout entier, il faisait visite à monsieur Chauvel, avocat au Parlement, avisant un pantin suspendu à la cheminée, il éprouva une terrible tentation d’en tirer la ficelle. Ce ne fut qu’au prix d’un grand effort qu’il en triompha. Mais ce désir frivole le poursuivit et ne lui laissa plus de repos. Dans ses études, dans ses méditations, dans ses prières, à l’église, dans le chapitre, au confessionnal, en chaire, il en était obsédé. Après quelques jours consumés dans un trouble affreux, il exposa ce cas extraordinaire au général de l’ordre, qui, en ce moment, se trouvait heureusement à Paris. C’était un docteur éminent et l’un des princes de l’église de Milan. Il conseilla au Père Magitot de satisfaire une envie innocente dans son principe, importune dans ses conséquences et dont l’excès menaçait de causer dans l’âme qui en était dévorée les plus graves désordres. Sur l’avis ou, pour mieux dire, par l’ordre du général, le Père Magitot retourna chez monsieur Chauvel, qui le reçut, comme la première fois, dans son cabinet. Là, retrouvant le pantin accroché à la cheminée, il s’en approcha vivement et demanda à son hôte la grâce d’en tirer un moment la ficelle. L’avocat la lui accorda très volontiers et lui confia que parfois il faisait danser Scaramouche (c’était le nom du pantin) en préparant ses plaidoiries et que, la veille encore, il avait réglé sur les mouvements de Scaramouche sa péroraison en faveur d’une femme accusée faussement d’avoir empoisonné son mari. Le Père Magitot saisit en tremblant la ficelle, et vit sous sa main Scaramouche s’agiter comme un possédé qu’on exorcise. Ayant ainsi contenté son caprice, il fut délivré de l’obsession. | “Monsieur,” he said, “this little mask reminds me of a singular story. It was in 1746[^c14n07]: I was completing my novitiate under Father Magitot, an elderly man of profound learning and austere habits. At that time, as you may remember, jumping jacks, originally intended to amuse children, exercised an extraordinary attraction over women and even over men, young and old; they were all the rage in Paris. The fashionable dealers’ shops overflowed with them; they were found in the houses of people of quality, and it was not uncommon on the promenade or in the streets to see a grave personage making his jumping jack dance. Father Magitot’s age, character and profession did not protect him from the contagion. Seeing everyone occupied in making a little cardboard man jump, he felt an impatience in his fingers that soon became very troublesome. One day, calling on Monsieur Chauvel, an advocate at the Parlement, on an important matter concerning the whole order, he noticed a jumping jack hanging at the fireplace and felt a terrible temptation to pull its string. Only with a great effort did he overcome it. But this frivolous desire pursued him and gave him no rest. In his studies, meditations and prayers, in church, in chapter, in the confessional and in the pulpit, it obsessed him. After several days consumed in dreadful agitation, he laid this extraordinary case before the superior general of the order[^c14n08], who fortunately happened to be in Paris. He was an eminent doctor and one of the princes of the Church of Milan. He advised Father Magitot to satisfy a desire innocent in its origin, troublesome in its consequences, whose excess threatened to cause the gravest disorders in the soul it devoured. On the advice—or rather, at the command—of the superior general, Father Magitot returned to Monsieur Chauvel’s, where he was received as before in the study. Finding the jumping jack still hanging at the fireplace, he went quickly towards it and asked his host the favour of pulling its string for a moment. The advocate very willingly allowed him, confiding that he sometimes made Scaramouche—that was the jumping jack’s name—dance while preparing his speeches, and that only the day before he had timed his peroration in defence of a woman falsely accused of poisoning her husband to Scaramouche’s movements. Trembling, Father Magitot grasped the string and saw Scaramouche stir beneath his hand like a possessed man being exorcised. His whim thus satisfied, he was delivered from the obsession.” |
| <a id="c14p016"></a>— Votre récit ne me surprend pas, mon Père, dit Brotteaux. On voit de ces obsessions. Mais ce ne sont pas toujours des figures de carton qui les causent." | “Your story does not surprise me, Father,” Brotteaux said. “Such obsessions do occur. But cardboard figures are not always their cause[^c14n09].” |
| <a id="c14p017"></a>Le Père Longuemare, qui était religieux, ne parlait jamais de religion; Brotteaux en parlait constamment. Et, comme il se sentait de la sympathie pour le Barnabite, il se plaisait à l’embarrasser et à le troubler par des objectons à divers articles de la doctrine chrétienne. | Father Longuemare, who was a religious, never spoke of religion; Brotteaux spoke of it constantly. And because he felt fond of the Barnabite, he enjoyed embarrassing and troubling him with objections to various articles of Christian doctrine. |
| <a id="c14p018"></a>Une fois, tandis qu’ils fabriquaient ensemble des Zerlines et des Scaramouches: | Once, while they were making Zerlinas and Scaramouches together: |
| <a id="c14p019"></a>"Quand je considère, dit Brotteaux, les événements qui nous ont mis au point où nous sommes, doutant quel parti, dans la folie universelle, a été le plus fou, je ne suis pas éloigné de croire que ce fut celui de la cour. | “When I consider,” Brotteaux said, “the events that have brought us to where we are, and wonder which party in the universal madness was the maddest, I am not far from believing that it was the court.” |
| <a id="c14p020"></a>— Monsieur, répondit le religieux, tous les hommes deviennent insensés, comme Nabuchodonosor, quand Dieu les abandonne; mais nul homme, de nos jours, ne plongea dans l’ignorance et l’erreur aussi profondément que monsieur l’abbé Fauchet, nul homme ne fut aussi funeste au royaume que celui-là. Il fallait que Dieu fût ardemment irrité contre la France, pour lui envoyer monsieur l’abbé Fauchet! | “Monsieur,” the religious replied, “all men become senseless, like Nebuchadnezzar[^c14n10], when God abandons them; but no man in our time has plunged so deeply into ignorance and error as Monsieur l’abbé Fauchet[^c14n11]; no man has been so fatal to the kingdom as he. God must have been fiercely angered against France to send her Monsieur l’abbé Fauchet!” |
| <a id="c14p021"></a>— Il me semble que nous avons vu d’autres malfaiteurs que ce malheureux Fauchet. | “It seems to me we have seen other malefactors besides that unfortunate Fauchet.” |
| <a id="c14p022"></a>— Monsieur l’abbé Grégoire a montré aussi beaucoup de malice. | “Monsieur l’abbé Grégoire[^c14n12] has also shown much malice.” |
| <a id="c14p023"></a>— Et Brissot, et Danton, et Marat, et cent autres, qu’en dites-vous, mon Père? | “And Brissot, and Danton, and Marat, and a hundred others—what do you say of them, Father?” |
| <a id="c14p024"></a>— Monsieur, ce sont des laïques: les laïques ne sauraient encourir les mêmes responsabilités que les religieux. Ils ne font pas le mal de si haut, et leurs crimes ne sont point universels. | “Monsieur, they are laymen: laymen cannot incur the same responsibilities as the religious. They do not do evil from so great a height, and their crimes are not universal.” |
| <a id="c14p025"></a>— Et votre Dieu, mon Père, que dites-vous de sa conduite dans la révolution présente? | “And your God, Father—what do you say of His conduct in the present revolution?” |
| <a id="c14p026"></a>— Je ne vous comprends pas, monsieur. | “I do not understand you, Monsieur.” |
| <a id="c14p027"></a>— Épicure a dit: "Ou Dieu veut empêcher le mal et ne le peut, ou il le peut et ne le veut, ou il ne le peut ni ne le veut, ou il le veut et le peut. S’il le veut et ne le peut, il est impuissant; s’il le peut et ne le veut, il est pervers; s’il ne le peut ni ne le veut, il est impuissant et pervers; s’il le veut et le peut, que ne le fait-il, mon Père?" | “Epicurus said[^c14n13]: ‘Either God wishes to prevent evil and cannot, or He can and does not wish to, or He neither can nor wishes to, or He wishes to and can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is powerless; if He can and does not wish to, He is wicked; if He neither can nor wishes to, He is powerless and wicked; if He wishes to and can, why does He not do it, Father?’” |
| <a id="c14p028"></a>Et Brotteaux jeta sur son interlocuteur un regard satisfait. | And Brotteaux gave his interlocutor a satisfied look. |
| <a id="c14p029"></a>"Monsieur, répondit le religieux, il n’y a rien de plus misérable que les difficultés que vous soulevez. Quand j’examine les raisons de l’incrédulité, il me semble voir des fourmis opposer quelques brins d’herbe comme une digue au torrent qui descend des montagnes. Souffrez que je ne dispute pas avec vous: j’y aurais trop de raisons et trop peu d’esprit. Au reste, vous trouverez votre condamnation dans l’abbé Guénée et dans vingt autres. Je vous dirai seulement que ce que vous rapportez d’Épicure est une sottise: car on y juge Dieu comme s’il était un homme et en avait la morale. Eh bien! monsieur, les incrédules, depuis Celse jusqu’à Bayle et Voltaire, ont abusé les sots avec de semblables paradoxes. | “Monsieur,” the religious replied, “nothing could be more wretched than the difficulties you raise. When I examine the arguments of unbelief, I seem to see ants setting a few blades of grass as a dam against the torrent rushing down the mountains. Allow me not to dispute with you: I should have too many reasons and too little wit. Besides, you will find your condemnation in the Abbé Guénée[^c14n14] and twenty others. I will only tell you that what you report from Epicurus is folly, for it judges God as though He were a man and shared man’s morality. Well, Monsieur, unbelievers from Celsus to Bayle and Voltaire have deceived fools with similar paradoxes.” |
| <a id="c14p030"></a>— Voyez, mon Père, dit Brotteaux, où votre foi vous entraîne. Non content de trouver toute la vérité dans votre théologie, vous voulez encore n’en rencontrer aucune dans les ouvrages de tant de beaux génies qui pensèrent autrement que vous. | “See, Father,” Brotteaux said, “where your faith leads you. Not content with finding the whole truth in your theology, you also wish to find none in the works of so many fine minds who thought differently from you.” |
| <a id="c14p031"></a>— Vous vous trompez entièrement, monsieur, répliqua Longuemare. Je crois, au contraire, que rien ne saurait être tout à fait faux dans la pensée d’un homme. Les athées occupent le plus bas échelon de la connaissance; à ce degré encore, il reste des lueurs de raison et des éclairs de vérité, et, alors même que les ténèbres le noient, l’homme dresse un front où Dieu mit l’intelligence: c’est le sort de Lucifer. | “You are entirely mistaken, Monsieur,” Longuemare replied. “On the contrary, I believe nothing in a man’s thought can be altogether false. Atheists occupy the lowest rung of knowledge; even at that level gleams of reason and flashes of truth remain, and even when darkness engulfs him, man raises a brow in which God placed intelligence: it is Lucifer’s fate[^c14n15].” |
| <a id="c14p032"></a>— Eh bien, monsieur, dit Brotteaux, je ne serai pas si généreux et je vous avouerai que je ne trouve pas dans tous les ouvrages des théologiens un atome de bon sens." | “Well, Monsieur,” Brotteaux said, “I shall not be so generous, and I confess that in all the works of the theologians I cannot find an atom of good sense.” |
| <a id="c14p033"></a>Il se défendait toutefois de vouloir attaquer la religion, qu’il estimait nécessaire aux peuples: il eût souhaité seulement qu’elle eût pour ministres des philosophes et non des controversistes. Il déplorait que les Jacobins voulussent la remplacer par une religion plus jeune et plus maligne, par la religion de la liberté, de l’égalité, de la république, de la patrie. Il avait remarqué que c’est dans la vigueur de leur jeune âge que les religions sont le plus furieuses et le plus cruelles, et qu’elles s’apaisent en vieillissant. Aussi, souhaitait-il qu’on gardât le catholicisme, qui avait beaucoup dévoré de victimes au temps de sa vigueur, et qui maintenant, appesanti sous le poids des ans, d’appétit médiocre, se contentait de quatre ou cinq rôtis d’hérétiques en cent ans. | He nevertheless denied wishing to attack religion, which he considered necessary to peoples: he wished only that its ministers were philosophers rather than controversialists. He deplored the Jacobins’ wish to replace it with a younger and more malignant religion, the religion of liberty, equality, the republic and the country. He had noticed that religions were most furious and cruel in the vigour of their youth, and grew calmer as they aged. He therefore wished to retain Catholicism, which had devoured many victims in its vigorous days but now, weighed down by years and with a moderate appetite, contented itself with four or five roasts of heretics[^c14n16] in a hundred years. |
| <a id="c14p034"></a>"Au reste, ajouta-t-il, je me suis toujours bien accommodé des théophages et des christicoles. J’avais un aumônier aux Ilettes: chaque dimanche, on y disait la messe; tous mes invités y assistaient. Les philosophes y étaient les plus recueillis et les filles d’Opéra les plus ferventes. J’étais heureux alors et comptais de nombreux amis. | “Besides,” he added, “I have always got on very well with the god-eaters[^c14n17] and Christ-worshippers. I had a chaplain at Les Ilettes: Mass was said there every Sunday and all my guests attended. The philosophers were the most reverent and the opera girls the most fervent. I was happy then and had many friends.” |
| <a id="c14p035"></a>— Des amis, s’écria le Père Longuemare, des amis!... Ah! monsieur, croyez-vous qu’ils vous aimaient, tous ces philosophes et toutes ces courtisanes, qui ont dégradé votre âme de telle sorte que Dieu lui-même aurait peine à y reconnaître un des temples qu’il a édifiés pour sa gloire?" | “Friends!” Father Longuemare exclaimed. “Friends!… Ah, Monsieur, do you believe they loved you, all those philosophers and courtesans who degraded your soul until God Himself would have difficulty recognising it as one of the temples[^c14n18] He had built for His glory?” |
| <a id="c14p036"></a>Le Père Longuemare continua d’habiter huit jours chez le publicain sans y être inquiété. Il suivait, autant qu’il pouvait, la règle de sa communauté et se levait de sa paillasse pour réciter, agenouillé sur le carreau, les offices de nuit. Bien qu’ils n’eussent tous deux à manger que de misérables rogatons, il observait le jeûne et l’abstinence. Témoin affligé et souriant de ces austérités, le philosophe lui demanda, un jour: | Father Longuemare continued to live with the tax-gatherer for eight days without being molested. He followed the rule of his community as far as he could, rising from his straw pallet to recite the night offices, kneeling on the tiles. Though both had only miserable scraps to eat, he observed fasting and abstinence. A saddened, smiling witness to these austerities, the philosopher asked him one day: |
| <a id="c14p037"></a>"Croyez-vous vraiment que Dieu éprouve quelque plaisir à vous voir endurer ainsi le froid et la faim? | “Do you really think God takes any pleasure in seeing you endure cold and hunger like this?” |
| <a id="c14p038"></a>— Dieu lui-même, répondit le moine, nous a donné l’exemple de la souffrance." | “God Himself,” the monk replied, “has given us the example of suffering.” |
| <a id="c14p039"></a>Le neuvième jour depuis que le Barnabite logeait dans le grenier du philosophe, celui-ci sortit entre chien et loup pour porter ses pantins à Joly, marchand de jouets, rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. Il revenait heureux de les avoir tous vendus, lorsque, sur la ci-devant place du Carrousel, une fille en pelisse de satin bleu bordée d’hermine, qui courait en boitant, se jeta dans ses bras et le tint embrassé à la façon des suppliantes de tous les temps. | On the ninth day of the Barnabite’s stay in the philosopher’s attic, Brotteaux went out at dusk to take his jumping jacks to Joly, the toy dealer in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. He was returning, happy to have sold them all, when in the former Place du Carrousel a girl in a blue satin pelisse trimmed with ermine, running with a limp, threw herself into his arms and clung to him in the manner of suppliants in every age. |
| <a id="c14p040"></a>Elle tremblait; on entendait les battements précipités de son cœur. Admirant comme elle se montrait pathétique dans sa vulgarité, Brotteaux, vieil amateur de théâtre, songea que mademoiselle Raucourt ne l’eût pas vue sans profit. | She trembled; her rapid heartbeat could be heard. Admiring the pathos she displayed in her vulgarity, Brotteaux, an old lover of the theatre, thought Mademoiselle Raucourt[^c14n19] might have profited by seeing her. |
| <a id="c14p041"></a>Elle parlait d’une voix haletante, dont elle baissait le ton de peur d’être entendue des passants: | She spoke breathlessly, lowering her voice for fear that passers-by might hear: |
| <a id="c14p042"></a>"Emmenez-moi, citoyen, cachez-moi, par pitié!... Ils sont dans ma chambre, rue Fromenteau. Pendant qu’ils montaient, je me suis réfugiée chez Flora, ma voisine, et j’ai sauté par la fenêtre dans la rue, de sorte que je me suis foulé le pied.... Ils viennent; ils veulent me mettre en prison et me faire mourir.... La semaine dernière, ils ont fait mourir Virginie." | “Take me away, Citizen. Hide me, for pity’s sake!… They are in my room in the Rue Fromenteau. While they were coming upstairs, I took refuge with Flora, my neighbour, and jumped out of the window into the street, so that I sprained my foot… They’re coming; they want to put me in prison and have me killed… Last week they had Virginie killed.” |
| <a id="c14p043"></a>Brotteaux comprenait bien qu’elle parlait des délégués du Comité révolutionnaire de la section ou des commissaires du Comité de sûreté générale. La Commune avait alors un procureur vertueux, le citoyen Chaumette, qui poursuivait les filles de joie comme les plus funestes ennemies de la République. Il voulait régénérer les mœurs. A vrai dire, les demoiselles du Palais-Égalité étaient peu patriotes. Elles regrettaient l’ancien état et ne s’en cachaient pas toujours. Plusieurs avaient été déjà guillotinées comme conspiratrices, et leur sort tragique avait excité beaucoup d’émulation chez leurs pareilles. | Brotteaux understood that she meant the delegates of the section’s Revolutionary Committee or commissioners from the Committee of General Security. The Commune then had a virtuous prosecutor, Citizen Chaumette, who pursued prostitutes as the Republic’s most dangerous enemies. He wished to regenerate morals. In truth, the young ladies of the Palais-Égalité[^c14n20] were little inclined to patriotism. They regretted the former state of things and did not always conceal it. Several had already been guillotined as conspirators, and their tragic fate had aroused much emulation among their fellows. |
| <a id="c14p044"></a>Le citoyen Brotteaux demanda à la suppliante par quelle faute elle s’était attiré un mandat d’arrêt. | Citizen Brotteaux asked the suppliant what offence had brought a warrant for her arrest. |
| <a id="c14p045"></a>Elle jura qu’elle n’en savait rien, qu’elle n’avait rien fait qu’on pût lui reprocher. | She swore that she knew nothing about it, that she had done nothing anyone could reproach her with. |
| <a id="c14p046"></a>"Eh bien, ma fille, lui dit Brotteaux, tu n’es point suspecte: tu n’as rien à craindre. Va te coucher, et laisse-moi tranquille." | “Well, my girl,” Brotteaux said, “you’re not a suspect: you have nothing to fear. Go to bed and leave me in peace.” |
| <a id="c14p047"></a>Alors elle avoua tout: | Then she confessed everything: |
| <a id="c14p048"></a>"J’ai arraché ma cocarde et j’ai crié: "Vive le roi!" | “I tore off my cockade and shouted ‘Long live the king!’” |
| <a id="c14p049"></a>Il s’engagea sur les quais déserts, avec elle. Serrée à son bras, elle disait: | He set off along the deserted quays with her. Pressing against his arm, she said: |
| <a id="c14p050"></a>"Ce n’est pas que je l’aime, le roi; vous pensez bien que je ne l’ai jamais connu et peut-être n’était-il pas un homme très différent des autres. Mais ceux-ci sont méchants. Ils se montrent cruels envers les pauvres filles. Ils me tourmentent, me vexent et m’injurient de toutes les manières; ils veulent m’empêcher de faire mon métier. Je n’en ai pas d’autre. Vous pensez bien que si j’en avais un autre, je ne ferais pas celui-là.... Qu’est-ce qu’ils veulent? Ils s’acharnent contre les petits, les faibles, le laitier, le charbonnier, le porteur d’eau, la blanchisseuse. Ils ne seront contents que lorsqu’ils auront mis contre eux tout le pauvre monde." | “It isn’t that I love the king; you can understand that I never knew him, and perhaps he wasn’t a man very different from the others. But these men are wicked. They are cruel to poor girls. They torment me, bully me and insult me in every way; they want to stop me plying my trade. I have no other. You can understand that if I had another, I wouldn’t do this one… What do they want? They hound the little people, the weak—the milk seller, the charcoal seller, the water carrier, the washerwoman. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve turned all the poor against them.” |
| <a id="c14p051"></a>Il la regarda: elle avait l’air d’un enfant. Elle ne ressentait plus de peur. Elle souriait presque, légère et boitillante. Il lui demanda son nom. Elle répondit qu’elle se nommait Athénaïs et avait seize ans. | He looked at her: she seemed a child. She was no longer afraid. She almost smiled, light-hearted and limping. He asked her name. She replied that she was called Athénaïs and was sixteen. |
| <a id="c14p052"></a>Brotteaux lui offrit de la conduire où elle voudrait. Elle ne connaissait personne à Paris; mais elle avait une tante, servante à Palaiseau, qui la garderait chez elle. | Brotteaux offered to take her wherever she wished. She knew no one in Paris, but had an aunt in service at Palaiseau who would keep her. |
| <a id="c14p053"></a>Brotteaux prit sa résolution: | Brotteaux made up his mind: |
| <a id="c14p054"></a>"Viens, mon enfant", lui dit-il. | “Come, my child,” he said. |
| <a id="c14p055"></a>Et il l’emmena, appuyée à son bras. | And he led her away, her weight resting on his arm. |
| <a id="c14p056"></a>Rentré dans son grenier, il trouva le Père Longuemare qui lisait son bréviaire. | Back in his attic he found Father Longuemare reading his breviary. |
| <a id="c14p057"></a>Il lui montra Athénaïs, qu’il tenait par la main: | He showed him Athénaïs, whom he held by the hand: |
| <a id="c14p058"></a>"Mon Père, voilà une fille de la rue Fromenteau qui a crié: "Vive le roi!" La police révolutionnaire est à ses trousses. Elle n’a point de gîte. Permettrez-vous qu’elle passe la nuit ici?" | “Father, here is a girl from the Rue Fromenteau who has shouted ‘Long live the king!’ The revolutionary police are after her. She has nowhere to stay. Will you allow her to spend the night here?” |
| <a id="c14p059"></a>Le Père Longuemare ferma son bréviaire: | Father Longuemare closed his breviary. |
| <a id="c14p060"></a>"Si je vous comprends bien, dit-il, vous me demandez monsieur, si cette jeune fille, qui est comme moi sous le coup d’un mandat d’arrêt, peut, pour son salut temporel, passer la nuit dans la même chambre que moi. | “If I understand you correctly,” he said, “you are asking me, Monsieur, whether this young girl, who like myself is under a warrant of arrest, may spend the night in the same room as me for the sake of her temporal safety[^c14n21].” |
| <a id="c14p061"></a>— Oui, mon Père. | “Yes, Father.” |
| <a id="c14p062"></a>— De quel droit m’y opposerais-je? et, pour me croire offensé de sa présence, suis-je sûr de valoir mieux qu’elle?" | “By what right should I object? And to consider myself offended by her presence, am I certain I am worth more than she?” |
| <a id="c14p063"></a>Il se mit, pour la nuit, dans un vieux fauteuil ruiné, assurant qu’il y dormirait bien. Athénaïs se coucha sur le matelas. Brotteaux s’étendit sur la paillasse et souffla la chandelle. | For the night he settled into an old broken-down armchair, declaring that he would sleep well there. Athénaïs lay on the mattress. Brotteaux stretched out on the straw pallet and blew out the candle. |
| <a id="c14p064"></a>Les heures et les demies sonnaient aux clochers des églises: il ne dormait point et entendait les souffles mêlés du religieux et de la fille. La lune, image et témoin de ses anciennes amours, se leva et envoya dans la mansarde un rayon d’argent qui éclaira la chevelure blonde, les cils d’or, le nez fin, la bouche ronde et rouge d’Athénaïs, dormant les poings fermés. | The hours and half-hours sounded from the church steeples. He did not sleep, and heard the mingled breathing of the religious and the girl. The moon, image and witness of his former loves, rose and sent a silver ray into the attic, lighting Athénaïs’s blonde hair, her golden lashes, her fine nose and round red mouth as she slept with clenched fists. |
| <a id="c14p065"></a>"Voilà, songea-t-il, une terrible ennemie de la République!" | ‘There,’ he thought, ‘is a terrible enemy of the Republic!’ |
| <a id="c14p066"></a>Quand Athénaïs se réveilla, il faisait jour. Le religieux était parti. Brotteaux, sous la lucarne, lisant Lucrèce, s’instruisait, aux leçons de la muse latine, à vivre sans craintes et sans désirs; et toutefois il était dévoré de regrets et d’inquiétudes. | When Athénaïs woke it was daylight. The religious had gone. Beneath the skylight Brotteaux was reading Lucretius, learning from the Latin muse to live without fears or desires; yet regret and anxiety devoured him[^c14n22]. |
| <a id="c14p067"></a>En ouvrant les yeux, Athénaïs vit avec stupeur sur sa tête les solives d’un grenier. Puis elle se rappela, sourit à son sauveur et tendit vers lui, pour le caresser, ses jolies petites mains sales. | Opening her eyes, Athénaïs saw with amazement the attic beams above her head. Then she remembered, smiled at her saviour and reached out her pretty little dirty hands to caress him. |
| <a id="c14p068"></a>Soulevée sur sa couche, elle montra du doigt le fauteuil délabré où le religieux avait passé la nuit. | Raising herself on her bed, she pointed to the battered armchair in which the religious had spent the night. |
| <a id="c14p069"></a>"Il est parti?... Il n’est pas allé me dénoncer, dites? | “Has he gone?… He hasn’t gone to denounce me, has he?” |
| <a id="c14p070"></a>— Non, mon enfant. On ne saurait trouver plus honnête homme que ce vieux fou." | “No, my child. You could not find a more honest man than that old madman.” |
| <a id="c14p071"></a>Athénaïs demanda quelle était la folie de ce bonhomme; et, quand Brotteaux lui eut dit que c’était la religion, elle lui reprocha gravement de parler ainsi, déclara que les hommes sans religion étaient pis que des bêtes et que, pour elle, elle priait Dieu souvent, espérant qu’il lui pardonnerait ses péchés et la recevrait en sa sainte miséricorde. | Athénaïs asked what sort of madness the good man had, and when Brotteaux told her it was religion, she gravely reproached him for speaking so, declared that men without religion were worse than beasts, and that for her part she often prayed to God, hoping He would pardon her sins and receive her into His holy mercy. |
| <a id="c14p072"></a>Puis, remarquant que Brotteaux tenait un livre à la main, elle crut que c’était un livre de messe et dit: | Then, noticing the book Brotteaux held, she thought it was a prayer book and said: |
| <a id="c14p073"></a>"Vous voyez bien que, vous aussi, vous dites vos prières! Dieu vous récompensera de ce que vous avez fait pour moi." | “You see, you say your prayers too! God will reward you for what you have done for me.” |
| <a id="c14p074"></a>Brotteaux lui ayant dit que ce livre n’était pas un livre de messe, et qu’il avait été écrit avant que l’idée de messer se fût introduite dans le monde, elle pensa que c’était une *Clef des Songes*, et demanda s’il ne s’y trouvait pas l’explication d’un rêve extraordinaire qu’elle avait fait. Elle ne savait pas lire et ne connaissait, par ouï-dire, que ces deux sortes d’ouvrages. | When Brotteaux told her that the book was not a prayer book and had been written before the idea of Mass-going entered the world, she thought it was a *Key to Dreams*[^c14n23] and asked whether it contained the explanation of an extraordinary dream she had had. She could not read and knew of only these two kinds of books by hearsay. |
| <a id="c14p075"></a>Brotteaux lui répondit que ce livre n’expliquait que le songe de la vie. La belle enfant, trouvant cette réponse difficile, renonça à la comprendre et se trempa le bout du nez dans la terrine qui remplaçait pour Brotteaux les cuvettes d’argent dont il usait autrefois. Puis elle arrangea ses cheveux devant le miroir à barbe de son hôte, avec un soin minutieux et grave. Ses bras blancs recourbés sur sa tête, elle prononçait quelques paroles, à longs intervalles. | Brotteaux replied that the book explained only the dream of life. Finding this answer difficult, the pretty child gave up trying to understand it and dipped the tip of her nose into the earthenware bowl that replaced the silver basins Brotteaux had used in former days. Then she arranged her hair before her host’s shaving mirror with meticulous, solemn care. Her white arms curved above her head, she spoke a few words at long intervals. |
| <a id="c14p076"></a>"Vous, vous avez été riche. | “You used to be rich.” |
| <a id="c14p077"></a>— Qu’est-ce qui te le fait croire? | “What makes you think so?” |
| <a id="c14p078"></a>— Je ne sais pas. Mais vous avez été riche et vous êtes un aristocrate, j’en suis sûre." | “I don’t know. But you used to be rich and you’re an aristocrat, I’m sure of it.” |
| <a id="c14p079"></a>Elle tira de sa poche une petite Sainte-Vierge en argent dans une chapelle ronde d’ivoire, un morceau de sucre, du fil, des ciseaux, un briquet, deux ou trois étuis et, après avoir fait le choix de ce qui lui était nécessaire, elle se mit à raccommoder sa jupe, qui avait été déchirée en plusieurs endroits. | From her pocket she took a little silver Virgin in a round ivory shrine, a lump of sugar, thread, scissors, a fire steel and two or three cases. Having chosen what she needed, she began mending her skirt, which was torn in several places. |
| <a id="c14p080"></a>"Pour votre sûreté, mon enfant, mettez ceci à votre coiffe! lui dit Brotteaux, en lui donnant une cocarde tricolore. | “For your safety, my child, put this on your cap!” Brotteaux said, giving her a tricolour cockade. |
| <a id="c14p081"></a>— Je le ferai volontiers, monsieur, lui répondit-elle; mais ce sera pour l’amour de vous et non pour l’amour de la nation." | “I’ll gladly do so, Monsieur,” she replied, “but it will be for love of you, not for love of the nation.” |
| <a id="c14p082"></a>Quand elle se fut habillée et parée de son mieux, tenant sa jupe à deux mains, elle fit la révérence comme elle l’avait appris au village et dit à Brotteaux: | When she had dressed and adorned herself as well as she could, she held her skirt in both hands, made the curtsy she had learnt in her village and said to Brotteaux: |
| <a id="c14p083"></a>"Monsieur, je suis votre très humble servante." | “Monsieur, I am your most humble servant.” |
| <a id="c14p084"></a>Elle était prête à obliger son bienfaiteur de toutes les manières, mais elle trouvait convenable qu’il ne demandât rien et qu’elle n’offrît rien: il lui semblait que c’était gentil de se quitter de la sorte, et selon les bienséances. | She was ready to oblige her benefactor in every way, but thought it fitting that he should ask nothing and she should offer nothing. It seemed to her pleasant to part in this way, and proper. |
| <a id="c14p085"></a>Brotteaux lui mit dans la main quelques assignats pour qu’elle prît le coche de Palaiseau. C’était la moitié de sa fortune, et, bien qu’il fût connu pour ses prodigalités envers les femmes, il n’avait encore fait avec aucune un si égal partage de ses biens. | Brotteaux put a few assignats in her hand so that she could take the coach to Palaiseau. They were half his fortune[^c14n24], and although he was known for his lavishness towards women, he had never before made so equal a division of his possessions with any of them. |
| <a id="c14p086"></a>Elle lui demanda son nom. | She asked his name. |
| <a id="c14p087"></a>"Je me nomme Maurice." | “My name is Maurice.” |
| <a id="c14p088"></a>Il lui ouvrit à regret la porte de la mansarde: | He opened the attic door for her with regret: |
| <a id="c14p089"></a>"Adieu, Athénaïs." | “Goodbye, Athénaïs.” |
| <a id="c14p090"></a>Elle l’embrassa. | She kissed him. |
| <a id="c14p091"></a>"Monsieur Maurice, quand vous penserez à moi, appelez-moi Marthe: c’est le nom de mon baptême, le nom dont on m’appelait au village.... Adieu et merci.... Bien votre servante, monsieur Maurice." | “Monsieur Maurice, when you think of me, call me Marthe[^c14n25]: that is my baptismal name, the name they called me in the village… Goodbye, and thank you… Your devoted servant, Monsieur Maurice.” |

### Notes

[^c14n01]: A priest who rejected the revolutionary oath was described as insermenté or réfractaire. The clandestine chapel continues the divided religious world explained in Chapter XII. France stresses both popular attachment to worship and the incomplete reach of the section police. [S123](#S123)

[^c14n02]: The narrator briefly checks Brotteaux’s scepticism: singling out revolutionaries as uniquely foolish is itself an abstract prejudice. His humane intelligence is not presented as infallibility, any more than his Epicurean reading gives him complete freedom from anxiety. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n03]: Brotteaux gives sexual attraction the vocabulary of materialist philosophy. The description joins a woman’s beauty to the physical composition of nature, avoiding the division between body and soul assumed in his later argument with Longuemare. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n04]: Chestnuts revive the priest’s childhood rather than serving only as evidence of privation. The ruined dovecote also echoes Brotteaux’s lost estate: their unequal former circumstances meet in present poverty and an unexpected shared meal. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n05]: Refreshments, optical entertainment and the monkey frame an execution site as a place of public amusement. The dogs licking blood abruptly bring the spectacle back to bodily fact; Brotteaux’s response is to turn away. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n06]: The toy makers assemble parts of harmless bodies immediately after the description of the guillotine. Their craft offers a small, comic counter-image to political dismemberment, while the Barnabite’s care makes the figures responsive and animated. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n07]: The Paris lawyer Barbier’s chronicle, under January 1747, records the previous year’s craze for articulated cardboard pantins among adults as well as children, and mentions figures painted by Boucher. It supports the anecdote’s social setting, though it does not verify Father Magitot’s private story. [S122](#S122)

[^c14n08]: The général here is the head of a religious order, not a military commander. Chapter means an assembly of members of the religious community. The priest’s vocabulary places his apparently trivial temptation within structures of discipline and obedience. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n09]: Brotteaux leaves the other possible objects of obsession unnamed. His answer lets the priest’s harmless compulsion suggest more troubling desires without turning the anecdote into an explicit accusation against him. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n10]: Daniel 4 tells how the Babylonian king, after boasting of his power, is driven from human society and lives like an animal; his understanding returns when he acknowledges divine sovereignty. Longuemare makes the episode a model for political madness caused by abandonment by God. [S138](#S138)

[^c14n11]: Claude Fauchet became constitutional bishop of Calvados and a deputy. Longuemare’s special anger concerns a churchman’s participation in the Revolution; he judges such clerics more responsible than lay politicians. Fauchet was executed with the Girondins on 31 October 1793. [S139](#S139)

[^c14n12]: Henri Grégoire, parish priest and revolutionary legislator, became constitutional bishop of Blois. Longuemare pairs him with Fauchet because both accepted the revolutionary Church’s arrangements; the judgement of their ‘malice’ is the refractory priest’s, not the editor’s. [S140](#S140)

[^c14n13]: The argument concerning divine willingness, power and evil is transmitted by Lactantius, On the Anger of God, chapter 13, as an Epicurean objection. It should be identified through that surviving witness rather than presented as a securely extant passage in a work by Epicurus. [S141](#S141)

[^c14n14]: Antoine Guénée (1717–1803) was a Catholic apologist, known for his Letters of Some Portuguese, German and Polish Jews to Voltaire (1769). Longuemare invokes a recognised controversial opponent of unbelief while declining to conduct the argument himself. [S142](#S142)

[^c14n15]: The fallen angel supplies Longuemare’s image for intelligence surviving error and darkness. His concession allows a remnant of truth even to atheists, whereas Brotteaux immediately refuses a corresponding concession to theologians. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n16]: Brotteaux describes persecution in the language of appetite, extending the novel’s link between belief and the consumption of victims. His numerical phrase is satirical minimisation in a character’s argument, not an editorial estimate of Catholic executions. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n17]: Théophages, literally ‘god-eaters’, is a derisive name for Catholics who believe in transubstantiation and receive Christ in the Eucharist. Christicoles means worshippers of Christ. Brotteaux’s provocative vocabulary coexists with his practical willingness to accommodate worship. [S143](#S143)

[^c14n18]: Longuemare’s image recalls Paul’s description of the believer’s body as a temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 6:19. He transfers architectural dignity to the damaged soul, in contrast with Brotteaux’s account of a body as an arrangement of atoms. [S144](#S144)

[^c14n19]: Françoise Saucerotte, called Mademoiselle Raucourt, was a celebrated tragedienne of the Comédie-Française, known for roles as princesses and queens. Brotteaux sees an untrained girl’s fear as a lesson in tragic acting, even while recognising her social vulgarity. [S145](#S145)

[^c14n20]: Palais-Égalité is the revolutionary name of the Palais-Royal. Prostitution there continued under the Revolution, with police surveillance and arrests. France’s specific account of executions and emulation belongs to the novel; the civic history confirms the setting and continued policing. [S146](#S146)

[^c14n21]: Temporal contrasts worldly life and safety with spiritual salvation. Longuemare deliberately puts his own danger and the girl’s on the same plane; the language makes sheltering her a question of preserving life rather than of social or sexual respectability. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n22]: The text repeats the philosophical goal of freedom from fear and desire, then records its failure. Brotteaux’s sympathy and attachment exceed the serene position he studies: his humane conduct costs him emotional disturbance as well as money. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n23]: A dream book offered interpretations or predictions from dreams. Athénaïs knows books through their practical or devotional uses, not through reading. Her mistaken identification allows Brotteaux to give his materialist poem the figurative function of explaining life itself. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n24]: The arithmetic quietly overturns Brotteaux’s former reputation for lavish gifts. Measured by what remains, this small donation is his most equal division of property; the passage gives practical generosity a sharper meaning than the political formulas of equality heard earlier. [S137](#S137)

[^c14n25]: The baptismal and village name restores a private history beneath the assumed name Athénaïs. Their parting remains affectionate without becoming a sexual bargain; the name she asks him to remember completes that recognition of her individuality. [S137](#S137)

<a id="chapter-15"></a>

## XV

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c15p001"></a>Il fallait vider les prisons qui regorgeaient; il fallait juger, juger sans repos ni trêve. Assis contre les murailles tapissées de faisceaux et de bonnets rouges, comme leurs pareils sur les fleurs de lis, les juges gardaient la gravité, la tranquillité terrible de leurs prédécesseurs royaux. L’accusateur public et ses substituts, épuisés de fatigue, brûlés d’insomnie et d’eau-de-vie, ne secouaient leur accablement que par un violent effort; et leur mauvaise santé les rendait tragiques. Les jurés, divers d’origine et de caractère, les uns instruits, les autres ignares, lâches ou généreux, doux ou violents, hypocrites ou sincères, mais qui tous, dans le danger de la patrie et de la République, sentaient ou feignaient de sentir les mêmes angoisses, de brûler des mêmes flammes, tous atroces de vertu ou de peur, ne formaient qu’un seul être, une seule tête sourde, irritée, une seule âme, une bête mystique, qui, par l’exercice naturel de ses fonctions, produisait abondamment la mort. Bienveillants ou cruels par sensibilité, secoués soudain par un brusque mouvement de pitié, ils acquittaient avec des larmes un accusé qu’ils eussent, une heure auparavant, condamné avec des sarcasmes. A mesure qu’ils avançaient dans leur tâche, ils suivaient plus impétueusement les impulsions de leur cœur. | The overflowing prisons had to be emptied; they had to judge, judge without rest or respite. Seated against walls upholstered with fasces and red caps[^c15n01], as their counterparts had sat against fleurs-de-lis, the judges retained the gravity, the terrible tranquillity of their royal predecessors. The public prosecutor and his deputies, exhausted with fatigue, scorched by sleeplessness and brandy, shook off their prostration only by a violent effort; their ill health made them tragic. The jurors differed in origin and character, some educated, others ignorant, cowardly or generous, gentle or violent, hypocritical or sincere. Yet all, amid the danger to country and Republic, felt or pretended to feel the same anguish, to burn with the same flames. All were atrocious from virtue or fear, and formed a single being, a single deaf and angry head, a single soul, a mystical beast[^c15n02] which, by the natural exercise of its functions, abundantly produced death. Benevolent or cruel from sensibility, suddenly shaken by an abrupt movement of pity, they acquitted with tears a defendant whom an hour before they would have condemned with sarcasms. As they advanced in their task, they followed the impulses of their hearts more impetuously. |
| <a id="c15p002"></a>Ils jugeaient dans la fièvre et dans la somnolence que leur donnait l’excès du travail, sous les excitations du dehors et les ordres du souverain, sous les menaces des sans-culottes et des tricoteuses pressés dans les tribunes et dans l’enceinte publique, d’après des témoignages forcenés, sur des réquisitoires frénétiques, dans un air empesté, qui appesantissait les cerveaux, faisait bourdonner les oreilles et battre les tempes et mettait un voile de sang sur les yeux. Des bruits vagues couraient dans le public sur des jurés corrompus par l’or des accusés. Mais à ces rumeurs le jury tout entier répondait par des protestations indignées et des condamnations impitoyables. Enfin, c’étaient des hommes, ni pires ni meilleurs que les autres. L’innocence, le plus souvent, est un bonheur et non pas une vertu: quiconque eût accepté de se mettre à leur place eût agi comme eux et accompli d’une âme médiocre ces tâches épouvantables. | They judged in the fever and drowsiness of overwork, under outside incitements and the orders of the sovereign power, under threats from the sans-culottes and women knitters crowded into the galleries and public enclosure, on the strength of frenzied testimony and frantic indictments, in foul air that weighed upon their brains, set their ears humming and their temples throbbing, and drew a veil of blood across their eyes. Vague rumours circulated among the public about jurors corrupted by the defendants’ gold. But the entire jury answered such rumours with indignant protests and merciless convictions. After all, they were men, neither worse nor better than others. Innocence is most often a piece of good fortune, not a virtue[^c15n03]: anyone who had agreed to take their place would have acted as they did, accomplishing these appalling tasks with an ordinary soul. |
| <a id="c15p003"></a>Antoinette, tant attendue, vint enfin s’asseoir en robe noire dans le fauteuil fatal, au milieu d’un tel concert de haine que seule la certitude de l’issue qu’aurait le jugement en fit respecter les formes. Aux questions mortelles l’accusée répondit tantôt avec l’instinct de la conservation, tantôt avec sa hauteur accoutumée, et, une fois, grâce à l’infamie d’un de ses accusateurs, avec la majesté d’une mère. L’outrage et la calomnie seuls étaient permis aux témoins; la défense fut glacée d’effroi. Le Tribunal, se contraignant à juger dans les règles, attendait que tout cela fût fini pour jeter la tête de l’Autrichienne à l’Europe. | Antoinette, so long awaited, at last came in her black dress to sit in the fatal armchair, amid such a chorus of hatred that only certainty about the judgement’s outcome secured respect for its forms. To deadly questions the accused replied sometimes with the instinct of self-preservation, sometimes with her accustomed hauteur, and once, thanks to one accuser’s infamy, with the majesty of a mother[^c15n04]. Witnesses were permitted only insult and slander; the defence was frozen with terror. Constraining itself to judge according to the rules, the Tribunal waited for it all to end before flinging the Austrian woman’s head to Europe. |
| <a id="c15p004"></a>Trois jours après l’exécution de Marie-Antoinette, Gamelin fut appelé auprès du citoyen Fortuné Trubert, qui agonisait à trente pas du bureau militaire où il avait épuisé sa vie, sur un lit de sangle, dans la cellule de quelque Barnabite expulsé. Sa tête livide creusait l’oreiller. Ses yeux, qui ne voyaient déjà plus, tournèrent leurs prunelles vitreuses du côté d’Évariste; sa main desséchée saisit la main de l’ami et la pressa avec une force inattendue. Il avait eu trois vomissements de sang en deux jours. Il essaya de parler; sa voix, d’abord voilée et faible comme un murmure, s’enfla, grossit: | Three days after Marie-Antoinette’s execution, Gamelin was summoned to Citizen Fortuné Trubert, who lay dying thirty paces from the military office where he had worn himself out, on a webbing bed in the cell of some expelled Barnabite. His livid head hollowed the pillow. His eyes, already sightless, turned their glassy pupils towards Évariste; his wasted hand grasped his friend’s and pressed it with unexpected strength. He had vomited blood three times in two days. He tried to speak; his voice, at first veiled and as faint as a murmur, swelled and grew: |
| <a id="c15p005"></a>"Wattignies! Wattignies!... Jourdan a forcé l’ennemi dans son camp... débloqué Maubeuge.... Nous avons repris Marchiennes. Ça ira... ça ira...." | “Wattignies! Wattignies![^c15n05]… Jourdan has driven the enemy from their camp… relieved Maubeuge… We have retaken Marchiennes[^c15n06]. All will be well… all will be well…” |
| <a id="c15p006"></a>Et il sourit. | And he smiled. |
| <a id="c15p007"></a>Ce n’étaient pas des songes de malade; c’était une vue claire de la réalité, qui illuminait alors ce cerveau sur lequel descendaient les ténèbres éternelles. Désormais l’invasion semblait arrêtée: les généraux, terrorisés, s’apercevaient qu’ils n’avaient pas mieux à faire que de vaincre. Ce que les enrôlements volontaires n’avaient point apporté, une armée nombreuse et disciplinée, la réquisition le donnait. Encore un effort, et la République serait sauvée. | These were no sick man’s dreams: a clear vision of reality was illuminating this brain over which eternal darkness descended. The invasion now seemed checked: the generals, terrorised, were discovering that they could do no better than win. What voluntary enlistments had failed to provide—a numerous, disciplined army—requisition was supplying[^c15n07]. One more effort, and the Republic would be saved. |
| <a id="c15p008"></a>Après une demi-heure d’anéantissement, le visage de Fortuné Trubert, creusé par la mort, se ranima, ses mains se soulevèrent. | After half an hour of prostration, Fortuné Trubert’s face, hollowed by death, came to life again; his hands rose. |
| <a id="c15p009"></a>Il montra du doigt à son ami le seul meuble qu’il y eût dans la chambre, un petit secrétaire de noyer. | He pointed out to his friend the room’s only piece of furniture, a small walnut writing desk. |
| <a id="c15p010"></a>Et de sa voix haletante et faible, que conduisit un esprit lucide: | And in his weak, breathless voice, guided by a lucid mind: |
| <a id="c15p011"></a>"Mon ami, comme Eudamidas, je te lègue mes dettes: trois cent vingt livres dont tu trouveras le compte... dans ce cahier rouge.... Adieu, Gamelin. Ne t’endors pas. Veille à la défense de la République. Ça ira." | “My friend, like Eudamidas[^c15n08] I bequeath you my debts: three hundred and twenty livres, whose account you will find… in this red notebook… Goodbye, Gamelin. Do not fall asleep. Watch over the Republic’s defence. All will be well.” |
| <a id="c15p012"></a>L’ombre de la nuit descendait dans la cellule. On entendit le mourant pousser un souffle embarrassé, et ses mains qui grattaient le drap. | The shadow of night descended into the cell. They heard the dying man draw a laboured breath, and his hands scratching at the sheet. |
| <a id="c15p013"></a>A minuit, il prononça des mots sans suite: | At midnight he spoke disconnected words: |
| <a id="c15p014"></a>"Encore du salpêtre.... Faites livrer les fusils.... La santé? très bonne.... Descendez ces cloches...." | “More saltpetre… Have the muskets delivered… My health? Very good… Take those bells down…” |
| <a id="c15p015"></a>Il expira à 5 heures du matin. | He died at five in the morning. |
| <a id="c15p016"></a>Par ordre de la section, son corps fut exposé dans la nef de la ci-devant église des Barnabites, au pied de l’autel de la Patrie, sur un lit de camp, le corps recouvert d’un drapeau tricolore et le front ceint d’une couronne de chêne. | By the section’s order his body was laid out in the nave of the former Barnabite church, at the foot of the altar of the country, on a camp bed, his body covered with a tricolour flag and his brow encircled by an oak wreath. |
| <a id="c15p017"></a>Douze vieillards vêtus de la toge latine, une palme à la main, douze jeunes filles, traînant de longs voiles et portant des fleurs, entouraient le lit funèbre. Aux pieds du mort, deux enfants tenaient chacun une torche renversée. Évariste reconnut en l’un d’eux la fille de sa concierge, Joséphine, qui, par sa gravité enfantine et sa beauté charmante, lui rappela ces génies de l’amour et de la mort, que les Romains sculptaient sur leurs sarcophages. | Twelve old men in Latin togas, palms in their hands, and twelve young girls trailing long veils and carrying flowers surrounded the funeral bed. At the dead man’s feet two children each held a downturned torch. Évariste recognised one of them as his concierge’s daughter Joséphine, whose childish gravity and charming beauty recalled to him the spirits of love and death[^c15n09] that the Romans carved on their sarcophagi. |
| <a id="c15p018"></a>Le cortège se rendit au cimetière Saint-André-des-Arts aux chants de *La Marseillaise* et du *Ça ira*. | The procession made its way to the Saint-André-des-Arts cemetery to the singing of *La Marseillaise* and *Ça ira*[^c15n10]. |
| <a id="c15p019"></a>En mettant le baiser d’adieu sur le front de Fortuné Trubert, Évariste pleura. Il pleura sur lui-même, enviant celui qui se reposait, sa tâche accomplie. | As he set a farewell kiss on Fortuné Trubert’s brow, Évariste wept. He wept for himself, envying the man who rested, his task complete. |
| <a id="c15p020"></a>Rentré chez lui, il reçut avis qu’il était nommé membre du Conseil général de la Commune. Candidat depuis quatre mois, il avait été élu sans concurrent, après plusieurs scrutins, par une trentaine de suffrages. On ne votait plus: les sections étaient désertes; riches et pauvres ne cherchaient qu’à se soustraire aux charges publiques. Les plus grands événements n’excitaient plus ni enthousiasme ni curiosité; on ne lisait plus les journaux, Évariste doutait si, sur les sept cent mille habitants de la capitale, trois ou quatre mille seulement avaient encore l’âme républicaine. | Back at home, he received notice that he had been appointed a member of the General Council of the Commune. A candidate for four months, he had been elected unopposed, after several ballots, by some thirty votes. People no longer voted: the sections were deserted; rich and poor sought only to escape public duties. The greatest events no longer aroused enthusiasm or curiosity; people no longer read the newspapers. Évariste wondered whether, of the capital’s seven hundred thousand inhabitants, as many as three or four thousand still had a republican soul. |
| <a id="c15p021"></a>Ce jour-là, les Vingt et Un comparurent. | That day the Twenty-One[^c15n11] appeared. |
| <a id="c15p022"></a>Innocents ou coupables des malheurs et des crimes de la République, vains, imprudents, ambitieux et légers, à la fois modérés et violents, faibles dans la terreur comme dans la clémence, prompts à déclarer la guerre, lents à la conduire, traînés au Tribunal sur l’exemple qu’ils avaient donné, ils n’étaient pas moins la jeunesse éclatante de la Révolution; ils en avaient été le charme et la gloire. Ce juge, qui va les interroger avec une partialité savante; ce blême accusateur, qui, là, devant sa petite table, prépare leur mort et leur déshonneur; ces jurés, qui voudront tout à l’heure étouffer leur défense; ce public des tribunes, qui les couvre d’invectives et de huées, juge, jurés, peuple, ont naguère applaudi leur éloquence, célébré leurs talents, leurs vertus. Mais ils ne se souviennent plus. | Innocent or guilty of the Republic’s misfortunes and crimes, vain, imprudent, ambitious and frivolous, at once moderate and violent, weak in terror as in clemency, quick to declare war, slow to conduct it, dragged before the Tribunal by the precedent they themselves had set—they were nonetheless the brilliant youth of the Revolution; they had been its charm and glory. This judge, about to question them with practised partiality; this pale prosecutor at his little table, preparing their death and dishonour; these jurors who will presently seek to stifle their defence; this public in the galleries, covering them with insults and jeers—judge, jurors and people had lately applauded their eloquence and celebrated their talents and virtues. But they no longer remember. |
| <a id="c15p023"></a>Évariste avait fait jadis son dieu de Vergniaud, son oracle de Brissot. Il ne se rappelait plus, et, s’il restait dans sa mémoire quelque vestige de son antique admiration, c’était pour concevoir que ces monstres avaient séduit les meilleurs citoyens. | Évariste had once made Vergniaud his god and Brissot his oracle. He no longer recalled it, and if any trace of his former admiration remained in his memory, it was only to make him understand how these monsters had seduced the best citizens. |
| <a id="c15p024"></a>En rentrant, après l’audience, dans sa maison, Gamelin entendit des cris déchirants. C’était la petite Joséphine que sa mère fouettait pour avoir joué sur la place avec des polissons et sali la belle robe blanche qu’on lui avait mise pour la pompe funèbre du citoyen Trubert. | Returning home after the hearing, Gamelin heard piercing cries. It was little Joséphine, whom her mother was whipping for playing on the square with street urchins and dirtying the lovely white dress[^c15n12] she had been given to wear at Citizen Trubert’s funeral ceremony. |

### Notes

[^c15n01]: Fasces, bundles of rods associated with ancient Roman authority, and the liberty cap replace the monarchy’s fleurs-de-lis in the courtroom decoration. The narrator’s central point is continuity of judicial posture beneath the change of emblems. [S147](#S147)

[^c15n02]: The jurors’ varied personalities merge into a collective organism. France does not explain violence simply by selecting unusually wicked individuals: institutions, fear, enthusiasm and bodily exhaustion enable ordinary differences to produce a common murderous activity. [S147](#S147)

[^c15n03]: The narrator interrupts judgement of the judges with a disturbing counterfactual: another person might have acted in their place as they do. This qualification coexists with the account of their responsibility; it denies the reader an easy assurance of personal moral immunity. [S147](#S147)

[^c15n04]: At her trial on 14–16 October 1793 Marie-Antoinette was accused of incest; her appeal to mothers answered that accusation. She was condemned and executed on 16 October. France’s compressed phrase depends on the audience recognising this episode without reproducing the accusation in detail. [S093](#S093)

[^c15n05]: The fighting of 15–16 October 1793 under Jourdan relieved the Austrian blockade of Maubeuge. Trubert’s repeated name marks a real reversal of the military crisis that has haunted him; the narrator specifically distinguishes this news from his later delirium. [S148](#S148)

[^c15n06]: The scene is placed three days after the queen’s 16 October execution. Yet Laurent’s letter dated 22 October reports that Ransonnet took Marchiennes ‘yesterday’, placing that event on 21 October. The apparent chronological compression is retained rather than silently adjusted. [S149](#S149)

[^c15n07]: The levée en masse of 23 August 1793 placed the French population in permanent requisition for the war effort. France contrasts compulsory mobilisation with the earlier reliance on voluntary enlistment; he also preserves the bitter irony of generals discovering victory under threat. [S150](#S150)

[^c15n08]: In Lucian’s Toxaris, Eudamidas leaves friends the duty of supporting his mother and daughter rather than wealth. The story was also familiar through Poussin’s painting. Trubert adapts its exemplary trust in friendship to the more prosaic bequest of his unpaid debts. [S151](#S151) [S152](#S152)

[^c15n09]: The children holding lowered torches turn a civic funeral into an antique tableau seen through Gamelin’s artist’s eye. The recognition of Joséphine makes the closing scene especially sharp: a child idealised as a funerary spirit returns as a child being beaten. [S147](#S147)

[^c15n10]: The refrain heard throughout Trubert’s life accompanies his funeral. The song circulated by 1790 to Bécourt’s contredanse tune Le Carillon national. The translation uses ‘All will be well’ for his spoken refrain, retaining the French song title when it names the procession’s music. [S052](#S052) [S053](#S053)

[^c15n11]: The expression designates the group of Girondin defendants, including Brissot and Vergniaud, tried in late October 1793 and executed on 31 October. Earlier references to the Twenty-Two name the political group denounced in the spring, rather than an unchanging list of defendants. [S153](#S153) [S139](#S139)

[^c15n12]: The funeral’s elevated civic spectacle ends in domestic punishment. Joséphine’s beating follows Gamelin’s renewed condemnation of his former idols: both scenes expose how reverence and moral display can coexist with violence against the vulnerable. [S147](#S147)

<a id="chapter-16"></a>

## XVI

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c16p001"></a>Après avoir, durant trois mois, sacrifié chaque jour à la patrie des victimes illustres ou obscures, Évariste eut un procès à lui; d’un accusé il fit son accusé. | After sacrificing illustrious or obscure victims to the country every day for three months, Évariste had a trial of his own: he took one defendant for his own accused[^c16n01]. |
| <a id="c16p002"></a>Depuis qu’il siégeait au Tribunal, il épiait avidement, dans la foule des prévenus qui passaient sous ses yeux, le séducteur d’Élodie, dont il s’était fait, dans son imagination laborieuse, une idée dont quelques traits étaient précis. Il le concevait jeune, beau, insolent, et se faisait une certitude qu’il avait émigré en Angleterre. Il crut le découvrir en un jeune émigré nommé Maubel, qui, de retour en France et dénoncé par son hôte, avait été arrêté dans une auberge de Passy et dont le parquet de Fouquier-Tinville instruisait l’affaire avec mille autres. On avait saisi sur lui des lettres que l’accusation considérait comme les preuves d’un complot ourdi par Maubel et les agents de Pitt, mais qui n’étaient en fait que des lettres écrites à l’émigré par des banquiers de Londres chez qui il avait déposé des fonds. Maubel, qui était jeune et beau, paraissait surtout occupé de galanteries. On trouvait dans son carnet trace de relations avec l’Espagne, alors en guerre avec la France; ces lettres, à la vérité, étaient d’ordre intime, et, si le parquet ne rendit pas une ordonnance de non-lieu, ce fut en vertu de ce principe que la justice ne doit jamais se hâter de relâcher un prisonnier. | Ever since he had sat in the Tribunal, he had watched greedily for Élodie’s seducer among the crowd of defendants passing before his eyes. His laborious imagination had formed a picture of the man, precise in some of its details. He conceived him as young, handsome and insolent, and made it a certainty that he had emigrated to England. He thought he had discovered him in a young émigré named Maubel who, having returned to France and been denounced by his landlord, had been arrested at an inn in Passy. Fouquier-Tinville’s office was investigating his case with a thousand others. Letters had been seized on him which the prosecution considered evidence of a plot hatched by Maubel and Pitt’s agents[^c16n02], but which were in fact only letters written to the émigré by London bankers with whom he had deposited funds. Maubel, young and handsome, appeared chiefly occupied with love affairs. His notebook contained traces of dealings with Spain, then at war with France; these letters, in truth, were of a private kind, and if the prosecutor’s office did not order the case dismissed, it was by virtue of the principle that justice must never hurry to release a prisoner. |
| <a id="c16p003"></a>Gamelin eut communication du premier interrogatoire subi par Maubel en chambre du conseil et il fut frappé du caractère du jeune ci-devant, qu’il se figurait conforme à celui qu’il attribuait à l’homme qui avait abusé de la confiance d’Élodie. Dès lors, enfermé pendant de longues heures dans le cabinet du greffier, il étudia le dossier avec ardeur. Ses soupçons s’accrurent étrangement quand il trouva dans un calepin déjà ancien de l’émigré l’adresse de l'*Amour peintre*, jointe, il est vrai, à celle du *Singe Vert*, du *Portrait de la* ci-devant *Dauphine* et de plusieurs autres magasins d’estampes et de tableaux. Mais, quand il eut appris qu’on avait recueilli dans ce même calepin quelques pétales d’un œillet rouge, recouverts avec soin d’un papier de soie, songeant que l’œillet rouge était la fleur préférée d’Élodie qui la cultivait sur sa fenêtre, la portait dans ses cheveux, la donnait (il le savait) en témoignage d’amour, Évariste ne douta plus. | Gamelin was given the record of Maubel’s first examination in chambers, and was struck by the young former aristocrat’s character, which he imagined to correspond with the one he attributed to the man who had abused Élodie’s trust. From then on, shut for long hours in the clerk’s office, he studied the file with ardour. His suspicions grew strangely when he found in an old pocketbook of the émigré’s the address of *L’Amour peintre*[^c16n03]—together, admittedly, with those of *The Green Monkey*, *The Portrait of the Former Dauphine* and several other print and picture shops. But when he learnt that a few petals of a red carnation[^c16n04], carefully covered with tissue paper, had been found in the same pocketbook, he thought of how the red carnation was Élodie’s favourite flower, which she grew on her windowsill, wore in her hair and gave, as he knew, as a token of love. Évariste doubted no longer. |
| <a id="c16p004"></a>Alors, s’étant fait une certitude, il résolut d’interroger Élodie, en lui cachant toutefois les circonstances qui lui avaient fait découvrir le criminel. | Then, having made himself certain, he resolved to question Élodie, while concealing the circumstances that had led him to discover the criminal. |
| <a id="c16p005"></a>Comme il montait l’escalier de sa maison, il sentit dès les paliers inférieurs une entêtante odeur de fruit et trouva dans l’atelier Élodie, qui aidait la citoyenne Gamelin à faire de la confiture de coings. Tandis que la vieille ménagère, allumant le fourneau, méditait en son esprit les moyens d’épargner le charbon et la cassonade sans nuire à la qualité de la confiture, la citoyenne Blaise, sur sa chaise de paille, ceinte d’un tablier de toile bise, des fruits d’or plein son giron, pelait les coings et les jetait par quartiers dans une bassine de cuivre. Les barbes de sa coiffe étaient rejetées en arrière, ses mèches noires se tordaient sur son front moite; il émanait d’elle un charme domestique et une grâce familière qui inspiraient les douces pensées et la tranquille volupté. | As he climbed his staircase, he smelt the heady odour of fruit from the lower landings and found Élodie in the studio helping Citizen Gamelin make quince jam. While the old housekeeper lit the stove and considered how to save charcoal and brown sugar without impairing the quality of the preserve, Citizen Blaise sat on her straw chair in an apron of unbleached linen, her lap full of golden fruit, peeling the quinces and dropping them in quarters into a copper pan. The lappets of her cap were thrown back, her black locks curled on her damp forehead; a domestic charm and familiar grace[^c16n05] emanated from her, inspiring gentle thoughts and tranquil pleasure. |
| <a id="c16p006"></a>Elle leva, sans bouger, sur son amant son beau regard d’or fondu et dit: | Without moving, she raised her beautiful molten-gold eyes to her lover and said: |
| <a id="c16p007"></a>"Voyez, Évariste, nous travaillons pour vous. Vous mangerez, tout l’hiver, d’une délicieuse gelée de coings qui vous affermira l’estomac et vous rendra le cœur gai." | “Look, Évariste, we are working for you. All winter you will eat delicious quince jelly, which will strengthen your stomach and make your heart glad.” |
| <a id="c16p008"></a>Mais Gamelin, s’approchant d’elle, lui prononça ce nom à l’oreille: | But Gamelin went up to her and spoke this name into her ear: |
| <a id="c16p009"></a>"Jacques Maubel...." | “Jacques Maubel…” |
| <a id="c16p010"></a>A ce moment, le savetier Combalot vint montrer son nez rouge par la porte entrebâillée. Il apportait, avec des souliers, auxquels il avait remis des talons, la note de ses ressemelages. | At that moment the cobbler Combalot showed his red nose through the half-open door. Along with a pair of shoes he had reheeled, he brought his bill for resoling. |
| <a id="c16p011"></a>De peur de passer pour un mauvais citoyen, il faisait usage du nouveau calendrier. La citoyenne Gamelin, qui aimait à voir clair dans ses comptes, se perdait dans les fructidor et les vendémiaire. | For fear of passing for a bad citizen, he used the new calendar[^c16n06]. Citizen Gamelin, who liked to see her accounts clearly, lost her way among the Fructidors and Vendémiaires. |
| <a id="c16p012"></a>Elle soupira: | She sighed: |
| <a id="c16p013"></a>"Jésus! ils veulent tout changer, les jours, les mois, les saisons, le soleil et la lune! Seigneur Dieu, monsieur Combalot, qu’est-ce que c’est que cette paire de galoches du 8 vendémiaire? | “Jesus! They want to change everything—the days, the months, the seasons, the sun and moon! Lord God, Monsieur Combalot, what is this pair of wooden-soled shoes on 8 Vendémiaire?” |
| <a id="c16p014"></a>— Citoyenne, jetez les yeux sur votre calendrier pour vous rendre compte." | “Citizen, look at your calendar and you will see.” |
| <a id="c16p015"></a>Elle le décrocha, y jeta les yeux, et, les détournant aussitôt: | She took it down, glanced at it and immediately turned her eyes away. |
| <a id="c16p016"></a>"Il n’a pas l’air chrétien! fit-elle, épouvantée. | “It doesn’t look Christian!” she said in fright. |
| <a id="c16p017"></a>— Non seulement cela, citoyenne, dit le savetier, mais nous n’avons plus que trois dimanches au lieu de quatre. Et ce n’est pas tout: il va falloir changer notre manière de compter. Il n’y aura plus de liards ni de deniers, tout sera réglé sur l’eau distillée." | “Not only that, Citizen,” said the cobbler, “but we have only three Sundays instead of four[^c16n07]. And that’s not all: we’ll have to change the way we count. There’ll be no more liards or deniers[^c16n08]; everything will be based on distilled water[^c16n09].” |
| <a id="c16p018"></a>A ces paroles la citoyenne Gamelin, les lèvres tremblantes, leva les yeux au plafond et soupira: | At these words Citizen Gamelin, her lips trembling, raised her eyes to the ceiling and sighed: |
| <a id="c16p019"></a>"Ils en font trop!" | “They’re going too far!” |
| <a id="c16p020"></a>Et, tandis qu’elle se lamentait, semblable aux saintes femmes des calvaires rustiques, un fumeron, allumé en son absence dans la braise, remplissait l’atelier d’une vapeur infecte qui, jointe à l’odeur entêtante des coings, rendait l’air irrespirable. | And while she lamented, like the holy women of country Calvaries, a smoky lump of charcoal[^c16n10] had caught fire in the embers during her absence, filling the studio with a foul vapour which, mingled with the heady scent of quinces, made the air unbreathable. |
| <a id="c16p021"></a>Élodie se plaignit que la gorge lui grattait, et demanda qu’on ouvrît la fenêtre. Mais, dès que le citoyen savetier eut pris congé et que la citoyenne Gamelin eut regagné son fourneau, Évariste répéta ce nom à l’oreille de la citoyenne Blaise: | Élodie complained that her throat was scratchy and asked for the window to be opened. But as soon as the Citizen cobbler had taken his leave and Citizen Gamelin had returned to her stove, Évariste repeated the name into Citizen Blaise’s ear: |
| <a id="c16p022"></a>"Jacques Maubel." | “Jacques Maubel.” |
| <a id="c16p023"></a>Elle le regarda avec un peu de surprise, et, très tranquillement, sans cesser de couper un coing en quartiers: | She looked at him with a little surprise and, very calmly, without ceasing to cut a quince into quarters, said: |
| <a id="c16p024"></a>"Et bien?... Jacques Maubel?... | “Well?… Jacques Maubel?…” |
| <a id="c16p025"></a>— C’est lui! | “It’s him!” |
| <a id="c16p026"></a>— Qui? lui? | “Who? Him?” |
| <a id="c16p027"></a>— Tu lui as donné un œillet rouge." | “You gave him a red carnation.” |
| <a id="c16p028"></a>Elle déclara ne pas comprendre, et lui demanda qu’il s’expliquât. | She declared that she did not understand and asked him to explain. |
| <a id="c16p029"></a>"Cet aristocrate! cet émigré! cet infâme!..." | “That aristocrat! That émigré! That villain!…” |
| <a id="c16p030"></a>Elle haussa les épaules, et nia avec beaucoup de naturel avoir jamais connu un Jacques Maubel. | She shrugged and denied very naturally that she had ever known a Jacques Maubel. |
| <a id="c16p031"></a>Et vraiment elle n’en avait jamais connu. | And in fact she had never known one[^c16n11]. |
| <a id="c16p032"></a>Elle nia avoir jamais donné d’œillets rouges à personne qu’à Évariste; mais peut-être, sur ce point, n’avait-elle pas très bonne mémoire. | She denied ever giving red carnations to anyone but Évariste; but perhaps, on that point, her memory was not very good. |
| <a id="c16p033"></a>Il connaissait mal les femmes, et n’avait pas pénétré bien profondément le caractère d’Élodie; pourtant il la pensait très capable de feindre et de tromper un plus habile que lui. | He knew women badly and had not penetrated very deeply into Élodie’s character; yet he thought her quite capable of pretending and deceiving a man cleverer than himself. |
| <a id="c16p034"></a>"Pourquoi nier? dit-il. Je sais." | “Why deny it?” he said. “I know.” |
| <a id="c16p035"></a>Elle affirma de nouveau n’avoir connu aucun Maubel. Et, ayant fini de peler ses coings, elle demanda de l’eau parce que ses doigts poissaient. | She affirmed again that she had known no Maubel. Having finished peeling her quinces, she asked for water, because her fingers were sticky. |
| <a id="c16p036"></a>Gamelin lui apporta une cuvette. | Gamelin brought her a basin. |
| <a id="c16p037"></a>Et, en se lavant les mains, elle renouvela ses dénégations. | And as she washed her hands, she renewed her denials. |
| <a id="c16p038"></a>Il répéta encore qu’il savait, et, cette fois, elle garda le silence. | He repeated once more that he knew, and this time she remained silent. |
| <a id="c16p039"></a>Elle ne voyait pas où tendait la question de son amant et était à mille lieues de soupçonner que ce Maubel, dont elle n’avait jamais entendu parler, dût comparaître devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire; elle ne comprenait rien aux soupçons dont on l’obsédait, mais elle les savait mal fondés. C’est pourquoi, n’ayant guère d’espoir de les dissiper, elle n’en avait guère envie non plus. Elle cessa de se défendre d’avoir connu un Maubel, préférant laisser le jaloux s’égarer sur une fausse piste, quand, d’un moment à l’autre, le moindre incident pouvait le mettre sur la véritable voie. Son petit clerc d’autrefois, devenu un joli dragon patriote, était brouillé maintenant avec sa maîtresse aristocrate. Quand il rencontrait Élodie, dans la rue, il la regardait d’un œil qui semblait dire: "Allons! la belle; je sens bien que je vais vous pardonner de vous avoir trahie, et que je suis tout près de vous rendre mon estime." Elle ne fit donc plus effort pour guérir ce qu’elle appelait les lubies de son ami; Gamelin garda la conviction que Jacques Maubel était le corrupteur d’Élodie. | She did not see where her lover’s question was leading and was a thousand miles from suspecting that this Maubel, of whom she had never heard, was to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal. She understood nothing of the suspicions with which he plagued her, but knew them to be ill-founded. That was why, with little hope of dispelling them, she had little desire to do so either. She stopped defending herself against having known a Maubel, preferring to let the jealous man stray down a false trail when, at any moment, the smallest incident might put him on the true one. Her little clerk of former days, now a handsome patriotic dragoon, had quarrelled with his aristocratic mistress. When he met Élodie in the street he looked at her with an eye that seemed to say: ‘Come, my beauty! I feel I am going to forgive you for having betrayed you[^c16n12], and am very nearly ready to restore my esteem to you.’ So she made no further effort to cure what she called her friend’s fancies; Gamelin remained convinced that Jacques Maubel was Élodie’s corrupter. |
| <a id="c16p040"></a>Les jours qui suivirent, le Tribunal s’occupa sans relâche d’anéantir le fédéralisme, qui, comme une hydre, avait menacé de dévorer la liberté. Ce furent des jours chargés; et les jurés, épuisés de fatigue, expédièrent le plus rapidement possible la femme Roland, inspiratrice ou complice des crimes de la faction brissotine. | In the following days the Tribunal occupied itself unceasingly in annihilating federalism, which, like a hydra, had threatened to devour liberty. These were busy days, and the jurors, exhausted with fatigue, disposed as quickly as possible of the woman Roland[^c16n13], inspirer or accomplice of the Brissotin faction’s crimes. |
| <a id="c16p041"></a>Cependant Gamelin passait chaque matin au parquet pour presser l’affaire Maubel. Des pièces importantes étaient à Bordeaux: il obtint qu’un commissaire les irait chercher en poste. Elles arrivèrent enfin. | Meanwhile Gamelin called at the prosecutor’s office every morning to press the Maubel case. Important documents were in Bordeaux; he obtained permission for a commissioner to fetch them by post horses. At last they arrived. |
| <a id="c16p042"></a>Le substitut de l’accusateur public les lut, fit la grimace et dit à Évariste: | The deputy public prosecutor read them, made a face and said to Évariste: |
| <a id="c16p043"></a>"Elles ne sont pas fameuses, les pièces! Il n’y a rien là-dedans! des fadaises!... S’il était seulement certain que ce ci-devant comte de Maubel a émigré!..." | “Not much to these documents! There’s nothing in them! Trivial nonsense!… If only it were certain that this former Count Maubel had emigrated!…” |
| <a id="c16p044"></a>Enfin Gamelin réussit. Le jeune Maubel reçut son acte d’accusation et fut traduit devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire le 19 brumaire. | At last Gamelin succeeded. Young Maubel received his indictment and was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal on 19 Brumaire[^c16n14]. |
| <a id="c16p045"></a>Dès l’ouverture de l’audience, le président montra le visage sombre et terrible qu’il avait soin de prendre pour conduire les affaires mal instruites. Le substitut de l’accusateur se caressait le menton des barbes de sa plume et affectait la sérénité d’une conscience pure. Le greffier lut l’acte d’accusation: on n’en avait pas encore entendu de si creux. | From the opening of the hearing, the president displayed the dark, terrible face he was careful to assume when conducting poorly prepared cases. The deputy prosecutor stroked his chin with the barbs of his quill and affected the serenity of a pure conscience. The clerk read the indictment: none so hollow had yet been heard. |
| <a id="c16p046"></a>Le président demanda à l’accusé s’il n’avait pas eu connaissance des lois rendues contre les émigrés. | The president asked the accused whether he had been aware of the laws passed against émigrés. |
| <a id="c16p047"></a>"Je les ai connues et observées, répondit Maubel, et j’ai quitté la France muni de passeports en règle." | “I knew and observed them,” Maubel replied, “and I left France with passports in order.” |
| <a id="c16p048"></a>Sur les raisons de son voyage en Angleterre et de son retour en France il s’expliqua d’une manière satisfaisante. Sa figure était agréable, avec un air de franchise et de fierté qui plaisait. Les femmes des tribunes le regardaient d’un œil favorable. L’accusation prétendait qu’il avait fait un séjour en Espagne dans le moment où déjà cette nation était en guerre avec la France; il affirma n’avoir pas quitté Bayonne à cette époque. Un point seul restait obscur. Parmi les papiers qu’il avait jetés dans sa cheminée, lors de son arrestation, et dont on n’avait retrouvé que des bribes, on lisait des mots espagnols et le nom de "Nieves". | He explained satisfactorily the reasons for his journey to England and his return to France. His face was pleasing, with an air of frankness and pride that attracted sympathy. The women in the galleries looked on him favourably. The prosecution claimed that he had stayed in Spain at a time when that nation was already at war with France; he affirmed that he had not left Bayonne during that period. Only one point remained obscure. Among the papers he had thrown into his fireplace on his arrest, and of which only scraps had been recovered, Spanish words and the name ‘Nieves’ could be read. |
| <a id="c16p049"></a>Jacques Maubel refusa de donner à ce sujet les explications qui lui étaient demandées. Et, quand le président lui dit que l’intérêt de l’accusé était de s’expliquer, il répondit qu’on ne doit pas toujours suivre son intérêt. | Jacques Maubel refused to give the explanations demanded of him on this subject. When the president told him that it was in the accused’s interest to explain himself, he replied that one must not always follow one’s interest. |
| <a id="c16p050"></a>Gamelin ne songeait à convaincre Maubel que d’un crime: par trois fois il pressa le président de demander à l’accusé s’il pouvait s’expliquer sur l’œillet dont il gardait si précieusement dans son portefeuille les pétales desséchés. | Gamelin thought of proving Maubel guilty of only one crime: three times he urged the president to ask the accused whether he could explain the carnation whose dried petals he kept so preciously in his wallet. |
| <a id="c16p051"></a>Maubel répondit qu’il ne se croyait pas obligé de répondre à une question qui n’intéressait pas la justice, puisqu’on n’avait pas trouvé de billet caché dans cette fleur. | Maubel replied that he did not consider himself obliged to answer a question that did not concern justice, since no note had been found hidden in the flower[^c16n15]. |
| <a id="c16p052"></a>Le jury se retira dans la salle des délibérations, favorablement prévenu en faveur de ce jeune homme dont l’affaire, obscure, semblait surtout cacher des mystères amoureux. Cette fois, les bons, les purs eux-mêmes eussent volontiers acquitté. L’un d’eux, un ci-devant, qui avait donné des gages à la Révolution, dit: | The jury withdrew to the deliberation room, favourably disposed towards this young man whose obscure case seemed chiefly to conceal mysteries of love. This time even the good, the pure, would willingly have acquitted. One of them, a former aristocrat who had proved his commitment to the Revolution, said: |
| <a id="c16p053"></a>"Est-ce sa naissance qu’on lui reproche? Moi aussi, j’ai eu le malheur de naître dans l’aristocratie. | “Is it his birth he is reproached with? I too had the misfortune to be born into the aristocracy.” |
| <a id="c16p054"></a>— Oui, mais tu en es sorti, répliqua Gamelin, et il y est resté." | “Yes, but you left it,” Gamelin retorted, “and he stayed in it.” |
| <a id="c16p055"></a>Et il parla avec une telle véhémence contre ce conspirateur, cet émissaire de Pitt, ce complice de Cobourg, qui était allé par-delà les monts et par-delà les mers susciter des ennemis à la liberté, il demanda si ardemment la condamnation du traître, qu’il réveilla l’humeur toujours inquiète, la vieille sévérité des jurés patriotes. | And he spoke with such vehemence against this conspirator, this emissary of Pitt, this accomplice of Cobourg, who had gone beyond the mountains and beyond the seas to raise enemies against liberty; he demanded the traitor’s conviction so ardently that he reawakened the patriotic jurors’ ever-anxious temper and old severity. |
| <a id="c16p056"></a>L’un d’eux, cyniquement, lui dit: | One of them said to him cynically: |
| <a id="c16p057"></a>"Il est des services qu’on ne peut se refuser entre collègues." | “There are services colleagues cannot refuse each other[^c16n16].” |
| <a id="c16p058"></a>Le verdict de mort fut rendu à une voix de majorité. | The death verdict was returned by a majority of one. |
| <a id="c16p059"></a>Le condamné entendit sa sentence avec une tranquillité souriante. Ses regards, qu’il promenait paisiblement sur la salle, exprimèrent, en rencontrant le visage de Gamelin, un indicible mépris. | The condemned man heard his sentence with a smiling tranquillity. His eyes wandered peacefully over the chamber; when they met Gamelin’s face, they expressed an unspeakable contempt. |
| <a id="c16p060"></a>Personne n’applaudit la sentence. | No one applauded the sentence. |
| <a id="c16p061"></a>Jacques Maubel, reconduit à la Conciergerie, écrivit une lettre en attendant l’exécution qui devait se faire le soir même, aux flambeaux: | Taken back to the Conciergerie, Jacques Maubel wrote a letter while awaiting his execution, which was to take place that evening by torchlight: |
| <a id="c16p061a"></a>*Ma chère sœur, le Tribunal m’envoie à l’échafaud, me donnant la seule joie que je pouvais ressentir depuis la mort de ma Nieves adorée. Ils m’ont pris le seul bien qui me restait d’elle, une fleur de grenadier, qu’ils appelaient, je ne sais pourquoi, un œillet.* | *My dear sister, the Tribunal is sending me to the scaffold, giving me the only joy I could feel since the death of my adored Nieves. They have taken from me the one possession I had left of hers, a pomegranate blossom[^c16n17], which for some reason they called a carnation.* |
| <a id="c16p061b"></a>*J’aimais les arts: à Paris, dans les temps heureux, j’ai recueilli des peintures et des gravures qui sont maintenant en lieu sûr et qu’on te remettra dès qu’il sera possible. Je te prie, chère sœur, de les garder en mémoire de moi.* | *I loved the arts: in Paris, in the happy days, I collected paintings and engravings which are now in a safe place and will be delivered to you as soon as possible. I ask you, dear sister, to keep them in memory of me.* |
| <a id="c16p062"></a>Il se coupa une mèche de cheveux, la mit dans la lettre, qu’il plia, et écrivit la suscription: | He cut off a lock of hair, put it in the letter, folded it and wrote the address: |
| <a id="c16p062a"></a>*A la citoyenne Clémence Dezeimeries, née Maubel.* | *To Citizen Clémence Dezeimeries, née Maubel.* |
| <a id="c16p062b"></a>*La Réole.* | *La Réole.* |
| <a id="c16p063"></a>Il donna tout ce qu’il avait d’argent sur lui au porte-clefs, en le priant de faire parvenir cette lettre, demanda une bouteille de vin et but à petits coups en attendant la charrette.... | He gave all the money he had on him to the turnkey, asking him to have the letter delivered, requested a bottle of wine and drank it in small sips as he waited for the cart… |
| <a id="c16p064"></a>Après souper, Gamelin courut à l'*Amour peintre* et bondit dans la chambre bleue où chaque nuit l’attendait Élodie. | After supper Gamelin ran to *L’Amour peintre* and bounded into the blue room where Élodie waited for him every night. |
| <a id="c16p065"></a>"Tu es vengée, lui dit-il. Jacques Maubel n’est plus. La charrette qui le conduisait à la mort a passé sous tes fenêtres, entourée de flambeaux." | “You are avenged,” he told her. “Jacques Maubel is no more. The cart taking him to his death passed beneath your windows, surrounded by torches.” |
| <a id="c16p066"></a>Elle comprit: | She understood: |
| <a id="c16p067"></a>"Misérable! C’est toi qui l’as tué, et ce n’était pas mon amant. Je ne le connaissais pas... je ne l’ai jamais vu.... Quel homme était-ce? Il était jeune, aimable..., innocent. Et tu l’as tué, misérable! misérable!" | “Wretch! You killed him, and he wasn’t my lover. I didn’t know him… I never saw him… What sort of man was he? He was young, amiable… innocent. And you killed him, wretch! Wretch!” |
| <a id="c16p068"></a>Elle tomba évanouie. Mais, dans les ombres de cette mort légère, elle se sentait inondée en même temps d’horreur et de volupté. Elle se ranima à demi; ses lourdes paupières découvraient le blanc de ses yeux, sa gorge se gonflait, ses mains battantes cherchaient son amant. Elle le pressa dans ses bras à l’étouffer, lui enfonça les ongles dans la chair et lui donna, de ses lèvres déchirées, le plus muet, le plus sourd, le plus long, le plus douloureux et le plus délicieux des baisers. | She fell into a swoon. But in the shadows of this light death[^c16n18] she felt herself flooded at once with horror and sensual pleasure. She half revived; her heavy eyelids revealed the whites of her eyes, her breast swelled, her beating hands sought her lover. She clasped him in her arms until he almost suffocated, dug her nails into his flesh and, with her torn lips, gave him the most silent, the most muffled, the longest, the most painful and the most delicious of kisses. |
| <a id="c16p069"></a>Elle l’aimait de toute sa chair, et, plus il lui apparaissait terrible, cruel, atroce, plus elle le voyait couvert du sang de ses victimes, plus elle avait faim et soif de lui. | She loved him with all her flesh, and the more terrible, cruel and atrocious he seemed to her, the more she saw him covered in his victims’ blood, the more she hungered and thirsted for him[^c16n19]. |

### Notes

[^c16n01]: The possessive marks the intrusion of a private grievance into public judgement. Gamelin does not merely recognise a defendant: he appropriates a case, treating the national institution as the means of punishing an imagined personal injury. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n02]: William Pitt the Younger was Britain’s prime minister during the war with revolutionary France. His name becomes a shorthand for foreign conspiracy in the prosecution’s language. The narrator immediately distinguishes that construction from the ordinary banking correspondence actually seized. [S155](#S155)

[^c16n03]: The other dealers’ addresses supply an innocent explanation for Maubel’s visit to Blaise’s shop: he collects art. Gamelin notices this qualifying evidence but subordinates it to the conclusion he has already begun to desire. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n04]: The flower repeats Élodie’s token at the end of Chapter XI. That private association makes a material object appear decisive to Gamelin before its identity, owner or provenance has been established. The later letter will correct the apparent botanical fact itself. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n05]: The making of preserves offers an image of winter, continuity and ordinary pleasure. Gamelin’s interrogation interrupts that possible future; the heady fruit scent and cooking smoke also place suspicion in a physically oppressive domestic atmosphere. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n06]: The republican calendar was adopted in October 1793, replacing saints’ days and the seven-day week with months divided into three ten-day décades. The old woman’s confusion is practical as well as religious: reform makes the dates on an ordinary tradesman’s bill difficult for her to check. [S156](#S156)

[^c16n07]: The tenth day, décadi, replaced the weekly day of rest in the new calendar. Combalot calls these rest days ‘Sundays’ in familiar language. A thirty-day month therefore contained three such days rather than approximately four weekly Sundays. [S157](#S157)

[^c16n08]: A liard was worth three deniers; four liards made one sou. The old subdivisions were not decimal. Combalot places the threatened loss of familiar money units alongside changes to the calendar, making reform a disruption of everyday reckonings. [S158](#S158) [S159](#S159)

[^c16n09]: Early metric mass standards were defined through a measured volume of water; a 1793 prototype was the grave, precursor of the kilogram. Combalot blends money and metrology in an alarmed summary. His remark is retained as popular apprehension, rather than a technically exact description of currency reform. [S160](#S160)

[^c16n10]: Fumeron denotes charcoal insufficiently carbonised, which still gives flame and abundant smoke, as the Academy’s 1798 dictionary explains. The nuisance is concrete: the attempt to economise on fuel contributes to the room’s oppressive atmosphere. [S161](#S161)

[^c16n11]: Unlike Gamelin, the reader is given the truth directly by the narrator. The episode’s suspense therefore concerns what certainty will make him do, rather than the solution of a romantic mystery. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n12]: The paradox is deliberate. The dragoon imagines forgiving Élodie for the betrayal he himself committed. His presumption helps explain why she conceals the true history, although she has no knowledge of the judicial danger facing Maubel. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n13]: Manon Roland was closely associated with Girondin politics and wrote her memoirs in prison. She was tried and executed on 8 November 1793. The source’s impersonal designation, femme Roland, belongs to the judicial language that the narrative briefly adopts. [S162](#S162)

[^c16n14]: In Year II, 19 Brumaire corresponds to 9 November 1793, the day after Madame Roland’s execution. A contemporary calendar decree discussed in that day’s Convention sitting supplies a securely dated correspondence of the two calendars. [S163](#S163)

[^c16n15]: A flower could conceal a message: the August 1793 plot to free Marie-Antoinette involved billets hidden in carnations. Maubel’s answer therefore distinguishes a possible evidential use of the object from its private sentimental value. [S093](#S093)

[^c16n16]: The cynical remark replaces evidence with collegial accommodation. Even jurors disposed to acquit can be moved by personal loyalty and the old reflex of suspicion; the majority of one makes the individual intervention decisive. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n17]: Grenadier here is the pomegranate tree, not a soldier. Maubel’s letter reveals that the supposed carnation was misidentified, while its second paragraph explains the art dealers’ addresses. Both material clues are thus deprived of the meanings Gamelin imposed on them. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n18]: The swoon becomes a figurative death in which horror and pleasure mingle. Élodie’s condemnation of the killing does not end her desire; the body’s response makes the scene more disturbing than either simple approval or rejection would be. [S154](#S154)

[^c16n19]: Appetite closes the chapter after a private sacrifice carried out through the public court. The language recalls the novel’s title and the repeated imagery of religion and consumption, while remaining an account of Élodie’s bodily desire. [S154](#S154)

<a id="chapter-17"></a>

## XVII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c17p001"></a>Le 24 frimaire, à dix heures du matin, sous un ciel vif et rose, qui fondait les glaces de la nuit, les citoyens Guénot et Delourmel, délégués du Comité de sûreté générale, se rendirent aux Barnabites et se firent conduire au Comité de surveillance de la section, dans la salle capitulaire, où se trouvait pour lors le citoyen Beauvisage, qui fourrait des bûches dans la cheminée. Mais ils ne le virent point d’abord, à cause de sa stature brève et ramassée. | On 24 frimaire, at ten in the morning, beneath a bright pink sky that was melting the night’s ice, Citizens Guénot and Delourmel, delegates of the Committee of General Security, went to the Barnabites and had themselves shown to the section’s Surveillance Committee, in the chapter house, where Citizen Beauvisage was then stuffing logs into the fireplace. At first they failed to see him, however, because he was so short and squat. |
| <a id="c17p002"></a>De la voix fêlée des bossus, le citoyen Beauvisage pria les délégués de s’asseoir et se mit tout à leur service. | In the cracked voice of a hunchback, Citizen Beauvisage invited the delegates to sit down and placed himself entirely at their service. |
| <a id="c17p003"></a>Guénot lui demanda s’il connaissait un ci-devant des Ilettes, demeurant près du Pont-Neuf. | Guénot asked whether he knew a former nobleman called des Ilettes, living near the Pont-Neuf. |
| <a id="c17p004"></a>"C’est, ajouta-t-il, un individu que je suis chargé d’arrêter." | “He is,” he added, “an individual I have been ordered to arrest.” |
| <a id="c17p005"></a>Et il exhiba l’ordre du Comité de sûreté générale. | And he produced the order from the Committee of General Security. |
| <a id="c17p006"></a>Beauvisage, ayant quelque temps cherché dans sa mémoire, répondit qu’il ne connaissait point d’individu nommé des Ilettes, que le suspect ainsi désigné pouvait ne point habiter la section, certaines parties du Muséum, de l’Unité, de Marat-et-Marseille se trouvant aussi à proximité du Pont-Neuf; que, s’il habitait la section, ce devait être sous un nom autre que celui que portait l’ordre du Comité; que néanmoins on ne tarderait pas à le découvrir. | Having searched his memory for a while, Beauvisage replied that he knew no individual named des Ilettes; that the suspect in question might not live in the section, since parts of the Muséum, Unité and Marat-et-Marseille sections were also close to the Pont-Neuf; that, if he did live in the section, it must be under some name other than the one appearing on the Committee’s order; but that he would nevertheless soon be discovered. |
| <a id="c17p007"></a>"Ne perdons point de temps! dit Guénot. Il fut signalé à notre vigilance par une lettre d’une de ses complices qui a été interceptée et remise au Comité, il y a déjà quinze jours, et dont le citoyen Lacroix a pris connaissance hier soir seulement. Nous sommes débordés; les dénonciations nous arrivent de toutes parts, en telle abondance qu’on ne sait à qui entendre. | “Let us waste no time!” said Guénot. “He was brought to our notice by a letter from one of his accomplices, intercepted and handed to the Committee a fortnight ago already, which Citizen Lacroix only read last night. We are overwhelmed; denunciations pour in from every quarter, in such numbers that we scarcely know whom to hear first.” |
| <a id="c17p008"></a>— Les dénonciations, répliqua fièrement Beauvisage, affluent aussi au Comité de vigilance de la section. Les uns apportent leurs révélations par civisme; les autres, par l’appât d’un billet de cent sols. Beaucoup d’enfants dénoncent leurs parents, dont ils convoitent l’héritage. | “Denunciations also pour in to the section’s Vigilance Committee[^c17n01],” Beauvisage replied proudly. “Some people bring their revelations out of civic duty; others are tempted by a hundred-sol note. Many children denounce their parents because they covet their inheritance.” |
| <a id="c17p009"></a>— Cette lettre, reprit Guénot, émane d’une ci-devant Rochemaure, femme galante, chez qui l’on jouait le biribi, et porte en suscription le nom d’un citoyen Rauline; mais elle est réellement adressée à un émigré au service de Pitt. Je l’ai prise sur moi pour vous en communiquer ce qui concerne l’individu des Ilettes." | “This letter,” Guénot resumed, “comes from a former aristocrat named Rochemaure, a woman of pleasure in whose house biribi[^c17n02] was played, and is addressed on the outside to a Citizen Rauline; but its real recipient is an émigré in Pitt’s service[^c17n03]. I have it with me, to show you what concerns this individual des Ilettes.” |
| <a id="c17p010"></a>Il tira la lettre de sa poche. | He took the letter from his pocket. |
| <a id="c17p011"></a>"Elle débute par de longues indications sur les membres de la Convention qu’on pourrait, au dire de cette femme, gagner par l’offre d’une somme d’argent ou la promesse d’une haute fonction dans un gouvernement nouveau, plus stable que celui-ci. Ensuite se lit ce passage: | “It begins with lengthy particulars of the Convention members who, according to this woman, might be won over by the offer of money or the promise of high office in a new government, more stable than the present one. Then comes this passage: |
| <a id="c17p011a"></a>*Je sors de chez M. des Ilettes, qui habite, près du Pont-Neuf, un grenier où il faut être chat ou diable pour le trouver; il est réduit pour vivre à fabriquer des polichinelles. Il a du jugement: c’est pourquoi je vous transmets, monsieur, l’essentiel de sa conversation. Il ne croit pas que l’état de choses actuel durera longtemps. Il n’en prévoit pas la fin dans la victoire de la coalition; et l’événement semble lui donner raison; car vous savez, monsieur, que depuis quelque temps les nouvelles de la guerre sont mauvaises. Il croirait plutôt à la révolte des petites gens et des femmes du peuple, encore profondément attachées à leur religion. Il estime que l’effroi général que cause le Tribunal révolutionnaire réunira bientôt la France entière contre les Jacobins. "Ce Tribunal, a-t-il dit plaisamment, qui juge la reine de France et une porteuse de pain, ressemble à ce Guillaume Shakespeare, si admiré des Anglais, etc...." Il ne croit pas impossible que Robespierre épouse Madame Royale et se fasse nommer protecteur du royaume.* | *I have just left Monsieur des Ilettes, who lives near the Pont-Neuf in an attic where one would have to be a cat or a devil to find him; he is reduced to making Punchinellos for a living. He is a man of judgement: that is why, monsieur, I am sending you the substance of his conversation. He does not believe the present state of affairs will last long. He does not expect its end to come through a victory of the coalition; events seem to bear him out, for, as you know, monsieur, the news of the war has been bad for some time. He would be more inclined to expect a rising among the little people and the women of the lower classes, still deeply attached to their religion. He thinks the universal terror inspired by the Revolutionary Tribunal will soon unite the whole of France against the Jacobins. ‘This Tribunal,’ he said jokingly, ‘which tries the Queen of France and a woman who delivers bread, resembles that William Shakespeare whom the English admire so much, etc.…’ He does not think it impossible that Robespierre will marry Madame Royale[^c17n04] and have himself appointed Protector of the Kingdom.* |
| <a id="c17p011b"></a>*Je vous serais reconnaissant, monsieur, de me faire tenir les sommes qui me sont dues, c’est-à-dire mille livres sterling, par la voie que vous avez coutume d’employer, mais gardez-vous bien d’écrire à M. Morhardt: il vient d’être arrêté, mis en prison, etc., etc.* | *I should be grateful, monsieur, if you would have the sums owed to me, namely one thousand pounds sterling, sent by your usual means, but take care not to write to Monsieur Morhardt: he has just been arrested, imprisoned, etc., etc.* |
| <a id="c17p012"></a>— Le sieur des Ilettes fabrique des polichinelles, dit Beauvisage, voilà un indice précieux... bien qu’il y ait beaucoup de petites industries de ce genre dans la section. | “This des Ilettes makes Punchinellos,” said Beauvisage. “That is a valuable clue… though there are plenty of little trades of that sort in the section.” |
| <a id="c17p013"></a>— Cela me fait penser, dit Delourmel, que j’ai promis de rapporter une poupée à ma fille Nathalie, la cadette, qui est malade d’une fièvre scarlatine. Les taches ont paru hier. Cette fièvre n’est pas bien à craindre; mais elle exige des soins. Et Nathalie, très avancée pour son âge, d’une intelligence très développée, est d’une santé délicate. | “That reminds me,” said Delourmel, “I promised to bring a doll home to my daughter Nathalie, the younger one, who has scarlet fever. The spots appeared yesterday. It is not a very dangerous fever, but it needs care. And Nathalie, though very advanced for her age, with a highly developed intelligence, has delicate health.” |
| <a id="c17p014"></a>— Moi, dit Guénot, je n’ai qu’un garçon. Il joue au cerceau avec des cercles de tonneau et fabrique de petites montgolfières en soufflant dans des sacs. | “I have only one boy,” said Guénot. “He bowls barrel hoops and makes little Montgolfier balloons by blowing into bags.” |
| <a id="c17p015"></a>— Bien souvent, fit observer Beauvisage, c’est avec des objets qui ne sont pas des jouets que les enfants jouent le mieux. Mon neveu Émile, qui est un bambin de sept ans, très intelligent, s’amuse toute la journée avec de petits carrés de bois, dont il fait des constructions.... En usez-vous?..." | “Very often,” Beauvisage observed, “children play best with things that are not toys at all. My nephew Émile, a little lad of seven, very intelligent, amuses himself all day building things out of little blocks of wood.… Do you take it?…” |
| <a id="c17p016"></a>Et Beauvisage tendit sa tabatière ouverte aux deux délégués. | And Beauvisage held out his open snuffbox to the two delegates. |
| <a id="c17p017"></a>"Maintenant il faut pincer notre gredin, dit Delourmel, qui portait de longues moustaches et roulait de grands yeux. Je me sens d’appétit, ce matin, à manger de la fressure d’aristocrate, arrosée d’un verre de vin blanc." | “Now we must nab our scoundrel,” said Delourmel, who had long moustaches and rolled his great eyes. “This morning I feel I could eat a dish of aristocrat’s lights[^c17n05], washed down with a glass of white wine.” |
| <a id="c17p018"></a>Beauvisage proposa aux délégués d’aller trouver dans sa boutique de la place Dauphine son collègue Dupont aîné, qui connaissait sûrement l’individu des Ilettes. | Beauvisage suggested they go and find his colleague Dupont the elder in his shop in the Place Dauphine; he was sure to know this individual des Ilettes. |
| <a id="c17p019"></a>Ils cheminaient dans l’air vif, suivis de quatre grenadiers de la section. | They walked through the brisk air, followed by four grenadiers of the section. |
| <a id="c17p020"></a>"Avez-vous vu jouer *Le Jugement dernier des Rois*? demanda Delourmel à ses compagnons; la pièce mérite d’être vue. L’auteur y montre tous les rois de l’Europe réfugiés dans une île déserte, au pied d’un volcan qui les engloutit. C’est un ouvrage patriotique." | “Have you seen *The Last Judgement of Kings[^c17n06]*?” Delourmel asked his companions. “The play is worth seeing. The author shows all the kings of Europe taking refuge on a desert island, at the foot of a volcano that swallows them up. It is a patriotic work.” |
| <a id="c17p021"></a>Delourmel avisa, au coin de la rue du Harlay, une petite voiture, brillante comme une chapelle, que poussait une vieille qui portait par-dessus sa coiffe un chapeau de toile cirée. | At the corner of the Rue du Harlay, Delourmel noticed a little handcart, glittering like a chapel, pushed by an old woman who wore an oilskin hat over her cap. |
| <a id="c17p022"></a>"Qu’est-ce que vend cette vieille?" demanda-t-il. | “What is that old woman selling?” he asked. |
| <a id="c17p023"></a>La vieille répondit elle-même: | The old woman answered for herself: |
| <a id="c17p024"></a>"Voyez, messieurs, faites votre choix. Je tiens chapelets et rosaires, croix, images saint Antoine, saints suaires, mouchoirs de sainte Véronique, *Ecce homo*, *Agnus Dei*, cors et bagues de saint Hubert, et tous objets de dévotion. | “Look, messieurs, take your pick. I have chaplets and rosaries, crosses, pictures of Saint Anthony, holy shrouds, Saint Veronica’s handkerchiefs, *Ecce homo[^c17n07]*, *Agnus Dei*, Saint Hubert’s horns and rings, and every kind of devotional article.” |
| <a id="c17p025"></a>— C’est l’arsenal du fanatisme!" s’écria Delourmel. | “The arsenal of fanaticism!” cried Delourmel. |
| <a id="c17p026"></a>Et il procéda à l’interrogatoire sommaire de la colporteuse, qui répondait à toutes les questions: | And he subjected the pedlar to a summary interrogation. To every question she replied: |
| <a id="c17p027"></a>"Mon fils, il y a quarante ans que je vends des objets de dévotion." | “My son, I have been selling devotional articles these forty years.” |
| <a id="c17p028"></a>Un délégué du Comité de sûreté générale, avisant un habit bleu qui passait, lui enjoignit de conduire à la Conciergerie la vieille femme étonnée. | Noticing a blue coat passing by, one of the delegates of the Committee of General Security ordered its wearer to take the astonished old woman to the Conciergerie. |
| <a id="c17p029"></a>Le citoyen Beauvisage fit observer à Delourmel que c’eût été plutôt au Comité de surveillance à arrêter cette marchande et à la conduire à la section; que d’ailleurs on ne savait plus quelle conduite tenir à l’endroit du ci-devant culte, pour agir selon les vues du gouvernement, et s’il fallait ou tout permettre ou tout interdire. | Citizen Beauvisage observed to Delourmel that it would properly have been for the Surveillance Committee to arrest this vendor and take her to the section; besides, nobody knew any longer what attitude to take towards the former religion in order to act in accordance with the government’s wishes, or whether everything should be allowed or everything forbidden[^c17n08]. |
| <a id="c17p030"></a>En approchant de la boutique du menuisier, les délégués et le commissaire entendirent des clameurs irritées, mêlées aux grincements de la scie et aux ronflements du rabot. Une querelle s’était élevée entre le menuisier Dupont aîné et son voisin le portier Remacle à cause de la citoyenne Remacle, qu’un attrait invincible ramenait sans cesse au fond de la menuiserie d’où elle revenait à la loge couverte de copeaux et de sciure de bois. Le portier offensé donna un coup de pied à Mouton, le chien du menuisier, au moment même où sa propre fille, la petite Joséphine, tenait l’animal tendrement embrassé. Joséphine, indignée, se répandit en imprécations contre son père; le menuisier s’écria d’une voix irritée: | As they approached the carpenter’s shop, the delegates and the commissioner heard angry cries mingling with the screech of the saw and the hum of the plane. A quarrel had broken out between the carpenter Dupont the elder and his neighbour Remacle, the porter, over Citizen Remacle, who was drawn by an irresistible attraction again and again to the back of the carpenter’s shop, returning to the porter’s lodge covered in shavings and sawdust. The offended porter kicked Mouton, the carpenter’s dog, at the very moment when his own daughter, little Joséphine, was clasping the animal tenderly in her arms. Indignant, Joséphine poured curses upon her father; the carpenter cried angrily: |
| <a id="c17p031"></a>"Misérable! je te défends de battre mon chien. | “You wretch! I forbid you to beat my dog.” |
| <a id="c17p032"></a>— Et moi, répliqua le portier en levant son balai, je te défends de...." | “And I,” the porter replied, raising his broom, “forbid you to…” |
| <a id="c17p033"></a>Il n’acheva pas: la varlope du menuisier lui avait effleuré la tête. | He did not finish: the carpenter’s jointer plane had grazed his head. |
| <a id="c17p034"></a>Du plus loin qu’il aperçut le citoyen Beauvisage accompagné des délégués, il courut à lui et lui dit: | As soon as he caught sight of Citizen Beauvisage and the delegates, he ran to him and said: |
| <a id="c17p035"></a>"Citoyen commissaire, tu es témoin que ce scélérat vient de m’assassiner." | “Citizen commissioner, you are a witness: that scoundrel has just murdered me.” |
| <a id="c17p036"></a>Le citoyen Beauvisage, coiffé du bonnet rouge, insigne de ses fonctions, étendit ses longs bras dans une attitude pacificatrice, et, s’adressant au portier et au menuisier: | Citizen Beauvisage, wearing the red cap that was the badge of his office, stretched out his long arms in a gesture of peace and addressed the porter and the carpenter: |
| <a id="c17p037"></a>"Cent sols, dit-il, à celui de vous qui nous indiquera où se trouve un suspect, recherché par le Comité de sûreté générale, le ci-devant des Ilettes, fabricant de polichinelles." | “A hundred sols to whichever of you tells us where to find a suspect wanted by the Committee of General Security, the former des Ilettes, maker of Punchinellos.” |
| <a id="c17p038"></a>Tous deux, le portier et le menuisier, désignèrent ensemble le logis de Brotteaux, ne se disputant plus que pour l’assignat de cent sols promis au délateur. | Both porter and carpenter pointed together to Brotteaux’s lodging, now quarrelling only over the hundred-sol assignat promised to the informer. |
| <a id="c17p039"></a>Delourmel, Guénot et Beauvisage, suivis des quatre Grenadiers, du portier Remacle, du menuisier Dupont, et d’une douzaine de petits polissons du quartier, enfilèrent l’escalier ébranlé sur leurs pas, puis montèrent par l’échelle de meunier. | Delourmel, Guénot and Beauvisage, followed by the four grenadiers, the porter Remacle, the carpenter Dupont and a dozen little rascals from the neighbourhood, went up the staircase, which shook beneath their feet, then climbed the steep ladder to the attic. |
| <a id="c17p040"></a>Brotteaux, dans son grenier, découpait des pantins tandis que le Père Longuemare, en face de lui, assemblait par des fils leurs membres épars, et il souriait en voyant ainsi naître sous ses doigts le rythme et l’harmonie. | In his attic Brotteaux was cutting out jumping jacks[^c17n09] while Father Longuemare, sitting opposite him, threaded their scattered limbs together; he smiled to see rhythm and harmony thus coming to life beneath his fingers. |
| <a id="c17p041"></a>Au bruit des crosses sur le palier, le religieux tressaillit de tous ses membres, non qu’il eût moins de courage que Brotteaux qui demeurait impassible, mais le respect humain ne l’avait pas habitué à se composer un maintien. Brotteaux, aux questions du citoyen Delourmel, comprit d’où venait le coup et s’aperçut un peu tard qu’on a tort de se confier aux femmes. Invité à suivre le citoyen commissaire, il prit son Lucrèce et ses trois chemises. | At the sound of musket butts on the landing, every limb of the religious started. He had no less courage than Brotteaux, who remained impassive, but concern for appearances had not trained him to compose his expression. From Citizen Delourmel’s questions, Brotteaux understood where the blow had come from and realised a little too late that it was a mistake to confide in women. Invited to follow the citizen commissioner, he took his Lucretius and his three shirts. |
| <a id="c17p042"></a>"Le citoyen, dit-il, montrant le Père Longuemare, est un aide que j’ai pris pour fabriquer mes pantins. Il est domicilié ici." | “This citizen,” he said, pointing to Father Longuemare, “is an assistant I have taken on to make my jumping jacks. He is resident here.” |
| <a id="c17p043"></a>Mais le religieux, n’ayant pu présenter un certificat de civisme, fut mis avec Brotteaux en état d’arrestation. | But the religious, unable to produce a certificate of civic loyalty, was placed under arrest with Brotteaux. |
| <a id="c17p044"></a>Quand le cortège passa devant la loge du concierge, la citoyenne Remacle, appuyée sur son balai, regarda son locataire de l’air de la vertu qui voit le crime aux mains de la loi. La petite Joséphine, dédaigneuse et belle, retint par son collier Mouton, qui voulait caresser l’ami qui lui avait donné du sucre. Une foule de curieux emplissait la place de Thionville. | As the procession passed the porter’s lodge, Citizen Remacle, leaning on her broom, watched her tenant with the air of virtue beholding crime in the hands of the law[^c17n10]. Little Joséphine, disdainful and beautiful, held Mouton by the collar as he tried to greet the friend who had given him sugar. A crowd of onlookers filled the Place de Thionville. |
| <a id="c17p045"></a>Brotteaux, au pied de l’escalier, se rencontra avec une jeune paysanne qui se disposait à monter les degrés. Elle portait sous son bras un panier plein d’œufs et tenait à la main une galette enveloppée dans un linge. C’était Athénaïs, qui venait de Palaiseau présenter à son sauveur un témoignage de sa reconnaissance. Quand elle s’aperçut que des magistrats et quatre grenadiers emmenaient "monsieur Maurice", elle demeura stupide, demanda si c’était vrai, s’approcha du commissaire, et lui dit doucement: | At the foot of the stairs Brotteaux met a young countrywoman who was about to go up. She carried a basket full of eggs under her arm and held a flat cake wrapped in a cloth. It was Athénaïs, who had come from Palaiseau to bring her rescuer a token of her gratitude. When she saw magistrates and four grenadiers taking “Monsieur Maurice” away, she stood dumbfounded, asked whether it was true, approached the commissioner and said gently: |
| <a id="c17p046"></a>"Vous ne l’emmenez pas? ce n’est pas possible.... Mais vous ne le connaissez pas! Il est bon comme le bon Dieu." | “You are not taking him away? You cannot be.… But you do not know him! He is as good as the good Lord.” |
| <a id="c17p047"></a>Le citoyen Delourmel la repoussa et fit signe aux grenadiers d’avancer. Alors Athénaïs vomit les plus sales injures, les invectives les plus obscènes sur les magistrats et les grenadiers, qui croyaient sentir se vider sur leurs têtes toutes les cuvettes du Palais-Royal et de la rue Fromenteau. Puis, d’une voix qui remplit la place de Thionville tout entière et fit frémir la foule des curieux, elle cria: | Citizen Delourmel pushed her aside and signalled the grenadiers to move on. Then Athénaïs spewed the foulest abuse and the most obscene invective upon the magistrates and grenadiers, who felt as though all the chamber pots of the Palais-Royal and the Rue Fromenteau were being emptied over their heads. Then, in a voice that filled the whole Place de Thionville and sent a shiver through the crowd of onlookers, she cried: |
| <a id="c17p048"></a>"Vive le roi! vive le roi!" | “Long live the king! Long live the king!” |

### Notes

[^c17n01]: The novel also calls the local body the Surveillance Committee. Beauvisage’s pride in the volume of denunciations turns Guénot’s complaint about overwork into a competition in civic zeal; the children seeking inheritances immediately disclose less public motives. This is an interpretation of the exchange. [S164](#S164)

[^c17n02]: A gambling game played with a numbered board and numbers drawn from hollow balls. Its presence identifies Rochemaure’s house as a place of sociability and wagering, rather than an official political meeting place. [S165](#S165)

[^c17n03]: William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), British prime minister during 1783–1801 and again in 1804–06. In this letter his name identifies the foreign power for which the correspondent is alleged to work; Guénot’s accusation must be distinguished from independently established evidence. [S166](#S166)

[^c17n04]: Marie-Thérèse Charlotte (1778–1851), eldest daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, imprisoned during the Revolution. The proposed marriage is Brotteaux’s reported speculation, not an event: she eventually married her cousin Louis Antoine d’Artois in 1799. [S115](#S115)

[^c17n05]: Edible internal organs, especially lungs; French fressure includes the heart, liver and lungs of a slaughtered animal. The butcher’s vocabulary makes Delourmel’s threat bodily, immediately after his tender concern for his daughter. The contrast is an interpretation of the juxtaposition. [S164](#S164)

[^c17n06]: Sylvain Maréchal’s Le Jugement dernier des rois (1793), subtitled a “prophecy” in one act and prose. Delourmel accurately recalls its spectacular premise: European rulers are deposited on a volcanic island. The play’s printed text is available through Bibliotheca Augustana. [S167](#S167)

[^c17n07]: Latin for “Behold the man”: Pilate’s presentation of Jesus, crowned with thorns, in John 19:5. Here the words designate a devotional image of the suffering Christ. The pedlar’s list names portable religious objects and representations, not authenticated relics. [S168](#S168)

[^c17n08]: The uncertainty reflects conflicting revolutionary positions on worship. Robespierre opposed coercive dechristianisation and proposed measures for religious liberty in December 1793. France turns that political ambiguity into an immediate jurisdictional argument between national delegates and a local committee. [S169](#S169)

[^c17n09]: French pantins are articulated figures whose limbs move when their strings are pulled. Polichinelles, rendered “Punchinellos” above, names their comic puppet type. The change of word allows France to evoke the physical assembly and animation of the toys. [S164](#S164)

[^c17n10]: An interpretive reversal: the woman whose affair the preceding quarrel exposed now assumes the posture of moral judgement. Athénaïs, socially discredited but loyal to her rescuer, supplies the chapter’s contrasting act of gratitude. [S164](#S164)

<a id="chapter-18"></a>

## XVIII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c18p001"></a>La citoyenne Gamelin aimait le vieux Brotteaux, et le tenait pour l’homme tout ensemble le plus aimable et le plus considérable qu’elle eût jamais approché. Elle ne lui avait pas dit adieu quand on l’avait arrêté, parce qu’elle eût craint de braver les autorités et que dans son humble condition elle regardait la lâcheté comme un devoir. Mais elle en avait reçu un coup dont elle ne se relevait pas. | Citizen Gamelin loved old Brotteaux and thought him at once the most charming and the most distinguished man she had ever known. She had not said goodbye when he was arrested, because she would have feared to defy the authorities, and in her humble station she regarded cowardice as a duty[^c18n01]. But she had suffered a blow from which she could not recover. |
| <a id="c18p002"></a>Elle ne pouvait manger et déplorait qu’elle eût perdu l’appétit au moment où elle avait enfin de quoi le satisfaire. Elle admirait encore son fils; mais elle n’osait plus penser aux épouvantables tâches qu’il accomplissait et se félicitait de n’être qu’une femme ignorante pour n’avoir pas à le juger. | She could not eat, and lamented having lost her appetite just when she had at last acquired the means to satisfy it. She still admired her son; but she no longer dared think of the appalling tasks he performed, and was thankful to be only an ignorant woman, with no need to pass judgement on him. |
| <a id="c18p003"></a>La pauvre mère avait retrouvé un vieux chapelet au fond d’une malle; elle ne savait pas bien s’en servir, mais elle en occupait ses doigts tremblants. Après avoir vécu jusqu’à la vieillesse sans pratiquer sa religion, elle devenait pieuse: elle priait Dieu, toute la journée, au coin du feu, pour le salut de son enfant et de ce bon monsieur Brotteaux. Souvent Élodie l’allait voir: elles n’osaient se regarder et, l’une près de l’autre, parlaient au hasard de choses sans intérêt. | The poor mother had found an old rosary at the bottom of a trunk; she scarcely knew how to use it, but it kept her trembling fingers occupied. After living into old age without practising her religion, she was growing devout: all day, by the fireside, she prayed to God for the salvation of her child and good Monsieur Brotteaux. Élodie often went to see her: they dared not look at one another and, sitting side by side, talked at random of unimportant things. |
| <a id="c18p004"></a>Un jour de pluviôse, quand la neige qui tombait à gros flocons obscurcissait le ciel et étouffait tous les bruits de la ville, la citoyenne Gamelin, qui était seule au logis, entendit frapper à la porte. Elle tressaillit: depuis plusieurs mois le moindre bruit la faisait frissonner. Elle ouvrit la porte. Un jeune homme de dix-huit ou vingt ans entra, son chapeau sur la tête. Il était vêtu d’un carrick vert bouteille, dont les trois collets lui couvraient la poitrine et la taille. Il portait des bottes à revers de façon anglaise. Ses cheveux châtains tombaient en boucles sur ses épaules. Il s’avança au milieu de l’atelier, comme pour recevoir tout ce que le vitrage envoyait de lumière à travers la neige, et demeura quelques instants immobile et silencieux. | One day in pluviôse, when great flakes of snow darkened the sky and muffled every sound in the city, Citizen Gamelin, alone at home, heard a knock at the door. She started: for several months now the slightest noise had made her shudder. She opened the door. A young man of eighteen or twenty came in, keeping his hat on. He wore a bottle-green carrick[^c18n02] whose three capes covered his chest and waist. His boots had turned-down tops in the English fashion. His chestnut hair fell in curls upon his shoulders. He advanced into the middle of the studio, as though to catch all the light that the skylight admitted through the snow, and stood for a few moments motionless and silent. |
| <a id="c18p005"></a>Enfin, tandis que la citoyenne Gamelin le regardait interdite: | At last, as Citizen Gamelin stared at him in bewilderment: |
| <a id="c18p006"></a>"Tu ne reconnais pas ta fille?..." | “Don’t you recognise your daughter?…” |
| <a id="c18p007"></a>La vieille dame joignit les mains: | The old lady clasped her hands: |
| <a id="c18p008"></a>"Julie!... C’est toi.... Est-il Dieu possible!... | “Julie!… It’s you.… Can it be possible!…” |
| <a id="c18p009"></a>— Mais oui, c’est moi! Embrasse-moi, maman." | “Of course it’s me! Kiss me, Maman.” |
| <a id="c18p010"></a>La citoyenne veuve Gamelin serra sa fille dans ses bras et mit une larme sur le collet du carrick. Puis elle reprit avec un accent d’inquiétude: | Citizen Widow Gamelin took her daughter in her arms and left a tear upon the carrick’s cape. Then, anxiously, she said: |
| <a id="c18p011"></a>"Toi, à Paris!... | “You, in Paris!…” |
| <a id="c18p012"></a>— Ah! maman, que n’y suis-je venue seule!... Moi, on ne me reconnaîtra pas dans cet habit." | “Ah, Maman, if only I had come alone!… Nobody will recognise me in these clothes.” |
| <a id="c18p013"></a>En effet, le carrick dissimulait ses formes et elle ne paraissait pas différente de beaucoup de très jeunes hommes qui, comme elle, portaient les cheveux longs, partagés en deux masses. Les traits de son visage, fins et charmants, mais hâlés, creusés par la fatigue, endurcis par les soucis, avaient une expression audacieuse et mâle. Elle était mince, avait les jambes longues et droites, ses gestes étaient aisés; seule sa voix claire eût pu la trahir. | Indeed, the carrick concealed her figure, and she looked no different from many very young men who, like her, wore their long hair parted in two masses. The features of her face, delicate and charming but weathered, hollowed by fatigue and hardened by anxiety, had a bold, masculine expression. She was slender, with long straight legs and easy movements; only her clear voice might have betrayed her. |
| <a id="c18p014"></a>Sa mère lui demanda si elle avait faim. Elle répondit qu’elle mangerait volontiers, et, quand on lui eut servi du pain, du vin et du jambon, elle se mit à manger, un coude sur la table, belle et gloutonne comme Cérès dans la cabane de la vieille Baubô. | Her mother asked whether she was hungry. She replied that she would gladly eat, and when bread, wine and ham had been put before her, she began to eat, one elbow on the table, beautiful and ravenous as Ceres in old Baubo’s hut[^c18n03]. |
| <a id="c18p015"></a>Puis, le verre encore sur ses lèvres: | Then, with the glass still at her lips: |
| <a id="c18p016"></a>"Maman, sais-tu quand mon frère rentrera? Je suis venue lui parler." | “Maman, do you know when my brother will be home? I’ve come to speak to him.” |
| <a id="c18p017"></a>La bonne mère regarda sa fille avec embarras et ne répondit rien. | Her good mother looked at her daughter awkwardly and made no reply. |
| <a id="c18p018"></a>"Il faut que je le voie. Mon mari a été arrêté ce matin et conduit au Luxembourg." | “I must see him. My husband was arrested this morning and taken to the Luxembourg[^c18n04].” |
| <a id="c18p019"></a>Elle donnait ce nom de "mari" à Fortuné de Chassagne, ci-devant noble et officier dans le régiment de Bouillé. Il l’avait aimée quand elle était ouvrière de modes rue des Lombards, enlevée et emmenée en Angleterre, où il avait émigré après le 10 août. C’était son amant; mais elle trouvait plus décent de le nommer son époux, devant sa mère. Et elle se disait que la misère les avait bien mariés et que c’était un sacrement que le malheur. | She gave this name of “husband” to Fortuné de Chassagne, a former nobleman and officer in Bouillé’s regiment. He had loved her when she was a milliner in the Rue des Lombards, carried her off and taken her to England, where he had emigrated after 10 August[^c18n05]. He was her lover; but in her mother’s presence she thought it more decent to call him her spouse. And she told herself that poverty had married them well enough, and misfortune was a sacrament[^c18n06]. |
| <a id="c18p020"></a>Ils avaient plus d’une fois passé la nuit tous deux sur un banc, dans les parcs de Londres, et ramassé des morceaux de pain sous les tables des tavernes, à Piccadilly. | More than once they had spent the night together on a bench in the London parks and picked up scraps of bread beneath the tavern tables in Piccadilly. |
| <a id="c18p021"></a>Sa mère ne répondait point et la regardait d’un œil morne. | Her mother made no reply and looked at her with a dull eye. |
| <a id="c18p022"></a>"Tu ne m’entends donc pas, maman? Le temps presse, il faut que je voie Évariste tout de suite: lui seul peut sauver Fortuné. | “Can’t you hear me, Maman? There’s no time to lose. I must see Évariste at once: only he can save Fortuné.” |
| <a id="c18p023"></a>— Julie, répondit la mère, il vaut mieux que tu ne parles pas à ton frère. | “Julie,” her mother answered, “it would be better not to speak to your brother.” |
| <a id="c18p024"></a>— Comment? que dis-tu, ma mère? | “What? What are you saying, Mother?” |
| <a id="c18p025"></a>— Je dis qu’il vaut mieux que tu ne parles pas à ton frère de monsieur de Chassagne. | “I’m saying it would be better not to speak to your brother about Monsieur de Chassagne.” |
| <a id="c18p026"></a>— Maman, il le faut bien, pourtant! | “But Maman, I must!” |
| <a id="c18p027"></a>— Mon enfant, Évariste ne pardonne pas à monsieur de Chassagne de t’avoir enlevée. Tu sais avec quelle colère il parlait de lui, quels noms il lui donnait. | “My child, Évariste has not forgiven Monsieur de Chassagne for carrying you off. You know how angrily he spoke of him, the names he called him.” |
| <a id="c18p028"></a>— Oui, il l’appelait corrupteur, fit Julie avec un petit rire sifflant, en haussant les épaules. | “Yes, he called him a corrupter,” said Julie, shrugging her shoulders with a little hissing laugh. |
| <a id="c18p029"></a>— Mon enfant, il était mortellement offensé. Évariste a pris sur lui de ne plus parler de monsieur de Chassagne. Et voilà deux ans qu’il n’a soufflé mot de lui ni de toi. Mais ses sentiments n’ont pas changé; tu le connais: il ne vous pardonne pas. | “My child, he was mortally offended. Évariste has made himself stop speaking of Monsieur de Chassagne. For two years he has not breathed a word about either him or you. But his feelings have not changed; you know him: he does not forgive you.” |
| <a id="c18p030"></a>— Mais, maman, puisque Fortuné m’a épousée... à Londres...." | “But Maman, Fortuné married me… in London.…” |
| <a id="c18p031"></a>La pauvre mère leva les yeux et les bras: | The poor mother lifted her eyes and her arms: |
| <a id="c18p032"></a>"Il suffit que Fortuné soit un aristocrate, un émigré, pour qu’Évariste le traite comme un ennemi. | “It is enough for Fortuné to be an aristocrat and an émigré[^c18n07] for Évariste to treat him as an enemy.” |
| <a id="c18p033"></a>— Enfin, réponds, maman. Penses-tu que, si je lui demande de faire auprès de l’accusateur public et du Comité de sûreté générale les démarches nécessaires pour sauver Fortuné, il n’y consentira pas?... Mais, maman, ce serait un monstre, s’il refusait! | “Come, answer me, Maman. Do you think that if I ask him to take the necessary steps with the public prosecutor and the Committee of General Security to save Fortuné, he won’t agree?… But Maman, he would be a monster if he refused!” |
| <a id="c18p034"></a>— Mon enfant, ton frère est un honnête homme et un bon fils. Mais ne lui demande pas, oh! ne lui demande pas de s’intéresser à monsieur de Chassagne.... Écoute-moi, Julie. Il ne me confie point ses pensées et, sans doute, je ne serais pas capable de les comprendre... mais il est juge; il a des principes; il agit d’après sa conscience. Ne lui demande rien, Julie. | “My child, your brother is an honest man and a good son. But do not ask him, oh, do not ask him to concern himself with Monsieur de Chassagne.… Listen to me, Julie. He does not confide his thoughts to me, and no doubt I would not be capable of understanding them… but he is a judge; he has his principles; he acts according to his conscience. Ask him for nothing, Julie.” |
| <a id="c18p035"></a>— Je vois que tu le connais maintenant. Tu sais qu’il est froid, insensible, que c’est un méchant, qu’il n’a que de l’ambition, de la vanité. Et tu l’as toujours préféré à moi. Quand nous vivions tous les trois ensemble, tu me le proposais pour modèle. Sa démarche compassée et sa parole grave t’imposaient: tu lui découvrais toutes les vertus. Et moi, tu me désapprouvais toujours, tu m’attribuais tous les vices, parce que j’étais franche, et que je grimpais aux arbres. Tu n’as jamais pu me souffrir. Tu n’aimais que lui. Tiens! je le hais, ton Évariste; c’est un hypocrite. | “I see you know him now. You know he’s cold, unfeeling, wicked, that there’s nothing to him but ambition and vanity. And you always preferred him to me. When the three of us lived together, you held him up as an example. His measured walk and solemn speech impressed you: you discovered every virtue in him. And you were always finding fault with me, attributing every vice to me, because I spoke my mind and climbed trees. You could never bear me. You loved only him. There! I hate your Évariste; he’s a hypocrite.” |
| <a id="c18p036"></a>— Tais-toi, Julie: j’ai été une bonne mère pour toi comme pour lui. Je t’ai fait apprendre un état. Il n’a pas dépendu de moi que tu ne restes une honnête fille et que tu ne te maries selon ta condition. Je t’ai aimée tendrement et je t’aime encore. Je te pardonne et je t’aime. Mais ne dis pas de mal d’Évariste. C’est un bon fils. Il a toujours eu soin de moi. Quand tu m’as quittée, mon enfant, quand tu as abandonné ton état, ton magasin, pour aller vivre avec monsieur de Chassagne, que serais-je devenue sans lui? Je serais morte de misère et de faim. | “Be quiet, Julie: I have been as good a mother to you as to him. I had you taught a trade. It was no fault of mine that you did not remain a respectable girl and marry in your own station. I loved you tenderly and I love you still. I forgive you and I love you. But do not speak ill of Évariste. He is a good son. He has always looked after me. When you left me, my child, when you abandoned your trade and your shop to live with Monsieur de Chassagne, what would have become of me without him? I would have died of poverty and hunger.” |
| <a id="c18p037"></a>— Ne parle pas ainsi, maman: tu sais bien que nous t’aurions entourée de soins, Fortuné et moi, si tu ne t’étais pas détournée de nous, excitée par Évariste. Laisse-moi tranquille! il est incapable d’une bonne action; c’est pour me rendre odieuse à tes yeux qu’il a affecté de prendre soin de toi. Lui! t’aimer?... Est-ce qu’il est capable d’aimer quelqu’un? Il n’a ni cœur ni esprit. Il n’a aucun talent, aucun. Pour peindre, il faut une nature plus tendre que la sienne." | “Don’t speak like that, Maman: you know perfectly well that Fortuné and I would have taken every care of you if Évariste hadn’t stirred you up against us. Leave me alone! He’s incapable of doing anything good; he only made such a show of looking after you to turn you against me. He, love you?… Is he capable of loving anyone? He has neither heart nor intelligence. He has no talent, none. To paint, you need a gentler nature than his.” |
| <a id="c18p038"></a>Elle promena ses regards sur les toiles de l’atelier, qu’elle retrouvait telles qu’elle les avait quittées. | She looked round at the canvases in the studio, finding them as she had left them. |
| <a id="c18p039"></a>"La voilà, son âme! il l’a mise sur ses toiles, froide et sombre. Son Oreste, son Oreste, l’œil bête, la bouche mauvaise et qui a l’air d’un empalé, c’est lui tout entier.... Enfin, maman, tu ne comprends donc rien? Je ne peux pas laisser Fortuné en prison. Tu les connais, les jacobins, les patriotes, toute la séquelle d’Évariste. Ils le feront mourir. Maman, ma chère maman, ma petite maman, je ne veux pas qu’on me le tue. Je l’aime! je l’aime! Il a été si bon pour moi, et nous avons été si malheureux ensemble! Tiens, ce carrick, c’est un habit à lui. Je n’avais plus de chemise. Un ami de Fortuné m’a prêté une veste et j’ai été chez un garçon limonadier à Douvres, pendant qu’il travaillait chez un coiffeur. Nous savions bien que, revenir en France, c’était risquer notre vie; mais on nous a demandé si nous voulions aller à Paris, pour y accomplir une mission importante.... Nous avons consenti; nous aurions accepté une mission pour le diable. On nous a payé notre voyage et donné une lettre de change pour un banquier de Paris. Nous avons trouvé les bureaux fermés: ce banquier est en prison et va être guillotiné. Nous n’avions pas un rouge liard. Toutes les personnes à qui nous étions affiliés et à qui nous pouvions nous adresser sont en fuite ou emprisonnées. Pas une porte où frapper. Nous couchions dans une écurie de la rue de la Femme-sans-tête. Un décrotteur charitable, qui y dormait sur la paille avec nous, prêta à mon amant une de ses boîtes, une brosse et un pot de cirage aux trois quarts vide. Fortuné, pendant quinze jours, a gagné sa vie et la mienne à cirer des souliers sur la place de Grève. Mais lundi un membre de la Commune mit le pied sur la boîte et lui fit cirer ses bottes. C’est un ancien boucher à qui Fortuné a donné autrefois un coup de pied dans le derrière pour avoir vendu de la viande à faux poids. Quand Fortuné releva la tête pour réclamer ses deux sous, le coquin le reconnut, l’appela aristocrate et le menaça de le faire arrêter. La foule s’amassa; elle se composait de braves gens et de quelques scélérats qui criaient: "A mort l’émigré!" et appelaient les gendarmes. A ce moment, j’apportais la soupe à Fortuné. Je l’ai vu conduire à la section, et enfermer dans l’église Saint-Jean. J’ai voulu l’embrasser: on me repoussa. J’ai passé la nuit comme un chien sur une marche de l’église.... On l’a conduit, ce matin...." | “There’s his soul! He’s put it on his canvases, cold and dark. His Orestes, his Orestes, with his stupid eye, his nasty mouth and his look of a man who’s been impaled—that’s him all over.… Maman, can’t you understand anything? I can’t leave Fortuné in prison. You know the Jacobins, the patriots, Évariste’s whole gang. They’ll put him to death. Maman, my dear Maman, my darling Maman, I won’t have them kill him. I love him! I love him! He’s been so good to me, and we’ve been so unhappy together! Look, this carrick is his coat. I hadn’t even a shirt left. A friend of Fortuné’s lent me a jacket, and I went to work for a waiter in Dover while he worked for a hairdresser. We knew that coming back to France meant risking our lives; but we were asked whether we would go to Paris to carry out an important mission.… We agreed; we would have accepted a mission for the devil. They paid our passage and gave us a bill of exchange[^c18n08] drawn on a Paris banker. We found his offices closed: he’s in prison and going to be guillotined. We hadn’t a red liard[^c18n09]. Everyone we were connected with, everyone we could turn to, is in hiding or in prison. Not a door to knock at. We were sleeping in a stable in the Rue de la Femme-sans-tête. A charitable shoeblack, who slept there on the straw with us, lent my lover one of his boxes, a brush and a pot of polish three-quarters empty. For a fortnight Fortuné earned his living and mine polishing shoes in the Place de Grève. But on Monday a member of the Commune put his foot on the box and had his boots cleaned. He’s a former butcher whom Fortuné once kicked up the backside for selling short weight. When Fortuné raised his head to ask for his two sous, the rogue recognised him, called him an aristocrat and threatened to have him arrested. A crowd gathered; there were decent people in it and a few scoundrels who shouted, ‘Death to the émigré!’ and called the gendarmes. Just then I was bringing Fortuné his soup. I saw him taken to the section and locked in the church of Saint-Jean. I tried to kiss him: they pushed me away. I spent the night like a dog on a church step.… This morning they took him…” |
| <a id="c18p040"></a>Julie ne put achever; les sanglots l’étouffaient. | Julie could not finish; sobs choked her. |
| <a id="c18p041"></a>Elle jeta son chapeau sur le plancher et se mit à genoux aux pieds de sa mère: | She threw her hat on the floor and knelt at her mother’s feet: |
| <a id="c18p042"></a>"On l’a conduit, ce matin, dans la prison du Luxembourg. Maman, maman, aide-moi à le sauver; aie pitié de ta fille!" | “This morning they took him to the Luxembourg prison. Maman, Maman, help me save him; have pity on your daughter!” |
| <a id="c18p043"></a>Tout en pleurs, elle écarta son carrick et, pour se mieux faire reconnaître amante et fille, découvrit sa poitrine; et, prenant les mains de sa mère, elle les pressa sur ses seins palpitants. | Weeping, she opened her carrick and, to make herself more fully recognised as a lover and a daughter[^c18n10], bared her chest; then she took her mother’s hands and pressed them to her heaving breasts. |
| <a id="c18p044"></a>"Ma fille chérie, ma Julie, ma Julie!" soupira la veuve Gamelin. | “My darling daughter, my Julie, my Julie!” sighed Widow Gamelin. |
| <a id="c18p045"></a>Et elle colla son visage humide de larmes sur les joues de la jeune femme. | And she pressed her tear-wet face against the young woman’s cheeks. |
| <a id="c18p046"></a>Durant quelques instants, elles gardèrent le silence. La pauvre mère cherchait dans son esprit le moyen d’aider sa fille et Julie épiait le regard de ces yeux noyés de pleurs. | For a few moments they were silent. The poor mother searched her mind for a way to help her daughter, and Julie watched those tear-drowned eyes. |
| <a id="c18p047"></a>"Peut-être, songeait la mère d’Évariste, peut-être, si je lui parle, se laissera-t-il fléchir. Il est bon, il est tendre. Si la politique ne l’avait pas endurci, s’il n’avait pas subi l’influence des jacobins, il n’aurait point eu de ces sévérités qui m’effraient, parce que je ne les comprends pas." | “Perhaps,” Évariste’s mother thought, “perhaps, if I speak to him, he may relent. He is good, he is tender. If politics had not hardened him, if he had not come under the influence of the Jacobins, he would never have been guilty of those severities that frighten me because I do not understand them.” |
| <a id="c18p048"></a>Elle prit dans ses deux mains la tête de Julie: | She took Julie’s head between her hands: |
| <a id="c18p049"></a>"Écoute, ma fille. Je parlerai à Évariste. Je le préparerai à te voir, à t’entendre. Ta vue pourrait l’irriter et je craindrais le premier mouvement.... Et puis, je le connais: cet habit le choquerait; il est sévère sur tout ce qui touche aux mœurs, aux convenances. Moi-même, j’ai été un peu surprise de voir ma Julie en garçon. | “Listen, my daughter. I will speak to Évariste. I will prepare him to see you, to hear you. The sight of you might anger him, and I would fear his first impulse.… And then, I know him: these clothes would shock him; he is strict about everything to do with morals and propriety. Even I was a little surprised to see my Julie dressed as a boy.” |
| <a id="c18p050"></a>— Ah! maman, l’émigration et les affreux désordres du royaume ont rendu ces travestissements bien communs. On les prend pour exercer un métier, pour n’être point reconnu, pour faire concorder un passeport ou un certificat empruntés. J’ai vu à Londres le petit Girey habillé en fille et qui avait l’air d’une très jolie fille; et tu conviendras, maman, que ce travestissement est plus scabreux que le mien. | “Ah, Maman, emigration and the terrible disorders in the kingdom have made such disguises quite common. People wear them to follow a trade, to avoid being recognised, to fit a borrowed passport or certificate. In London I saw little Girey dressed as a girl, and he looked a very pretty girl; and you’ll admit, Maman, that his disguise is more questionable than mine.” |
| <a id="c18p051"></a>— Ma pauvre enfant, tu n’as pas besoin de te justifier à mes yeux, ni de cela ni d’autre chose. Je suis ta mère: tu seras toujours innocente pour moi. Je parlerai à Évariste, je dirai...." | “My poor child, you need not justify yourself to me, in that or anything else. I am your mother: you will always be innocent to me. I will speak to Évariste, I will say…” |
| <a id="c18p052"></a>Elle s’interrompit. Elle sentait ce qu’était son fils; elle le sentait, mais elle ne voulait pas le croire, elle ne voulait pas le savoir. | She broke off. She felt what her son was; she felt it, but she would not believe it, she would not know it. |
| <a id="c18p053"></a>"Il est bon. Il fera pour moi... pour toi ce que je lui demanderai." | “He is good. He will do what I ask for my sake… for yours.” |
| <a id="c18p054"></a>Et les deux femmes, infiniment lasses, se turent. Julie s’endormit la tête sur les genoux où elle avait reposé enfant. Cependant, son chapelet à la main, la mère douloureuse pleurait sur les maux qu’elle sentait venir silencieusement, dans le calme de ce jour de neige où tout se taisait, les pas, les roues, le ciel. | And the two women, infinitely weary, fell silent. Julie went to sleep with her head on the knees where it had rested in childhood. Meanwhile, rosary in hand, the sorrowing mother[^c18n11] wept over the evils she felt approaching silently, in the stillness of this snowy day when everything was hushed, footsteps, wheels, the sky. |
| <a id="c18p055"></a>Tout à coup, avec une finesse d’ouïe que l’inquiétude avait aiguisée, elle entendit son fils qui montait l’escalier. | Suddenly, with hearing sharpened to extraordinary keenness by anxiety, she heard her son coming up the stairs. |
| <a id="c18p056"></a>"Évariste!... dit-elle. Cache-toi." | “Évariste!…” she said. “Hide.” |
| <a id="c18p057"></a>Et elle poussa sa fille dans sa chambre. | And she pushed her daughter into her bedroom. |
| <a id="c18p058"></a>"Comment allez-vous aujourd’hui, ma bonne mère?" | “How are you today, my dear mother?” |
| <a id="c18p059"></a>Évariste accrocha son chapeau au portemanteau, changea son habit bleu contre une veste de travail et s’assit devant son chevalet. Depuis quelques jours il esquissait au fusain une Victoire déposant une couronne sur le front d’un soldat mort pour la patrie. Il eût traité ce sujet avec enthousiasme, mais le Tribunal dévorait toutes ses journées, prenait toute son âme, et sa main déshabituée du dessin se faisait lourde et paresseuse. | Évariste hung his hat on the rack, exchanged his blue coat for a working jacket and sat down before his easel. For several days he had been sketching in charcoal a Victory[^c18n12] placing a crown on the brow of a soldier who had died for his country. He would have treated this subject with enthusiasm, but the Tribunal devoured all his days and possessed his whole soul, and his hand, out of practice at drawing, was growing heavy and sluggish. |
| <a id="c18p060"></a>Il fredonna le *Ça ira*. | He hummed the *Ça ira*. |
| <a id="c18p061"></a>"Tu chantes, mon enfant, dit la citoyenne Gamelin; tu as le cœur gai. | “You’re singing, my child,” said Citizen Gamelin. “Your heart is light.” |
| <a id="c18p062"></a>— Nous devons nous réjouir, ma mère: il y a de bonnes nouvelles. La Vendée est écrasée, les Autrichiens défaits; l’armée du Rhin a forcé les lignes de Lautern et de Wissembourg. Le jour est proche où la République triomphante montrera sa clémence. Pourquoi faut-il que l’audace des conspirateurs grandisse à mesure que la République croît en force et que les traîtres s’étudient à frapper dans l’ombre la patrie, alors qu’elle foudroie les ennemis qui l’attaquent à découvert?" | “We ought to rejoice, Mother: there is good news. The Vendée is crushed, the Austrians defeated; the Army of the Rhine has forced the lines of Lautern and Wissembourg. The day is near when the triumphant Republic will show its clemency[^c18n13]. Why must the conspirators grow bolder as the Republic grows stronger, and the traitors strive to strike our country in the dark while it blasts the enemies who attack it openly?” |
| <a id="c18p063"></a>La citoyenne Gamelin, en tricotant un bas, observait son fils par-dessus ses lunettes. | Knitting a stocking, Citizen Gamelin watched her son over her spectacles. |
| <a id="c18p064"></a>"Berzélius, ton vieux modèle, est venu réclamer les dix livres que tu lui devais: je les lui ai remises. La petite Joséphine a eu mal au ventre pour avoir mangé trop de confitures, que le menuisier lui avait données. Je lui ai fait de la tisane.... Desmahis est venu te voir; il a regretté de ne pas te trouver. Il voudrait graver un sujet de ta composition. Il te trouve un grand talent. Ce brave garçon a regardé tes esquisses et les a admirées. | “Berzélius, your old model, came to ask for the ten livres you owed him: I gave them to him. Little Joséphine had a stomach ache from eating too much jam that the carpenter had given her. I made her some herbal tea.… Desmahis came to see you; he was sorry to miss you. He would like to engrave something of your composition. He thinks you have great talent. That good lad looked at your sketches and admired them.” |
| <a id="c18p065"></a>— Quand la paix sera rétablie et la conspiration étouffée, dit le peintre, je reprendrai mon Oreste. Je n’ai pas l’habitude de me flatter; mais il y a là une tête digne de David." | “When peace is restored and the conspiracy crushed,” said the painter, “I shall return to my Orestes. I am not in the habit of flattering myself, but there is a head there worthy of David[^c18n14].” |
| <a id="c18p066"></a>Il traça d’une ligne majestueuse le bras de sa Victoire. | With a majestic line he traced his Victory’s arm. |
| <a id="c18p067"></a>"Elle tend des palmes, dit-il. Mais il serait plus beau que ses bras eux-mêmes fussent des palmes. | “She holds out palms,” he said. “But it would be more beautiful if her arms themselves were palms.” |
| <a id="c18p068"></a>— Évariste! | “Évariste!” |
| <a id="c18p069"></a>— Maman?... | “Maman?…” |
| <a id="c18p070"></a>— J’ai reçu des nouvelles... devine de qui.... | “I’ve had news… guess of whom.…” |
| <a id="c18p071"></a>— Je ne sais pas.... | “I don’t know.…” |
| <a id="c18p072"></a>— De Julie... de ta sœur.... Elle n’est pas heureuse. | “Of Julie… your sister.… She is not happy.” |
| <a id="c18p073"></a>— Ce serait un scandale qu’elle le fût. | “It would be a scandal if she were.” |
| <a id="c18p074"></a>— Ne parle pas ainsi, mon enfant: elle est ta sœur. Julie n’est pas mauvaise; elle a de bons sentiments, que le malheur a nourris. Elle t’aime. Je puis t’assurer, Évariste, qu’elle aspire à une vie laborieuse, exemplaire, et ne songe qu’à se rapprocher des siens. Rien n’empêche que tu la revoies. Elle a épousé Fortuné Chassagne. | “Do not speak like that, my child: she is your sister. Julie is not bad; she has good feelings which misfortune has nourished. She loves you. I can assure you, Évariste, that she longs for a hardworking, exemplary life, and thinks only of drawing closer to her family. Nothing prevents you from seeing her again. She has married Fortuné Chassagne.” |
| <a id="c18p075"></a>— Elle vous a écrit? | “Has she written to you?” |
| <a id="c18p076"></a>— Non. | “No.” |
| <a id="c18p077"></a>— Comment avez-vous de ses nouvelles, ma mère? | “How have you had news of her, Mother?” |
| <a id="c18p078"></a>— Ce n’est pas par une lettre, mon enfant; c’est...." | “Not by a letter, my child; it is…” |
| <a id="c18p079"></a>Il se leva et l’interrompit d’une voix terrible: | He rose and cut her short in a terrible voice: |
| <a id="c18p080"></a>"Taisez-vous, ma mère! Ne me dites pas qu’ils sont tous deux rentrés en France.... Puisqu’ils doivent périr, que du moins ce ne soit pas par moi. Pour eux, pour vous, pour moi, faites que j’ignore qu’ils sont à Paris.... Ne me forcez pas à le savoir; sans quoi.... | “Be silent, Mother! Do not tell me they have both returned to France.… Since they must perish, at least let it not be through me. For their sake, for yours, for mine, let me remain ignorant that they are in Paris.… Do not force me to know it; otherwise…” |
| <a id="c18p081"></a>— Que veux-tu dire, mon enfant? Tu voudrais, tu oserais?... | “What do you mean, my child? Would you, would you dare?…” |
| <a id="c18p082"></a>— Ma mère, écoutez-moi: si je savais que ma sœur Julie est dans cette chambre... (et il montra du doigt la porte close), j’irais tout de suite la dénoncer au Comité de vigilance de la section." | “Mother, listen to me: if I knew my sister Julie was in that room…”—and he pointed to the closed door—“I would go straight to the section’s Vigilance Committee and denounce her.” |
| <a id="c18p083"></a>La pauvre mère, blanche comme sa coiffe, laissa tomber son tricot de ses mains tremblantes et soupira, d’une voix plus faible que le plus faible murmure: | The poor mother, white as her cap, let her knitting fall from her trembling hands and sighed in a voice fainter than the faintest murmur: |
| <a id="c18p084"></a>"Je ne voulais pas le croire, mais je le vois bien: c’est un monstre...." | “I would not believe it, but now I see: he is a monster.…” |
| <a id="c18p085"></a>Aussi pâle qu’elle, l’écume aux lèvres, Évariste s’enfuit et courut chercher auprès d’Élodie l’oubli, le sommeil, l’avant-goût délicieux du néant. | As pale as she was, foaming at the lips, Évariste fled and ran to Élodie to seek forgetfulness, sleep, the delicious foretaste of nothingness. |

### Notes

[^c18n01]: An interpretation: the phrase places social obedience and moral failure uncomfortably together. The widow’s silence does not express assent to Brotteaux’s arrest; France shows fear becoming the obligation of someone who feels powerless. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n02]: A capacious travelling overcoat with several short shoulder capes. The garment both conceals Julie’s body and carries Fortuné’s presence into the scene: she later identifies it as his own coat. Its three collets are separate capes, not three ordinary shirt collars. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n03]: Ceres is the Roman counterpart of Demeter. In Clement of Alexandria’s account, Baubo offers the mourning goddess a drink; after Baubo exposes herself, Demeter laughs and accepts it (Protrepticus 2.20–21). France gives Julie an earthy, bodily comparison with the goddess, rather than an idealised classical pose. [S171](#S171)

[^c18n04]: The Palais du Luxembourg, now the seat of the French Senate, served as a prison during the Revolution. The apparent incongruity of a palace and a place of confinement is literal: Julie is naming a real revolutionary prison, not a destination outside Paris. [S172](#S172)

[^c18n05]: 10 August 1792, when insurgents stormed the Tuileries and the royal family took refuge with the Legislative Assembly. The day brought down the constitutional monarchy; the Republic was proclaimed the following month. [S173](#S173)

[^c18n06]: An interpretation: Julie’s inward account of marriage places shared suffering above the ceremony she falsely claims before her mother. The passage does not confirm a London marriage; the narrator explicitly distinguishes Fortuné’s position as her lover from her public designation of him as husband. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n07]: Here an exile from revolutionary France, a politically charged status. The law of 28 March 1793 pronounced banishment and civil death against émigrés; thus Julie’s account of dangerous return involves both political suspicion and an existing apparatus of exclusion. [S174](#S174)

[^c18n08]: A written order for payment through another party, here the Paris banker. It is not cash: the banker’s imprisonment leaves the travellers without the money they expected, a distinction essential to Julie’s account of their destitution. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n09]: The liard was a small copper coin; French pas un rouge liard is an emphatic expression for having no money at all. The colour belongs to the copper. The translation preserves the period unit rather than substituting a modern penny or inventing an exchange value. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n10]: An interpretation: Julie’s gesture presents the same body as the seat of erotic love and of kinship. The two claims unite against Évariste’s abstract principles; France makes recognition physical before the mother attempts political intercession. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n11]: French la mère douloureuse evokes the Mater Dolorosa, the Virgin mourning her son. John 19:25–27 places Jesus’ mother beside the cross. The religious colouring grows from the widow’s rosary and anticipatory grief; it does not identify her son with Christ without qualification. [S168](#S168)

[^c18n12]: A personified female figure of Victory, rather than a victorious woman. The crown, dead soldier and palms establish the allegory within the passage. Gamelin’s wish to turn the figure’s arms into palms shows his attraction to pure emblem at the moment his own family needs practical mercy. This last connection is interpretive. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n13]: An interpretation: Gamelin postpones mercy until victory while finding renewed conspiracy in the Republic’s increasing strength. The unfinished condition makes clemency recede even as he announces success; the chapter immediately tests that promise against Julie’s plea. [S170](#S170)

[^c18n14]: Jacques-Louis David, Gamelin’s master, is the standard of artistic excellence already established in chapter I. The comparison belongs to Gamelin’s self-assessment; Julie has just read the same painting as a disclosure of his coldness. [S170](#S170)

<a id="chapter-19"></a>

## XIX

| Français | English |
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| <a id="c19p001"></a>Pendant que le Père Longuemare et la fille Athénaïs étaient interrogés à la section, Brotteaux fut conduit entre deux gendarmes au Luxembourg, où le portier refusa de le recevoir, alléguant qu’il n’avait plus de place. Le vieux traitant fut mené ensuite à la Conciergerie et introduit au greffe, pièce assez petite, partagée en deux par une cloison vitrée. Pendant que le greffier inscrivait son nom sur les registres d’écrou, Brotteaux vit à travers les carreaux deux hommes qui, chacun sur un mauvais matelas, gardaient une immobilité de mort et, l’œil fixe, semblaient ne rien voir. Des assiettes, des bouteilles, des restes de pain et de viande couvraient le sol autour d’eux. C’étaient des condamnés à mort qui attendaient la charrette. | While Father Longuemare and the girl Athénaïs were being questioned at the section, Brotteaux was taken between two gendarmes to the Luxembourg, where the porter refused to admit him, saying there was no room left. The old financier was then taken to the Conciergerie and brought into the registry[^c19n01], a rather small room divided in two by a glazed partition. While the clerk entered his name in the prison registers, Brotteaux saw through the glass two men, each on a wretched mattress, lying still as death, their eyes fixed as though they saw nothing. Plates, bottles and scraps of bread and meat covered the floor around them. They were condemned men waiting for the cart. |
| <a id="c19p002"></a>Le ci-devant des Ilettes fut conduit dans un cachot où, à la lueur d’une lanterne, il entrevit deux figures étendues, l’une farouche, mutilée, hideuse, l’autre gracieuse et douce. Ces deux prisonniers lui offrirent un peu de leur paille pourrie et pleine de vermine, pour qu’il ne couchât pas sur la terre souillée d’excréments. Brotteaux se laissa choir sur un banc, dans l’ombre puante, et demeura la tête contre le mur, muet, immobile. Sa douleur était telle qu’il se serait brisé la tête contre le mur, s’il en avait eu la force. Il ne pouvait respirer. Ses yeux se voilèrent; un long bruit, tranquille comme le silence, envahit ses oreilles, il sentit tout son être baigner dans un néant délicieux. Durant une incomparable seconde, tout lui fut harmonie, clarté sereine, parfum, douceur. Puis il cessa d’être. | The former des Ilettes was led into a dungeon where, by the light of a lantern, he glimpsed two figures lying down, one fierce, mutilated and hideous, the other graceful and gentle. These two prisoners offered him some of their rotten, verminous straw so that he would not have to lie on the earth fouled with excrement. Brotteaux dropped on to a bench in the stinking darkness and remained with his head against the wall, silent and motionless. His anguish was such that he would have dashed his head against the wall had he had the strength. He could not breathe. His eyes clouded; a long sound, peaceful as silence, filled his ears, and he felt his whole being bathed in a delicious nothingness. For one incomparable second, everything was harmony, serene light, fragrance, sweetness. Then he ceased to be[^c19n02]. |
| <a id="c19p003"></a>Quand il revint à lui, la première pensée qui s’empara de son esprit fut de regretter son évanouissement et, philosophe jusque dans la stupeur du désespoir, il songea qu’il lui avait fallu descendre dans un cul de basse-fosse, en attendant la guillotine, pour éprouver la sensation de volupté la plus vive que ses sens eussent jamais goûtée. Il s’essayait à perdre de nouveau le sentiment, mais sans y réussir, et, peu à peu, au contraire, il sentait l’air infect du cachot apporter à ses poumons, avec la chaleur de la vie, la conscience de son intolérable misère. | When he came to, the first thought to take possession of his mind was regret for his fainting fit; and, a philosopher even in the stupor of despair, he reflected that he had had to descend into a dungeon pit and await the guillotine to experience the keenest pleasure his senses had ever tasted. He tried to lose consciousness again, without success; on the contrary, little by little he felt the dungeon’s foul air bringing to his lungs, with the warmth of life, the awareness of his intolerable misery. |
| <a id="c19p004"></a>Cependant ses deux compagnons tenaient son silence pour une cruelle injure. Brotteaux, qui était sociable, essaya de satisfaire leur curiosité; mais, quand ils apprirent qu’il était ce que l’on appelait "un politique", un de ceux dont le crime léger était de parole ou de pensée, ils n’éprouvèrent pour lui ni estime ni sympathie. Les faits reprochés à ces deux prisonniers avaient plus de solidité: le plus vieux était un assassin, l’autre avait fabriqué de faux assignats. Ils s’accommodaient tous deux de leur état et y trouvaient même quelques satisfactions. Brotteaux se prit à songer soudain qu’au-dessus de sa tête tout était mouvement, bruit, lumière et vie, et que les jolies marchandes du Palais souriaient derrière leur étalage de parfumerie, de mercerie, au passant heureux et libre, et cette idée accrut son désespoir. | Meanwhile his two companions took his silence as a cruel insult. Brotteaux, who was sociable, tried to satisfy their curiosity; but when they learnt that he was what was called “a political”[^c19n03], one of those whose slight offence lay in words or thoughts, they felt neither esteem nor sympathy for him. The charges against these two prisoners had more substance: the elder was a murderer; the other had forged assignats. Both accepted their condition and even found some satisfactions in it. Brotteaux suddenly began to think that above his head everything was movement, noise, light and life, and that the pretty shopkeepers of the Palais smiled from behind their displays of perfumery and haberdashery at the happy, free passer-by; the thought increased his despair. |
| <a id="c19p005"></a>La nuit vint, inaperçue dans l’ombre et le silence du cachot, mais lourde pourtant et lugubre. Une jambe étendue sur son banc et le dos contre la muraille, Brotteaux s’assoupit. Et il se vit assis au pied d’un hêtre touffu, où chantaient les oiseaux; le soleil couchant couvrait la rivière de flammes liquides et le bord des nuées était teint de pourpre. La nuit se passa. Une fièvre ardente le dévorait et il buvait avidement, à même sa cruche, une eau qui augmentait son mal. | Night came, unperceived in the dungeon’s darkness and silence, yet heavy and mournful all the same. With one leg stretched along the bench and his back against the wall, Brotteaux dozed. He saw himself seated beneath a leafy beech where birds sang; the setting sun covered the river with liquid flames, and the edges of the clouds were stained purple. The night passed. A burning fever consumed him, and he drank greedily straight from his pitcher, water that worsened his suffering. |
| <a id="c19p006"></a>Le lendemain, le geôlier, qui apporta la soupe, promit à Brotteaux de le mettre à la pistole, moyennant finance, dès qu’il aurait de la place, ce qui ne tarderait guère. En effet, le surlendemain, il invita le vieux traitant à sortir de son cachot. A chaque marche qu’il montait, Brotteaux sentait rentrer en lui la force et la vie, et quand sur le carreau rouge d’une chambre il vit se dresser un lit de sangle recouvert d’une méchante couverture de laine, il pleura de joie. Le lit doré où se becquetaient des colombes, qu’il avait jadis fait faire pour la plus jolie des danseuses de l’Opéra, ne lui avait pas paru si agréable ni promis de telles délices. | Next day the gaoler who brought the soup promised Brotteaux that, for a payment, he would move him to the paying quarters[^c19n04] as soon as there was room, which would not be long. Sure enough, the day after that he invited the old financier to leave his dungeon. At every step he climbed, Brotteaux felt strength and life returning; and when, on the red tiles of a room, he saw a camp bed covered with a wretched woollen blanket, he wept for joy. The gilded bed with billing doves that he had once had made for the prettiest dancer at the Opéra had not seemed so agreeable or promised such delights. |
| <a id="c19p007"></a>Ce lit de sangle était dans une grande salle, assez propre, qui en contenait dix-sept autres, séparés par de hautes planches. La compagnie qui habitait là, composée d’ex-nobles, de marchands, de banquiers, d’artisans, ne déplut pas au vieux publicain, qui s’accommodait de toutes sortes de personnes. Il observa que ces hommes, privés comme lui de tout plaisir et exposés à périr par la main du bourreau, montraient de la gaieté et un goût vif pour la plaisanterie. Peu disposé à admirer les hommes, il attribuait la bonne humeur de ses compagnons à la légèreté de leur esprit, qui les empêchait de considérer attentivement leur situation. Et il se confirmait dans cette idée en observant que les plus intelligents d’entre eux étaient profondément tristes. Il s’aperçut bientôt que, pour la plupart, ils puisaient dans le vin et l’eau-de-vie une gaieté qui prenait à sa source un caractère violent et parfois un peu fou. Ils n’avaient pas tous du courage; mais tous en montraient. Brotteaux n’en était pas surpris: il savait que les hommes avouent volontiers la cruauté, la colère, l’avarice même, mais jamais la lâcheté, parce que cet aveu les mettrait, chez les sauvages et même dans une société polie, en un danger mortel. C’est pourquoi, songeait-il, tous les peuples sont des peuples de héros et toutes les armées ne sont composées que de braves. | This camp bed stood in a large, fairly clean room containing seventeen others, separated by tall boards. The company living there, made up of former nobles, merchants, bankers and artisans, did not displease the old tax collector, who got on with people of every sort. He observed that these men, deprived like him of every pleasure and liable to die at the executioner’s hands, displayed good humour and a lively taste for jokes. Little inclined to admire mankind, he attributed his companions’ cheerfulness to the frivolity of their minds, which prevented them from considering their position attentively. He was confirmed in this view by observing that the most intelligent among them were profoundly sad. He soon noticed that most drew their gaiety from wine and brandy, a gaiety which took from its source a violent and sometimes rather mad character. Not all had courage; all showed it. This did not surprise Brotteaux: he knew men would readily admit to cruelty, anger, even avarice, but never cowardice, because such an admission, among savages and even in polite society, would place them in mortal danger. That was why, he reflected, every people was a people of heroes and every army composed entirely of brave men[^c19n05]. |
| <a id="c19p008"></a>Plus encore que le vin et l’eau-de-vie, le bruit des armes et des clefs, le grincement des serrures, l’appel des sentinelles, le trépignement des citoyens à la porte du Tribunal enivraient les prisonniers, leur inspiraient la mélancolie, le délire ou la fureur. Il y en avait qui se coupaient la gorge avec un rasoir ou se jetaient par une fenêtre. | More than wine and brandy, the noise of weapons and keys, the screech of locks, the sentries’ calls and the stamping of citizens at the Tribunal’s door intoxicated the prisoners, inspiring melancholy, delirium or fury. Some cut their throats with a razor or threw themselves from a window. |
| <a id="c19p009"></a>Brotteaux logeait depuis trois jours à la pistole, quand il apprit, par le porte-clefs, que le Père Longuemare croupissait sur la paille pourrie, dans la vermine, avec les voleurs et les assassins. Il le fit recevoir à la pistole, dans la chambre qu’il habitait et où un lit était devenu vacant. S’étant engagé à payer pour le religieux, le vieux publicain, qui n’avait pas sur lui un grand trésor, s’ingénia à faire des portraits à un écu l’un. Il se procura, par l’intermédiaire d’un geôlier, de petits cadres noirs pour y mettre de menus travaux en cheveux qu’il exécutait assez adroitement. Et ces ouvrages furent très recherchés dans une réunion d’hommes qui songeaient à laisser des souvenirs. | Brotteaux had been three days in the paying quarters when he learnt from the turnkey that Father Longuemare was rotting on verminous straw among thieves and murderers. He had him admitted to the paying quarters, into his own room, where a bed had fallen vacant. Having undertaken to pay for the religious, the old tax collector, who had no great store of money on him, contrived to make portraits at an écu apiece. Through a gaoler he obtained little black frames in which to put the small hairwork pieces[^c19n06] he made quite skilfully. These works were much in demand among men who thought of leaving keepsakes behind them. |
| <a id="c19p010"></a>Le Père Longuemare tenait haut son cœur et son esprit. En attendant d’être traduit devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire, il préparait sa défense. Ne séparant point sa cause de celle de l’Église, il se promettait d’exposer à ses juges les désordres et les scandales causés à l’Épouse de Jésus-Christ par la constitution civile du clergé; il entreprenait de peindre la fille aînée de l’Église faisant au pape une guerre sacrilège, le clergé français dépouillé, violenté, odieusement soumis à des laïques; les réguliers, véritable milice du Christ, spoliés et dispersés. Il citait saint Grégoire le Grand et saint Irénée, produisait des articles nombreux de droit canon et des paragraphes entiers des décrétales. | Father Longuemare kept his heart and mind uplifted. While waiting to be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he prepared his defence. Refusing to separate his cause from the Church’s, he intended to lay before his judges the disorders and scandals inflicted upon the Bride of Jesus Christ by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy[^c19n07]; he undertook to portray the Church’s eldest daughter waging sacrilegious war on the Pope, the French clergy stripped of its possessions, subjected to violence and odiously placed under lay control, the regular clergy[^c19n08], Christ’s true militia, despoiled and scattered. He cited Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Irenaeus, adducing numerous articles of canon law and whole paragraphs of the decretals[^c19n09]. |
| <a id="c19p011"></a>Toute la journée, il griffonnait sur ses genoux, au pied de son lit, trempant des tronçons de plumes usées jusqu’aux barbes dans l’encre, dans la suie, dans le marc de café, couvrant d’une illisible écriture papiers à chandelle, papiers d’emballage, journaux, gardes de livres, vieilles lettres, vieilles factures, cartes à jouer, et songeant à y employer sa chemise après l’avoir passée à l’amidon. Il entassait feuille sur feuille, et, montrant l’indéchiffrable barbouillage, il disait: | All day he scribbled on his knees at the foot of his bed, dipping worn pen stumps up to the barbs in ink, soot or coffee grounds, covering candle wrappers, packing paper, newspapers, flyleaves, old letters, old bills and playing cards with illegible writing, and thinking of using his shirt after starching it. He piled sheet upon sheet and, pointing to the indecipherable scrawl, said: |
| <a id="c19p012"></a>"Quand je paraîtrai devant mes juges, je les inonderai de lumière." | “When I appear before my judges, I shall flood them with light.” |
| <a id="c19p013"></a>Et, un jour, jetant un regard satisfait sur sa défense sans cesse accrue et pensant à ces magistrats qu’il brûlait de confondre, il s’écria: | And one day, casting a satisfied glance over his ever-growing defence and thinking of the magistrates he burned to confound, he exclaimed: |
| <a id="c19p014"></a>"Je ne voudrais pas être à leur place!" | “I should not like to be in their place!” |
| <a id="c19p015"></a>Les prisonniers que le sort avait réunis dans ce cachot étaient ou royalistes ou fédéralistes; il s’y trouvait même un jacobin; ils différaient entre eux d’opinion sur la manière de conduire les affaires de l’État, mais aucun d’eux ne gardait le moindre reste de croyances chrétiennes. Les feuillants, les constitutionnels, les girondins trouvaient, comme Brotteaux, le bon Dieu fort mauvais pour eux-mêmes et excellent pour le peuple. Les jacobins installaient à la place de Jéhovah un dieu jacobin, pour faire descendre de plus haut le jacobinisme sur le monde; mais, comme ils ne pouvaient concevoir ni les uns ni les autres qu’on fût assez absurde pour croire à aucune religion révélée, voyant que le Père Longuemare ne manquait pas d’esprit, ils le prenaient pour un fourbe. Afin, sans doute, de se préparer au martyre, il confessait sa foi en toute rencontre, et, plus il montrait de sincérité, plus il semblait un imposteur. | The prisoners whom chance had brought together in this dungeon were either royalists or federalists; there was even a Jacobin among them. They differed in their opinions on the conduct of state affairs, but none retained the least vestige of Christian belief. The Feuillants, the constitutionalists and the Girondins agreed with Brotteaux in finding the good Lord very bad for themselves and excellent for the people. The Jacobins installed a Jacobin god in Jehovah’s place, to send Jacobinism down upon the world from a greater height; but, since neither party could imagine anyone absurd enough to believe in any revealed religion, seeing that Father Longuemare was not without intelligence, they took him for a rogue. Doubtless to prepare himself for martyrdom, he professed his faith on every occasion; and the more sincerity he showed, the more he seemed an impostor. |
| <a id="c19p016"></a>En vain Brotteaux se portait garant de la bonne foi du religieux; Brotteaux passait lui-même pour ne croire qu’une partie de ce qu’il disait. Ses idées étaient trop singulières pour ne pas paraître affectées, et ne contentaient personne entièrement. Il parlait de Jean-Jacques comme d’un plat coquin. Par contre, il mettait Voltaire au rang des hommes divins, sans toutefois l’égaler à l’aimable Helvétius, à Diderot, au baron d’Holbach. A son sens, le plus grand génie du siècle était Boulanger. Il estimait beaucoup aussi l’astronome Lalande et Dupuis, auteur d’un *Mémoire sur l’origine des constellations*. Les hommes d’esprit de la chambrée faisaient au pauvre barnabite mille plaisanteries dont il ne s’apercevait jamais: sa candeur déjouait tous les pièges. | Brotteaux vouched in vain for the religious’s good faith; Brotteaux himself was thought to believe only half of what he said. His ideas were too singular not to seem affected and pleased nobody entirely. He spoke of Jean-Jacques as an arrant scoundrel. On the other hand, he ranked Voltaire among divine men, though without making him the equal of the amiable Helvétius, Diderot or the Baron d’Holbach. In his view, the century’s greatest genius was Boulanger[^c19n10]. He also thought highly of the astronomer Lalande and of Dupuis, author of a *Memoir on the Origin of the Constellations[^c19n11]*. The wits of the room played a thousand jokes upon the poor Barnabite, who never noticed them: his innocence defeated every trap. |
| <a id="c19p017"></a>Pour écarter les soucis qui les rongeaient et échapper aux tourments de l’oisiveté, les prisonniers jouaient aux dames, aux cartes et au trictrac. Il n’était permis d’avoir aucun instrument de musique. Après souper, on chantait, on récitait des vers. *La Pucelle* de Voltaire mettait un peu de gaîeté au cœur de ces malheureux, qui ne se lassaient pas d’en entendre les bons endroits. Mais, ne pouvant se distraire de la pensée affreuse plantée au milieu de leur cœur, ils essayaient parfois d’en faire un amusement et, dans la chambre des dix-huit lits, avant de s’endormir, ils jouaient au Tribunal révolutionnaire. Les rôles étaient distribués selon les goûts et les aptitudes. Les uns représentaient les juges et l’accusateur; d’autres, les accusés ou les témoins, d’autres le bourreau et ses valets. Les procès finissaient invariablement par l’exécution des condamnés, qu’on étendait sur un lit, le cou sous une planche. La scène était transportée ensuite dans les enfers. Les plus agiles de la troupe, enveloppés dans des draps, faisaient des spectres. Et un jeune avocat de Bordeaux, nommé Dubosc, petit, noir, borgne, bossu, bancal, le Diable boiteux en personne, venait, tout encorné, tirer le Père Longuemare, par les pieds, hors de son lit, lui annonçant qu’il était condamné aux flammes éternelles et damné sans rémission pour avoir fait du créateur de l’univers un être envieux, sot et méchant, un ennemi de la joie et de l’amour. | To drive away the cares that gnawed at them and escape the torments of idleness, the prisoners played draughts, cards and trictrac. No musical instrument was allowed. After supper they sang and recited verse. Voltaire’s *La Pucelle[^c19n12]* brought a little gaiety to these unhappy hearts, and they never tired of hearing the best passages. But, unable to distract themselves from the dreadful thought planted in the middle of their hearts, they sometimes tried to make it an amusement, and in the room of eighteen beds, before going to sleep, they played at the Revolutionary Tribunal. Parts were assigned according to taste and ability. Some played the judges and prosecutor; others the accused or witnesses, others the executioner and his assistants. The trials invariably ended in the execution of those condemned, who were stretched on a bed with their necks beneath a board. The scene then shifted to hell. The most agile of the company, wrapped in sheets, played ghosts. A young lawyer from Bordeaux called Dubosc, small, dark, one-eyed, hunchbacked and bandy-legged—the Lame Devil[^c19n13] in person—would come, equipped with horns, to drag Father Longuemare out of bed by the feet, announcing that he was condemned to eternal flames and damned beyond remission for having made the creator of the universe an envious, stupid, wicked being, an enemy of joy and love. |
| <a id="c19p018"></a>"Ah! ah! ah! criait horriblement ce diable, tu as enseigné, vieux bonze, que Dieu se plaît à voir ses créatures languir dans la pénitence et s’abstenir de ses dons les plus chers. Imposteur, hypocrite, cafard, assieds-toi sur des clous et mange des coquilles d’œufs pour l’éternité!" | “Ha! Ha! Ha!” this devil would cry hideously. “You have taught, you old bonze, that God delights in seeing his creatures languish in penance and abstain from his dearest gifts. Impostor, hypocrite, canting rogue, sit on nails and eat eggshells for all eternity!” |
| <a id="c19p019"></a>Le Père Longuemare se contentait de répondre que, dans ce discours, le philosophe perçait sous le diable et que le moindre démon de l’enfer eût dit moins de sottises, étant un peu frotté de théologie et certes moins ignorant qu’un encyclopédiste. | Father Longuemare merely replied that in this speech the philosopher showed through the devil, and the least demon in hell would have talked less nonsense, possessing some acquaintance with theology and certainly less ignorance than an Encyclopaedist. |
| <a id="c19p020"></a>Mais, quand l’avocat girondin l’appelait capucin, il se fâchait tout rouge et disait qu’un homme incapable de distinguer un barnabite d’un franciscain ne saurait pas voir une mouche dans du lait. | But when the Girondin lawyer called him a Capuchin, he grew red with anger and said that a man incapable of distinguishing a Barnabite from a Franciscan[^c19n14] would fail to see a fly in milk. |
| <a id="c19p021"></a>Le Tribunal révolutionnaire vidait les prisons, que les comités remplissaient sans relâche: en trois mois la chambre des dix-huit fut à moitié renouvelée. Le Père Longuemare perdit son diablotin. L’avocat Dubosc, traduit devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire, fut condamné à mort comme fédéraliste et pour avoir conspiré contre l’unité de la République. Au sortir du Tribunal, il repassa, comme tous les autres condamnés, par un corridor qui traversait la prison et donnait sur la chambre qu’il avait animée trois mois de sa gaieté. En faisant ses adieux à ses compagnons, il garda le ton léger et l’air joyeux qui lui étaient habituels. | The Revolutionary Tribunal emptied the prisons, which the committees ceaselessly refilled: in three months half the occupants of the room of eighteen had changed. Father Longuemare lost his little devil. Brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the lawyer Dubosc was condemned to death as a federalist and for conspiring against the unity of the Republic. Leaving the Tribunal, he passed, like all the other condemned prisoners, through a corridor that crossed the prison and opened on the room he had enlivened with his gaiety for three months. In bidding his companions farewell, he kept his usual light tone and cheerful air. |
| <a id="c19p022"></a>"Excusez-moi, monsieur, dit-il au Père Longuemare, de vous avoir tiré par les pieds dans votre lit. Je n’y reviendrai plus." | “Forgive me, monsieur,” he said to Father Longuemare, “for pulling you out of bed by the feet. I shall not do it again.” |
| <a id="c19p023"></a>Et, se tournant vers le vieux Brotteaux: | Then, turning to old Brotteaux: |
| <a id="c19p024"></a>"Adieu, je vous précède dans le néant. Je livre volontiers à la nature les éléments qui me composent, en souhaitant qu’elle en fasse, à l’avenir, un meilleur usage, car il faut reconnaître qu’elle m’avait fort mal réussi." | “Goodbye, I precede you into nothingness. I willingly surrender the elements that compose me to nature, in the hope that she will make better use of them in future, for one must admit that she had made a very poor job of me.” |
| <a id="c19p025"></a>Et il descendit au greffe, laissant Brotteaux affligé et le Père Longuemare tremblant et vert comme la feuille, plus mort que vif de voir l’impie rire au bord de l’abîme. | And he went down to the registry, leaving Brotteaux grieved and Father Longuemare trembling, green as a leaf, more dead than alive at seeing the unbeliever laugh on the brink of the abyss. |
| <a id="c19p026"></a>Quand germinal ramena les jours clairs, Brotteaux, qui était voluptueux, descendit plusieurs fois par jour dans la cour qui donnait sur le quartier des femmes, près de la fontaine où les captives venaient, le matin, laver leur linge. Une grille séparait les deux quartiers; mais les barreaux n’en étaient pas assez rapprochés pour empêcher les mains de se joindre et les bouches de s’unir. Sous la nuit indulgente, des couples s’y pressaient. Alors Brotteaux, discrètement se réfugiait dans l’escalier et, assis sur une marche, tirait de la poche de sa redingote puce son petit Lucrèce, et lisait, à la lueur d’une lanterne, quelques maximes sévèrement consolatrices: "*Sic ubi non erimus*.... Quand nous aurons cessé de vivre, rien ne pourra nous émouvoir, non pas même le ciel, la terre et la mer confondant leurs débris...." Mais, tout en jouissant de sa haute sagesse, Brotteaux enviait au barnabite cette folie qui lui cachait l’univers. | When germinal brought back the bright days, Brotteaux, who was a sensual man, went down several times a day into the courtyard adjoining the women’s quarters, near the fountain where the female prisoners came in the mornings to wash their linen. A grille divided the two quarters, but its bars were not close enough to prevent hands from joining and mouths from meeting. Beneath the indulgent night, couples pressed against it. Then Brotteaux would discreetly take refuge in the stairway and, seated on a step, draw his little Lucretius from the pocket of his flea-coloured coat and read by lantern light a few sternly consoling maxims: “*Sic ubi non erimus[^c19n15]*… When we have ceased to live, nothing can move us, not even heaven, earth and sea mingling their ruins.…” But while delighting in his lofty wisdom, Brotteaux envied the Barnabite the madness that hid the universe from him. |
| <a id="c19p027"></a>La terreur, de mois en mois, grandissait. Chaque nuit, les geôliers ivres, accompagnés de leurs chiens de garde, allaient de cachot en cachot, portant des actes d’accusation, hurlant des noms qu’ils estropiaient, réveillaient les prisonniers et pour vingt victimes désignées en épouvantaient deux cents. Dans ces corridors, pleins d’ombres sanglantes, passaient chaque jour, sans une plainte, vingt, trente, cinquante condamnés, vieillards, femmes, adolescents, et si divers de condition, de caractère, de sentiment, qu’on se demandait s’ils n’avaient pas été tirés au sort. | From month to month the terror grew. Every night the drunken gaolers, accompanied by their watchdogs, went from dungeon to dungeon carrying indictments and howling names they mangled, waking the prisoners and terrifying two hundred to summon twenty victims. Through those corridors, full of bloody shadows, passed every day, without a complaint, twenty, thirty, fifty condemned prisoners: old men, women, adolescents, so various in condition, character and feeling that one wondered whether they had been chosen by lot. |
| <a id="c19p028"></a>Et l’on jouait aux cartes, on buvait du vin de Bourgogne, on faisait des projets, on avait des rendez-vous, la nuit, à la grille. La société, presque entièrement renouvelée, était maintenant composée en grande partie d'"exagérés" et d'"enragés". Toutefois la chambre des dix-huit lits demeurait encore le séjour de l’élégance et du bon ton: hors deux détenus qu’on y avait mis, récemment transférés du Luxembourg à la Conciergerie, et qu’on suspectait d’être des "moutons", c’est-à-dire des espions, les citoyens Navette et Bellier, il ne s’y trouvait que d’honnêtes gens, qui se témoignaient une confiance réciproque. On y célébrait, la coupe à la main, les victoires de la République. Il s’y rencontrait plusieurs poètes, comme il s’en voit dans toute réunion d’hommes oisifs. Les plus habiles d’entre eux composaient des odes sur les triomphes de l’armée du Rhin et les récitaient avec emphase. Ils étaient bruyamment applaudis. Brotteaux seul louait mollement les vainqueurs et leurs chantres. | And they played cards, drank Burgundy, made plans and kept appointments at the grille by night. The company, almost wholly renewed, now consisted largely of “ultras” and “Enragés”. Yet the room of eighteen beds remained a home of elegance and good manners: apart from two inmates recently transferred from the Luxembourg to the Conciergerie, Citizens Navette and Bellier, suspected of being “sheep”[^c19n16], that is, spies, there were only honourable people, who trusted one another. Glass in hand, they celebrated the Republic’s victories. Several poets were to be found among them, as in any gathering of idle men. The most skilful composed odes on the triumphs of the Army of the Rhine and recited them with emphasis. They were loudly applauded. Brotteaux alone praised the victors and their bards half-heartedly. |
| <a id="c19p029"></a>"C’est, depuis Homère, une étrange manie des poètes, dit-il un jour, que de célébrer les militaires. La guerre n’est point un art, et le hasard décide seul du sort des batailles. De deux généraux en présence, tous deux stupides, il faut nécessairement que l’un d’eux soit victorieux. Attendez-vous à ce qu’un jour un de ces porteurs d’épée que vous divinisez vous avale tous comme la grue de la fable avale les grenouilles. C’est alors qu’il sera vraiment dieu! Car les dieux se connaissent à l’appétit." | “Since Homer,” he said one day, “poets have had a strange mania for celebrating military men. War is no art, and chance alone decides the outcome of battles. Of two generals facing each other, both stupid, one must necessarily be victorious. Expect one of these sword-bearers whom you make into gods to swallow you all one day, as the crane in the fable[^c19n17] swallows the frogs. Then he will truly be a god! For gods are known by their appetite.” |
| <a id="c19p030"></a>Brotteaux n’avait jamais été touché par la gloire des armes. Il ne se réjouissait nullement des triomphes de la République, qu’il avait prévus. Il n’aimait point le nouveau régime qu’affermissait la victoire. Il était mécontent. On l’eût été à moins. | Brotteaux had never been moved by military glory. He took no pleasure in the Republic’s triumphs, which he had foreseen. He did not like the new regime which victory was strengthening. He was discontented. One would be, for less. |
| <a id="c19p031"></a>Un matin, on annonça que les commissaires du Comité de sûreté générale feraient des perquisitions chez les détenus, qu’on saisirait assignats, objets d’or et d’argent, couteaux, ciseaux, que de telles recherches avaient été faites au Luxembourg et qu’on avait enlevé lettres, papiers, livres. | One morning it was announced that commissioners from the Committee of General Security would search the prisoners’ belongings and confiscate assignats, gold and silver objects, knives and scissors; that such searches had been made at the Luxembourg, where letters, papers and books had been taken away. |
| <a id="c19p032"></a>Chacun alors s’ingénia à trouver quelque cachette où mettre ce qu’il avait de plus précieux. Le Père Longuemare porta, par brassées, sa défense dans une gouttière. Brotteaux coula son Lucrèce dans les cendres de la cheminée. | Everyone then set about finding a hiding place for whatever he held most precious. Father Longuemare carried his defence by the armful to a gutter. Brotteaux slipped his Lucretius into the fireplace ashes. |
| <a id="c19p033"></a>Quand les commissaires, ayant au cou des rubans tricolores, vinrent opérer leurs saisies, ils ne trouvèrent guère que ce qu’on avait jugé convenable de leur laisser. Après leur départ, le Père Longuemare courut à sa gouttière et recueillit de sa défense ce que l’eau et le vent en avaient laissé. Brotteaux retira de la cheminée son Lucrèce tout noir de suie. | When the commissioners, tricolour ribbons round their necks, came to make their seizures, they found little beyond what it had been judged appropriate to leave them. After they had gone, Father Longuemare ran to his gutter and gathered what wind and water had left of his defence. Brotteaux retrieved his Lucretius from the fireplace, black with soot. |
| <a id="c19p034"></a>"Jouissons de l’heure présente, songea-t-il, car j’augure à certains signes que le temps nous est désormais étroitement mesuré." | “Let us enjoy the present hour,” he thought, “for certain signs lead me to believe that our time is now strictly measured.” |
| <a id="c19p035"></a>Par une douce nuit de prairial, tandis qu’au-dessus du préau la lune montrait dans le ciel pâli ses deux cornes d’argent, le vieux traitant qui, à sa coutume, lisait Lucrèce sur un degré de l’escalier de pierre, entendit une voix l’appeler, une voix de femme, une voix délicieuse, qu’il ne reconnaissait pas. Il descendit dans la cour et vit derrière la grille une forme qu’il ne reconnaissait pas plus que la voix et qui lui rappelait, par ses contours indistincts et charmants, toutes les femmes qu’il avait aimées. Le ciel la baignait d’azur et d’argent. Brotteaux reconnut soudain la jolie comédienne de la rue Feydeau, Rose Thévenin. | One mild night in prairial, while above the exercise yard the moon showed its two silver horns in the pale sky, the old financier, reading Lucretius as usual on a step of the stone stairway, heard a voice calling him, a woman’s voice, a delicious voice he did not recognise. He went down into the courtyard and saw behind the grille a figure he recognised no more than the voice, whose indistinct, charming outlines recalled all the women he had loved. The sky bathed her in blue and silver. Suddenly Brotteaux recognised the pretty actress of the Rue Feydeau, Rose Thévenin. |
| <a id="c19p036"></a>"Vous ici, mon enfant! La joie de vous y voir m’est cruelle. Depuis quand et pourquoi êtes-vous ici? | “You here, my child! The joy of seeing you is cruel to me. How long have you been here, and why?” |
| <a id="c19p037"></a>— Depuis hier." | “Since yesterday.” |
| <a id="c19p038"></a>Et elle ajouta très bas: | And she added very softly: |
| <a id="c19p039"></a>"J’ai été dénoncée comme royaliste. On m’accuse d’avoir conspiré pour délivrer la reine. Comme je vous savais ici, j’ai tout de suite cherché à vous voir. Écoutez-moi, mon ami... car vous voulez bien que je vous donne ce nom?... Je connais des gens en place; j’ai, je le sais, des sympathies jusque dans le Comité de salut public. Je ferai agir mes amis: ils me délivreront, et je vous délivrerai à mon tour." | “I was denounced as a royalist. They accuse me of conspiring to free the queen. Knowing you were here, I tried to see you at once. Listen, my friend… for you will let me call you that?… I know people in office; I know I have sympathisers even in the Committee of Public Safety. I shall get my friends to act: they will free me, and I shall free you in turn.” |
| <a id="c19p040"></a>Mais Brotteaux, d’une voix qui se fit pressante: | But Brotteaux said, his voice growing urgent: |
| <a id="c19p041"></a>"Par tout ce que vous avez de cher, mon enfant, n’en faites rien! N’écrivez pas, ne sollicitez pas; ne demandez rien à personne, je vous en conjure, faites-vous oublier." | “By all you hold dear, my child, do nothing of the kind! Do not write, do not petition; ask nobody for anything, I beg you. Let them forget you.” |
| <a id="c19p042"></a>Comme elle ne semblait pas pénétrée de ce qu’il disait, il se fit plus suppliant encore: | As she seemed not fully to understand, he grew still more pleading: |
| <a id="c19p043"></a>"Gardez le silence, Rose, faites-vous oublier: là est le salut. Tout ce que vos amis tenteraient ne ferait que hâter votre perte. Gagnez du temps. Il en faut peu, très peu, j’espère, pour vous sauver.... Surtout n’essayez pas d’émouvoir les juges, les jurés, un Gamelin. Ce ne sont pas des hommes, ce sont des choses: on ne s’explique pas avec les choses. Faites-vous oublier. Si vous suivez mon conseil, mon amie, je mourrai heureux de vous avoir sauvé la vie." | “Keep silent, Rose, let them forget you: that is salvation. Anything your friends attempted would only hasten your destruction. Gain time. Very little, I hope, very little is needed to save you.… Above all, do not try to move the judges, the jurors, a Gamelin. They are not men, they are things[^c19n18]: you cannot reason with things. Let them forget you. If you follow my advice, my friend, I shall die happy to have saved your life.” |
| <a id="c19p044"></a>Elle répondit: | She answered: |
| <a id="c19p045"></a>"Je vous obéirai.... Ne parlez pas de mourir." | “I shall obey you.… Do not speak of dying.” |
| <a id="c19p046"></a>Il haussa les épaules: | He shrugged: |
| <a id="c19p047"></a>"Ma vie est finie, mon enfant. Vivez et soyez heureuse." | “My life is over, my child. Live and be happy.” |
| <a id="c19p048"></a>Elle lui prit les mains et les mit sur son sein: | She took his hands and placed them on her breast: |
| <a id="c19p049"></a>"Écoutez-moi, mon ami.... Je ne vous ai vu qu’un jour et pourtant vous ne m’êtes point indifférent. Et si ce que je vais vous dire peut vous rattacher à la vie, croyez-le: je serai pour vous... tout ce que vous voudrez que je sois." | “Listen, my friend.… I saw you only once, yet I am not indifferent to you. And if what I am about to tell you can bind you to life, believe it: I shall be for you… whatever you wish me to be.” |
| <a id="c19p050"></a>Et ils se donnèrent un baiser sur la bouche à travers la grille. | And they kissed on the mouth through the grille. |

### Notes

[^c19n01]: French greffe: the prison’s administrative office, where admissions and commitments are recorded. The same place is a stage on the condemned prisoners’ route to execution; its recurrence gives administrative routine a fatal significance. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n02]: The sentence describes loss of consciousness, not literal death: the following paragraph begins with his recovery. Its absolute phrasing anticipates Brotteaux’s repeated conception of death as nothingness. This link is interpretive. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n03]: French un politique, a political prisoner, contrasted by the cellmates with people accused of substantial criminal acts. Their contempt for offences of speech or thought reverses the state’s estimate of danger; the prisoners’ own hierarchy is part of France’s irony. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n04]: French à la pistole: improved prison accommodation obtained by paying. The word derives from a monetary designation but here names a regime of confinement, not a particular cell fee. Even the poor bed becomes luxurious after the dungeon. [S176](#S176)

[^c19n05]: An interpretation: Brotteaux explains the universal appearance of courage through fear of admitting cowardice. The conclusion sounds like patriotic praise while undermining its evidentiary basis; it should not be read as the narrator’s uncomplicated tribute to every army. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n06]: Small ornamental or commemorative works made with human hair. France explains their demand through the prisoners’ wish to leave keepsakes; their commercial value and their emotional significance are therefore inseparable within the scene. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n07]: The measure adopted on 12 July 1790 reorganised the French Church and provoked deep opposition. The account of sacrilege and persecution here represents Longuemare’s intended defence, not a neutral summary of the law. [S177](#S177)

[^c19n08]: Members of religious orders living under a rule, Latin regula, as distinct from secular clergy attached to dioceses. The phrase does not mean ordinary or regularly employed priests; Longuemare counts his own displaced religious community among them. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n09]: Papal decisions or letters forming part of the body of canon law. Longuemare’s appeal piles ecclesiastical authorities before a revolutionary court that rejects their jurisdiction; his confidence in illumination contrasts with the material illegibility of his defence. The contrast is interpretive. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n10]: Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger, author of L’Antiquité dévoilée par ses usages, published posthumously and associated with d’Holbach. Brotteaux’s unusually high ranking places the investigation of religious origins above the more familiar literary hierarchy. [S178](#S178)

[^c19n11]: Charles-François Dupuis’s astronomical explanation of mythology was published in collected form in 1781 as Mémoires sur l’Origine des Constellations et sur l’explication de la Fable par l’Astronomie. The title in the novel is shortened and singular; the translation follows it. [S179](#S179)

[^c19n12]: Voltaire’s irreverent, bawdy satirical epic about Joan of Arc. Its subject and manner account for its appeal to the anticlerical prisoners; it is not a devotional life of the saint or Jean Chapelain’s serious epic of the same subject. [S180](#S180)

[^c19n13]: An allusion to Le Diable boiteux, Alain-René Lesage’s novel first published in 1707. Dubosc’s body and theatrical horns turn the literary designation into a role in the prisoners’ improvised hell. [S181](#S181)

[^c19n14]: The insult matters because a Capuchin belongs to a Franciscan tradition, whereas Longuemare is a Barnabite. His profession of faith survives philosophical mockery, but an error about his order wounds his particular identity; this contrast is interpretive. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n15]: Lucretius, De rerum natura III.838–842: after the dissolution of body and soul, nothing can affect the person who no longer exists, even cosmic destruction. France gives the opening Latin words and a French rendering; the English translates that French, retaining the Latin. [S182](#S182)

[^c19n16]: French moutons, prison informers who mingle with fellow inmates. The apparently harmless animal-name carries a precise accusation of treachery; Navette and Bellier’s later evidence should be read in the light of this suspicion, not as an independently verified report. [S175](#S175)

[^c19n17]: La Fontaine, “Les Grenouilles qui demandent un Roi”, Fables III.4: dissatisfied frogs receive a devouring ruler. Brotteaux applies the fable to the deification of a military leader. A retrospective anticipation of Bonaparte is a plausible interpretation, not an explicit identification in his speech. [S183](#S183)

[^c19n18]: An interpretation: Brotteaux describes the jurors as inaccessible to personal appeal, governed by something more mechanical than ordinary fellow feeling. His instruction to be forgotten reverses Rose’s initial faith in influential friends and public advocacy. [S175](#S175)

<a id="chapter-20"></a>

## XX

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c20p001"></a>Évariste Gamelin, pendant une longue audience du Tribunal, à son banc, dans l’air chaud, ferme les yeux et pense: | During a long hearing of the Tribunal, on his bench in the hot air, Évariste Gamelin closes his eyes and thinks: |
| <a id="c20p002"></a>"Les méchants, en forçant Marat à se cacher dans les trous, en avaient fait un oiseau de nuit, l’oiseau de Minerve, dont l’œil perçait les conspirateurs dans les ténèbres où ils se dissimulaient. Maintenant, c’est un regard bleu, froid, tranquille, qui pénètre les ennemis de l’État et dénonce les traîtres avec une subtilité inconnue même à l’Ami du peuple, endormi pour toujours dans le jardin des Cordeliers. Le nouveau sauveur, aussi zélé et plus perspicace que le premier, voit ce que personne n’avait vu et son doigt levé répand la terreur. Il distingue les nuances délicates, imperceptibles, qui séparent le mal du bien, le vice de la vertu, que sans lui on eût confondues, au dommage de la patrie et de la liberté; il trace devant lui la ligne mince, inflexible, en dehors de laquelle il n’est, à gauche et à droite, qu’erreur, crime et scélératesse. L’Incorruptible enseigne comment on sert l’étranger par exagération et par faiblesse, en persécutant les cultes au nom de la raison, et en résistant au nom de la religion aux lois de la République. Non moins que les scélérats qui immolèrent Le Peltier et Marat, ceux qui leur décernent des honneurs divins pour compromettre leur mémoire servent l’étranger. Agent de l’étranger, quiconque rejette les idées d’ordre, de sagesse, d’opportunité; agent de l’étranger, quiconque outrage les mœurs, offense la vertu, et, dans le dérèglement de son cœur, nie Dieu. Les prêtres fanatiques méritent la mort; mais il y a une manière contre-révolutionnaire de combattre le fanatisme; il y a des abjurations criminelles. Modéré, on perd la République; violent, on la perd. | “By forcing Marat to hide in holes, the wicked had made him a night bird, Minerva’s bird[^c20n01], whose eye pierced the conspirators in the darkness where they concealed themselves. Now a blue gaze, cold and tranquil, penetrates the enemies of the State and unmasks traitors with a subtlety unknown even to the Friend of the People, asleep for ever in the Cordeliers garden. The new saviour, as zealous and more perceptive than the first, sees what nobody had seen, and his raised finger spreads terror. He distinguishes the delicate, imperceptible shades separating evil from good and vice from virtue, which without him would have been confused, to the detriment of country and liberty; before him he draws the thin, inflexible line beyond which, to left and right alike, there is only error, crime and villainy. The Incorruptible[^c20n02] teaches how one serves the foreigner through excess and through weakness, by persecuting worship in the name of reason and by resisting the laws of the Republic in the name of religion. Those who confer divine honours on Le Peltier and Marat, to compromise their memory, serve the foreigner no less than the scoundrels who murdered them. An agent of the foreigner, whoever rejects ideas of order, wisdom and timeliness; an agent of the foreigner, whoever outrages morals, offends virtue and, in the disorder of his heart, denies God. Fanatical priests deserve death; but there is a counter-revolutionary way of fighting fanaticism; there are criminal recantations. Moderate, one destroys the Republic; violent, one destroys it. |
| <a id="c20p003"></a>"Oh! redoutables devoirs du juge, dictés par le plus sage des hommes! Ce ne sont plus seulement les aristocrates, les fédéralistes, les scélérats de la faction d’Orléans, les ennemis déclarés de la patrie qu’il faut frapper. Le conspirateur, l’agent de l’étranger est un Protée, il prend toutes les formes. Il revêt l’apparence d’un patriote, d’un révolutionnaire, d’un ennemi des rois; il affecte l’audace d’un cœur qui ne bat que pour la liberté; il enfle la voix et fait trembler les ennemis de la République: c’est Danton; sa violence cache mal son odieux modérantisme et sa corruption apparaît enfin. Le conspirateur, l’agent de l’étranger, c’est ce bègue éloquent qui mit à son chapeau la première cocarde des révolutionnaires, c’est ce pamphlétaire qui, dans son civisme ironique et cruel, s’appelait lui-même "le procureur de la lanterne", c’est Camille Desmoulins: il s’est décelé en défendant les généraux traîtres et en réclamant les mesures criminelles d’une clémence intempestive. C’est Philippeaux, c’est Hérault, c’est le méprisable Lacroix. Le conspirateur, l’agent de l’étranger, c’est ce père Duchesne qui avilit la liberté par sa basse démagogie et de qui les immondes calomnies rendirent Antoinette elle-même intéressante. C’est Chaumette, qu’on vit pourtant doux, populaire, modéré, bonhomme et vertueux dans l’administration de la Commune, mais il était athée! Les conspirateurs, les agents de l’étranger, ce sont tous ces sans-culottes en bonnet rouge, en carmagnole, en sabots, qui ont follement renchéri de patriotisme sur les jacobins. Le conspirateur, l’agent de l’étranger, c’est Anacharsis Cloots, l’orateur du genre humain, condamné à mort par toutes les monarchies du monde; mais on devait tout craindre de lui: il était Prussien. | “Oh, fearful duties of the judge, dictated by the wisest of men! It is no longer only the aristocrats, the federalists, the scoundrels of the Orléans faction, the avowed enemies of the country who must be struck down. The conspirator, the foreign agent, is a Proteus[^c20n03]; he takes every shape. He assumes the appearance of a patriot, a revolutionary, an enemy of kings; he affects the boldness of a heart that beats only for liberty; he swells his voice and makes the Republic’s enemies tremble: he is Danton; his violence ill conceals his odious moderation, and his corruption is at last revealed. The conspirator, the foreign agent, is that eloquent stammerer who put the revolutionaries’ first cockade in his hat, that pamphleteer who, in his cruel, ironic patriotism, called himself ‘the prosecutor of the lamp-post’: he is Camille Desmoulins; he exposed himself by defending the treacherous generals and demanding the criminal measures of an untimely clemency. He is Philippeaux, he is Hérault, he is the contemptible Lacroix. The conspirator, the foreign agent, is that Père Duchesne[^c20n04] who debased liberty with his vulgar demagoguery and whose filthy slanders made even Antoinette an object of sympathy. He is Chaumette, whom we nevertheless saw gentle, popular, moderate, good-natured and virtuous in the administration of the Commune—but he was an atheist! The conspirators, the foreign agents, are all those sans-culottes in red caps, carmagnoles and clogs who madly tried to outbid the Jacobins in patriotism. The conspirator, the foreign agent, is Anacharsis Cloots, the orator of the human race, condemned to death by every monarchy in the world; but there was every reason to fear him: he was Prussian. |
| <a id="c20p004"></a>"Maintenant, violents et modérés, tous ces méchants, tous ces traîtres, Danton, Desmoulins, Hébert, Chaumette, ont péri sous la hache. La République est sauvée; un concert de louanges monte de tous les comités et de toutes les assemblées populaires vers Maximilien et la Montagne. Les bons citoyens s’écrient: "Dignes représentants d’un peuple libre, c’est en vain que les enfants des Titans ont levé leur tête altière: Montagne bienfaisante, Sinaï protecteur, de ton sein bouillonnant est sortie la foudre salutaire...." | “Now, violent and moderate alike, all those wicked men, all those traitors, Danton, Desmoulins, Hébert, Chaumette, have perished beneath the axe. The Republic is saved; a chorus of praise rises from every committee and every popular assembly towards Maximilien and the Mountain. Good citizens cry: ‘Worthy representatives of a free people, in vain have the children of the Titans raised their haughty heads: beneficent Mountain, protecting Sinai[^c20n05], from your seething breast has issued the saving thunderbolt.…’ |
| <a id="c20p005"></a>"En ce concert, le Tribunal a sa part de louanges. Qu’il est doux d’être vertueux et combien la reconnaissance publique est chère au cœur du juge intègre! | “In this chorus the Tribunal has its share of praise. How sweet it is to be virtuous, and how dear public gratitude is to the heart of an upright judge! |
| <a id="c20p006"></a>"Cependant, pour un cœur patriote, quel sujet d’étonnement et quelles causes d’inquiétude! Quoi! pour trahir la cause populaire, ce n’était donc pas assez de Mirabeau, de La Fayette, de Bailly, de Pétion, de Brissot? Il y fallait encore ceux qui ont dénoncé ces traîtres. Quoi! tous les hommes qui ont fait la Révolution ne l’ont faite que pour la perdre! Ces grands auteurs des grandes journées préparaient avec Pitt et Cobourg la royauté d’Orléans ou la tutelle de Louis XVII. Quoi! Danton, c’était Monk! Quoi! Chaumette et les hébertistes, plus perfides que les fédéralistes qu’ils ont poussés sous le couteau, avaient conjuré la ruine de l’empire! Mais parmi ceux qui précipitent à la mort les perfides Danton et les perfides Chaumette, l’œil bleu de Robespierre n’en découvrira-t-il pas demain de plus perfides encore? Où s’arrêtera l’exécrable enchaînement des traîtres trahis et la perspicacité de l’Incorruptible?..." | “And yet, for a patriotic heart, what a source of amazement and what causes for anxiety! What! Were Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly, Pétion and Brissot not enough, then, to betray the popular cause? Were those who denounced these traitors needed too? What! All the men who made the Revolution made it only to destroy it! Those great authors of the great days were preparing, with Pitt and Coburg, a kingship for Orléans or a protectorate over Louis XVII. What! Danton was Monck[^c20n06]! What! Chaumette and the Hébertists, more treacherous than the federalists they thrust beneath the blade, had conspired to ruin the state! But among those hurling the treacherous Dantons and the treacherous Chaumettes to their deaths, will Robespierre’s blue eye not discover still more treacherous men tomorrow? Where will the loathsome chain of traitors betrayed[^c20n07] end, and the perspicacity of the Incorruptible?…” |

### Notes

[^c20n01]: The owl, associated with the classical goddess of wisdom. Gamelin turns the circumstances of Marat’s concealment into a providential qualification for detecting hidden enemies. The subsequent replacement of the night bird by Robespierre’s blue gaze belongs to his developing cult of political vision. [S184](#S184)

[^c20n02]: The designation of Maximilien Robespierre used throughout the novel. This entire chapter after its opening sentence is Gamelin’s inward discourse: accusations of foreign agency are his interpretation, not claims the edition endorses as historical fact. [S184](#S184)

[^c20n03]: The shape-changing sea god of Greek mythology. The image makes changing political appearances evidence of a single hidden enemy: incompatibility between the positions of the accused ceases to count against the conspiracy theory. This use of the image is interpretive. [S184](#S184)

[^c20n04]: “Father Duchesne”, the popular persona and newspaper associated here with Jacques-René Hébert. Gamelin first identifies the politician through his journalistic mask, then names Hébert among the executed in the next paragraph. The translation keeps the established French designation. [S184](#S184)

[^c20n05]: The biblical mountain of revelation and divine law, here superimposed on the revolutionary Mountain. The thunderbolt and Titans also invoke classical divine warfare. The mingling of sacred vocabularies makes political praise resemble religious revelation; this is an interpretation of the passage’s imagery. [S184](#S184)

[^c20n06]: George Monck (1608–70), the general whose actions helped restore Charles II in 1660. Gamelin’s comparison casts Danton as a concealed restorer of monarchy. It is an accusation within his monologue, not evidence of a corresponding plan. [S185](#S185)

[^c20n07]: French traîtres trahis. The doubled root makes the purging of one supposed betrayer by another into an indefinitely extendable sequence. Gamelin’s final question unsettles his preceding certainties without yet dislodging his faith in Robespierre. [S184](#S184)

<a id="chapter-21"></a>

## XXI

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c21p001"></a>Cependant Julie Gamelin, vêtue de son carrick vert bouteille, allait tous les jours dans le jardin du Luxembourg et là, sur un banc, au bout d’une allée, attendait le moment où son amant paraîtrait à une des lucarnes du palais. Ils se faisaient des signes et échangeaient leurs pensées dans un langage muet qu’ils avaient imaginé. Elle savait par ce moyen que le prisonnier occupait une assez bonne chambre, jouissait d’une agréable compagnie, avait besoin d’une couverture et d’une bouillotte et aimait tendrement sa maîtresse. | Meanwhile Julie Gamelin, wearing her bottle-green carrick, went every day to the Luxembourg garden and there, on a bench at the end of an avenue, waited for the moment when her lover would appear at one of the palace’s attic windows. They made signs to one another and exchanged their thoughts in a silent language[^c21n01] they had invented. In this way she knew that the prisoner occupied a fairly good room, enjoyed agreeable company, needed a blanket and a hot-water bottle, and loved his mistress tenderly. |
| <a id="c21p002"></a>Elle n’était pas seule à épier un visage aimé dans ce palais changé en prison. Une jeune mère près d’elle tenait ses regards attachés sur une fenêtre close et, dès qu’elle voyait la fenêtre s’ouvrir, elle élevait son petit enfant dans ses bras, au-dessus de sa tête. Une vieille dame, voilée de dentelle, se tenait de longues heures immobile sur un pliant, espérant en vain apercevoir un moment son fils qui, pour ne pas s’attendrir, jouait au palet dans la cour de la prison, jusqu’à ce qu’on eût fermé le jardin. | She was not alone in watching for a beloved face in that palace turned prison. Beside her a young mother kept her eyes fixed on a closed window and, as soon as she saw it open, raised her little child above her head in her arms. An old lady, veiled in lace, sat motionless for long hours on a folding stool, hoping in vain for a moment’s glimpse of her son, who, to avoid being overcome by tenderness, played quoits in the prison yard until the garden was closed. |
| <a id="c21p003"></a>Durant ces longues stations sous le ciel gris ou bleu, un homme d’un âge mûr, assez gros, très propre, se tenait sur un banc voisin, jouant avec sa tabatière et ses breloques, et dépliant un journal qu’il ne lisait jamais. Il était vêtu, à la vieille mode bourgeoise, d’un tricorne à galon d’or, d’un habit zinzolin et d’un gilet bleu, brodé d’argent. Il avait l’air honnête; il était musicien, à en juger par la flûte dont un bout dépassait sa poche. Pas un moment il ne quittait des yeux le faux jeune garçon, il ne cessait de lui sourire et, le voyant se lever, il se levait lui-même et le suivait de loin. Julie, dans sa misère et dans sa solitude, se sentait touchée de la sympathie discrète que lui montrait ce bon homme. | During these long vigils beneath a grey or blue sky, a middle-aged man, rather stout and very neat, sat on a neighbouring bench, playing with his snuffbox and watch charms and unfolding a newspaper he never read[^c21n02]. He was dressed in the old bourgeois fashion, with a gold-braided three-cornered hat, a reddish-purple coat and a blue waistcoat embroidered in silver. He looked respectable; he was a musician, judging by the end of a flute that protruded from his pocket. Not for a moment did he take his eyes off the seeming young lad; he smiled at him continually and, seeing him rise, rose himself and followed at a distance. In her misery and solitude Julie was touched by the discreet sympathy this good man showed her. |
| <a id="c21p004"></a>Un jour, comme elle sortait du jardin, la pluie commençant à tomber, le bon homme s’approcha d’elle et, ouvrant son vaste parapluie rouge, lui demanda la permission de l’en abriter. Elle lui répondit doucement, de sa voix claire, qu’elle y consentait. Mais au son de cette voix et averti, peut-être, par une subtile odeur de femme, il s’éloigna vivement, laissant exposée à la pluie d’orage la jeune femme, qui comprit et, malgré ses soucis, ne put s’empêcher de sourire. | One day, as she was leaving the garden and rain was beginning to fall, the good man approached her and, opening his great red umbrella, asked leave to shelter her beneath it. Gently, in her clear voice, she consented. But at the sound of that voice, warned perhaps by a subtle womanly scent, he hurried away, leaving the young woman exposed to the storm. She understood and, despite her troubles, could not help smiling. |
| <a id="c21p005"></a>Julie logeait dans une mansarde de la rue du Cherche-Midi et se faisait passer pour un commis drapier qui cherchait un emploi: la citoyenne veuve Gamelin, persuadée enfin que sa fille ne courait nulle part de si grand danger que près d’elle, l’avait éloignée de la place de Thionville et de la section du Pont-Neuf, et l’entretenait de vivres et de linge autant qu’elle pouvait. Julie faisait un peu de cuisine, allait au Luxembourg voir son cher amant et rentrait dans son taudis; la monotonie de ce manège berçait ses chagrins et, comme elle était jeune et robuste, elle dormait toute la nuit d’un profond sommeil. D’un caractère hardi, habituée aux aventures et excitée, peut-être, par l’habit qu’elle portait, elle allait quelquefois, la nuit, chez un limonadier de la rue du Four, à l’enseigne de la *Croix rouge*, que fréquentaient des gens de toutes sortes et des femmes galantes. Elle y lisait les gazettes et jouait au trictrac avec quelque courtaud de boutique ou quelque militaire, qui lui fumait sa pipe au nez. Là, on buvait, on jouait, on faisait l’amour et les rixes étaient fréquentes. Un soir, un buveur, au bruit d’une chevauchée sur le pavé du carrefour, souleva le rideau et, reconnaissant le commandant en chef de la garde nationale, le citoyen Hanriot, qui passait au galop avec son état-major, murmura entre ses dents: | Julie lodged in an attic room in the Rue du Cherche-Midi and passed herself off as a draper’s assistant seeking work. Citizen Widow Gamelin, convinced at last that her daughter was nowhere in greater danger than beside her, had sent her away from the Place de Thionville and the Pont-Neuf section, and supplied her with food and linen as far as she could. Julie did a little cooking, went to the Luxembourg to see her dear lover and returned to her hovel; the monotony of this routine soothed her sorrows, and, being young and robust, she slept soundly all night. Bold by nature, used to adventures and perhaps excited by the clothes she wore, she sometimes went at night to a café in the Rue du Four, at the sign of the *Red Cross*, frequented by people of every sort and women of pleasure. There she read the gazettes and played trictrac[^c21n03] with some shop lad or soldier who puffed his pipe in her face. People drank, gambled and made love there, and brawls were frequent. One evening, at the sound of horses on the paving stones of the crossroads, a drinker raised the curtain and, recognising the commander-in-chief of the National Guard, Citizen Hanriot, galloping past with his staff, muttered between his teeth: |
| <a id="c21p006"></a>"Voilà la bourrique à Robespierre!" | “There goes Robespierre’s donkey!” |
| <a id="c21p007"></a>A ce mot, Julie poussa un grand éclat de rire. | At this Julie burst out laughing. |
| <a id="c21p008"></a>Mais un patriote à moustaches releva vertement le propos: | But a moustached patriot sharply challenged the remark: |
| <a id="c21p009"></a>"Celui qui parle ainsi, s’écria-t-il, est un f... aristocrate, que j’aurais plaisir à voir éternuer dans le panier à Samson. Sachez que le général Hanriot est un bon patriote qui saura défendre, au besoin, Paris et la Convention. C’est cela que les royalistes ne lui pardonnent point." | “Anyone who talks like that,” he cried, “is a f… aristocrat I should be glad to see sneeze into Samson’s basket[^c21n04]. Understand that General Hanriot is a good patriot who will know how to defend Paris and the Convention if need be. That is what the royalists cannot forgive him.” |
| <a id="c21p010"></a>Et le patriote à moustaches, dévisageant Julie qui ne cessait pas de rire: | Then the moustached patriot, staring at Julie, who was still laughing: |
| <a id="c21p011"></a>"Toi, blanc-bec, prends garde que je ne t’envoie mon pied dans le derrière, pour t’apprendre à respecter les patriotes." | “You, you beardless brat, mind I don’t kick your backside to teach you respect for patriots.” |
| <a id="c21p012"></a>Cependant des voix s’élevaient: | Meanwhile voices were rising: |
| <a id="c21p013"></a>"Hanriot est un ivrogne et un imbécile! | “Hanriot’s a drunkard and an imbecile!” |
| <a id="c21p014"></a>— Hanriot est un bon jacobin! Vive Hanriot!" | “Hanriot’s a good Jacobin! Long live Hanriot!” |
| <a id="c21p015"></a>Deux partis se formèrent. On s’aborda, les poings s’abattirent sut les chapeaux défoncés, les tables se renversèrent, les verres volèrent en éclats, les quinquets s’éteignirent, les femmes poussèrent des cris aigus. Assaillie par plusieurs patriotes, Julie s’arma d’une banquette, fut terrassée, griffa, mordit ses agresseurs. De son carrick ouvert et de son jabot déchiré sa poitrine haletante sortait. Une patrouille accourut au bruit, et la jeune aristocrate s’échappa entre les jambes des gendarmes. | Two parties formed. They closed on one another; fists fell on battered hats, tables overturned, glasses shattered, oil lamps went out, women shrieked. Attacked by several patriots, Julie armed herself with a bench, was knocked down, scratched and bit her assailants. Her heaving chest emerged from her open carrick and torn shirt-frill. A patrol ran up at the noise, and the young aristocrat escaped between the gendarmes’ legs. |
| <a id="c21p016"></a>Chaque jour, les charrettes étaient pleines de condamnés. | Every day the carts were full of condemned prisoners. |
| <a id="c21p017"></a>"Je ne peux pourtant pas laisser mourir mon amant!" disait Julie à sa mère. | “I can’t simply let my lover die!” Julie told her mother. |
| <a id="c21p018"></a>Elle résolut de solliciter, de faire des démarches, d’aller dans les comités, dans les bureaux, chez des représentants, chez des magistrats, partout où il faudrait. Elle n’avait point de robe. Sa mère emprunta une robe rayée, un fichu, une coiffe de dentelle à la citoyenne Blaise, et Julie, vêtue en femme et en patriote, se rendit chez le juge Renaudin, dans une humide et sombre maison de la rue Mazarine. | She resolved to petition, to take steps, to go to committees, to offices, to representatives and magistrates, wherever she must. She had no dress. Her mother borrowed a striped dress, a kerchief and a lace cap from Citizen Blaise, and Julie, dressed as a woman and a patriot[^c21n05], went to see Judge Renaudin in a damp, dark house in the Rue Mazarine. |
| <a id="c21p019"></a>Elle monta en tremblant l’escalier de bois et de carreau et fut reçue par le juge dans son cabinet misérable, meublé d’une table de sapin et de deux chaises de paille. Le papier de tenture pendait en lambeaux. Renaudin, les cheveux noirs et collés, l’œil sombre, les babines retroussées et le menton saillant, lui fit signe de parler et l’écouta en silence. | Trembling, she climbed the wooden and tiled staircase and was received by the judge in his miserable study, furnished with a deal table and two rush-seated chairs. The wallpaper hung in strips. Renaudin, his black hair plastered down, his eyes dark, his lips drawn back and his chin jutting, signalled her to speak and listened in silence. |
| <a id="c21p020"></a>Elle lui dit qu’elle était la sœur du citoyen Chassagne, prisonnier au Luxembourg, lui exposa le plus habilement qu’elle put les circonstances dans lesquelles il avait été arrêté, le représenta innocent et malheureux, se montra pressante. | She told him she was the sister of Citizen Chassagne, a prisoner at the Luxembourg, explained as skilfully as she could the circumstances of his arrest, represented him as innocent and unfortunate, and pressed her plea. |
| <a id="c21p021"></a>Il demeura insensible et dur. | He remained unfeeling and hard. |
| <a id="c21p022"></a>Suppliante, à ses pieds, elle pleura. | Suppliant at his feet, she wept. |
| <a id="c21p023"></a>Dès qu’il vit des larmes, son visage changea: ses prunelles, d’un noir rougeâtre, s’enflammèrent, et ses énormes mâchoires bleues remuèrent comme pour ramener la salive dans sa gorge sèche. | The moment he saw tears his face changed: his reddish-black eyes kindled, and his enormous blue-shadowed jaws moved as if to bring saliva back into his dry throat. |
| <a id="c21p024"></a>"Citoyenne, on fera le nécessaire. Ne vous inquiétez pas." | “Citizen, what is necessary will be done. Do not worry.” |
| <a id="c21p025"></a>Et, ouvrant une porte, il poussa la solliciteuse dans un petit salon rose, où il y avait des trumeaux peints, des groupes de biscuit, un cartel et des candélabres dorés, des bergères, un canapé de tapisserie décoré d’une pastorale de Boucher. Julie était prête à tout pour sauver son amant. | And, opening a door, he pushed the petitioner into a little pink drawing room containing painted wall panels, bisque groups[^c21n06], a gilt wall clock and candlesticks, armchairs and a tapestry sofa decorated with a pastoral by Boucher[^c21n07]. Julie was ready for anything to save her lover. |
| <a id="c21p026"></a>Renaudin fut brutal et rapide. Quand elle se leva, rajustant la belle robe de la citoyenne Élodie, elle rencontra le regard cruel et moqueur de cet homme; elle sentit aussitôt qu’elle avait fait un sacrifice inutile. | Renaudin was brutal and quick. When she rose, adjusting Citizen Élodie’s beautiful dress, she met the man’s cruel, mocking gaze; at once she felt she had made a useless sacrifice. |
| <a id="c21p027"></a>"Vous m’avez promis la liberté de mon frère", dit-elle. | “You promised me my brother’s freedom,” she said. |
| <a id="c21p028"></a>Il ricana. | He sniggered. |
| <a id="c21p029"></a>"Je t’ai dit, citoyenne, qu’on ferait le nécessaire, c’est-à-dire qu’on appliquerait la loi, rien de plus, rien de moins. Je t’ai dit de ne point t’inquiéter, et pourquoi t’inquiéterais-tu? Le Tribunal révolutionnaire est toujours juste." | “I told you, Citizen, that what was necessary would be done[^c21n08]; that is, the law would be applied, no more, no less. I told you not to worry, and why should you worry? The Revolutionary Tribunal is always just.” |
| <a id="c21p030"></a>Elle pensa se jeter sur lui, le mordre, lui arracher les yeux. Mais, sentant qu’elle achèverait de perdre Fortuné Chassagne, elle s’enfuit et courut enlever dans sa mansarde la robe souillée d’Élodie. Et là, seule, elle hurla, toute la nuit, de rage et de douleur. | She thought of flinging herself upon him, biting him, tearing out his eyes. But, feeling she would complete Fortuné Chassagne’s ruin, she fled and ran to her attic to strip off Élodie’s soiled dress. There, alone, she howled all night with rage and grief. |
| <a id="c21p031"></a>Le lendemain, étant retournée au Luxembourg, elle trouva le jardin occupé par des gendarmes qui chassaient les femmes et les enfants. Des sentinelles, placées dans les allées, empêchaient les passants de communiquer avec les détenus. La jeune mère, qui venait, chaque jour, portant son enfant dans ses bras, dit à Julie qu’on parlait de conspiration dans les prisons et que l’on reprochait aux femmes de se réunir dans le jardin pour émouvoir le peuple en faveur des aristocrates et des traîtres. | Next day, returning to the Luxembourg, she found the garden occupied by gendarmes who were driving away women and children. Sentries posted in the avenues prevented passers-by from communicating with the prisoners. The young mother who came every day with her child in her arms told Julie that people were speaking of a conspiracy in the prisons, and accusing the women of gathering in the garden to move the people in favour of aristocrats and traitors. |

### Notes

[^c21n01]: An interpretation: gestures restore private communication across the prison boundary. The final paragraph abolishes this fragile channel and reclassifies the families’ visible affection as political agitation; the chapter’s beginning and ending thus frame the same act of watching differently. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n02]: The unread newspaper disguises the stranger’s attention. His departure on discovering Julie is a woman reveals the erotic nature of what she first takes for disinterested sympathy. The narration leaves the inference to the reader rather than naming his preference. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n03]: A board game of the backgammon family, played with dice and counters. It is distinct from the gambling game biribi mentioned in chapter XVII. Here its social function is to place Julie among shop assistants and soldiers while she passes as a young man. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n04]: A grotesque euphemism for being guillotined: the severed head falls into the executioner’s basket. The source prints Samson, a spelling preserved here. The image turns a café disagreement into a fantasy of execution. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n05]: An interpretation: the borrowed dress changes Julie’s public legibility in both gender and politics. Élodie’s clothes move between the lover of a revolutionary juror and the lover of his political enemy; their eventual soiling connects these otherwise opposed relationships. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n06]: Small sculptural groups in unglazed porcelain. Together with the wall panels, gilt fittings and tapestry, they disclose a luxurious inner room behind the judge’s display of austere poverty. The significance of the contrast is interpretive. [S186](#S186)

[^c21n07]: François Boucher (1703–70), whose pastoral subjects present an elaborately graceful rural world. The scene supplies an aristocratic, sensuous setting for Renaudin’s predation. The novel does not identify a specific surviving tapestry, and none is asserted here. [S187](#S187)

[^c21n08]: The repeated phrase translates on ferait le nécessaire. Renaudin retrospectively restricts his promise to legal procedure after Julie has acted on its implication of assistance. The repetition must remain identical for the verbal trap to work. [S186](#S186)

<a id="chapter-22"></a>

## XXII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c22p001"></a>Une montagne s’est élevée subitement dans le jardin des Tuileries. Le ciel est sans nuages. Maximilien marche devant ses collègues en habit bleu, en culotte jaune, ayant à la main un bouquet d’épis, de bleuets et de coquelicots. Il gravit la montagne et annonce le dieu de Jean-Jacques à la République attendrie. O pureté! ô douceur! ô foi! ô simplicité antique! ô larmes de pitié! ô rosée féconde! ô clémence! ô fraternité humaine! | A mountain has suddenly risen in the Tuileries garden[^c22n01]. The sky is cloudless. Maximilien walks before his colleagues in a blue coat and yellow breeches, carrying a bouquet of wheat ears, cornflowers and poppies. He climbs the mountain and announces Jean-Jacques’s god[^c22n02] to the tender-hearted Republic. O purity! O sweetness! O faith! O ancient simplicity! O tears of pity! O fruitful dew! O clemency! O human brotherhood! |
| <a id="c22p002"></a>En vain l’athéisme dresse encore sa face hideuse: Maximilien saisit une torche; les flammes dévorent le monstre et la Sagesse apparaît, d’une main montrant le ciel, de l’autre tenant une couronne d’étoiles. | In vain does atheism still raise its hideous face: Maximilien seizes a torch; flames devour the monster and Wisdom appears, pointing one hand towards heaven and holding a crown of stars in the other. |
| <a id="c22p003"></a>Sur l’estrade dressée contre le palais des Tuileries, Évariste, au milieu de la foule émue, verse de douces larmes et rend grâces à Dieu. Il voit s’ouvrir une ère de félicité. | On the platform built against the Tuileries palace, Évariste, amid the moved crowd, sheds sweet tears and gives thanks to God. He sees an age of happiness opening. |
| <a id="c22p004"></a>Il soupire: | He sighs: |
| <a id="c22p005"></a>"Enfin nous serons heureux, purs, innocents, si les scélérats le permettent." | “At last we shall be happy, pure and innocent, if the scoundrels allow it.” |
| <a id="c22p006"></a>Hélas! les scélérats ne l’ont pas permis. Il faut encore des supplices; il faut encore verser des flots de sang impur. Trois jours après la fête de la nouvelle alliance et la réconciliation du ciel et de la terre, la Convention promulgue la loi de prairial qui supprime, avec une sorte de bonhomie terrible, toutes les formes traditionnelles de la loi, tout ce qui a été conçu depuis le temps des Romains équitables pour la sauvegarde de l’innocence soupçonnée. Plus d’instructions, plus d’interrogatoires, plus de témoins, plus de défenseurs: l’amour de la patrie supplée à tout. L’accusé, qui porte renfermé en lui son crime ou son innocence, passe muet devant le juré patriote. Et c’est dans ce temps qu’il faut discerner sa cause parfois difficile, souvent chargée et obscurcie. Comment juger maintenant? Comment reconnaître en un instant l’honnête homme et le scélérat, le patriote et l’ennemi de la patrie?... | Alas, the scoundrels have not allowed it. There must be more executions; more floods of impure blood must be shed. Three days after[^c22n03] the festival of the new covenant and the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the Convention promulgates the law of prairial, which abolishes, with a kind of terrible good nature, all the traditional forms of law, everything devised since the time of the equitable Romans to safeguard suspected innocence. No more investigations, no more interrogations, no more witnesses, no more counsel[^c22n04]: love of country takes the place of everything. The accused, carrying his guilt or innocence shut within him, passes silently before the patriotic juror. And in that time one must discern his case, sometimes difficult, often burdened and obscured. How is one to judge now? How distinguish in an instant the honest man from the villain, the patriot from the enemy of his country?… |
| <a id="c22p007"></a>Après un moment de trouble, Gamelin comprit ses nouveaux devoirs et s’accommoda à ses nouvelles fonctions. Il reconnaissait dans l’abréviation de la procédure les vrais caractères de cette justice salutaire et terrible dont les ministres n’étaient point des chats-fourrés pesant à loisir le pour et le contre dans leurs gothiques balances, mais des sans-culottes jugeant par illumination patriotique et voyant tout dans un éclair. Alors que les garanties, les précautions eussent tout perdu, les mouvements d’un cœur droit sauvaient tout. Il fallait suivre les impulsions de la nature, cette bonne mère, qui ne se trompe jamais; il fallait juger avec le cœur, et Gamelin faisait des invocations aux mânes de Jean-Jacques: | After a moment of bewilderment, Gamelin understood his new duties and adapted himself to his new functions. In the shortening of procedure he recognised the true character of that salutary and terrible justice whose ministers were not fur-gowned lawyers[^c22n05] leisurely weighing the pros and cons in their Gothic scales, but sans-culottes judging by patriotic illumination and seeing everything in a flash. Where guarantees and precautions would have ruined everything, the movements of an upright heart saved everything. One must follow the impulses of nature, that good mother who never errs; one must judge with the heart, and Gamelin invoked the shade of Jean-Jacques: |
| <a id="c22p008"></a>"Homme vertueux, inspire-moi, avec l’amour des hommes, l’ardeur de les régénérer!" | “Virtuous man, inspire in me, with love of mankind, the ardour to regenerate it!” |
| <a id="c22p009"></a>Ses collègues, pour la plupart, sentaient comme lui. C’était surtout des simples; et, quand les formes furent simplifiées, ils se trouvèrent à leur aise. La justice abrégée les contentait. Rien, dans sa marche accélérée, ne les troublait plus. Ils s’enquéraient seulement des opinions des accusés, ne concevant pas qu’on pût sans méchanceté penser autrement qu’eux. Comme ils croyaient posséder la vérité, la sagesse, le souverain bien, ils attribuaient à leurs adversaires l’erreur et le mal. Ils se sentaient forts: ils voyaient Dieu. | Most of his colleagues felt as he did. They were chiefly simple men, and when the forms were simplified they found themselves at ease. Abridged justice satisfied them. Nothing in its accelerated progress troubled them any longer. They enquired only into the opinions of the accused, unable to conceive that anyone could think differently from themselves without wickedness. Believing they possessed truth, wisdom and the sovereign good, they attributed error and evil to their opponents. They felt strong: they saw God. |
| <a id="c22p010"></a>Ils voyaient Dieu, ces jurés du Tribunal révolutionnaire. L’Être suprême, reconnu par Maximilien, les inondait de ses flammes. Ils aimaient, ils croyaient. | They saw God, those jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Supreme Being acknowledged by Maximilien flooded them with his flames. They loved, they believed. |
| <a id="c22p011"></a>Le fauteuil de l’accusé avait été remplacé par une vaste estrade pouvant contenir cinquante individus: on ne procédait plus que par fournées. L’accusateur public réunissait dans une même affaire et inculpait comme complices des gens qui souvent, au Tribunal, se rencontraient pour la première fois. Le Tribunal jugea avec les facilités terribles de la loi de prairial ces prétendues conspirations des prisons qui, succédant aux proscriptions des dantonistes et de la Commune, s’y rattachaient par les artifices d’une pensée subtile. Pour qu’on y reconnût en effet les deux caractères essentiels d’un complot fomenté avec l’or de l’étranger contre la République, la modération intempestive et l’exagération calculée, pour qu’on y vît encore le crime dantoniste et le crime hébertiste, on y avait mis deux têtes opposées, deux têtes de femmes, la veuve de Camille, cette aimable Lucile, et la veuve de l’hébertiste Momoro, déesse d’un jour et joyeuse commère. Toutes deux avaient été renfermées par symétrie dans la même prison, où elles avaient pleuré ensemble sur le même banc de pierre; toutes deux avaient, par symétrie, monté sur l’échafaud. Symbole trop ingénieux, chef-d’œuvre d’équilibre imaginé sans doute par une âme de procureur et dont on faisait honneur à Maximilien. On rapportait à ce représentant du peuple tous les événements heureux ou malheureux qui s’accomplissaient dans la République, les lois, les mœurs, le cours des saisons, les récoltes, les maladies. Injustice méritée, car cet homme, menu, propret, chétif, à face de chat, était puissant sur le peuple.... | The accused’s chair had been replaced by a great platform that could hold fifty people: proceedings were conducted only in batches now. The public prosecutor brought together in a single case, and charged as accomplices, people who often met for the first time in the Tribunal. With the terrible facilities afforded by the law of prairial, the Tribunal judged those supposed prison conspiracies which, following the proscriptions of the Dantonists and the Commune, were linked to them by the artifices of a subtle mind. To ensure that the two essential characteristics of a plot fomented against the Republic with foreign gold could be recognised in them—untimely moderation and calculated extremism—to make the crime of Danton and the crime of Hébert visible once again, two opposing figures had been placed at their head, two women: Camille’s widow, the charming Lucile, and the widow of the Hébertist Momoro[^c22n06], a goddess for a day and a merry gossip. Both had been confined, for symmetry, in the same prison, where they had wept together on the same stone bench; both had mounted the scaffold, for symmetry. An overingenious symbol, a masterpiece of balance, devised no doubt by a prosecutor’s soul and credited to Maximilien. To this representative of the people were attributed all the happy or unhappy events that befell the Republic: laws, manners, the course of the seasons, harvests, diseases. A deserved injustice, for this small, neat, sickly man with his cat’s face was powerful over the people.… |
| <a id="c22p012"></a>Le Tribunal expédiait, ce jour-là, une partie de la grande conspiration des prisons, une trentaine de conspirateurs du Luxembourg, captifs très soumis, mais royalistes ou fédéralistes très prononcés. L’accusation reposait tout entière sur le témoignage d’un seul délateur. Les jurés ne savaient pas un mot de l’affaire; ils ignoraient jusqu’aux noms des conspirateurs. Gamelin, en jetant les yeux sur le banc des accusés, reconnut parmi eux Fortuné Chassagne. L’amant de Julie, amaigri par une longue captivité, pâle, les traits durcis par la lumière crue qui baignait la salle, gardait encore quelque grâce et quelque fierté. Ses regards rencontrèrent ceux de Gamelin et se chargèrent de mépris. | That day the Tribunal was dispatching part of the great prison conspiracy, some thirty conspirators from the Luxembourg, very submissive captives but pronounced royalists or federalists. The accusation rested entirely on the testimony of a single informer. The jurors knew not a word of the case; they did not even know the conspirators’ names. Glancing at the dock, Gamelin recognised Fortuné Chassagne among them. Julie’s lover, thin from long captivity, pale, his features hardened by the harsh light flooding the room, still retained some grace and pride. His eyes met Gamelin’s and filled with contempt. |
| <a id="c22p013"></a>Gamelin, possédé d’une fureur tranquille, se leva, demanda la parole, et, les yeux fixés sur le buste de Brutus l’ancien, qui dominait le Tribunal: | Possessed by a tranquil fury, Gamelin rose and asked to speak. His eyes fixed on the bust of the elder Brutus that dominated the Tribunal, he said: |
| <a id="c22p014"></a>"Citoyen président, dit-il, bien qu’il puisse exister entre un des accusés et moi des liens qui, s’ils étaient déclarés, seraient des liens d’alliance, je déclare ne me point récuser. Les deux Brutus ne se récusèrent pas quand, pour le salut de la république ou la cause de la liberté, il leur fallut condamner un fils, frapper un père adoptif." | “Citizen president, although there may exist between one of the accused and myself ties which, were they declared, would be ties of kinship by marriage, I declare that I shall not withdraw. Neither of the two Brutuses withdrew when, for the salvation of the republic or the cause of liberty, he had to condemn a son[^c22n07] or strike down an adoptive father[^c22n08].” |
| <a id="c22p015"></a>Il se rassit. | He sat down again. |
| <a id="c22p016"></a>"Voilà un beau scélérat", murmura Chassagne entre ses dents. | “A fine scoundrel,” Chassagne muttered between his teeth. |
| <a id="c22p017"></a>Le public restait froid, soit qu’il fût enfin las des caractères sublimes, soit que Gamelin eût triomphé trop facilement des sentiments naturels. | The public remained cold, either because it was at last weary of sublime characters, or because Gamelin had triumphed too easily over natural feelings. |
| <a id="c22p018"></a>"Citoyen Gamelin, dit le président, aux termes de la loi, toute récusation doit être formulée par écrit, dans les vingt-quatre heures avant l’ouverture des débats. Au reste, tu n’as pas lieu de te récuser: un juré patriote est au-dessus des passions." | “Citizen Gamelin,” said the president, “under the law, any withdrawal must be declared in writing twenty-four hours before the opening of the hearing. Besides, you have no reason to withdraw: a patriotic juror is above the passions.” |
| <a id="c22p019"></a>Chaque accusé fut interrogé pendant trois ou quatre minutes. Le réquisitoire conclut à la peine de mort pour tous. Les jurés la votèrent d’une parole, d’un signe de tête et par acclamation. Quand ce fut le tour de Gamelin d’opiner: | Each accused was questioned for three or four minutes. The prosecutor called for death for them all. The jurors voted it with a word, a nod, by acclamation. When Gamelin’s turn came to give his opinion: |
| <a id="c22p020"></a>"Tous les accusés sont convaincus, dit-il, et la loi est formelle." | “All the accused are convicted,” he said, “and the law is explicit.” |
| <a id="c22p021"></a>Tandis qu’il descendait l’escalier du Palais, un jeune homme vêtu d’un carrick vert bouteille et qui semblait âgé de dix-sept ou dix-huit ans, l’arrêta brusquement au passage. Il portait un chapeau rond, rejeté en arrière, et dont les bords faisaient à sa belle tête pâle une auréole noire. Dressé devant le juré, il lui cria, terrible de colère et de désespoir: | As he went down the Palais staircase, a young man in a bottle-green carrick, seemingly seventeen or eighteen, abruptly barred his way. He wore a round hat pushed back, its brim making a black halo round his beautiful pale head. Drawing himself up before the juror, terrible in anger and despair, he cried: |
| <a id="c22p022"></a>"Scélérat! monstre! assassin! Frappe-moi, lâche! Je suis une femme! Fais-moi arrêter, fais-moi guillotiner, Caïn! Je suis ta sœur." | “Scoundrel! Monster! Murderer! Strike me, coward! I am a woman! Have me arrested, have me guillotined, Cain[^c22n09]! I am your sister.” |
| <a id="c22p023"></a>Et Julie lui cracha au visage. | And Julie spat in his face. |
| <a id="c22p024"></a>La foule des tricoteuses et des sans-culottes se relâchait alors de sa vigilance révolutionnaire; son ardeur civique était bien attiédie: il n’y eut autour de Gamelin et de son agresseur que des mouvements incertains et confus. Julie fendit l’attroupement et disparut dans le crépuscule. | The crowd of knitting women and sans-culottes was then relaxing its revolutionary vigilance; its civic ardour had greatly cooled. Around Gamelin and his assailant there were only uncertain, confused movements. Julie forced her way through the gathering and disappeared into the dusk. |

### Notes

[^c22n01]: The Festival of the Supreme Being took place on 8 June 1794 (20 prairial II). France compresses its two locations: the burning of Atheism occurred at the Tuileries, while the artificial mountain belonged to the subsequent ceremony at the Champ-de-Mars. The translation preserves his staging. [S188](#S188)

[^c22n02]: Rousseau’s deistic religious language is a central reference for the festival as well as Gamelin’s inward devotions. “Jean-Jacques” names Rousseau throughout the novel. Recognition of the Supreme Being and immortality of the soul had been decreed on 7 May 1794. [S188](#S188)

[^c22n03]: The law of 22 prairial II was adopted on 10 June 1794, two calendar days after the festival of 8 June. France’s wording is retained rather than silently changing the interval. [S189](#S189)

[^c22n04]: France’s compressed indictment is broader than the decree’s literal provisions. It removed preliminary interrogation and defence counsel; public questioning remained, and witnesses could still be summoned under specified conditions. The legal and practical destruction of safeguards should not be confused with a verbatim statement of every article. [S189](#S189)

[^c22n05]: French chats-fourrés, literally “furred cats”, a satirical designation for legal dignitaries in fur-trimmed robes. Gamelin’s rejection of the leisurely old legal profession makes procedural haste appear both socially egalitarian and morally inspired. The latter connection is interpretive. [S190](#S190)

[^c22n06]: France appears to confuse Sophie Momoro with Françoise Hébert, who was executed with Lucile Desmoulins. Sophie survived: the Société historique du VIe arrondissement records her release on 27 May 1794 and remarriage in 1796. The novel’s identification is retained, with the discrepancy made explicit here. [S191](#S191)

[^c22n07]: Lucius Junius Brutus, the traditional founder of the Roman Republic, condemned his sons for conspiring to restore the monarchy. David’s painting of their bodies returned home (1789) made this conflict between family and civic duty a prominent image for the revolutionary generation. [S192](#S192)

[^c22n08]: The second Brutus is Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins. Gamelin’s designation of Caesar as his adoptive father is a rhetorical or legendary relationship, not reliable genealogy: Suetonius names Gaius Octavius as Caesar’s adopted heir (Julius 83). [S193](#S193)

[^c22n09]: In Genesis 4, Cain kills his brother Abel. Julie turns the biblical name against her brother as the destroyer of her lover, replacing his chosen Roman exemplars with the figure of fratricide. The application is interpretive. [S194](#S194)

<a id="chapter-23"></a>

## XXIII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c23p001"></a>Évariste Gamelin était las et ne pouvait se reposer; vingt fois dans la nuit, il se réveillait en sursaut d’un sommeil plein de cauchemars. C’était seulement dans la chambre bleue, entre les bras d’Élodie, qu’il pouvait dormir quelques heures. Il parlait et criait en dormant et la réveillait; mais elle ne pouvait comprendre ses paroles. | Évariste Gamelin was weary and could find no rest; twenty times a night he started awake from a sleep full of nightmares. Only in the blue room, in Élodie’s arms, could he sleep for a few hours. He spoke and cried out in his sleep and woke her; but she could not understand his words. |
| <a id="c23p002"></a>Un matin, après une nuit où il avait vu les Euménides, il se réveilla brisé d’épouvante et faible comme un enfant. L’aube traversait les rideaux de la chambre de ses flèches livides. Les cheveux d’Évariste, mêlés sur son front, lui couvraient les yeux d’un voile noir: Élodie, au chevet du lit, écartait doucement les mèches farouches. Elle le regardait, cette fois, avec une tendresse de sœur et, de son mouchoir, essuyait la sueur glacée sur le front du malheureux. Alors il se rappela cette belle scène de l'*Oreste* d’Euripide, dont il avait ébauché un tableau qui, s’il avait pu l’achever, aurait été son chef-d’œuvre: la scène où la malheureuse Électre essuie l’écume qui souille la bouche de son frère. Et il croyait entendre aussi Élodie dire d’une voix douce: "Écoute-moi, mon frère chéri, pendant que les Furies te laissent maître de ta raison...." | One morning, after a night in which he had seen the Eumenides[^c23n01], he awoke shattered with terror and weak as a child. Dawn pierced the bedroom curtains with its livid arrows. Évariste’s hair, tangled across his forehead, covered his eyes with a black veil; beside the bed Élodie gently brushed the wild locks away. This time she looked at him with a sister’s tenderness and, with her handkerchief, wiped the cold sweat from the unhappy man’s forehead. Then he remembered that beautiful scene in Euripides’ *Orestes* for which he had sketched a painting that, had he been able to finish it, would have been his masterpiece: the scene in which the unhappy Electra wipes the foam that soils her brother’s mouth. And he seemed to hear Élodie too saying softly: “Listen to me, my dear brother, while the Furies leave you master of your reason.…” |
| <a id="c23p003"></a>Et il songeait: | And he thought: |
| <a id="c23p004"></a>"Et pourtant, je ne suis point parricide. Au contraire, c’est par piété filiale que j’ai versé le sang impur des ennemis de ma patrie." | “And yet I am no parricide. On the contrary, it was from filial piety[^c23n02] that I shed the impure blood of my country’s enemies.” |

### Notes

[^c23n01]: A propitiatory Greek name, “the Kindly Ones”, for the Erinyes or Furies, avenging powers associated with blood-guilt. In Euripides’ Orestes they torment the hero after his killing of his mother; Gamelin’s dream resumes the analogy already embodied in his unfinished painting. [S195](#S195)

[^c23n02]: French piété filiale retains both dutiful reverence and its quasi-religious colouring. Gamelin answers the charge suggested by Orestes by treating the country as his parent: he claims that killing expresses rather than violates family obligation. The opposition to his actual mother and sister is an interpretive implication. [S196](#S196)

<a id="chapter-24"></a>

## XXIV

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c24p001"></a>On n’en finissait pas avec la conspiration des prisons. Quarante-neuf accusés remplissaient les gradins. Maurice Brotteaux occupait la droite du plus haut degré, la place d’honneur. Il était vêtu de sa redingote puce, qu’il avait soigneusement brossée la veille, et reprisée à l’endroit de la poche que le petit Lucrèce, à la longue, avait usée. A son côté, la femme Rochemaure, peinte, fardée, éclatante, horrible. On avait placé le Père Longuemare entre elle et la fille Athénaïs, qui avait retrouvé, aux Madelonnettes, la fraîcheur de l’adolescence. | There was no end to the prison conspiracy. Forty-nine accused filled the tiered benches. Maurice Brotteaux occupied the right-hand end of the highest tier, the place of honour. He wore his flea-coloured coat, carefully brushed the night before and darned at the pocket where the little Lucretius had worn it through over time. Beside him sat the woman Rochemaure, painted, rouged, dazzling, horrible. Father Longuemare had been placed between her and the girl Athénaïs, who at the Madelonnettes had recovered the freshness of adolescence. |
| <a id="c24p002"></a>Les gendarmes entassaient sur les gradins des gens que ceux-ci ne connaissaient pas, et qui, peut-être, ne se connaissaient pas entre eux, tous complices cependant, parlementaires, journaliers, ci-devant nobles, bourgeois et bourgeoises. La citoyenne Rochemaure aperçut Gamelin au banc des jurés. Bien qu’il n’eût pas répondu à ses lettres pressantes, à ses messages répétés, elle espéra en lui, lui envoya un regard suppliant et s’efforça d’être pour lui belle et touchante. Mais le regard froid du jeune magistrat lui ôta toute illusion. | The gendarmes packed the benches with people these prisoners did not know, who perhaps did not know one another, yet were all accomplices: members of the old parlements[^c24n01], day labourers, former nobles, bourgeois men and women. Citizen Rochemaure caught sight of Gamelin on the jurors’ bench. Though he had not answered her urgent letters and repeated messages, she put her hopes in him, sent him a pleading glance and tried to look beautiful and moving for him. But the young magistrate’s cold gaze stripped her of every illusion. |
| <a id="c24p003"></a>Le greffier lut l’acte d’accusation qui, bref sur chacun des accusés, était long à cause de leur nombre. Il exposait à grands traits le complot ourdi dans les prisons pour noyer la République dans le sang des représentants de la nation et du peuple de Paris, et, faisant la part de chacun, il disait: | The clerk read the indictment, brief about each accused but long because of their number. It outlined the plot hatched in the prisons to drown the Republic in the blood of the nation’s representatives and the people of Paris; and, assigning each his part, it said: |
| <a id="c24p004"></a>"L’un des plus pernicieux auteurs de cette abominable conjuration est le nommé Brotteaux, ci-devant des Ilettes, receveur des finances sous le tyran. Cet individu, qui se faisait remarquer, même au temps de la tyrannie, par sa conduite dissolue, est une preuve certaine que le libertinage et les mauvaises mœurs sont les plus grands ennemis de la liberté et du bonheur des peuples: en effet, après avoir dilapidé les finances publiques et épuisé en débauches une notable partie de la substance du peuple, cet individu s’associa avec son ancienne concubine, la femme Rochemaure, pour correspondre avec les émigrés et informer traîtreusement la faction de l’étranger de l’état de nos finances, des mouvements de nos troupes, des fluctuations de l’opinion. | “One of the most pernicious authors of this abominable conspiracy is the man named Brotteaux, formerly des Ilettes, a receiver of revenue under the tyrant. This individual, remarkable even in the days of tyranny for his dissolute conduct, is certain proof that libertinage[^c24n02] and bad morals are the greatest enemies of liberty and the happiness of peoples. Indeed, after squandering the public finances and exhausting a notable portion of the people’s substance in debauchery, this individual joined with his former concubine, the woman Rochemaure, to correspond with the émigrés and treacherously inform the foreign faction of the state of our finances, our troop movements and fluctuations in public opinion. |
| <a id="c24p005"></a>"Brotteaux qui, à cette période de sa méprisable existence, vivait en concubinage avec une prostituée qu’il avait ramassée dans la boue de la rue Fromenteau, la fille Athénaïs, la gagna facilement à ses desseins et l’employa à fomenter la contre-révolution par des cris impudents et des excitations indécentes. | “Brotteaux, who at this period of his contemptible existence was living in concubinage with a prostitute he had picked out of the mud of the Rue Fromenteau, the girl Athénaïs, easily won her over to his designs and employed her to foment counter-revolution by shameless cries and indecent incitements. |
| <a id="c24p006"></a>"Quelques propos de cet homme néfaste vous indiqueront clairement ses idées abjectes et son but pernicieux. Parlant du tribunal patriotique, appelé aujourd’hui à le châtier, il disait insolemment: "Le Tribunal révolutionnaire ressemble à une pièce de Guillaume Shakespeare, qui mêle aux scènes les plus sanglantes les bouffonneries les plus triviales." Sans cesse il préconisait l’athéisme, comme le moyen le plus sûr d’avilir le peuple et de le rejeter dans l’immoralité. Dans la prison de la Conciergerie, où il était détenu, il déplorait à l’égal des pires calamités les victoires de nos vaillantes armées, et s’efforçait de jeter la suspicion sur les généraux les plus patriotes en leur prêtant des desseins tyrannicides. "Attendez-vous, disait-il, dans un langage atroce, que la plume hésite à reproduire, attendez-vous à ce que, un jour, un de ces porteurs d’épée, à qui vous devez votre salut, vous avale tous comme la grue de la fable avala les grenouilles." | “A few remarks of this baleful man will clearly show you his abject ideas and pernicious purpose. Speaking of the patriotic tribunal now called upon to punish him, he said insolently: ‘The Revolutionary Tribunal resembles a play by William Shakespeare, which mingles the bloodiest scenes with the most vulgar buffoonery.’ He ceaselessly advocated atheism as the surest means of debasing the people and casting them back into immorality. In the Conciergerie prison, where he was held, he deplored the victories of our valiant armies as the worst of calamities, and strove to cast suspicion upon the most patriotic generals by attributing tyrannicidal designs[^c24n03] to them. ‘Expect,’ he said, in atrocious language which the pen hesitates to reproduce, ‘expect one of these sword-bearers, to whom you owe your salvation, to swallow you all one day, as the crane in the fable swallowed the frogs.’” |
| <a id="c24p007"></a>Et l’acte d’accusation poursuivait de la sorte. | And the indictment continued in the same manner. |
| <a id="c24p008"></a>"La femme Rochemaure, ci-devant noble, concubine de Brotteaux, n’est pas moins coupable que lui. Non seulement elle correspondait avec l’étranger et était stipendiée par Pitt lui-même, mais, associée à des hommes corrompus, tels que Julien (de Toulouse) et Chabot, en relations avec le ci-devant baron de Batz, elle inventait, de concert avec ce scélérat, toutes sortes de machinations pour faire baisser les actions de la Compagnie des Indes, les acheter à vil prix et en relever le cours par des machinations opposées aux premières, frustrant ainsi la fortune privée et la fortune publique. Incarcérée à la Bourbe et aux Madelonnettes, elle n’a pas cessé de conspirer dans sa prison, d’agioter et de se livrer à des tentatives de corruption à l’égard des juges et des jurés. | “The woman Rochemaure, formerly noble, Brotteaux’s concubine, is no less guilty than he. Not only did she correspond with the foreigner and receive payment from Pitt himself, but, associated with corrupt men such as Julien of Toulouse[^c24n04] and Chabot, in contact with the former Baron de Batz, she devised in concert with that scoundrel every kind of scheme to lower the shares of the Compagnie des Indes, buy them at a paltry price and raise their value again by schemes opposite to the first, thus defrauding both private and public wealth. Imprisoned at La Bourbe and the Madelonnettes, she never ceased conspiring in prison, speculating and attempting to corrupt judges and jurors. |
| <a id="c24p009"></a>"Louis Longuemare, ex-noble, ex-capucin, s’était depuis longtemps essayé à l’infamie et au crime avant d’accomplir les actes de trahison dont il a à répondre ici. Vivant dans une honteuse promiscuité avec la fille Gorcut, dite Athénaïs, sous le toit même de Brotteaux, il est le complice de cette fille et de ce ci-devant noble. Durant sa captivité à la Conciergerie, il n’a pas cessé un seul jour d’écrire des libelles attentatoires à la liberté et à la paix publiques. | “Louis Longuemare, former nobleman, former Capuchin, had long practised infamy and crime before committing the acts of treason for which he must answer here. Living in shameful promiscuity with the girl Gorcut, called Athénaïs, beneath Brotteaux’s very roof, he is the accomplice of this girl and this former nobleman. During his imprisonment at the Conciergerie he has not ceased for a single day to write libels[^c24n05] against public liberty and peace. |
| <a id="c24p010"></a>"Il est juste de dire, à propos de Marthe Gorcut, dite Athénaïs, que les filles prostituées sont le plus grand fléau des mœurs publiques, auxquelles elles insultent, et l’opprobre de la société qu’elles flétrissent. Mais à quoi bon s’étendre sur des crimes répugnants, que l’accusée avoue sans pudeur?..." | “It is just to say, with regard to Marthe Gorcut, called Athénaïs, that prostitutes are the greatest scourge of public morals, which they insult, and the disgrace of the society they defile. But why dwell on repugnant crimes which the accused admits without shame?…” |
| <a id="c24p011"></a>L’accusation passait ensuite en revue les cinquante-quatre autres prévenus, que ni Brotteaux, ni le Père Longuemare, ni la citoyenne Rochemaure ne connaissaient, sinon pour en avoir vu plusieurs dans les prisons, et qui étaient enveloppés avec les premiers dans "cette conjuration exécrable, dont les annales des peuples ne fournissent point d’exemple". | The indictment then reviewed the fifty-four other defendants[^c24n06], whom neither Brotteaux nor Father Longuemare nor Citizen Rochemaure knew, except that they had seen several of them in prison, and who were implicated with the first in “this execrable conspiracy, without example in the annals of peoples”. |
| <a id="c24p012"></a>L’accusation concluait à la peine de mort pour tous les inculpés. | The indictment called for the death penalty for all the accused. |
| <a id="c24p013"></a>Brotteaux fut interrogé le premier. | Brotteaux was questioned first. |
| <a id="c24p014"></a>"Tu as conspiré? | “Did you conspire?” |
| <a id="c24p015"></a>— Non, je n’ai pas conspiré. Tout est faux dans l’acte d’accusation que je viens d’entendre. | “No, I did not conspire. Everything in the indictment I have just heard is false.” |
| <a id="c24p016"></a>— Tu vois: tu conspires encore en ce moment contre le Tribunal." | “You see: you are conspiring against the Tribunal even now.” |
| <a id="c24p017"></a>Et le président passa à la femme Rochemaure, qui répondit par des protestations désespérées, des larmes et des arguties. | And the president turned to the woman Rochemaure, who answered with desperate protests, tears and quibbles. |
| <a id="c24p018"></a>Le Père Longuemare s’en remettait entièrement à la volonté de Dieu. Il n’avait pas même apporté sa défense écrite. | Father Longuemare entrusted himself entirely to God’s will. He had not even brought his written defence. |
| <a id="c24p019"></a>A toutes les questions qui lui furent posées, il répondit avec un esprit de renoncement. Toutefois, quand le président le traita de capucin, le vieil homme en lui se ranima: | To every question put to him he replied in a spirit of renunciation. Yet when the president called him a Capuchin, the old Adam[^c24n07] in him revived: |
| <a id="c24p020"></a>"Je ne suis pas capucin, dit-il, je suis prêtre et religieux de l’ordre des Barnabites. | “I am not a Capuchin,” he said. “I am a priest and a religious of the Order of Barnabites.” |
| <a id="c24p021"></a>— C’est la même chose", répliqua le président avec bonhomie. | “It is the same thing,” the president replied good-naturedly. |
| <a id="c24p022"></a>Le Père Longuemare le regarda, indigné: | Father Longuemare looked at him indignantly: |
| <a id="c24p023"></a>"On ne peut concevoir d’erreur plus étrange, fit-il, que de confondre avec un capucin un religieux de cet ordre des Barnabites qui tient ses constitutions de l’apôtre saint Paul lui-même." | “No stranger error can be imagined,” he said, “than to confuse a Capuchin with a religious of this Order of Barnabites, which derives its constitutions from the Apostle Saint Paul himself.” |
| <a id="c24p024"></a>Les éclats de rire et les huées éclatèrent dans l’assistance. | Laughter and jeering broke out among the spectators. |
| <a id="c24p025"></a>Et le Père Longuemare, prenant ces moqueries pour des signes de dénégation, proclamait qu’il mourrait membre de cet ordre de Saint-Barnabé, dont il portait l’habit dans son cœur. | Taking the mockery for signs of denial, Father Longuemare proclaimed that he would die a member of this Order of Saint Barnabas, whose habit he wore in his heart. |
| <a id="c24p026"></a>"Reconnais-tu, demanda le président, avoir conspiré avec la fille Gorcut, dite Athénaïs, qui t’accordait ses méprisables faveurs?" | “Do you admit,” asked the president, “to conspiring with the girl Gorcut, called Athénaïs, who granted you her contemptible favours?” |
| <a id="c24p027"></a>A cette question, le Père Longuemare leva vers le ciel un regard douloureux et répondit par un silence qui exprimait la surprise d’une âme candide et la gravité d’un religieux qui craint de prononcer de vaines paroles. | At this question Father Longuemare raised sorrowful eyes to heaven and answered with a silence expressing the surprise of an innocent soul and the gravity of a religious who fears to utter idle words. |
| <a id="c24p028"></a>"Fille Gorcut, demanda le président à la jeune Athénaïs, reconnais-tu avoir conspiré avec Brotteaux?" | “Gorcut,” the president asked the young Athénaïs, “do you admit to conspiring with Brotteaux?” |
| <a id="c24p029"></a>Elle répondit doucement: | She answered gently: |
| <a id="c24p030"></a>"Monsieur Brotteaux, à ma connaissance, n’a fait que du bien. C’est un homme comme il en faudrait beaucoup et comme il n’y a pas meilleur. Ceux qui disent le contraire se trompent. C’est tout ce que j’ai à dire." | “Monsieur Brotteaux, to my knowledge, has done nothing but good. He is a man we ought to have many of, and there is none better. Those who say otherwise are mistaken. That is all I have to say.” |
| <a id="c24p031"></a>Le président lui demanda si elle reconnaissait avoir vécu en concubinage avec Brotteaux. Il fallut lui expliquer ce terme qu’elle n’entendait pas. Mais, dès qu’elle eut compris de quoi il s’agissait, elle répondit qu’il n’aurait tenu qu’à lui, mais qu’il ne le lui avait pas demandé. | The president asked whether she admitted having lived in concubinage with Brotteaux. They had to explain the term, which she did not understand. But as soon as she grasped what it meant, she replied that he had only to ask, but he had not asked her. |
| <a id="c24p032"></a>On rit dans les tribunes et le président menaça la fille Gorcut de la mettre hors des débats si elle répondait encore avec un tel cynisme. | People laughed in the galleries, and the president threatened to exclude Gorcut from the proceedings if she answered again with such cynicism. |
| <a id="c24p033"></a>Alors elle l’appela cafard, face de carême, cornard, et vomit sur lui, sur les juges et les jurés des potées d’injures, jusqu’à ce que les gendarmes l’eussent tirée de son banc et emmenée hors de la salle. | Then she called him a canting rogue, a Lenten face[^c24n08] and a cuckold, and poured potfuls of abuse upon him, the judges and the jurors, until the gendarmes pulled her from her bench and took her out of the room. |
| <a id="c24p034"></a>Le président interrogea ensuite brièvement les autres accusés, dans l’ordre où ils étaient placés sur les gradins. Un nommé Navette répondit qu’il n’avait pu conspirer dans une prison où il n’avait séjourné que quatre jours. Le président fit cette observation que la réponse était à considérer et qu’il priait les citoyens jurés d’en tenir compte. Un certain Bellier répondit de même et le président adressa en sa faveur la même observation au jury. On interpréta cette bienveillance du juge comme l’effet d’une louable équité ou comme un salaire dû à la délation. | The president then briefly questioned the other accused in the order in which they sat on the benches. A man named Navette[^c24n09] replied that he could not have conspired in a prison where he had spent only four days. The president observed that the answer deserved consideration and asked the citizen jurors to take it into account. A certain Bellier gave the same answer, and the president made the same observation to the jury in his favour. This benevolence on the judge’s part was interpreted either as the effect of laudable fairness or as a reward owed for informing. |
| <a id="c24p035"></a>Le substitut de l’accusateur public prit la parole. Il ne fit qu’amplifier l’acte d’accusation et posa ces questions: | The deputy public prosecutor spoke. He merely expanded upon the indictment and put these questions: |
| <a id="c24p036"></a>"Est-il constant que Maurice Brotteaux, Louise Rochemaure, Louis Longuemare, Marthe Gorcut, dite Athénaïs, Eusèbe Rocher, Pierre Guyton-Fabulet, Marcelline Descourtis, etc., etc., ont formé une conjuration dont les moyens sont l’assassinat, la famine, la fabrication de faux assignats et de fausse monnaie, la dépravation de la morale et de l’esprit public, le soulèvement des prisons; le but: la guerre civile, la dissolution de la représentation nationale, le rétablissement de la royauté? | “Is it established that Maurice Brotteaux, Louise Rochemaure, Louis Longuemare, Marthe Gorcut, called Athénaïs, Eusèbe Rocher, Pierre Guyton-Fabulet, Marcelline Descourtis, etc., etc., formed a conspiracy whose means were murder, famine, the forging of assignats and coin, the corruption of public morals and spirit, and a rising in the prisons; whose object was civil war, the dissolution of the national representation and the restoration of monarchy?” |
| <a id="c24p037"></a>Les jurés se retirèrent dans la chambre des délibérations. Ils se prononcèrent à l’unanimité pour l’affirmative en ce qui concernait tous les accusés, à l’exception des dénommés Navette et Bellier, que le président et, après lui, l’accusateur public avaient mis, en quelque sorte, hors de cause. Gamelin motiva son verdict en ces termes: | The jurors retired to the deliberation room. They unanimously answered in the affirmative with regard to all the accused, except the men named Navette and Bellier, whom the president, followed by the public prosecutor, had in effect removed from the case. Gamelin gave the grounds for his verdict in these terms: |
| <a id="c24p038"></a>"La culpabilité des accusés crève les yeux: leur châtiment importe au salut de la Nation et ils doivent eux-mêmes souhaiter leur supplice comme le seul moyen d’expier leurs crimes." | “The guilt of the accused is glaring: their punishment is necessary to the Nation’s salvation, and they themselves ought to desire execution as the only means of expiating their crimes.” |
| <a id="c24p039"></a>Le président prononça la sentence en l’absence de ceux qu’elle concernait. Dans ces grandes journées, contrairement à ce qu’exigeait la loi, on ne rappelait pas les condamnés pour leur lire leur arrêt, sans doute parce qu’on craignait le désespoir d’un si grand nombre de personnes. Vaine crainte, tant la soumission des victimes était alors grande et générale! Le greffier descendit lire le verdict, qui fut entendu dans ce silence et cette tranquillité qui faisaient comparer les condamnés de prairial à des arbres mis en coupe. | The president pronounced sentence in the absence of those it concerned. On these great days, contrary to the law’s requirements, the condemned were not brought back to hear their sentence read, no doubt for fear of the despair of so many people. An idle fear, so great and general was the victims’ submission then! The clerk went down to read the verdict, which was heard in the silence and tranquillity that made people compare the condemned of prairial to trees marked for felling. |
| <a id="c24p040"></a>La citoyenne Rochemaure se déclara enceinte. Un chirurgien, qui était en même temps juré, fut commis pour la visiter. On la porta évanouie dans son cachot. | Citizen Rochemaure declared herself pregnant[^c24n10]. A surgeon who was also a juror was appointed to examine her. She was carried unconscious to her dungeon. |
| <a id="c24p041"></a>"Ah! soupira le Père Longuemare, ces juges sont des hommes bien dignes de pitié: l’état de leur âme est vraiment déplorable. Ils brouillent tout et confondent un barnabite avec un franciscain." | “Ah!” sighed Father Longuemare. “These judges are men greatly to be pitied: the state of their souls is truly deplorable. They muddle everything and confuse a Barnabite with a Franciscan.” |
| <a id="c24p042"></a>L’exécution devait avoir lieu, le jour même, à la "barrière du Trône-Renversé". Les condamnés, la toilette faite, les cheveux coupés, la chemise échancrée, attendirent le bourreau, parqués comme un bétail dans la petite salle séparée du greffe par une cloison vitrée. | The execution was to take place that same day at the “Barrière du Trône-Renversé[^c24n11]”. Prepared for death, their hair cut and their shirts cut away at the neck, the condemned awaited the executioner, penned like cattle in the little room divided from the registry by a glazed partition. |
| <a id="c24p043"></a>A l’arrivée de l’exécuteur et de ses valets, Brotteaux, qui lisait tranquillement son Lucrèce, mit le signet à la page commencée, ferma le livre, le fourra dans la poche de sa redingote et dit au barnabite: | When the executioner and his assistants arrived, Brotteaux, calmly reading his Lucretius, put the marker at the page he had begun, closed the book, thrust it into his coat pocket and said to the Barnabite: |
| <a id="c24p044"></a>"Mon révérend Père, ce dont j’enrage, c’est que je ne vous persuaderai pas. Nous allons dormir tous deux notre dernier sommeil, et je ne pourrai pas vous tirer par la manche et vous réveiller pour vous dire: "Vous voyez: vous n’avez plus ni sentiment ni connaissance; vous êtes inanimé. Ce qui suit la vie est comme ce qui la précède." | “Reverend Father, what infuriates me is that I shall not convince you. We are both about to sleep our last sleep, and I shall not be able to tug at your sleeve and wake you to say: ‘You see: you have neither feeling nor knowledge left; you are inanimate. What follows life is like what precedes it[^c24n12].’” |
| <a id="c24p045"></a>Il voulut sourire; mais une atroce douleur lui saisit le cœur et les entrailles et il fut près de défaillir. | He tried to smile; but an atrocious pain gripped his heart and entrails and he almost fainted. |
| <a id="c24p046"></a>Il reprit toutefois: | Yet he resumed: |
| <a id="c24p047"></a>"Mon Père, je vous laisse voir ma faiblesse. J’aime la vie et ne la quitte point sans regret. | “Father, I let you see my weakness. I love life and do not leave it without regret.” |
| <a id="c24p048"></a>— Monsieur, répondit le moine avec douceur, prenez garde que vous êtes plus brave que moi et que pourtant la mort vous trouble davantage. Que veut dire cela, sinon que je vois la lumière, que vous ne voyez pas encore? | “Monsieur,” the monk answered gently, “consider that you are braver than I, and yet death troubles you more. What can that mean but that I see the light which you do not yet see?” |
| <a id="c24p049"></a>— Ce pourrait être aussi, dit Brotteaux, que je regrette la vie parce que j’en ai mieux joui que vous, qui l’avez rendue aussi semblable que possible à la mort. | “It might also mean,” said Brotteaux, “that I regret life because I have enjoyed it more than you, who have made it as like death as possible.” |
| <a id="c24p050"></a>— Monsieur, dit le Père Longuemare en pâlissant, cette heure est grave. Que Dieu m’assiste! Il est certain que nous mourrons sans secours. Il faut que j’aie jadis reçu les sacrements avec tiédeur et d’un cœur ingrat, pour que le Ciel me les refuse aujourd’hui que j’en ai un si pressant besoin." | “Monsieur,” said Father Longuemare, turning pale, “this is a solemn hour. May God help me! It is certain that we shall die without spiritual aid. I must once have received the sacraments lukewarmly and with an ungrateful heart, for Heaven to refuse them to me today, when my need of them is so pressing.” |
| <a id="c24p051"></a>Les charrettes attendaient. On y entassa les condamnés, les mains liées. La femme Rochemaure, dont la grossesse n’avait pas été reconnue par le chirurgien, fut hissée dans un des tombereaux. Elle retrouva un peu de son énergie pour observer la foule des spectateurs, espérant contre toute espérance y rencontrer des sauveurs. Ses yeux imploraient. L’affluence était moindre qu’autrefois et les mouvements des esprits moins violents. Quelques femmes seulement criaient: "A mort!" ou raillaient ceux qui allaient mourir. Les hommes haussaient les épaules, détournaient la tête et se taisaient, soit par prudence, soit par respect des lois. | The carts were waiting. The condemned were packed into them, their hands bound. The woman Rochemaure, whose pregnancy the surgeon had not confirmed, was hoisted into one of the tumbrils. She recovered a little of her energy to study the spectators, hoping against all hope to find rescuers among them. Her eyes implored them. The crowd was smaller than formerly and feeling less violent. Only a few women shouted “Death!” or mocked those about to die. The men shrugged, turned away and said nothing, from prudence or respect for the laws. |
| <a id="c24p052"></a>Il y eut un frisson dans la foule quand Athénaïs passa le guichet. Elle avait l’air d’un enfant. | A shudder passed through the crowd when Athénaïs came through the wicket. She looked like a child. |
| <a id="c24p053"></a>Elle s’inclina devant le religieux: | She bowed before the religious: |
| <a id="c24p054"></a>"Monsieur le curé, lui dit-elle, donnez-moi l’absolution." | “Monsieur le curé,” she said, “give me absolution.” |
| <a id="c24p055"></a>Le Père Longuemare murmura gravement les paroles sacramentelles, et dit: | Father Longuemare gravely murmured the sacramental words, then said: |
| <a id="c24p056"></a>"Ma fille! vous êtes tombée dans de grands désordres; mais que ne puis-je présenter au Seigneur un cœur aussi simple que le vôtre!" | “My daughter! You have fallen into great disorders; but would that I could present to the Lord a heart as simple as yours!” |
| <a id="c24p057"></a>Elle monta, légère, dans la charrette. Et là, le buste droit, sa tête d’enfant fièrement dressée, elle s’écria: | She stepped lightly into the cart. There, her body upright and her child’s head proudly raised, she cried: |
| <a id="c24p058"></a>"Vive le roi!" | “Long live the king!” |
| <a id="c24p059"></a>Elle fit un petit signe à Brotteaux pour lui montrer qu’il y avait de la place à côté d’elle. Brotteaux aida le barnabite à monter et vint se placer entre le religieux et l’innocente fille. | She made a little sign to Brotteaux to show him there was room beside her. Brotteaux helped the Barnabite up, then placed himself between the religious and the innocent girl. |
| <a id="c24p060"></a>"Monsieur, dit le Père Longuemare au philosophe épicurien, je vous demande une grâce: ce Dieu auquel vous ne croyez pas encore, priez-le pour moi. Il n’est pas sûr que vous ne soyez pas plus près de lui que je ne le suis moi-même: un moment en peut décider. Pour que vous deveniez l’enfant privilégié du Seigneur, il ne faut qu’une seconde. Monsieur, priez pour moi." | “Monsieur,” Father Longuemare said to the Epicurean philosopher, “I ask a favour of you: pray for me to this God in whom you do not yet believe. It is not certain that you are not nearer to him than I am myself: a moment may decide it. One second is all that is needed to make you the Lord’s privileged child. Monsieur, pray for me[^c24n13].” |
| <a id="c24p061"></a>Tandis que les roues tournaient en grinçant sur le pavé du long faubourg, le religieux récitait du cœur et des lèvres les prières des agonisants. | While the wheels creaked over the paving stones of the long faubourg, the religious recited, in heart and on his lips, the prayers for the dying. |
| <a id="c24p062"></a>Brotteaux se remémorait les vers du poète de la nature: *Sic ubi non erimus*.... Tout lié qu’il était et secoué dans l’infâme charrette, il gardait une attitude tranquille et comme un souci de ses aises. A son côté, Athénaïs, fière de mourir ainsi que la reine de France, jetait sur la foule un regard hautain, et le vieux traitant, contemplant en connaisseur la gorge blanche de la jeune femme, regrettait la lumière du jour. | Brotteaux recalled the verses of the poet of nature: *Sic ubi non erimus*… Bound as he was and shaken in the infamous cart, he maintained a tranquil air and something of a concern for his comfort. Beside him Athénaïs, proud to die like the Queen of France, looked haughtily upon the crowd; and the old financier, gazing with a connoisseur’s eye at the young woman’s white breast, regretted the light of day[^c24n14]. |

### Notes

[^c24n01]: French parlementaires here means members of the sovereign law courts of the old monarchy, not members of a modern legislative parliament. The mixed professions and ranks underscore that the alleged association is imposed by the indictment. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n02]: The French term joins sexual licence to associations with unbelief and freethinking. The prosecution treats private conduct, religious scepticism and political conspiracy as parts of a single moral offence; the translation retains the word’s historical breadth. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n03]: The supplied French reads desseins tyrannicides, literally designs to kill tyrants, although Brotteaux’s quoted warning attributes potentially tyrannical ambitions to victorious generals. The apparent inconsistency is retained; silently substituting “tyrannical” would conceal a problem in the transmitted text. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n04]: Jean Julien (1750–1828), a former Protestant minister and Convention deputy for Haute-Garonne. The Assemblée nationale’s biographical record confirms Julien with one l; he should not be confused with Marc-Antoine Jullien of the Drôme. The prosecution’s further allegations remain allegations. [S198](#S198)

[^c24n05]: The accusation transforms Longuemare’s theological defence, described at length in chapter XIX, into attacks on public liberty. Similarly, Athénaïs’s gratitude becomes sexual collusion and Brotteaux’s conversation becomes conspiracy. This relation between the accounts is interpretive. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n06]: The chapter opens with forty-nine accused, but now names four principals and fifty-four others, implying fifty-eight. The translation preserves both figures. No attempt has been made to harmonise the discrepancy by silently altering a number. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n07]: French le vieil homme, the unregenerate or habitual self persisting beneath religious renunciation. Longuemare has abandoned his elaborate defence but cannot abandon the distinction between his order and the Capuchins. “Old Adam” brings out the religious idiom without making the phrase merely a reference to age. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n08]: French face de carême: a thin, mournful or sour-looking face, invoking the season of fasting. Athénaïs joins insults of hypocrisy, bodily appearance and cuckoldry; the language deliberately breaks through the Tribunal’s official register. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n09]: Navette and Bellier were already suspected of being prison informers in chapter XIX. The narration offers two possible readings of the president’s indulgence rather than proving an arrangement; their exemption should not be converted into an unqualified historical claim. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n10]: A claim of pregnancy could lead to examination and postponement of an execution. Max Billard’s historical account reproduces a Tribunal document ordering a stay for Marie-Anne Quétineau. In this fictional case the surgeon does not confirm Rochemaure’s claim; the text does not establish that she knowingly lied. [S199](#S199)

[^c24n11]: The eastern Paris execution site used during the final weeks of the Terror, near today’s Place de la Nation. Victims were buried nearby in the ground that became the Picpus cemetery. The royal name Trône, “throne”, had received the revolutionary addition Renversé, “overturned”. [S200](#S200)

[^c24n12]: The symmetry expresses the Lucretian argument already cited in chapter XIX: non-existence before birth provides an analogy for non-existence after death. Brotteaux’s imagined demonstration defeats itself, since neither observer could remain to receive the proof. This last point is interpretive. [S182](#S182)

[^c24n13]: An interpretation: Longuemare’s request reverses the expected direction of spiritual aid. His acknowledgement that the unbeliever may be nearer to God makes room for humility without requiring Brotteaux’s conversion, which the narrative does not supply. [S197](#S197)

[^c24n14]: An interpretation: the final sight of embodied beauty returns Brotteaux’s philosophy to attachment and sensation. France lets his composure coexist with regret; neither his unbelief nor Longuemare’s faith cancels the human difficulty of dying. [S197](#S197)

<a id="chapter-25"></a>

## XXV

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c25p001"></a>Pendant que les charrettes roulaient, entourées de gendarmes, vers la place du Trône-Renversé, menant à la mort Brotteaux et ses complices, Évariste était assis, pensif, sur un banc du jardin des Tuileries. Il attendait Élodie. Le soleil, penchant à l’horizon, criblait de ses flèches enflammées les marronniers touffus. A la grille du jardin, la Renommée, sur son cheval ailé, embouchait sa trompette éternelle. Les porteurs de journaux criaient la grande victoire de Fleurus. | While the carts, surrounded by gendarmes, rolled towards the Place du Trône-Renversé, carrying Brotteaux and his accomplices to their deaths, Évariste sat pensively on a bench in the Tuileries garden. He was waiting for Élodie. The sun, sinking towards the horizon, riddled the leafy chestnuts with its fiery arrows. At the garden gate, Fame on her winged horse[^c25n01] blew her eternal trumpet. The newspaper sellers were crying the great victory of Fleurus[^c25n02]. |
| <a id="c25p002"></a>"Oui, songeait Gamelin, la victoire est à nous. Nous y avons mis le prix." | “Yes,” Gamelin thought, “victory is ours. We have paid the price.” |
| <a id="c25p003"></a>Il voyait les mauvais généraux traîner leurs ombres condamnées dans la poussière sanglante de cette place de la Révolution où ils avaient péri. Et il sourit fièrement, songeant que, sans les sévérités dont il avait eu sa part, les chevaux autrichiens mordraient aujourd’hui l’écorce de ces arbres. | He saw the bad generals dragging their condemned shades through the bloody dust of that Place de la Révolution where they had perished. And he smiled proudly, thinking that without the severities in which he had played his part, Austrian horses would now be biting the bark from these trees. |
| <a id="c25p004"></a>Il s’écria en lui-même: | Inwardly he exclaimed: |
| <a id="c25p005"></a>"Terreur salutaire, ô sainte terreur! L’année passée, à pareille époque, nous avions pour défenseurs d’héroïques vaincus en guenilles; le sol de la patrie était envahi, les deux tiers des départements en révolte. Maintenant nos armées bien équipées, bien instruites, commandées par d’habiles généraux, prennent l’offensive, prêtes à porter la liberté par le monde. La paix règne sur tout le territoire de la République.... Terreur salutaire! ô sainte terreur! aimable guillotine! L’année passée, à pareille époque, la République était déchirée par les factions; l’hydre du fédéralisme menaçait de la dévorer. Maintenant l’unité jacobine étend sur l’empire sa force et sa sagesse...." | “Salutary terror, O holy terror! This time last year our defenders were heroic, defeated men in rags; our country’s soil was invaded, two-thirds of the departments in revolt. Now our armies, well equipped and well trained, commanded by able generals, are taking the offensive, ready to carry liberty throughout the world. Peace reigns over the Republic’s whole territory.… Salutary terror! O holy terror! Beloved guillotine! This time last year factions were tearing the Republic apart; the hydra of federalism threatened to devour it. Now Jacobin unity extends its strength and wisdom over the state.…” |
| <a id="c25p006"></a>Cependant il était sombre. Un pli profond lui barrait le front; sa bouche était amère. Il songeait: "Nous disions: *Vaincre ou mourir*. Nous nous trompions, c’est *vaincre et mourir* qu’il fallait dire." | Yet he was gloomy. A deep furrow barred his forehead; his mouth was bitter. He thought: “We used to say, *Conquer or die*. We were wrong; we should have said, *Conquer and die[^c25n03]*.” |
| <a id="c25p007"></a>Il regardait autour de lui. Les enfants faisaient des tas de sable. Les citoyennes sur leur chaise de bois, au pied des arbres, brodaient ou cousaient. Les passants en habit et culotte d’une élégance étrange, songeant à leurs affaires ou à leurs plaisirs, regagnaient leur demeure. Et Gamelin se sentait seul parmi eux: il n’était ni leur compatriote ni leur contemporain. Que s’était-il donc passé? Comment à l’enthousiasme des belles années avaient succédé l’indifférence, la fatigue et, peut-être, le dégoût? Visiblement, ces gens-là ne voulaient plus entendre parler du Tribunal révolutionnaire et se détournaient de la guillotine. Devenue trop importune sur la place de la Révolution, on l’avait renvoyée au bout du faubourg Antoine. Là même, au passage des charrettes, on murmurait. Quelques voix, dit-on, avaient crié: "Assez!" | He looked round him. Children were making heaps of sand. Citizens seated on wooden chairs beneath the trees were embroidering or sewing. Passers-by in coats and breeches of a strange elegance, thinking of their affairs or their pleasures, were going home. And Gamelin felt alone among them: he was neither their countryman nor their contemporary. What had happened? How had the enthusiasm of the beautiful years given way to indifference, weariness and perhaps disgust? Plainly these people wanted to hear no more of the Revolutionary Tribunal and were turning away from the guillotine. It had become too importunate in the Place de la Révolution and had been banished to the end of the Faubourg Antoine[^c25n04]. Even there people murmured as the carts passed. Some voices, it was said, had cried: “Enough!” |
| <a id="c25p008"></a>Assez, quand il y avait encore des traîtres, des conspirateurs! Assez, quand il fallait renouveler les comités, épurer la Convention! Assez, quand des scélérats déshonoraient la représentation nationale! Assez, quand on méditait jusque dans le Tribunal révolutionnaire la perte du Juste! Car, chose horrible à penser et trop véritable! Fouquier lui-même ourdissait des trames, et c’était pour perdre Maximilien qu’il lui avait immolé pompeusement cinquante-sept victimes traînées à la mort dans la chemise rouge des parricides. A quelle pitié criminelle cédait la France? Il fallait donc la sauver malgré elle et, lorsqu’elle criait grâce, se boucher les oreilles et frapper. Hélas! les destins l’avaient résolu: la patrie maudissait ses sauveurs. Qu’elle nous maudisse et qu’elle soit sauvée! | Enough, when there were still traitors and conspirators! Enough, when the committees needed renewing and the Convention purging! Enough, when scoundrels dishonoured the national representation! Enough, when even within the Revolutionary Tribunal men were plotting the ruin of the Just Man! For—horrible to think, and only too true—Fouquier himself was weaving plots, and it was to destroy Maximilien that he had ceremoniously sacrificed to him fifty-seven victims dragged to their deaths in the red shirt of parricides[^c25n05]. To what criminal pity was France yielding? She must be saved despite herself, then, and when she cried for mercy one must stop one’s ears and strike. Alas, the fates had decreed it: the country cursed its saviours. Let her curse us and be saved! |
| <a id="c25p009"></a>"C’est trop peu que d’immoler des victimes obscures, des aristocrates, des financiers, des publicistes, des poètes, un Lavoisier, un Roucher, un André Chénier. Il faut frapper ces scélérats tout-puissants qui, les mains pleines d’or et dégouttantes de sang, préparent la ruine de la Montagne, les Foucher, les Tallien, les Rovère, les Carrier, les Bourdon. Il faut délivrer l’État de tous ses ennemis. Si Hébert avait triomphé, la Convention était renversée, la République roulait aux abîmes; si Desmoulins et Danton avaient triomphé, la Convention, sans vertus, livrait la République aux aristocrates, aux agioteurs et aux généraux. Si les Tallien, les Fouché, monstres gorgés de sang et de rapines, triomphent, la France se noie dans le crime et l’infamie.... Tu dors, Robespierre, tandis que des criminels ivres de fureur et d’effroi méditent ta mort et les funérailles de la liberté. Couthon, Saint-Just, que tardez-vous à dénoncer les complots? | “It is too little to sacrifice obscure victims, aristocrats, financiers, publicists, poets, a Lavoisier, a Roucher, an André Chénier. We must strike those all-powerful scoundrels who, their hands full of gold and dripping blood, are preparing the Mountain’s ruin: the Fouchés, the Talliens[^c25n06], the Rovères, the Carriers, the Bourdons. The State must be delivered from all its enemies. If Hébert had triumphed, the Convention would have been overthrown, the Republic plunged into the abyss; if Desmoulins and Danton had triumphed, the Convention, devoid of virtue, would have handed the Republic over to aristocrats, speculators and generals. If the Talliens and the Fouchés, monsters gorged with blood and plunder, triumph, France will drown in crime and infamy.… You sleep, Robespierre, while criminals drunk with fury and fear plot your death and the funeral of liberty. Couthon, Saint-Just, why do you delay denouncing the plots? |
| <a id="c25p010"></a>"Quoi! l’ancien État, le monstre royal assurait son empire en emprisonnant chaque année quatre cent mille hommes, en en pendant quinze mille, en en rouant trois mille, et la République hésiterait encore à sacrifier quelques centaines de têtes à sa sûreté et à sa puissance! Noyons-nous dans le sang et sauvons la patrie...." | “What! The old State, the royal monster, secured its dominion by imprisoning four hundred thousand men every year[^c25n07], hanging fifteen thousand and breaking three thousand on the wheel, and the Republic should still hesitate to sacrifice a few hundred heads to its safety and power! Let us drown ourselves in blood and save our country.…” |
| <a id="c25p011"></a>Comme il songeait ainsi, Élodie accourut à lui pâle et défaite: | As he thought in this way, Élodie ran up to him, pale and distraught: |
| <a id="c25p012"></a>"Évariste, qu’as-tu à me dire? Pourquoi ne pas venir à l'*Amour peintre*, dans la chambre bleue? Pourquoi m’as-tu fait venir ici? | “Évariste, what have you to tell me? Why not come to the *Amour peintre*, to the blue room? Why have you made me come here?” |
| <a id="c25p013"></a>— Pour te dire un éternel adieu." | “To bid you an eternal farewell.” |
| <a id="c25p014"></a>Elle murmura qu’il était insensé, qu’elle ne pouvait comprendre.... | She murmured that he was mad, that she could not understand.… |
| <a id="c25p015"></a>Il l’arrêta d’un très petit geste de la main: | He stopped her with a very slight movement of his hand: |
| <a id="c25p016"></a>"Élodie, je ne puis plus accepter ton amour. | “Élodie, I can no longer accept your love.” |
| <a id="c25p017"></a>— Tais-toi, Évariste, tais-toi!" | “Be quiet, Évariste, be quiet!” |
| <a id="c25p018"></a>Elle le pria d’aller plus loin: là, on les observait, on les écoutait. | She begged him to go further away: people were watching them there, listening. |
| <a id="c25p019"></a>Il fit une vingtaine de pas et poursuivit, très calme: | He took some twenty steps and went on, very calmly: |
| <a id="c25p020"></a>"J’ai fait à ma patrie le sacrifice de ma vie et de mon honneur. Je mourrai infâme, et n’aurai à te léguer, malheureuse, qu’une mémoire exécrée.... Nous aimer? Est-ce que l’on peut m’aimer encore?... Est-ce que je puis aimer?" | “I have sacrificed my life and my honour to my country. I shall die infamous, and shall have nothing to leave you, unhappy girl, but an execrated memory.… Love one another? Can anyone still love me?… Can I love?” |
| <a id="c25p021"></a>Elle lui dit qu’il était fou; qu’elle l’aimait, qu’elle l’aimerait toujours. Elle fut ardente, sincère; mais elle sentait aussi bien que lui, elle sentait mieux que lui qu’il avait raison. Et elle se débattait contre l’évidence. | She told him he was mad; she loved him, she would always love him. She was ardent and sincere; but she felt as well as he, she felt better than he, that he was right. And she struggled against the evidence. |
| <a id="c25p022"></a>Il reprit: | He resumed: |
| <a id="c25p023"></a>"Je ne me reproche rien. Ce que j’ai fait, je le ferais encore. Je me suis fait anathème pour la patrie. Je suis maudit. Je me suis mis hors l’humanité: je n’y rentrerai jamais. Non! la grande tâche n’est pas finie. Ah! la clémence, le pardon!... Les traîtres pardonnent-ils? Les conspirateurs sont-ils cléments? Les scélérats parricides croissent sans cesse en nombre; il en sort de dessous terre, il en accourt de toutes nos frontières: de jeunes hommes, qui eussent mieux péri dans nos armées, des vieillards, des enfants, des femmes, avec les masques de l’innocence, de la pureté, de la grâce. Et quand on les a immolés, on en trouve davantage.... Tu vois bien qu’il faut que je renonce à l’amour, à toute joie, à toute douceur de la vie, à la vie elle-même." | “I reproach myself with nothing. What I have done, I would do again. I have made myself anathema[^c25n08] for my country. I am accursed. I have placed myself outside humanity: I shall never return to it. No! The great task is not finished. Ah, clemency, forgiveness!… Do traitors forgive? Are conspirators merciful? The scoundrels who murder their country grow ever more numerous; they spring from beneath the earth, they come running from every frontier: young men who would better have died in our armies, old men, children, women, wearing the masks of innocence, purity and grace. And when they have been sacrificed, we find still more.… You see that I must renounce love, every joy, every sweetness of life, life itself.” |
| <a id="c25p024"></a>Il se tut. Faite pour goûter de paisibles jouissances, Élodie depuis plus d’un jour s’effrayait de mêler, sous les baisers d’un amant tragique, aux impressions voluptueuses des images sanglantes: elle ne répondit rien. Évariste but comme un calice amer le silence de la jeune femme. | He fell silent. Made to savour peaceful pleasures, Élodie had for more than a day been frightened to mingle bloody images with voluptuous sensations beneath a tragic lover’s kisses: she made no reply. Évariste drank the young woman’s silence like a bitter cup. |
| <a id="c25p025"></a>"Tu le vois bien, Élodie: nous sommes précipités; notre œuvre nous dévore. Nos jours, nos heures sont des années. J’aurai bientôt vécu un siècle. Vois ce front! Est-il d’un amant? Aimer!... | “You see it, Élodie: we are driven headlong; our work devours us. Our days, our hours are years. Soon I shall have lived a century. Look at this forehead! Is it a lover’s? Love!…” |
| <a id="c25p026"></a>— Évariste, tu es à moi, je te garde; je ne te rends pas ta liberté." | “Évariste, you are mine, I am keeping you; I do not give you back your freedom.” |
| <a id="c25p027"></a>Elle s’exprimait avec l’accent du sacrifice. Il le sentit; elle le sentit elle-même. | She spoke with the tone of sacrifice. He felt it; she felt it herself. |
| <a id="c25p028"></a>"Élodie, pourras-tu attester, un jour, que je vécus fidèle à mon devoir, que mon cœur fut droit et mon âme pure, que je n’eus d’autre passion que le bien public; que j’étais né sensible et tendre? Diras-tu: "Il fit son devoir?" Mais non! tu ne le diras pas. Et je ne te demande pas de le dire. Périsse ma mémoire! Ma gloire est dans mon cœur; la honte m’environne. Si tu m’aimas, garde sur mon nom un éternel silence." | “Élodie, will you be able to testify one day that I lived faithful to my duty, that my heart was upright and my soul pure, that I had no passion but the public good; that I was born sensitive and tender? Will you say, ‘He did his duty’? But no! You will not say it. And I do not ask you to. Let my memory perish! My glory is in my heart; shame surrounds me. If you loved me, keep an eternal silence about my name.” |
| <a id="c25p029"></a>Un enfant de huit ou neuf ans, qui jouait au cerceau, se jeta en ce moment dans les jambes de Gamelin. | At that moment a child of eight or nine, playing with a hoop, ran into Gamelin’s legs. |
| <a id="c25p030"></a>Celui-ci l’éleva brusquement dans ses bras: | He abruptly lifted him in his arms: |
| <a id="c25p031"></a>"Enfant! tu grandiras libre, heureux, et tu le devras à l’infâme Gamelin. Je suis atroce pour que tu sois heureux. Je suis cruel pour que tu sois bon, je suis impitoyable pour que demain tous les Français s’embrassent en versant des larmes de joie." | “Child! You will grow up free and happy, and you will owe it to the infamous Gamelin. I am atrocious so that you may be happy. I am cruel so that you may be good[^c25n09], I am pitiless so that tomorrow all Frenchmen may embrace, shedding tears of joy.” |
| <a id="c25p032"></a>Il le pressa contre sa poitrine: | He pressed him to his breast: |
| <a id="c25p033"></a>"Petit enfant, quand tu seras un homme, tu me devras ton bonheur, ton innocence; et, si jamais tu entends prononcer mon nom, tu l’exécreras." | “Little child, when you are a man, you will owe me your happiness and your innocence; and if ever you hear my name spoken, you will execrate it.” |
| <a id="c25p034"></a>Et il posa à terre l’enfant, qui s’alla jeter épouvanté dans les jupes de sa mère, accourue pour le délivrer. | He put the child down. Terrified, the boy flung himself into the skirts of his mother, who had hurried up to rescue him. |
| <a id="c25p035"></a>Cette jeune mère, qui était jolie et d’une grâce aristocratique, dans sa robe de linon blanc, emmena son petit garçon avec un air de hauteur. | This young mother, pretty and aristocratically graceful in her white lawn dress, took her little boy away with a haughty air. |
| <a id="c25p036"></a>Gamelin tourna vers Élodie un regard farouche: | Gamelin turned a fierce gaze on Élodie: |
| <a id="c25p037"></a>"J’ai embrassé cet enfant; peut-être ferai-je guillotiner sa mère." | “I have kissed that child; perhaps I shall have his mother guillotined.” |
| <a id="c25p038"></a>Et il s’éloigna, à grands pas, sous les quinconces. | And he strode away beneath the regularly planted trees. |
| <a id="c25p039"></a>Élodie resta un moment immobile, le regard fixe et baissé. Puis, tout à coup, elle s’élança sur les pas de son amant, et, furieuse, échevelée, telle qu’une ménade, elle le saisit comme pour le déchirer et lui cria d’une voix étranglée de sang et de larmes: | Élodie stood still for a moment, her eyes fixed and lowered. Then suddenly she darted after her lover and, furious, dishevelled, like a maenad[^c25n10], seized him as though to tear him apart and cried in a voice choked with blood and tears: |
| <a id="c25p040"></a>"Eh bien! moi aussi, mon bien-aimé, envoie-moi à la guillotine; moi aussi, fais-moi trancher la tête!" | “Well then, my beloved, send me to the guillotine too; have my head cut off too!” |
| <a id="c25p041"></a>Et, à l’idée du couteau sur sa nuque, toute sa chair se fondait d’horreur et de volupté. | And at the thought of the blade upon her neck, all her flesh melted with horror and voluptuousness. |

### Notes

[^c25n01]: Antoine Coysevox’s La Renommée à cheval sur Pégase, completed in 1702, now in the Louvre. The trumpet of Fame places a royal monument of glory beside the newspaper cries celebrating the Republic’s victory. The juxtaposition is interpretive. [S201](#S201)

[^c25n02]: The French victory of 26 June 1794 (8 messidor II). The episode’s precise relation to the first announcement is not fixed here: France also places Chénier, executed later, among Gamelin’s victims below. The translation leaves the narrative chronology as supplied. [S202](#S202)

[^c25n03]: The change from ou, “or”, to et, “and”, destroys the comforting alternative in the patriotic formula. Gamelin expects victory to require his death rather than secure his survival; it marks the passage from confidence to a self-conception as an accursed saviour. [S203](#S203)

[^c25n04]: The execution site near the Barrière du Trône-Renversé, discussed in chapter XXIV. The historical movement of the guillotine away from the city centre underlies Gamelin’s observation that the public is turning against its spectacle. [S200](#S200)

[^c25n05]: The source’s phrase is retained. The 1791 Penal Code, part I, title I, article 4, assigned red shirts to those condemned for assassination, arson or poisoning; parricides instead wore a black covering over head and face. Gamelin’s moral language should not be mistaken for the exact legal distinction. [S204](#S204)

[^c25n06]: Joseph Fouché, later a prominent minister of police. The supplied French first spells the name Foucher and later Fouché in the same speech; the translation uses Fouché consistently. The hostile collective plurals remain Gamelin’s grouping of his enemies. [S205](#S205)

[^c25n07]: These figures occur in Gamelin’s internal justification of revolutionary violence. They are retained as part of his rhetoric; the edition does not present them as verified annual statistics for imprisonment or execution under the monarchy. [S203](#S203)

[^c25n08]: French je me suis fait anathème: he represents himself as devoted to a curse for the country’s sake. The religious vocabulary turns anticipated condemnation into a sacrificial identity, allowing him to acknowledge universal hatred while continuing to deny personal guilt. This reading is interpretive. [S203](#S203)

[^c25n09]: An interpretation: each promise of future benevolence is made dependent upon present cruelty. The frightened child and the threat to his mother test the abstraction immediately; the narration gives no sign that the child accepts the obligation Gamelin assigns him. [S203](#S203)

[^c25n10]: A female follower of Dionysus in an ecstatic state. The comparison joins dishevelment, violent seizure and erotic transport; Élodie’s cry brings the chapter’s language of political sacrifice into the lovers’ bodily relation. This application is interpretive. [S203](#S203)

<a id="chapter-26"></a>

## XXVI

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c26p001"></a>Tandis que le soleil de thermidor se couchait dans une pourpre sanglante, Évariste errait, sombre et soucieux, par les jardins Marbeuf, devenus propriété nationale et fréquentés des Parisiens oisifs. On y prenait de la limonade et des glaces; il y avait des chevaux de bois et des tirs pour les jeunes patriotes. Sous un arbre, un petit Savoyard en guenilles, coiffé d’un bonnet noir, faisait danser une marmotte au son aigre de sa vielle. Un homme, jeune encore, svelte, en habit bleu, les cheveux poudrés, accompagné d’un grand chien, s’arrêta pour écouter cette musique agreste. Évariste reconnut Robespierre. Il le retrouvait pâli, amaigri, le visage durci et traversé de plis douloureux. Et il songea: "Quelles fatigues, et combien de souffrances ont laissé leur empreinte sur son front? Qu’il est pénible de travailler au bonheur des hommes! A quoi songe-t-il en ce moment? Le son de la vielle montagnarde le distrait-il du souci des affaires? Pense-t-il qu’il a fait un pacte avec la mort et que l’heure est proche de le tenir? Médite-t-il de rentrer en vainqueur dans ce comité de Salut public dont il s’est retiré, las d’y être tenu en échec, avec Couthon et Saint-Just, par une majorité séditieuse? Derrière cette face impénétrable quelles espérances s’agitent ou quelles craintes?" | As the thermidor sun sank in a bloody purple, Évariste wandered, gloomy and anxious, through the Jardins Marbeuf, now national property and frequented by idle Parisians. People took lemonade and ices there; there were wooden horses and shooting galleries for young patriots. Beneath a tree, a little Savoyard in rags and a black cap made a marmot dance to the shrill sound of his hurdy-gurdy. A man still young, slender, in a blue coat, with powdered hair and a large dog beside him, stopped to listen to this rustic music. Évariste recognised Robespierre. He found him paler, thinner, his face hardened and crossed by lines of pain. And he thought: “What labours, how much suffering have left their mark on his forehead? How painful it is to work for mankind’s happiness! What is he thinking of now? Does the sound of the mountain hurdy-gurdy distract him from the cares of affairs? Does he think that he has made a pact with death and the hour to honour it is near? Is he meditating a triumphant return to that Committee of Public Safety from which he withdrew, weary of being thwarted with Couthon and Saint-Just by a seditious majority? Behind that impenetrable face, what hopes are stirring, or what fears?” |
| <a id="c26p002"></a>Pourtant Maximilien sourit à l’enfant, lui fit d’une voix douce, avec bienveillance, quelques questions sur la vallée, la chaumière, les parents que le pauvre petit avait quittés, lui jeta une petite pièce d’argent et reprit sa promenade. Après avoir fait quelques pas, il se retourna pour appeler son chien qui, sentant le rat, montrait les dents à la marmotte hérissée. | Yet Maximilien smiled at the child and, in a gentle voice, kindly asked him a few questions about the valley, the cottage and the parents the poor little fellow had left; he tossed him a small silver coin and resumed his walk. After a few steps he turned to call his dog, who, catching the rodent’s scent, was baring his teeth at the bristling marmot. |
| <a id="c26p003"></a>"Brount! Brount!" | “Brount! Brount!” |
| <a id="c26p004"></a>Puis il s’enfonça dans les allées sombres. | Then he vanished into the dark avenues. |
| <a id="c26p005"></a>Gamelin, par respect, ne s’approcha pas du promeneur solitaire; mais, contemplant la forme mince qui s’effaçait dans la nuit, il lui adressa cette oraison mentale: | Out of respect Gamelin did not approach the solitary walker; but, gazing at the slender figure fading into the night, he addressed this silent prayer to him: |
| <a id="c26p006"></a>"J’ai vu ta tristesse, Maximilien; j’ai compris ta pensée. Ta mélancolie, ta fatigue et jusqu’à cette expression d’effroi empreinte dans tes regards, tout en toi dit: "Que la terreur s’achève et que la fraternité commence! Français, soyez unis, soyez vertueux, soyez bons. Aimez-vous les uns les autres...." Eh bien! je servirai tes desseins; pour que tu puisses, dans ta sagesse et ta bonté, mettre fin aux discordes civiles, éteindre les haines fratricides, faire du bourreau un jardinier qui ne tranchera plus que les têtes des choux et des laitues, je préparerai avec mes collègues du Tribunal les voies de la clémence, en exterminant les conspirateurs et les traîtres. Nous redoublerons de vigilance et de sévérité. Aucun coupable ne nous échappera. Et quand la tête du dernier des ennemis de la République sera tombée sous le couteau, tu pourras être indulgent sans crime et faire régner l’innocence et la vertu sur la France, ô père de la patrie!" | “I have seen your sadness, Maximilien; I have understood your thoughts[^c26n01]. Your melancholy, your weariness, even that expression of fear imprinted on your gaze, everything in you says: ‘Let terror end and brotherhood begin! Frenchmen, be united, be virtuous, be good. Love one another.…’ Well, I shall serve your designs; so that in your wisdom and goodness you may end civil strife, quench fratricidal hatreds, make the executioner a gardener who cuts off only the heads of cabbages and lettuces, I shall prepare the way for clemency with my colleagues of the Tribunal by exterminating conspirators and traitors. We shall redouble our vigilance and severity. No guilty man shall escape us. And when the head of the Republic’s last enemy has fallen beneath the blade, you may be indulgent without crime and make innocence and virtue reign over France, O father of the country!” |
| <a id="c26p007"></a>L’Incorruptible était déjà loin. Deux hommes en chapeau rond et culotte de nankin, dont l’un, d’aspect farouche, long et maigre, avait un dragon sur l’œil et ressemblait à Tallien, le croisèrent au tournant d’une allée, lui jetèrent un regard oblique et, feignant de ne point le reconnaître, passèrent. Quand ils furent à une assez grande distance pour n’être pas entendus, ils murmurèrent à voix basse: | The Incorruptible was already far away. Two men in round hats and nankeen breeches, one of them fierce-looking, tall and thin, with a spot on his eye[^c26n02] and a resemblance to Tallien, passed him at a bend in an avenue, cast him a sidelong glance and, pretending not to recognise him, went on. When they were far enough away not to be heard, they murmured softly: |
| <a id="c26p008"></a>"Le voilà donc, le roi, le pape, le dieu. Car il est Dieu. Et Catherine Théot est sa prophétesse. | “There he is, then, the king, the pope, the god. For he is God. And Catherine Théot[^c26n03] is his prophetess.” |
| <a id="c26p009"></a>— Dictateur, traître, tyran! il est encore des Brutus. | “Dictator, traitor, tyrant! There are still Brutuses.” |
| <a id="c26p010"></a>— Tremble, scélérat! la roche Tarpéienne est près du Capitole." | “Tremble, scoundrel! The Tarpeian Rock is close to the Capitol[^c26n04].” |
| <a id="c26p011"></a>Le chien Brount s’approcha d’eux. Ils se turent et hâtèrent le pas. | The dog Brount came towards them. They fell silent and quickened their pace. |

### Notes

[^c26n01]: An interpretation: Robespierre’s actual words concern the Savoyard’s home and parents; Gamelin supplies an extensive political intention which he has not heard. The separation between observable kindness and the admirer’s imagined programme is essential to the scene. [S206](#S206)

[^c26n02]: French un dragon sur l’œil. Dragon has an old sense of a blemish or opaque spot in the eye, recorded by both the Académie and Littré; it does not mean a lock of hair or a tattoo here. No modern medical diagnosis is implied. [S207](#S207) [S208](#S208)

[^c26n03]: A religious visionary (1716–94) whose following and supposed connection to Robespierre became a political scandal. The speakers’ designation of him as her god is polemical. It must not be taken as evidence that he accepted their account of her claims. [S209](#S209)

[^c26n04]: A proverb making the proximity of Roman public glory and the rock from which condemned people were thrown into an image of sudden political downfall. Littré illustrates it with Mirabeau’s speech of 22 May 1790. The speakers turn the familiar warning into a threat. [S210](#S210)

<a id="chapter-27"></a>

## XXVII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c27p001"></a>Tu dors, Robespierre! L’heure passe, le temps précieux coule.... | You sleep, Robespierre! The hour passes, precious time runs away.… |
| <a id="c27p002"></a>Enfin, le 8 thermidor, à la Convention, l’Incorruptible se lève et va parler. Soleil du 31 mai, te lèves-tu une seconde fois? Gamelin attend, espère. Robespierre va donc arracher des bancs qu’ils déshonorent ces législateurs plus coupables que les fédéralistes, plus dangereux que Danton.... Non! pas encore. "Je ne puis, dit-il, me résoudre à déchirer entièrement le voile qui recouvre ce profond mystère d’iniquité." Et la foudre éparpillée, sans frapper aucun des conjurés, les effraie tous. On en comptait soixante qui, depuis quinze jours, n’osaient coucher dans leur lit. Marat nommait les traîtres, lui; il les montrait du doigt. L’Incorruptible hésite, et, dès lors, c’est lui l’accusé.... | At last, on 8 thermidor[^c27n01], in the Convention, the Incorruptible rises and is about to speak. Sun of 31 May, are you rising a second time? Gamelin waits, hopes. So Robespierre is going to tear from the benches they dishonour those legislators more guilty than the federalists, more dangerous than Danton.… No! Not yet. “I cannot,” he says, “bring myself to tear away entirely the veil covering this profound mystery of iniquity.” And the scattered thunderbolt, striking none of the conspirators, frightens them all. Sixty were reckoned to have dared not sleep in their beds for a fortnight. Marat named the traitors; he pointed them out. The Incorruptible hesitates, and from that moment he is the accused.… |
| <a id="c27p003"></a>Le soir, aux Jacobins, on s’étouffe dans la salle, dans les couloirs, dans la cour. | That evening, at the Jacobins, people are stifling in the hall, the corridors, the courtyard. |
| <a id="c27p004"></a>Ils sont là tous, les amis bruyants et les ennemis muets. Robespierre leur lit ce discours que la Convention a entendu dans un silence affreux et que les jacobins couvrent d’applaudissements émus. | They are all there, the noisy friends and the silent enemies. Robespierre reads them the speech the Convention heard in dreadful silence and which the Jacobins cover with heartfelt applause. |
| <a id="c27p005"></a>"C’est mon testament de mort, dit l’homme, vous me verrez boire la ciguë avec calme. | “This is my death testament,” the man says. “You will see me drink the hemlock[^c27n02] calmly.” |
| <a id="c27p006"></a>— Je la boirai avec toi, répond David. | “I shall drink it with you,” David replies. |
| <a id="c27p007"></a>— Tous, tous!" s’écrient les jacobins, qui se séparent sans rien décider. | “All of us, all of us!” cry the Jacobins, who disperse without deciding anything. |
| <a id="c27p008"></a>Évariste, pendant que se préparait la mort du Juste, dormit du sommeil des disciples au jardin des Oliviers. Le lendemain, il se rendit au Tribunal, où deux sections siégeaient. Celle dont il faisait partie jugeait vingt et un complices de la conspiration de Lazare. Et, pendant ce temps, arrivaient les nouvelles: "La Convention, après une séance de six heures, a décrété d’accusation Maximilien Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just avec Augustin Robespierre et Lebas, qui ont demandé à partager le sort des accusés. Les cinq proscrits sont descendus à la barre." | While the death of the Just Man was being prepared, Évariste slept the sleep of the disciples in the Garden of Olives[^c27n03]. Next day he went to the Tribunal, where two divisions were sitting. His own was trying twenty-one accomplices in the Lazare conspiracy. Meanwhile news arrived: “After a six-hour sitting, the Convention has decreed the indictment of Maximilien Robespierre, Couthon and Saint-Just, together with Augustin Robespierre and Lebas, who asked to share the fate of the accused. The five proscribed men have come down to the bar.” |
| <a id="c27p009"></a>On apprend que le président de la section qui fonctionne dans la salle voisine, le citoyen Dumas, a été arrêté sur son siège, mais que l’audience continue. On entend battre la générale et sonner le tocsin. | It is learnt that the president of the division sitting in the next room, Citizen Dumas, has been arrested in his chair, but that the hearing continues. The drums can be heard beating the assembly[^c27n04] and the alarm bells ringing. |
| <a id="c27p010"></a>Évariste, à son banc, reçoit de la Commune l’ordre de se rendre à l’Hôtel de Ville pour siéger au Conseil général. Au son des cloches et des tambours, il rend son verdict avec ses collègues et court chez lui embrasser sa mère et prendre son écharpe. La place de Thionville est déserte. La section n’ose se prononcer ni pour ni contre la Convention. On rase les murs, on se coule dans les allées, on rentre chez soi. A l’appel du tocsin et de la générale répondent les bruits des volets qui se rabattent et des serrures qui se ferment. Le citoyen Dupont aîné s’est caché dans sa boutique; le portier Remacle se barricade dans sa loge. La petite Joséphine retient craintivement Mouton dans ses bras. La citoyenne veuve Gamelin gémit de la cherté des vivres, cause de tout le mal. Au pied de l’escalier, Évariste rencontre Élodie essoufflée, ses mèches noires collées sur son cou moite. | On his bench Évariste receives the Commune’s order to go to the Hôtel de Ville and sit on the General Council. To the sound of bells and drums he gives his verdict with his colleagues and runs home to kiss his mother and fetch his sash. The Place de Thionville is deserted. The section dares not declare either for or against the Convention. People hug the walls, slip into passages, go home. The summons of bells and drums is answered by the noise of shutters closing and locks turning. Citizen Dupont the elder has hidden in his shop; the porter Remacle barricades himself in his lodge. Little Joséphine holds Mouton fearfully in her arms. Citizen Widow Gamelin laments the high price of food, the cause of all the trouble. At the foot of the staircase Évariste meets Élodie, breathless, her black locks stuck to her damp neck. |
| <a id="c27p011"></a>"Je t’ai cherché au Tribunal. Tu venais de partir. Où vas-tu? | “I looked for you at the Tribunal. You had just left. Where are you going?” |
| <a id="c27p012"></a>— A l’Hôtel de Ville. | “To the Hôtel de Ville.” |
| <a id="c27p013"></a>— N’y va pas! Tu te perdrais: Hanriot est arrêté... les sections ne marcheront pas. La section des Piques, la section de Robespierre, reste tranquille. Je le sais: mon père en fait partie. Si tu vas à l’Hôtel de Ville, tu te perds inutilement. | “Don’t go! You would destroy yourself: Hanriot has been arrested… the sections will not march. The Piques section, Robespierre’s section, is staying quiet. I know: my father belongs to it. If you go to the Hôtel de Ville, you will destroy yourself for nothing.” |
| <a id="c27p014"></a>— Tu veux que je sois lâche? | “Do you want me to be a coward?” |
| <a id="c27p015"></a>— Il est courageux, au contraire, d’être fidèle à la Convention et d’obéir à la loi. | “On the contrary, it takes courage to remain faithful to the Convention and obey the law.” |
| <a id="c27p016"></a>— La loi est morte quand les scélérats triomphent. | “The law is dead when scoundrels triumph.” |
| <a id="c27p017"></a>— Évariste, écoute ton Élodie; écoute ta sœur; viens t’asseoir près d’elle, pour qu’elle apaise ton âme irritée." | “Évariste, listen to your Élodie; listen to your sister; come and sit beside her, so that she can soothe your angry soul.” |
| <a id="c27p018"></a>Il la regarda: jamais elle ne lui avait paru si désirable; jamais cette voix n’avait sonné à ses oreilles si voluptueuse et si persuasive. | He looked at her: never had she seemed so desirable; never had that voice sounded so voluptuous and persuasive in his ears. |
| <a id="c27p019"></a>"Deux pas, deux pas seulement, mon ami!" | “Two steps, only two steps, my friend!” |
| <a id="c27p020"></a>Elle l’entraîna vers le terre-plein qui portait le piédestal de la statue renversée. Des bancs en faisaient le tour, garnis de promeneurs et de promeneuses. Une marchande de frivolités offrait ses dentelles; le marchand de tisane, portant sur son dos sa fontaine, agitait sa sonnette; des fillettes jouaient aux grâces. Sur la berge, des pêcheurs se tenaient immobiles, leur ligne à la main. Le temps était orageux, le ciel voilé. Gamelin, penché sur le parapet, plongeait ses regards sur l’île pointue comme une proue, écoutait gémir au vent la cime des arbres, et sentait entrer dans son âme un désir infini de paix et de solitude. | She drew him towards the raised ground bearing the pedestal of the toppled statue. Benches ran round it, occupied by strolling men and women. A woman selling finery offered her lace; the herbal-drink seller, his tank on his back, shook his bell; little girls played graces[^c27n05]. On the bank, fishermen stood motionless with their lines in their hands. The weather was stormy, the sky veiled. Leaning over the parapet, Gamelin gazed down upon the island, pointed like a prow, listened to the treetops moaning in the wind, and felt an infinite desire for peace and solitude enter his soul. |
| <a id="c27p021"></a>Et, comme un écho délicieux de sa pensée, la voix d’Élodie soupira: | And, like a delicious echo of his thought, Élodie’s voice sighed: |
| <a id="c27p022"></a>"Te souviens-tu, quand, à la vue des champs, tu désirais être juge de paix dans un petit village? Ce serait le bonheur." | “Do you remember, when the sight of the fields made you wish to be a justice of the peace in a little village? That would be happiness.” |
| <a id="c27p023"></a>Mais, à travers le bruissement des arbres et la voix de la femme, il entendait le tocsin, la générale, le fracas lointain des chevaux et des canons sur le pavé. | But through the rustling of the trees and the woman’s voice he heard the alarm bells, the drums, the distant clatter of horses and cannon on the stones. |
| <a id="c27p024"></a>A deux pas de lui, un jeune homme, qui causait avec une citoyenne élégante, dit: | A few steps away, a young man talking to an elegantly dressed citizen said: |
| <a id="c27p025"></a>"Connaissez-vous la nouvelle?... L’Opéra est installé rue de la Loi." | “Have you heard the news?… The Opéra has moved to the Rue de la Loi[^c27n06].” |
| <a id="c27p026"></a>Cependant on savait: on chuchotait le nom de Robespierre, mais en tremblant, car on le craignait encore. Et les femmes, au bruit murmuré de sa chute, dissimulaient un sourire. | Yet people knew: they whispered Robespierre’s name, but trembling, for they feared him still. And at the murmured news of his fall the women concealed a smile. |
| <a id="c27p027"></a>Évariste Gamelin saisit la main d’Élodie et aussitôt la rejeta brusquement: | Évariste Gamelin seized Élodie’s hand and at once flung it abruptly away: |
| <a id="c27p028"></a>"Adieu! Je t’ai associée à mes destins affreux, j’ai flétri à jamais ta vie. Adieu. Puisses-tu m’oublier! | “Goodbye! I have joined you to my dreadful fate; I have blighted your life for ever. Goodbye. May you forget me!” |
| <a id="c27p029"></a>— Surtout, lui dit-elle, ne rentre pas chez toi cette nuit: viens à l'*Amour peintre*. Ne sonne pas; jette une pierre contre mes volets. J’irai t’ouvrir moi-même la porte, je te cacherai dans le grenier. | “Above all,” she told him, “do not go home tonight: come to the *Amour peintre*. Do not ring; throw a stone against my shutters. I shall open the door myself and hide you in the attic.” |
| <a id="c27p030"></a>— Tu me reverras triomphant, ou tu ne me reverras plus. Adieu!" | “You will see me triumphant, or you will never see me again. Goodbye!” |
| <a id="c27p031"></a>En approchant de l’Hôtel de Ville, il entendit monter vers le ciel lourd la rumeur des grands jours. Sur la place de Grève, un tumulte d’armes, un flamboiement d’écharpes et d’uniformes, les canons d’Hanriot en batterie. Il gravit l’escalier d’honneur et, en entrant dans la salle du Conseil, signe la feuille de présence. Le Conseil général de la Commune, à l’unanimité des quatre cent quatre-vingt-onze membres présents, se déclare pour les proscrits. | Approaching the Hôtel de Ville, he heard the tumult of the great days rising towards the heavy sky. In the Place de Grève, a clamour of weapons, a blaze of sashes and uniforms, Hanriot’s cannon in position. He climbs the grand staircase and, entering the Council chamber, signs the attendance sheet. The General Council of the Commune, by the unanimous vote of the four hundred and ninety-one members present, declares for the proscribed men. |
| <a id="c27p032"></a>Le maire se fait apporter la table des Droits de l’Homme, lit l’article où il est dit: "Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l’insurrection est pour le peuple le plus saint et le plus indispensable des devoirs", et le premier magistrat de Paris déclare qu’au coup d’État de la Convention la Commune oppose l’insurrection populaire. | The mayor has the tablet of the Rights of Man brought in and reads the article saying: “When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is for the people the holiest and most indispensable of duties[^c27n07]”; and the chief magistrate of Paris declares that the Commune opposes popular insurrection to the Convention’s coup d’état. |
| <a id="c27p033"></a>Les membres du Conseil général font serment de mourir à leur poste. Deux officiers municipaux sont chargés de se rendre sur la place de Grève et d’inviter le peuple à se joindre à ses magistrats afin de sauver la patrie et la liberté. | The members of the General Council swear to die at their posts. Two municipal officers are instructed to go to the Place de Grève and invite the people to join their magistrates in saving country and liberty. |
| <a id="c27p034"></a>On se cherche, on échange des nouvelles, on donne des avis. Parmi ces magistrats, peu d’artisans. La Commune réunie là est telle que l’a faite l’épuration jacobine: des juges et des jurés du Tribunal révolutionnaire, des artistes comme Beauvallet et Gamelin, des rentiers et des professeurs, des bourgeois cossus, de gros commerçants, des têtes poudrées, des ventres à breloques; peu de sabots, de pantalons, de carmagnoles, de bonnets rouges. Ces bourgeois sont nombreux, résolus. Mais, quand on y songe, c’est à peu près tout ce que Paris compte de vrais républicains. Debout dans la maison de ville, comme sur le rocher de la liberté, un océan d’indifférence les environne. | People look for one another, exchange news and give opinions. Among these magistrates there are few artisans. The Commune gathered here is as the Jacobin purge has made it: judges and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, artists such as Beauvallet and Gamelin, men of independent means and teachers, prosperous bourgeois, substantial merchants, powdered heads, bellies hung with watch charms[^c27n08]; few clogs, long trousers, carmagnoles or red caps. These bourgeois are numerous and resolute. Yet, when one considers it, they are almost all the true republicans Paris contains. Standing in the town hall as on the rock of liberty, they are surrounded by an ocean of indifference. |
| <a id="c27p035"></a>Pourtant des nouvelles favorables arrivent. Toutes les prisons où les proscrits ont été enfermés ouvrent leurs portes et rendent leur proie. Augustin Robespierre, venu de la Force, entre le premier à l’Hôtel de Ville et est acclamé. On apprend, à huit heures, que Maximilien, après avoir longtemps résisté, se rend à la Commune. On l’attend, il va venir, il vient; une acclamation formidable ébranle les voûtes du vieux palais municipal. Il entre, porté par vingt bras. Cet homme mince, propret, en habit bleu et culotte jaune, c’est lui. Il siège, il parle. | Yet favourable news arrives. All the prisons where the proscribed men have been confined open their gates and surrender their prey. Augustin Robespierre, coming from La Force, enters the Hôtel de Ville first and is acclaimed. At eight it is learnt that Maximilien, after long resistance, is coming to the Commune. They wait; he is about to come, he is coming; a tremendous acclamation shakes the vaults of the old municipal palace. He enters, borne by twenty arms. That slender, neat man in the blue coat and yellow breeches is he. He takes his seat; he speaks. |
| <a id="c27p036"></a>A son arrivée, le Conseil ordonne que la façade de la maison Commune sera sur-le-champ illuminée. En lui la République réside. Il parle, il parle d’une voix grêle, avec élégance. Il parle purement, abondamment. Ceux qui sont là, qui ont joué leur vie sur sa tête, s’aperçoivent, épouvantés, que c’est un homme de parole, un homme de comités, de tribune, incapable d’une résolution prompte et d’un acte révolutionnaire. | On his arrival the Council orders the façade of the Commune’s house illuminated at once. The Republic resides in him. He speaks, he speaks in a thin voice, elegantly. He speaks correctly, abundantly. Those present, who have staked their lives upon his head, realise with horror that he is a man of words, of committees and the tribune, incapable of a prompt resolution or a revolutionary act. |
| <a id="c27p037"></a>On l’entraîne dans la salle des délibérations. Maintenant ils sont là tous, ces illustres proscrits: Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre parle. Il est minuit et demi: il parle encore. Cependant Gamelin, dans la salle du Conseil, le front collé à une fenêtre, regarde d’un œil anxieux; il voit fumer les lampions dans la nuit sombre. Les canons d’Hanriot sont en batterie devant la maison de ville. Sur la place toute noire s’agite une foule incertaine, inquiète. A minuit et demi, des torches débouchent au coin de la rue de la Vannerie, entourant un délégué de la Convention qui, revêtu de ses insignes, déploie un papier et lit, dans une rouge lueur, le décret de la Convention, la mise hors la loi des membres de la Commune insurgée, des membres du Conseil général qui l’assistent et des citoyens qui répondraient à son appel. | He is drawn into the deliberation room. Now they are all there, these illustrious proscribed men: Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre speaks. It is half past midnight: he is speaking still. Meanwhile, in the Council chamber, his forehead pressed to a window, Gamelin looks anxiously out; he sees the little oil lamps smoking in the dark night. Hanriot’s cannon stand in position before the town hall. In the black square an uncertain, anxious crowd stirs. At half past midnight torches appear at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, surrounding a delegate of the Convention who, wearing his insignia, unfolds a paper and reads, in a red glow, the Convention’s decree: the outlawing of the members of the insurgent Commune, the General Council members assisting it, and citizens who answer its call. |
| <a id="c27p038"></a>La mise hors la loi, la mort sans jugement! la seule idée en fait pâlir les plus déterminés. Gamelin sent son front se glacer. Il regarde la foule quitter à grands pas la place de Grève. | Outlawry, death without trial! The very thought blanches the most determined. Gamelin feels his forehead grow icy. He watches the crowd leaving the Place de Grève at a rapid walk. |
| <a id="c27p039"></a>Et, quand il tourne la tête, ses yeux voient que la salle, où les conseillers s’étouffaient tout à l’heure, est presque vide. | And when he turns his head his eyes see that the room where the councillors were packed together a moment ago is almost empty. |
| <a id="c27p040"></a>Mais ils ont fui en vain: ils avaient signé. | But they have fled in vain: they had signed[^c27n09]. |
| <a id="c27p041"></a>Il est deux heures. L’Incorruptible délibère dans la salle voisine avec la Commune et les représentants proscrits. | It is two o’clock. The Incorruptible deliberates in the adjoining room with the Commune and the proscribed representatives. |
| <a id="c27p042"></a>Gamelin plonge ses regards désespérés sur la place noire. Il voit, à la clarté des lanternes, les chandelles de bois s’entrechoquer sur l’auvent de l’épicier, avec un bruit de quilles; les réverbères se balancent et vacillent: un grand vent s’est élevé. Un instant après, une pluie d’orage tombe: la place se vide entièrement; ceux que n’avait pas chassés le terrible décret, quelques gouttes d’eau les dispersent. Les canons d’Hanriot sont abandonnés. Et quand on voit à la lueur des éclairs déboucher en même temps par la rue Antoine et par le quai les troupes de la Convention, les abords de la maison Commune sont déserts. | Gamelin gazes despairingly into the black square. By lantern light he sees the wooden candles knocking together above the grocer’s awning with a sound like skittles; the street lamps sway and flicker: a great wind has risen. A moment later a thunderstorm breaks: the square empties entirely; a few drops of water scatter those whom the terrible decree had not driven away. Hanriot’s cannon are abandoned. And when, in the lightning, the Convention’s troops are seen emerging at the same moment from the Rue Antoine and the quay, the approaches to the Commune’s house are deserted. |
| <a id="c27p043"></a>Enfin Maximilien s’est décidé à faire appel du décret de la Convention à la section des Piques. | At last Maximilien has decided to appeal from the Convention’s decree to the Piques section. |
| <a id="c27p044"></a>Le Conseil général se fait apporter des sabres, des pistolets, des fusils. Mais un fracas d’armes, de pas et de vitres brisées emplit la maison. Les troupes de la Convention passent comme une avalanche à travers la salle des délibérations et s’engouffrent dans la salle du Conseil. Un coup de feu retentit: Gamelin voit Robespierre tomber la mâchoire fracassée. Lui-même, il saisit son couteau, le couteau de six sous qui, un jour de famine, avait coupé du pain pour une mère indigente, et que, dans la ferme d’Orangis, par un beau soir, Élodie avait gardé sur ses genoux, en tirant les gages; il l’ouvre, veut l’enfoncer dans son cœur: la lame rencontre une côte et se replie sur la virole qui a cédé et il s’entame deux doigts. Gamelin tombe ensanglanté. Il est sans mouvement, mais il souffre d’un froid cruel, et, dans le tumulte d’une lutte effroyable, foulé aux pieds, il entend distinctement la voix du jeune dragon Henry qui s’écrie: | The General Council calls for sabres, pistols and muskets. But a crash of weapons, footsteps and breaking glass fills the building. The Convention’s troops sweep like an avalanche through the deliberation room and pour into the Council chamber. A shot rings out: Gamelin sees Robespierre fall, his jaw shattered[^c27n10]. He himself seizes his knife, the six-sou knife[^c27n11] that one day in a famine had cut bread for a destitute mother, and which at the Orangis farm, on a beautiful evening, Élodie had held in her lap while the forfeits were being claimed. He opens it, tries to plunge it into his heart: the blade strikes a rib and folds back against the metal collar, which has given way, and cuts two of his fingers. Gamelin falls, bleeding. He lies motionless, but suffers a cruel cold, and, trampled underfoot in the tumult of a terrible struggle, distinctly hears the voice of the young dragoon Henry crying: |
| <a id="c27p045"></a>"Le tyran n’est plus; ses satellites sont brisés. La Révolution va reprendre son cours majestueux et terrible." | “The tyrant is no more; his satellites are crushed. The Revolution will resume its majestic and terrible course.” |
| <a id="c27p046"></a>Gamelin s’évanouit. | Gamelin faints. |
| <a id="c27p047"></a>A sept heures du matin, un chirurgien envoyé par la Convention le pansa. La Convention était pleine de sollicitude pour les complices de Robespierre: elle ne voulait pas qu’aucun d’eux échappât à la guillotine. L’artiste peintre, ex-juré, ex-membre du Conseil général de la Commune, fut porté sur une civière à la Conciergerie. | At seven in the morning a surgeon sent by the Convention dressed his wounds. The Convention was full of solicitude for Robespierre’s accomplices: it wished none of them to escape the guillotine. The painter, former juror, former member of the Commune’s General Council, was carried on a stretcher to the Conciergerie. |

### Notes

[^c27n01]: 26 July 1794. The following day, 9 thermidor (27 July), brought Robespierre’s arrest and the failed mobilisation at the Hôtel de Ville. The revolutionary date remains in the narrative; this note supplies the Gregorian equivalent. [S211](#S211)

[^c27n02]: An allusion to Socrates’ execution, recalled as an emblem of philosophic courage. The offer to share the cup is immediately followed by dispersal without a decision, making verbal solidarity and effective action separate things. The juxtaposition is interpretive. [S212](#S212)

[^c27n03]: The disciples sleep while Jesus prays before his arrest: see Mark 14:32–42. The analogy extends the sacred designation “the Just Man” to Robespierre’s approaching fall, while making the follower’s failure to keep watch part of the comparison. [S213](#S213)

[^c27n04]: French battre la générale: the drum signal summoning troops to assemble. Tocsin designates an alarm rung on bells. Both sounds recur as demands for mobilisation, answered in the neighbourhood by closing shutters and doors. [S212](#S212)

[^c27n05]: A throwing game using small hoops and sticks. The ordinary games, commerce and fishing continue beside the political crisis, giving concrete form to the indifference Gamelin increasingly perceives. This narrative significance is interpretive. [S212](#S212)

[^c27n06]: The revolutionary name of the Rue de Richelieu. The Opéra occupied the former Théâtre Montansier there in 1794; its institutional history dates the opening as the Théâtre national or Théâtre des Arts to 7 August. The casual announcement here is retained within the novel’s 9 thermidor scene. [S214](#S214)

[^c27n07]: A shortened rendering in the novel of article 35 of the Declaration prefacing the Constitution of 24 June 1793. The original includes each portion of the people and calls insurrection both the most sacred right and the most indispensable duty. The translation does not silently expand France’s quotation. [S215](#S215)

[^c27n08]: An interpretation: the inventory of powdered hair, ample bodies and watch ornaments qualifies the Council’s self-image as popular revolutionaries. Clothing associated with sans-culottes is scarce. The phrasing describes this assembled group, not a general absence of artisans from revolutionary politics. [S212](#S212)

[^c27n09]: The attendance sheet in paragraph 31 returns as documentary evidence. The same act that records collective political solidarity becomes the basis for individual liability when the assembly is outlawed; the narrative reversal is interpretive. [S212](#S212)

[^c27n10]: Robespierre’s jaw wound is historical, but its cause has been disputed between an attempted suicide and a shot by a gendarme. The novel records a gunshot and a fall without naming the shooter. The translation preserves that limited observation. [S216](#S216)

[^c27n11]: The object recalls Gamelin’s earlier generosity to a hungry mother and his shared pleasure with Élodie at Orangis. Its failure during his attempted suicide brings charity, erotic memory and political catastrophe together. This connection is interpretive, based on the novel’s explicit recollections. [S212](#S212)

<a id="chapter-28"></a>

## XXVIII

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c28p001"></a>Le 10, tandis que, sur le grabat d’un cachot, Évariste, après un sommeil de fièvre, se réveillait en sursaut dans une indicible horreur, Paris, en sa grâce et son immensité, souriait au soleil; l’espérance renaissait au cœur des prisonniers; les marchands ouvraient allégrement leur boutique, les bourgeois se sentaient plus riches, les jeunes hommes plus heureux, les femmes plus belles, par la chute de Robespierre. Seuls une poignée de jacobins, quelques prêtres constitutionnels et quelques vieilles femmes tremblaient de voir l’empire passer aux méchants et aux corrompus. Une délégation du Tribunal révolutionnaire, composée de l’accusateur public et de deux juges, se rendait à la Convention pour la féliciter d’avoir arrêté les complots. L’assemblée décidait que l’échafaud serait dressé de nouveau sur la place de la Révolution. On voulait que les riches, les élégants, les jolies femmes pussent voir sans se déranger le supplice de Robespierre, qui aurait lieu le jour même. Le dictateur et ses complices étaient hors la loi: il suffisait que leur identité fût constatée par deux officiers municipaux pour que le Tribunal les livrât immédiatement à l’exécuteur. Mais une difficulté surgissait: les constatations ne pouvaient être faites dans les formes, la Commune étant tout entière hors la loi. L’assemblée autorisa le Tribunal à faire constater l’identité par des témoins ordinaires. | On the 10th[^c28n01], while Évariste started awake from a feverish sleep on the pallet of a dungeon in unspeakable horror, Paris, in all its grace and immensity, smiled at the sun. Hope was reborn in the prisoners’ hearts; shopkeepers cheerfully opened their shops, bourgeois felt richer, young men happier, women more beautiful, because Robespierre had fallen. Only a handful of Jacobins, a few constitutional priests and some old women trembled to see power pass to the wicked and corrupt. A delegation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, consisting of the public prosecutor and two judges, went to the Convention to congratulate it on having stopped the plots. The assembly decided that the scaffold should be erected once more in the Place de la Révolution. They wanted the rich, the elegant and the pretty women to see Robespierre’s execution, to take place that very day, without going out of their way. The dictator and his accomplices were outlaws: it was enough for two municipal officers to establish their identities for the Tribunal to hand them immediately to the executioner. But a difficulty arose: verification could not be carried out in due form, since the whole Commune was outlawed. The assembly authorised the Tribunal to have identity established by ordinary witnesses. |
| <a id="c28p002"></a>Les triumvirs furent traînés à la mort, avec leurs principaux complices, au milieu des cris de joie et de fureur, des imprécations, des rires, des danses. | The triumvirs[^c28n02] were dragged to their deaths with their principal accomplices amid cries of joy and fury, curses, laughter and dancing. |
| <a id="c28p003"></a>Le lendemain, Évariste, qui avait repris quelque force et pouvait presque se tenir sur ses jambes, fut tiré de son cachot, amené au Tribunal et placé sur l’estrade qu’il avait tant de fois vue chargée d’accusés, où s’étaient assises tour à tour tant de victimes illustres ou obscures. Elle gémissait maintenant sous le poids de soixante-dix individus, la plupart membres de la Commune, et quelques-uns jurés comme Gamelin, mis comme lui hors la loi. Il revit son banc, le dossier sur lequel il avait coutume de s’appuyer, la place d’où il avait terrorisé des malheureux, la place où il lui avait fallu subir le regard de Jacques Maubel, de Fortuné Chassagne, de Maurice Brotteaux, les yeux suppliants de la citoyenne Rochemaure qui l’avait fait nommer juré et qu’il en avait récompensée par un verdict de mort. Il revit, dominant l’estrade où les juges siégeaient sur trois fauteuils d’acajou, garnis de velours d’Utrecht rouge, les bustes de Chalier et de Marat et ce buste de Brutus qu’il avait un jour attesté. Rien n’était changé, ni les haches, les faisceaux, les bonnets rouges du papier de tenture, ni les outrages jetés par les tricoteuses des tribunes à ceux qui allaient mourir, ni l’âme de Fouquier-Tinville, têtu, laborieux, remuant avec zèle ses papiers homicides, et envoyant, magistrat accompli, ses amis de la veille à l’échafaud. | Next day Évariste, who had regained some strength and could almost stand, was taken from his dungeon, brought to the Tribunal and placed on the platform he had so often seen laden with accused prisoners, where so many illustrious or obscure victims had sat in turn. It now groaned beneath the weight of seventy people, chiefly members of the Commune, some of them jurors like Gamelin, outlawed like him. He saw his bench again, the back on which he used to lean, the place from which he had terrorised the unfortunate, the place where he had had to endure the gaze of Jacques Maubel, Fortuné Chassagne and Maurice Brotteaux, and the pleading eyes of Citizen Rochemaure, who had secured his appointment as a juror and whom he had rewarded with a death verdict. He saw again, above the platform where the judges sat on three mahogany chairs upholstered in red Utrecht velvet, the busts of Chalier and Marat, and that bust of Brutus to which he had once appealed. Nothing had changed: neither the axes, fasces[^c28n03] and red caps of the wallpaper, nor the insults hurled by the knitting women in the galleries at those about to die, nor Fouquier-Tinville’s soul, stubborn, industrious, zealously shuffling his homicidal papers and sending yesterday’s friends to the scaffold like the accomplished magistrate he was. |
| <a id="c28p004"></a>Les citoyens Remacle, portier tailleur, et Dupont aîné, menuisier, place de Thionville, membre du Comité de surveillance de la section du Pont-Neuf, reconnurent Gamelin (Évariste), artiste peintre, ex-juré au Tribunal révolutionnaire, ex-membre du Conseil général de la Commune. Ils témoignaient pour un assignat de cent sols, aux frais de la section; mais, parce qu’ils avaient eu des rapports de voisinage et d’amitié avec le proscrit, ils éprouvaient de la gêne à rencontrer son regard. Au reste, il faisait chaud: ils avaient soif et étaient pressés d’aller boire un verre de vin. | Citizens Remacle, porter and tailor, and Dupont the elder, carpenter of the Place de Thionville and member of the Pont-Neuf section’s Surveillance Committee, identified Gamelin (Évariste), artist and painter, former juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, former member of the Commune’s General Council. They testified for a hundred-sol assignat[^c28n04], paid by the section; but, having been neighbours and friends of the proscribed man, they felt awkward about meeting his eye. Besides, it was hot: they were thirsty and in a hurry to go and drink a glass of wine. |
| <a id="c28p005"></a>Gamelin fit effort pour monter dans la charrette: il avait perdu beaucoup de sang et sa blessure le faisait cruellement souffrir. Le cocher fouetta sa haridelle et le cortège se mit en marche au milieu des huées. | Gamelin struggled to climb into the cart: he had lost much blood and his wound caused him cruel suffering. The driver whipped his nag, and the procession moved off amid jeers. |
| <a id="c28p006"></a>Des femmes qui reconnaissaient Gamelin lui criaient: | Women who recognised Gamelin shouted: |
| <a id="c28p007"></a>"Va donc! buveur de sang! Assassin à dix-huit francs par jour!... Il ne rit plus: voyez comme il est pâle, le lâche!" | “Go on, blood-drinker! Murderer at eighteen francs a day!… He’s not laughing now: look how pale he is, the coward!” |
| <a id="c28p008"></a>C’étaient les mêmes femmes qui insultaient naguère les conspirateurs et les aristocrates, les exagérés et les indulgents envoyés par Gamelin et ses collègues à la guillotine. | They were the same women who had lately insulted the conspirators and aristocrats, the ultras and the indulgents whom Gamelin and his colleagues had sent to the guillotine. |
| <a id="c28p009"></a>La charrette tourna sur le quai des Morfondus, gagna lentement le Pont-Neuf et la rue de la Monnaie: on allait à la place de la Révolution, à l’échafaud de Robespierre. Le cheval boitait; à tout moment, le cocher lui effleurait du fouet les oreilles. La foule des spectateurs, joyeuse, animée, retardait la marche de l’escorte. Le public félicitait les gendarmes, qui retenaient leurs chevaux. Au coin de la rue Honoré, les insultes redoublèrent. Des jeunes gens, attablés à l’entresol, dans les salons des traiteurs à la mode, se mirent aux fenêtres, leur serviette à la main, et crièrent: | The cart turned on to the Quai des Morfondus and slowly reached the Pont-Neuf and the Rue de la Monnaie: they were going to the Place de la Révolution, to Robespierre’s scaffold. The horse limped; continually the driver flicked its ears with his whip. The spectators, cheerful and animated, slowed the escort’s progress. People congratulated the gendarmes, who held back their horses. At the corner of the Rue Honoré the insults redoubled. Young men dining on the mezzanine floors of fashionable eating houses came to the windows, napkins in hand, and shouted: |
| <a id="c28p010"></a>"Cannibales, anthropophages, vampires!" | “Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires!” |
| <a id="c28p011"></a>La charrette ayant buté dans un tas d’ordures qu’on n’avait pas enlevées en ces deux jours de troubles, la jeunesse dorée éclata de joie: | When the cart struck a heap of refuse left uncleared in these two days of turmoil, the gilded youth[^c28n05] burst into delight: |
| <a id="c28p012"></a>"Le char embourbé!... Dans la gadoue, les jacobins!" | “The chariot’s stuck!… Into the muck with the Jacobins!” |
| <a id="c28p013"></a>Gamelin songeait, et il crut comprendre. | Gamelin reflected, and believed he understood. |
| <a id="c28p014"></a>"Je meurs justement, pensa-t-il. Il est juste que nous recevions ces outrages jetés à la République et dont nous aurions dû la défendre. Nous avons été faibles; nous nous sommes rendus coupables d’indulgence. Nous avons trahi la République. Nous avons mérité notre sort. Robespierre lui-même, le pur, le saint, a péché par douceur, par mansuétude; ses fautes sont effacées par son martyre. A son exemple, j’ai trahi la République; elle périt: il est juste que je meure avec elle. J’ai épargné le sang: que mon sang coule! Que je périsse! je l’ai mérité...." | “I die justly,” he thought. “It is just that we should receive these insults flung at the Republic, from which we ought to have defended it. We were weak; we made ourselves guilty of indulgence. We betrayed the Republic. We have deserved our fate. Robespierre himself, the pure, the holy, sinned through gentleness, through mildness; his faults are wiped out by his martyrdom. Following his example, I betrayed the Republic; it is perishing: it is just that I should die with it. I spared blood[^c28n06]: let my blood flow! Let me perish! I have deserved it.…” |
| <a id="c28p015"></a>Tandis qu’il songeait ainsi, il aperçut l’enseigne de l'*Amour peintre*, et des torrents d’amertume et de douceur roulèrent en tumulte dans son cœur. | As he thought this, he caught sight of the sign of the *Amour peintre*, and torrents of bitterness and sweetness rushed tumultuously through his heart. |
| <a id="c28p016"></a>Le magasin était fermé, les jalousies des trois fenêtres de l’entresol entièrement rabattues. Quand la charrette passa devant la fenêtre de gauche, la fenêtre de la chambre bleue, une main de femme, qui portait à l’annulaire une bague d’argent, écarta le bord de la jalousie et lança vers Gamelin un œillet rouge que ses mains liées ne purent saisir, mais qu’il adora comme le symbole et l’image de ces lèvres rouges et parfumées dont s’était rafraîchie sa bouche. Ses yeux se gonflèrent de larmes et ce fut tout pénétré du charme de cet adieu qu’il vit se lever sur la place de la Révolution le couteau ensanglanté. | The shop was shut, the blinds of the three mezzanine windows completely lowered. When the cart passed the left-hand window, the window of the blue room, a woman’s hand, wearing a silver ring on its fourth finger, drew aside the edge of the blind and threw Gamelin a red carnation[^c28n07]. His bound hands could not catch it, but he adored it as the symbol and image of those red, fragrant lips that had refreshed his mouth. His eyes filled with tears; and, wholly penetrated by the charm of this farewell, he saw the bloodstained blade rise above the Place de la Révolution. |

### Notes

[^c28n01]: 10 thermidor II, 28 July 1794, the day of Robespierre’s execution. Gamelin’s own passage to execution takes place “next day”, 11 thermidor. The chapter deliberately places the city’s relief beside the former juror’s awakening into terror. [S211](#S211)

[^c28n02]: Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, presented as a ruling group of three. The classical political designation reflects the retrospective charge of concentrated power; it does not name a formally constituted Roman-style office in the Republic. [S217](#S217)

[^c28n03]: Bundles of rods, traditionally with an axe, emblematic of Roman magisterial authority. Here the decoration and familiar busts outlast the reversal in political power: the same institutional setting now encloses its former juror. This narrative connection is interpretive. [S217](#S217)

[^c28n04]: The reward repeats the sum for which Remacle and Dupont identified Brotteaux in chapter XVII. The recurrence joins two acts of profitable testimony across the change of regime; their thirst recalls the earlier officials’ conviviality. This relation is interpretive. [S217](#S217)

[^c28n05]: French jeunesse dorée, the fashionable young anti-Jacobins who become more prominent in the final chapter. “Gilded” renders the social glamour of the designation; the derisive crowd’s political violence should not be lost behind the elegance. [S217](#S217)

[^c28n06]: An interpretation: Gamelin’s last self-condemnation accepts his sentence while reversing the grounds on which the crowd condemns him. He regards insufficient severity, rather than the executions he ordered, as betrayal. The sentence offers no deathbed renunciation of his political faith. [S217](#S217)

[^c28n07]: Élodie’s flower replaces the physical embrace the bound prisoner can no longer receive. Its colour links the beloved mouth to the chapter’s blood, while the silver ring will return in chapter XXIX. These connections are interpretive; no fixed historical flower-code is asserted. [S217](#S217)

<a id="chapter-29"></a>

## XXIX

| Français | English |
| :--- | :--- |
| <a id="c29p001"></a>La Seine charriait les glaces de nivôse. Les bassins des Tuileries, les ruisseaux, les fontaines étaient gelés. Le vent du Nord soulevait dans les rues des ondes de frimas. Les chevaux expiraient par les naseaux une vapeur blanche; les citadins regardaient en passant le thermomètre à la porte des opticiens. Un commis essuyait la buée sur les vitres de l'*Amour peintre* et les curieux jetaient un regard sur les estampes à la mode: Robespierre pressant au-dessus d’une coupe un cœur comme un citron, pour en boire le sang, et de grandes pièces allégoriques telles que la *Tigrocratie de Robespierre*: ce n’était qu’hydres, serpents, monstres affreux déchaînés sur la France par le tyran. Et l’on voyait encore: l'*Horrible Conspiration de Robespierre*, l'*Arrestation de Robespierre*, la *Mort de Robespierre*. | The Seine carried the ice of nivôse. The Tuileries basins, the gutters and the fountains were frozen. The north wind raised waves of frost in the streets. Horses breathed white vapour through their nostrils; townspeople paused to look at the thermometers outside opticians’ shops. An assistant wiped the mist from the windows of the *Amour peintre*, and the curious glanced at the fashionable prints: Robespierre squeezing a heart like a lemon above a cup, to drink its blood, and large allegorical pieces such as *Robespierre’s Tiger Rule[^c29n01]*: nothing but hydras, serpents and horrible monsters unleashed upon France by the tyrant. There were also *Robespierre’s Horrible Conspiracy*, *The Arrest of Robespierre*, *The Death of Robespierre*. |
| <a id="c29p002"></a>Ce jour-là, après le dîner de midi, Philippe Desmahis entra, son carton sous le bras, à l'*Amour peintre* et apporta au citoyen Jean Blaise une planche qu’il venait de graver au pointillé, le *Suicide de Robespierre*. Le burin picaresque du graveur avait fait Robespierre aussi hideux que possible. Le peuple français n’était pas encore saoul de tous ces monuments qui consacraient l’opprobre et l’horreur de cet homme chargé de tous les crimes de la Révolution. Pourtant le marchand d’estampes, qui connaissait le public, avertit Desmahis qu’il lui donnerait désormais à graver des sujets militaires. | That day, after the midday meal, Philippe Desmahis entered the *Amour peintre* with his portfolio under his arm and brought Citizen Jean Blaise a plate he had just engraved in stipple[^c29n02], *The Suicide of Robespierre*. The engraver’s roguish burin had made Robespierre as hideous as possible. The French people were not yet sated with all these monuments consecrating the shame and horror of this man burdened with every crime of the Revolution. Yet the printseller, who knew his public, warned Desmahis that henceforth he would give him military subjects to engrave. |
| <a id="c29p003"></a>"Il va nous falloir des victoires et conquêtes, des sabres, des panaches, des généraux. Nous sommes partis pour la gloire. Je sens cela en moi; mon cœur bat au récit des exploits de nos vaillantes armées. Et quand j’éprouve un sentiment, il est rare que tout le monde ne l’éprouve pas en même temps. Ce qu’il nous faut, ce sont des guerriers et des femmes, Mars et Vénus. | “We shall need victories and conquests, sabres, plumes and generals. We are bound for glory. I feel it within me; my heart beats at the tale of our valiant armies’ exploits. And when I experience a feeling, it is rare for everyone else not to experience it at the same time. What we need is warriors and women, Mars and Venus.” |
| <a id="c29p004"></a>— Citoyen Blaise, j’ai encore chez moi deux ou trois dessins de Gamelin, que vous m’avez donnés à graver. Est-ce pressé? | “Citizen Blaise, I still have two or three drawings by Gamelin at home that you gave me to engrave. Is there any hurry?” |
| <a id="c29p005"></a>— Nullement. | “None at all.” |
| <a id="c29p006"></a>— A propos de Gamelin: hier, en passant sur le boulevard du Temple, j’ai vu chez un brocanteur, qui a son échoppe vis-à-vis la maison de Beaumarchais, toutes les toiles de ce malheureux. Il y avait là son *Oreste et Électre*. La tête de l’Oreste, qui ressemble à Gamelin, est vraiment belle, je vous assure... la tête et le bras sont superbes.... Le brocanteur m’a dit qu’il n’était pas embarrassé de vendre ces toiles à des artistes qui peindront dessus.... Ce pauvre Gamelin! il aurait eu peut-être un talent de premier ordre, s’il n’avait pas fait de politique. | “Speaking of Gamelin: yesterday, passing along the Boulevard du Temple, I saw all that unfortunate man’s canvases at a second-hand dealer’s whose stall stands opposite Beaumarchais’s house. His *Orestes and Electra* was there. Orestes’ head, which resembles Gamelin’s, is truly beautiful, I assure you… the head and arm are superb.… The dealer told me he would have no trouble selling the canvases to artists who will paint over them[^c29n03].… Poor Gamelin! He might have had a talent of the first rank if he had not gone into politics.” |
| <a id="c29p007"></a>— Il avait l’âme d’un criminel! répliqua le citoyen Blaise. Je l’ai démasqué, à cette place même, alors que ses instincts sanguinaires étaient encore contenus. Il ne me l’a jamais pardonné.... Ah! c’était une belle canaille. | “He had a criminal’s soul!” Citizen Blaise replied. “I unmasked him in this very spot, when his bloodthirsty instincts were still restrained. He never forgave me.… Ah, he was a fine scoundrel.” |
| <a id="c29p008"></a>— Le pauvre garçon! il était sincère. Ce sont les fanatiques qui l’ont perdu. | “Poor fellow! He was sincere. The fanatics were his ruin.” |
| <a id="c29p009"></a>— Vous ne le défendez pas, je pense, Desmahis!... Il n’est pas défendable. | “You are not defending him, I hope, Desmahis!… He cannot be defended.” |
| <a id="c29p010"></a>— Non, citoyen Blaise, il n’est pas défendable." | “No, Citizen Blaise, he cannot be defended.” |
| <a id="c29p011"></a>Et le citoyen Blaise tapant sur l’épaule du beau Desmahis: | And, clapping the handsome Desmahis on the shoulder, Citizen Blaise said: |
| <a id="c29p012"></a>"Les temps sont changés. On peut vous appeler "Barbaroux", maintenant que la Convention rappelle les proscrits.... J’y songe: Desmahis, gravez-moi donc un portrait de Charlotte Corday." | “Times have changed. We can call you ‘Barbaroux’ now that the Convention is recalling the proscribed.… That reminds me: Desmahis, engrave me a portrait of Charlotte Corday[^c29n04].” |
| <a id="c29p013"></a>Une femme grande et belle, brune, enveloppée de fourrures, entra dans le magasin et fit au citoyen Blaise un petit salut intime et discret. C’était Julie Gamelin; mais elle ne portait plus ce nom déshonoré: elle se faisait appeler "la citoyenne veuve Chassagne" et était habillée, sous son manteau, d’une tunique rouge, en l’honneur des chemises rouges de la Terreur. | A tall, beautiful, dark woman wrapped in furs entered the shop and gave Citizen Blaise an intimate, discreet little greeting. It was Julie Gamelin; but she no longer bore that dishonoured name: she called herself “Citizen Widow Chassagne” and, beneath her cloak, wore a red tunic in honour of the red shirts of the Terror. |
| <a id="c29p014"></a>Julie avait d’abord senti de l’éloignement pour l’amante d’Évariste: tout ce qui avait touché à son frère lui était odieux. Mais la citoyenne Blaise, après la mort d’Évariste, avait recueilli la malheureuse mère dans les combles de la maison de l'*Amour peintre*. Julie s’y était aussi réfugiée; puis elle avait retrouvé une place dans la maison de modes de la rue des Lombards. Ses cheveux courts, "à la victime", son air aristocratique, son deuil lui attiraient les sympathies de la jeunesse dorée. Jean Blaise, que Rose Thévenin avait à demi quitté, lui offrit des hommages qu’elle accepta. Cependant Julie aimait à porter, comme aux jours tragiques, des vêtements d’homme: elle s’était fait faire un bel habit de muscadin et allait souvent, un énorme bâton à la main, souper dans quelque cabaret de Sèvres ou de Meudon avec une demoiselle de modes. Inconsolable de la mort du jeune ci-devant dont elle portait le nom, cette mâle Julie ne trouvait de réconfort à sa tristesse que dans sa fureur, et, quand elle rencontrait des jacobins, elle ameutait contre eux les passants en poussant des cris de mort. Il lui restait peu de temps à donner à sa mère qui, seule dans sa chambre, disait toute la journée son chapelet, trop accablée de la fin tragique de son fils pour en sentir de la douleur. Rose était devenue la compagne assidue d’Élodie, qui décidément s’accordait avec ses belles-mères. | Julie had at first felt an aversion to Évariste’s mistress: everything that had touched her brother was hateful to her. But after Évariste’s death Citizen Blaise had taken his unhappy mother into the attic of the *Amour peintre*. Julie had found refuge there too, then secured a place again in the millinery house in the Rue des Lombards. Her short hair, “in the victim’s style”[^c29n05], her aristocratic air and her mourning won her the sympathy of the gilded youth. Jean Blaise, whom Rose Thévenin had half deserted, offered attentions which she accepted. Yet Julie still liked to wear men’s clothes, as in the tragic days: she had had a fine muscadin’s suit[^c29n06] made and often went, an enormous stick in her hand, to supper at some tavern in Sèvres or Meudon with a young milliner. Inconsolable at the death of the young former nobleman whose name she bore, this masculine Julie found relief from grief only in fury, and when she met Jacobins she roused the passers-by against them with cries of death. Little time remained for her mother, who, alone in her room, said her rosary all day, too crushed by her son’s tragic end to feel its pain. Rose had become Élodie’s constant companion; Élodie decidedly got on well with her stepmothers. |
| <a id="c29p015"></a>"Où est Élodie?" demanda la citoyenne Chassagne. | “Where is Élodie?” asked Citizen Chassagne. |
| <a id="c29p016"></a>Jean Blaise fit signe qu’il ne le savait pas. Il ne le savait jamais: il en faisait une ligne de conduite. | Jean Blaise signalled that he did not know. He never knew: he made it a rule of conduct. |
| <a id="c29p017"></a>Julie venait la prendre pour aller voir, en sa compagnie, la Thévenin à Monceaux, où la comédienne habitait une petite maison avec un jardin anglais. | Julie had come to fetch her to visit Thévenin at Monceaux, where the actress lived in a little house with an English garden. |
| <a id="c29p018"></a>A la Conciergerie, la Thévenin avait connu un gros fournisseur des armées, le citoyen Montfort. Sortie la première, à la sollicitation de Jean Blaise, elle obtint l’élargissement du citoyen Montfort, qui, sitôt libre, fournit des vivres aux troupes et spécula sur les terrains du quartier de la Pépinière. Les architectes Ledoux, Olivier et Wailly y construisaient de jolies maisons, et le terrain y avait, en trois mois, triplé de valeur. Montfort était, depuis la prison du Luxembourg, l’amant de la Thévenin: il lui donna un petit hôtel situé près de Tivoli et de la rue du Rocher, qui valait fort cher et ne lui coûtait rien, la vente des lots voisins l’ayant déjà plusieurs fois remboursé. Jean Blaise était galant homme; il pensait qu’il faut souffrir ce qu’on ne peut empêcher: il abandonna la Thévenin à Montfort sans se brouiller avec elle. | At the Conciergerie Thévenin had met a substantial army contractor, Citizen Montfort. Released first through Jean Blaise’s intercession, she obtained Citizen Montfort’s freedom; as soon as he was out he supplied the troops with provisions and speculated in land in the Pépinière district. The architects Ledoux, Olivier and Wailly were building pretty houses there, and in three months the land had tripled in value. Montfort had been Thévenin’s lover since the Luxembourg prison[^c29n07]: he gave her a little mansion near Tivoli and the Rue du Rocher, worth a great deal and costing him nothing, since the sale of neighbouring lots had already repaid him several times over. Jean Blaise was a gentleman; he thought one must endure what one could not prevent, and gave Thévenin up to Montfort without quarrelling with her. |
| <a id="c29p019"></a>Élodie, peu de temps après l’arrivée de Julie à l'*Amour peintre*, descendit toute parée au magasin. Sous son manteau, malgré la rigueur de la saison, elle était nue dans sa robe blanche; son visage avait pâli, sa taille s’était amincie, ses regards coulaient alanguis et toute sa personne respirait la volupté. | A little while after Julie arrived at the *Amour peintre*, Élodie came down to the shop in all her finery. Beneath her cloak, despite the severity of the season, she was naked in her white dress; her face had grown paler, her waist more slender, her languorous eyes glided, and her whole person breathed voluptuousness. |
| <a id="c29p020"></a>Les deux femmes allèrent chez la Thévenin qui les attendait. Desmahis les accompagna: l’actrice le consultait pour la décoration de son hôtel et il aimait Élodie qui était à ce moment plus qu’à demi résolue à ne pas le laisser souffrir davantage. Quand les deux femmes passèrent près de Monceaux, où étaient enfouis sous un lit de chaux les suppliciés de la place de la Révolution: | The two women went to Thévenin, who was expecting them. Desmahis accompanied them: the actress was consulting him about the decoration of her house, and he loved Élodie, who was now more than half resolved to let him suffer no longer. As the two women passed Monceaux, where those executed in the Place de la Révolution lay buried beneath a bed of lime: |
| <a id="c29p021"></a>"C’est bon pendant les froids, dit Julie; mais, au printemps, les exhalaisons de cette terre empoisonneront la moitié de la ville." | “It is all right in the cold,” Julie said, “but in spring the exhalations from this earth will poison half the city.” |
| <a id="c29p022"></a>La Thévenin reçut ses deux amies dans un salon antique dont les canapés et les fauteuils étaient dessinés par David. Des bas-reliefs romains, copiés en camaïeu, régnaient sur les murs, au-dessus de statues, de bustes et de candélabres peints en bronze. Elle portait une perruque bouclée, d’un blond de paille. Les perruques à cette époque faisaient fureur: on en mettait six ou douze ou dix-huit dans les corbeilles de mariage. Une robe "à la cyprienne" enfermait son corps comme un fourreau. | Thévenin received her two friends in an antique drawing room whose sofas and armchairs had been designed by David. Roman bas-reliefs copied in monochrome ran round the walls above statues, busts and candlesticks painted to resemble bronze. She wore a curled, straw-blond wig. Wigs were all the rage then: six, twelve or eighteen went into wedding baskets. A “Cyprian” dress enclosed her body like a sheath. |
| <a id="c29p023"></a>S’étant jeté un manteau sur les épaules, elle mena ses amies et le graveur dans le jardin, que Ledoux lui dessinait et qui n’était encore qu’un chaos d’arbres nus et de plâtras. Elle y montrait toutefois la grotte de Fingal, une chapelle gothique avec une cloche, un temple, un torrent. | Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, she led her friends and the engraver into the garden Ledoux was designing for her, still a chaos of bare trees and plaster rubble. Yet she showed them Fingal’s Cave[^c29n08], a Gothic chapel with a bell, a temple, a torrent. |
| <a id="c29p024"></a>"Là, dit-elle, en désignant un bouquet de sapins, je voudrais élever un cénotaphe à la mémoire de cet infortuné Brotteaux des Ilettes. Je ne lui étais pas indifférente. Il était aimable. Les monstres l’ont égorgé: je l’ai pleuré. Desmahis, vous me dessinerez une urne sur une colonne." | “There,” she said, pointing to a clump of firs, “I should like to erect a cenotaph[^c29n09] to the memory of that unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. He was not indifferent to me. He was charming. The monsters slaughtered him: I wept for him. Desmahis, you will draw me an urn on a column.” |
| <a id="c29p025"></a>Et elle ajouta presque aussitôt: | And almost immediately she added: |
| <a id="c29p026"></a>"C’est désolant... je voulais donner un bal cette semaine; mais tous les joueurs de violons sont retenus trois semaines à l’avance. On danse tous les soirs chez la citoyenne Tallien." | “It is maddening… I wanted to give a ball this week, but all the fiddlers are booked three weeks ahead. They dance every night at Citizen Tallien’s.” |
| <a id="c29p027"></a>Après le dîner, la voiture de la Thévenin conduisit les trois amies et Desmahis au Théâtre Feydeau. Tout ce que Paris avait d’élégant y était réuni. Les femmes, coiffées "à l’antique" ou "à la victime", en robes très ouvertes, pourpres ou blanches et pailletées d’or; les hommes portant des collets noirs très hauts et leur menton disparaissant dans de vastes cravates blanches. | After dinner Thévenin’s carriage took the three friends and Desmahis to the Théâtre Feydeau. All fashionable Paris was gathered there. The women wore their hair “in the antique style” or “in the victim’s style”, and very low-cut dresses, purple or white and spangled with gold; the men wore very high black collars, their chins lost in enormous white cravats. |
| <a id="c29p028"></a>L’affiche annonçait *Phèdre* et le *Chien du Jardinier*. Toute la salle réclama l’hymne cher aux muscadins et à la jeunesse dorée, le *Réveil du Peuple*. | The bill announced *Phèdre* and *The Gardener’s Dog*. The whole house demanded the hymn beloved of the muscadins and the gilded youth, *The Awakening of the People[^c29n10]*. |
| <a id="c29p029"></a>Le rideau se leva et un petit homme, gros et court, parut sur la scène: c’était le célèbre Lays. Il chanta de sa belle voix de ténor: | The curtain rose and a little man, short and stout, appeared on stage: the celebrated Lays. In his beautiful tenor voice he sang: |
| <a id="c29p029a"></a>Peuple français, peuple de frères!... | French people, people of brothers!… |
| <a id="c29p030"></a>Des applaudissements si formidables éclatèrent que les cristaux du lustre en tintaient. Puis on entendit quelques murmures, et la voix d’un citoyen en chapeau rond répondit, du parterre, par l'*hymne des Marseillais*: | Such tremendous applause broke out that the chandelier’s crystals rang. Then a few murmurs were heard, and from the pit the voice of a citizen in a round hat answered with the *Hymn of the Marseillais[^c29n11]*: |
| <a id="c29p030a"></a>Allons, enfants de la patrie!... | Come, children of the fatherland!… |
| <a id="c29p031"></a>Cette voix fut étouffée sous les huées; des cris retentirent: | His voice was drowned in jeers; cries rang out: |
| <a id="c29p032"></a>"A bas les terroristes! Mort aux jacobins!" | “Down with the terrorists! Death to the Jacobins!” |
| <a id="c29p033"></a>Et Lays, rappelé, chanta une seconde fois l’hymne des thermidoriens: | Called back, Lays sang the Thermidorians’ hymn a second time: |
| <a id="c29p033a"></a>Peuple français, peuple de frères!... | French people, people of brothers!… |
| <a id="c29p034"></a>Dans toutes les salles de spectacle on voyait le buste de Marat élevé sur une colonne ou porté sur un socle; au Théâtre Feydeau, ce buste se dressait sur un piédouche, du côté "jardin", contre le cadre de maçonnerie qui fermait la scène. | In every theatre a bust of Marat could be seen raised on a column or borne on a base; at the Théâtre Feydeau this bust stood on a pedestal on the “garden” side[^c29n12], against the masonry frame enclosing the stage. |
| <a id="c29p035"></a>Tandis que l’orchestre jouait l’ouverture de *Phèdre et Hippolyte*, un jeune muscadin, désignant le buste du bout de son gourdin, s’écria: | While the orchestra played the overture to *Phèdre and Hippolyte*, a young muscadin pointed at the bust with the end of his cudgel and cried: |
| <a id="c29p036"></a>"A bas Marat!" | “Down with Marat!” |
| <a id="c29p037"></a>Toute la salle répéta: | The whole house repeated: |
| <a id="c29p038"></a>"A bas Marat! A bas Marat!" | “Down with Marat! Down with Marat!” |
| <a id="c29p039"></a>Et des voix éloquentes dominèrent le tumulte: | And eloquent voices rose above the tumult: |
| <a id="c29p040"></a>"C’est une honte que ce buste soit encore debout! | “It is a disgrace that this bust is still standing!” |
| <a id="c29p041"></a>— L’infâme Marat règne partout, pour notre déshonneur! Le nombre de ses bustes égale celui des têtes qu’il voulait couper. | “The infamous Marat reigns everywhere, to our dishonour! He has as many busts as the heads he wanted cut off.” |
| <a id="c29p042"></a>— Crapaud venimeux! | “Poisonous toad!” |
| <a id="c29p043"></a>— Tigre! | “Tiger!” |
| <a id="c29p044"></a>— Noir serpent!" | “Black serpent!” |
| <a id="c29p045"></a>Soudain un spectateur élégant monte sur le rebord de sa loge, pousse le buste, le renverse. Et la tête de plâtre tombe en éclats sur les musiciens, aux applaudissements de la salle, qui, soulevée, entonne debout le *Réveil du Peuple*: | Suddenly an elegant spectator climbs on to the edge of his box, pushes the bust and topples it. The plaster head falls in fragments on the musicians, to the applause of the house, which rises to its feet and bursts into *The Awakening of the People*: |
| <a id="c29p045a"></a>Peuple français, peuple de frères!... | French people, people of brothers!… |
| <a id="c29p046"></a>Parmi les chanteurs les plus enthousiastes, Élodie reconnut le joli dragon, le petit clerc de procureur, Henry, son premier amour. | Among the most enthusiastic singers Élodie recognised the handsome dragoon, the little attorney’s clerk Henry, her first love[^c29n13]. |
| <a id="c29p047"></a>Après la représentation, le beau Desmahis appela un cabriolet, et reconduisit la citoyenne Blaise à l'*Amour peintre*. | After the performance the handsome Desmahis called a cabriolet and took Citizen Blaise back to the *Amour peintre*. |
| <a id="c29p048"></a>Dans la voiture, l’artiste prit la main d’Élodie, entre ses mains: | In the carriage the artist took Élodie’s hand between his: |
| <a id="c29p049"></a>"Vous le croyez, Élodie, que je vous aime? | “You believe I love you, Élodie?” |
| <a id="c29p050"></a>— Je le crois, puisque vous aimez toutes les femmes. | “I believe it, since you love all women.” |
| <a id="c29p051"></a>— Je les aime en vous." | “I love them in you.” |
| <a id="c29p052"></a>Elle sourit: | She smiled: |
| <a id="c29p053"></a>"J’assumerais une grande charge, malgré les perruques noires, blondes, rousses qui font fureur, si je me destinais à être pour vous toutes les sortes de femmes. | “I should be taking on a great burden, despite the black, blond and red wigs that are all the rage, if I undertook to be every kind of woman for you.” |
| <a id="c29p054"></a>— Élodie, je vous jure.... | “Élodie, I swear…” |
| <a id="c29p055"></a>— Quoi! des serments, citoyen Desmahis? Ou vous avez beaucoup de candeur, ou vous m’en supposez trop." | “What! Oaths, Citizen Desmahis? Either you are very innocent, or you suppose me far too much so.” |
| <a id="c29p056"></a>Desmahis ne trouvait rien à répondre, et elle se félicita comme d’un triomphe de lui avoir ôté tout son esprit. | Desmahis could find nothing to answer, and she congratulated herself on having robbed him of all his wit, as though it were a triumph. |
| <a id="c29p057"></a>Au coin de la rue de la Loi, ils entendirent des chants et des cris et virent des ombres s’agiter autour d’un brasier. C’était une troupe d’élégants, qui, au sortir du Théâtre-Français, brûlaient un mannequin représentant l’Ami du peuple. | At the corner of the Rue de la Loi they heard singing and shouting and saw shadows moving round a bonfire. A band of elegant young men, coming out of the Théâtre-Français, were burning a dummy representing the Friend of the People. |
| <a id="c29p058"></a>Rue Honoré, le cocher heurta de son bicorne une effigie burlesque de Marat, pendue à la lanterne. | In the Rue Honoré the driver struck with his two-cornered hat a burlesque effigy of Marat hanging from a lamp-post. |
| <a id="c29p059"></a>Le cocher, mis en joie par cette rencontre, se tourna vers les bourgeois et leur conta comment, la veille au soir, le tripier de la rue Montorgueil avait barbouillé de sang la tête de Marat en disant: "C’est ce qu’il aimait", comment des petits garçons de dix ans avaient jeté le buste à l’égout, et avec quel à-propos les citoyens s’étaient écriés: "Voilà son Panthéon!" | Delighted by the encounter, the driver turned towards his passengers and told them how, the previous evening, the tripe seller in the Rue Montorgueil had daubed Marat’s head with blood, saying, “That is what he liked”; how ten-year-old boys had thrown the bust into the sewer, and how aptly the citizens had cried, “There is his Panthéon!” |
| <a id="c29p060"></a>Cependant l’on entendait chanter chez tous les traiteurs et tous les limonadiers: | Meanwhile, in every eating house and café, people could be heard singing: |
| <a id="c29p060a"></a>Peuple français, peuple de frères!... | French people, people of brothers!… |
| <a id="c29p061"></a>Arrivée à l'*Amour peintre*: | Arriving at the *Amour peintre*: |
| <a id="c29p062"></a>"Adieu, fit Élodie, en sautant de cabriolet." | “Goodbye,” said Élodie, jumping out of the cabriolet. |
| <a id="c29p063"></a>Mais Desmahis la supplia tendrement, et fut si pressant avec tant de douceur, qu’elle n’eut pas le courage de le laisser à la porte. | But Desmahis pleaded tenderly, and was so insistent with such gentleness that she had not the heart to leave him at the door. |
| <a id="c29p064"></a>"Il est tard, fit-elle; vous ne resterez qu’un instant." | “It is late,” she said. “You will stay only a moment.” |
| <a id="c29p065"></a>Dans la chambre bleue, elle ôta son manteau et parut dans sa robe blanche à l’antique, pleine et tiède de ses formes. | In the blue room she took off her cloak and appeared in her white dress in the antique style, full and warm with her figure. |
| <a id="c29p066"></a>"Vous avez peut-être froid, dit-elle. Je vais allumer le feu: il est tout préparé." | “Perhaps you are cold,” she said. “I shall light the fire: it is all laid.” |
| <a id="c29p067"></a>Elle battit le briquet et mit dans le foyer une allumette enflammée. | She struck a light and put a burning match into the grate. |
| <a id="c29p068"></a>Philippe la prit dans ses bras avec cette délicatesse qui révèle la force, et elle en ressentit une douceur étrange. Et, comme déjà elle pliait sous les baisers, elle se dégagea: | Philippe took her in his arms with that delicacy which reveals strength, and she felt a strange sweetness. As she was already yielding beneath his kisses, she freed herself: |
| <a id="c29p069"></a>"Laissez-moi." | “Let me go.” |
| <a id="c29p070"></a>Elle se décoiffa lentement devant la glace de la cheminée; puis elle regarda, avec mélancolie, la bague qu’elle portait à l’annulaire de sa main gauche, une petite bague d’argent où la figure de Marat, tout usée, écrasée, ne se distinguait plus. Elle la regarda jusqu’à ce que les larmes eussent brouillé sa vue, l’ôta doucement et la jeta dans les flammes. | Slowly she took down her hair before the mantelpiece mirror; then she looked sadly at the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, a little silver ring on which Marat’s image, worn and flattened[^c29n14], could no longer be distinguished. She looked at it until tears blurred her sight, gently took it off and threw it into the flames. |
| <a id="c29p071"></a>Alors brillante de larmes et de sourire, belle de tendresse et d’amour, elle se jeta dans les bras de Philippe. | Then, shining with tears and a smile, beautiful with tenderness and love, she flung herself into Philippe’s arms. |
| <a id="c29p072"></a>La nuit était avancée déjà quand la citoyenne Blaise ouvrit à son amant la porte de l’appartement et lui dit tout bas dans l’ombre: | The night was already far advanced when Citizen Blaise opened the apartment door for her lover and whispered in the darkness: |
| <a id="c29p073"></a>"Adieu, mon amour.... C’est l’heure où mon père peut rentrer: si tu entends du bruit dans l’escalier, monte vite à l’étage supérieur et ne descends que quand il n’y aura plus de danger qu’on te voie. Pour te faire ouvrir la porte de la rue, frappe trois coups à la fenêtre de la concierge. Adieu, ma vie! adieu, mon âme!" | “Goodbye, my love.… This is the time my father may come home: if you hear a noise on the stairs, go quickly to the floor above and do not come down until there is no longer any danger of being seen. To have the street door opened, knock three times[^c29n15] at the porter’s window. Goodbye, my life! Goodbye, my soul!” |
| <a id="c29p074"></a>Les derniers tisons brillaient dans l’âtre. Élodie laissa retomber sur l’oreiller sa tête heureuse et lasse. | The last embers glowed in the hearth. Élodie let her happy, weary head fall back on the pillow. |

### Notes

[^c29n01]: French Tigrocratie, “rule of tigers”. The shop’s new images concentrate revolutionary monstrosity upon the fallen leader. The transition from vilification to military fashion is driven by Blaise’s reading of demand, rather than an avowed conversion of principle. This connection is interpretive. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n02]: French gravé au pointillé: modelling an image through small dots rather than continuous engraved lines. The burin is the engraver’s cutting tool; its personification as roguish makes Desmahis’s adaptability part of the visual product. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n03]: An interpretation: Gamelin’s most cherished work faces material erasure at the moment Desmahis offers a qualified recognition of its beauty. The painting’s possible survival as a support for another image parallels the transformation of political memory in the print shop. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n04]: Corday killed Marat on 13 July 1793 and was executed four days later. Blaise’s request makes the former assassin newly saleable as a portrait subject after the collapse of Marat’s cult. That market implication is interpretive. [S219](#S219)

[^c29n05]: French à la victime, a close-cropped hairstyle recalling the cutting of the condemned prisoner’s hair before execution. The chapter treats remembrance as a visible fashion. It does not require the often-repeated story of specially restricted “victims’ balls”, which is not asserted here. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n06]: Muscadin designates the fashionable anti-Jacobin young man represented here by distinctive clothes and a large stick. Julie adopts both dress and political street violence. Her grief persists, but its expression has become persecutory; this last relation is interpretive. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n07]: The paragraph first says that Thévenin met Montfort at the Conciergerie and later dates their liaison from the Luxembourg. Both place-names are retained. The text does not supply the movements that would connect the two statements, and none have been invented. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n08]: The celebrated basalt sea cave on Staffa, off Scotland’s west coast, drew notice after Joseph Banks’s visit in 1772. Here the name belongs to an artificial garden feature, among a Gothic chapel and classical temple, not a literal relocation of the Scottish cave. [S220](#S220)

[^c29n09]: An empty tomb or memorial to someone buried elsewhere. Thévenin’s proposed urn commemorates Brotteaux without claiming possession of his remains. The immediate change of subject to a ball lets mourning and renewed pleasure coexist; that tonal effect is interpretive. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n10]: Le Réveil du peuple (1795), words by Jean-Marie Souriguière and music by Pierre Gaveaux, an anti-Jacobin song opposed in the theatres to La Marseillaise. Its repeated opening declares fraternity while the surrounding audience calls for deaths and destroys an image. That irony is an interpretation of the scene. [S221](#S221)

[^c29n11]: La Marseillaise, composed by Rouget de Lisle in April 1792 as a war song for the Army of the Rhine and popularised by the Marseille volunteers. The single voice here sets revolutionary patriotic memory against the new audience’s anti-Jacobin unanimity. [S222](#S222)

[^c29n12]: French côté jardin, the left side of the stage as seen from the audience. The conventional French name is retained in quotation marks and explained, rather than confused with English stage left, which uses the performer’s viewpoint. [S223](#S223)

[^c29n13]: Henry’s identity is finally explicit. His presence among the new anthem’s enthusiasts joins private recognition to political opportunism; it also retrospectively qualifies Gamelin’s assumptions about Élodie’s former lover. These implications are interpretive. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n14]: The ring seen on the hand throwing the farewell carnation in chapter XXVIII now loses both its political image and its physical place on Élodie’s body. Her tears make the act more complex than simple erasure; this is an interpretive reading of the sequence. [S218](#S218)

[^c29n15]: The practical instructions for a departing lover resume the novel’s earlier pattern of secrecy in the blue room. Political catastrophe has not stopped desire or domestic routine. The closing movement can be read as renewal, repetition or both; no single moral verdict is forced by this note. [S218](#S218)

<a id="outline"></a>

## Outline of the Novel

This outline gives the sequence of the complete story and reveals its ending.

### Chapter I

At the former Barnabite church Gamelin signs a petition against political opponents.

Dupont admits that universal attendance would leave the patriots in a minority.

Trubert works on recruitment, weapons and relief while military crises close in.

The narrator ends with the resolve of obscure men who face victory or death.

### Chapter II

Gamelin returns through the renamed Place Dauphine to his subdivided building.

He meets Brotteaux, who now makes jumping jacks and reads Lucretius.

His studio reveals the conflict between his artistic aspirations, political ideals and poverty.

His mother discusses hunger, remembers royal executions and recalls his compassionate childhood.

A country girl recognises her absent fiancé in a generic volunteer watercolour and buys it.

### Chapter III

Gamelin visits Blaise’s print shop and watches Élodie examine currency.

Élodie courts him through her embroidery while he expounds an austere artistic programme.

Her thoughts reveal her independence and the economic obstacle to their union.

Blaise rejects the proposed revolutionary cards and argues that revolutionary enthusiasm has exhausted itself.

Gamelin renews his faith and seeks Desmahis, encountering an execution procession and his friend’s pursuit of a milliner.

### Chapter IV

Gamelin awaits Élodie at a fashionable rustic refreshment garden.

An old wafer seller explains her poverty through politics and portents.

Élodie guides Gamelin towards a mutual declaration of love.

Her departure by carriage gives him a vision of a world he cannot enter.

He encounters Marat’s triumphal return after acquittal and renews his patriotic devotion.

### Chapter V

Élodie arranges a private conversation because Gamelin insists upon an open union.

She confesses a previous attachment while withholding the man’s identity.

Gamelin invents an aristocratic émigré seducer; the narrator identifies a clerk turned sans-culotte dragoon.

The lovers pass a handsome soldier addressing a crowd, whom Élodie hastens to leave.

Brotteaux shares a capon with the Gamelins and develops a Rabelaisian reflection on ignorance and happiness.

### Chapter VI

A hungry crowd waits in oppressive heat outside a bakery.

Gamelin and Brotteaux discuss artistic subjects, revolutionary justice and the death penalty.

A false accusation of purse theft nearly destroys an old religious and his defenders.

Brotteaux meets Longuemare; the three men dispute morality, nature, religion and reason.

Brotteaux reads Lucretius, and Gamelin receives the final bread.

Gamelin gives half his ration to a starving mother and conceals his generosity from his own mother.

### Chapter VII

On 13 July Rochemaure and Henry visit the Gamelins.

Gamelin explains his Orestes painting and its Greek literary source.

Rochemaure’s social and speculative networks are revealed behind a proposed commission.

She seeks access to Marat and offers to procure Gamelin a Revolutionary Tribunal position.

On the way to Marat’s house they hear of his assassination.

Popular grief, accusation and Gamelin’s terror contrast with a peasant woman’s mistaken identification.

### Chapter VIII

Élodie and Gamelin inspect preparations for the festival celebrating the accepted constitution.

She tells him her father has escaped an accusation of fraudulent supplies; his silence troubles the narrative.

Gamelin gives her a ring bearing Marat’s head.

Rochemaure announces his appointment as a juror and reveals her expectation of judicial protection.

Henry criticises the Tribunal as insufficiently severe.

The mother rejoices in honour and income, while Brotteaux compares judgement by passion with Rabelais’ judicial dice.

### Chapter IX

Gamelin visits Herman and Fouquier and discovers old legal habits beneath revolutionary offices.

Bookshops and Desmahis offer pleasures indifferent to Gamelin’s civic severity.

A general’s trial teaches Gamelin to prefer patriotic punishment to individual innocence.

The section demands severity; Gamelin asserts judicial independence and Trubert defends the Tribunal.

His mother, Brotteaux, Desmahis and Élodie respond differently to his new authority.

Jean Blaise cultivates the juror and invites him on a commercial sketching excursion.

### Chapter X

The excursion leaves Paris; Desmahis narrowly escapes arrest after being called Barbaroux.

Artistic theories and fashion talk accompany the approach to Orangis.

The party sketches and discusses theatre; Thévenin’s charm unsettles simple oppositions of nature and artifice.

At the Bell Inn the grandmother, sick child and servant embody other forms of rural life.

Gamelin compares Élodie with Werther’s Charlotte; dinner reveals the guests’ views of appetite.

Pelleport offers a confident explanation of Tronche’s body.

Forfeits lead to Voltaire, an operatic romance and an anti-monastic song.

Desmahis’s arrangements culminate in his encounter with the sleeping servant.

The group returns to Paris with an abundance of roses.

### Chapter XI

Rochemaure visits Brotteaux in his attic and hears his predictions about the Tribunal.

Henry steals her letter for England and brings it to the Committee of General Security.

Gamelin sits as a juror and helps secure an acquittal for lack of proof.

Élodie praises his humanity and takes him to her bedroom; a red carnation ends the night.

### Chapter XII

Caillou refuses Brotteaux’s toys after an official calls them counter-revolutionary.

Brotteaux finds the homeless Father Longuemare and takes him into his attic.

The priest explains how his request for a civic certificate led to an attempted arrest.

Atheist and priest debate the motives and spiritual value of charity.

### Chapter XIII

Military crisis and self-preservation shape the jurors’ sense of public safety.

Trubert commissions Gamelin to extract saltpetre; Gamelin condemns a defeated general and a poor bread carrier.

At the Jacobins Gamelin adopts formulas of political certainty and hostility towards atheists.

Successive convictions, hatred disguised as virtue and pervasive conspiracy fears harden him.

Élodie fears and desires her bloodthirsty lover.

### Chapter XIV

Brotteaux and Longuemare share chestnuts and the work of making toys.

The priest recalls the jumping-jack craze; the friends debate evil, religion and persecution.

Brotteaux shelters Athénaïs, a sixteen-year-old prostitute fleeing arrest; Longuemare yields his bed.

Athénaïs leaves for her aunt’s home with half Brotteaux’s remaining money and asks to be remembered as Marthe.

### Chapter XV

The narrator describes the Tribunal’s exhausted, collective production of death.

Marie-Antoinette is tried and executed.

Trubert dies amid news of military recovery and is honoured with a civic funeral.

Gamelin joins the Commune and witnesses the Girondins’ trial; Joséphine is beaten for dirtying her funeral dress.

### Chapter XVI

Gamelin decides Maubel is Élodie’s former lover, interpreting art-shop addresses and flower petals as proof.

Élodie makes quince preserves while Widow Gamelin and Combalot puzzle over revolutionary reforms.

Élodie denies knowing Maubel but eventually lets the suspicion stand without understanding the danger.

Gamelin forces the weak case to trial and secures conviction by one vote.

Maubel’s letter reveals the flower’s true identity and his love of art; Élodie condemns the killing while desiring Gamelin.

### Chapter XVII

National delegates seek Brotteaux after intercepting Rochemaure’s letter.

Paternal conversation and an arrest interrupt the search.

Remacle and Dupont identify Brotteaux for a reward.

Brotteaux and Longuemare are arrested; Athénaïs protests.

### Chapter XVIII

The widow mourns Brotteaux’s arrest and turns to prayer.

Julie returns disguised as a man and begs for help for Fortuné.

Mother and daughter recall hardship and weigh Évariste’s character.

Évariste refuses knowledge of their return and threatens denunciation.

### Chapter XIX

Brotteaux suffers solitary misery, then obtains paid accommodation.

He rescues Longuemare from the common cells and makes keepsakes to pay their costs.

The prisoners mock religion and rehearse their own trials; Dubosc is executed.

Brotteaux’s materialist consolations persist amid increasing terror.

He urges the imprisoned Rose Thévenin to remain unnoticed.

### Chapter XX

During a hearing Gamelin meditates on Robespierre’s detection of hidden enemies.

He reconciles the destruction of opposing factions with belief in political virtue.

The multiplying betrayals begin to trouble his certainty.

### Chapter XXI

Julie communicates with Fortuné through the Luxembourg windows.

Her male disguise attracts attention and draws her into a café brawl.

Dressed in Élodie’s clothes, she petitions Renaudin and is exploited.

The authorities stop families communicating with prisoners.

### Chapter XXII

Gamelin attends the Festival of the Supreme Being.

The law of prairial turns patriotic conviction into accelerated judgement.

Chassagne appears in a batch of prisoners and Gamelin refuses withdrawal.

Julie denounces her brother after the unanimous death sentence.

### Chapter XXIII

Nightmares deprive Gamelin of sleep.

Élodie’s care revives the Orestes painting and the image of Electra.

Gamelin denies the analogy through a claim of patriotic filial duty.

### Chapter XXIV

Brotteaux, Rochemaure, Longuemare and Athénaïs face a mass conspiracy trial.

The indictment recasts their lives and conversations as criminal evidence.

Two suspected informers are excepted from the unanimous conviction.

The condemned prepare for death; Longuemare absolves Athénaïs.

Brotteaux and Longuemare exchange last reflections in the cart.

### Chapter XXV

Gamelin interprets military victory as proof that terror has saved France.

Public weariness leads him to imagine further purges and his own disgrace.

He attempts to renounce Élodie and asks her to erase his memory.

His address to a child reveals the violence within his promises of future happiness.

Élodie answers with an ecstatic wish to share his sacrificial death.

### Chapter XXVI

Gamelin sees Robespierre give money to a Savoyard child.

He imagines further executions as the path to Robespierre’s future clemency.

Two hostile passers-by threaten the leader, then retreat from his dog.

### Chapter XXVII

Robespierre speaks on 8 thermidor without naming all his enemies.

The Convention arrests him and his allies on 9 thermidor.

Élodie unsuccessfully tries to dissuade Gamelin from joining the Commune.

The Council declares for the arrested men, then fragments under outlawry and public indifference.

The Convention’s troops enter; Robespierre is wounded and Gamelin attempts suicide.

### Chapter XXVIII

Paris celebrates Robespierre’s fall and the Tribunal serves the victors.

Gamelin faces the court he once occupied and is identified by his neighbours.

The cart carries him through the rejoicing city.

He interprets his punishment as deserved for excessive mercy.

Élodie throws a red carnation from the blue room.

### Chapter XXIX

The print shop replaces revolutionary martyrdom with anti-Robespierre imagery and anticipates military glory.

Desmahis remembers Gamelin’s abandoned art while Blaise repudiates him.

Julie survives through work, new attachments and anti-Jacobin fury.

The friends visit Thévenin’s luxurious house, then attend a politically violent theatre performance.

Élodie recognises Henry, returns with Desmahis and burns her Marat ring.

The novel ends in the blue room; the printer’s colophon belongs to the source appendix.

<a id="editorial-note"></a>

## Editorial Note

### The French text

The French reading text is based on the public-domain transcription distributed as Project Gutenberg number 36477, which credits images supplied by the Bibliothèque nationale de France through Gallica. It contains all twenty-nine chapters. A second complete transcription on Wikisource was compared at word level to identify omissions, variants and obvious transcription problems. The comparison is a check between reading texts, not a collation of every surviving edition or manuscript.

The complete transcription preserves a Brodard & Taupin printer’s colophon, reproduced separately at the back of this edition with an English rendering. That later printer’s imprint should not be confused with the novel’s original publication date of 1912. The date and impression of the volume underlying the complete transcription have not been established. The colophon is source evidence, not part of the novel’s final scene, and is excluded from Chapter XXIX.

A separate Calmann-Lévy printing with a 1912 copyright page was inspected in the Google Books scan CUNMAAAAMAAJ. Its opening chapter occupies printed pages 1–8, all of which were visually compared with the transcriptions. This visual check covers Chapter I only; the complete reading text has not been collated throughout against a physical 1912 copy. The BnF separately catalogues a 1912 edition under FRBNF30457694. The Wikisource edition record also says 1912, but the Internet Archive item to which it links is catalogued as 1921. These different digital copies are not identified as the same physical volume, and no particular first impression is claimed.

The full French text is presented as a reading edition. Paragraph locators are editorial additions; they are keyed to the transcription and remain stable across the five formats. Embedded letters and songs are included. Display typography regularises apostrophes and dialogue dashes. The selected transcription’s wording is retained; important variants and consequential translation choices are discussed in the notes.

### The English

The English is a new rendering prepared directly from the French. Existing English translations were not used as the prose base. British spelling is used. Names and meaningful repetitions are retained; sentences may be divided when natural English requires it. Songs, letters, artistic descriptions and sexual passages are translated in full.

The translation seeks to keep the differences among narration, speech, reported speech and inward thought. Political accusations remain attributable to the character who makes them. Historical errors or compressions in France’s story are retained in the translation and explained in notes. The presence of a historical name does not turn the surrounding fiction into documentary testimony.

A single set of institutional terms is used through the book. The section’s local committees remain distinct from those of the Convention; the National Guard remains distinct from the army. Citizen renders both citoyen and citoyenne as an English civic form of address. The names of the revolutionary months and unfamiliar units of money are explained rather than replaced by invented equivalents.

### The notes

The notes identify people, institutions, places, works of art, literary allusions, religious language and technical vocabulary. Some explain a choice made by the translator. Interpretive observations are distinguished from external historical claims. A reference to a primary document supplies evidence for the particular point stated; it does not authenticate every detail of the fictional scene.

Footnotes restart on each English page in the print edition. The ebook and Markdown notes use stable chapter identifiers because reflowable pages vary between devices. Source references are linked and gathered in the source register. Repeated references may be shortened by those identifiers. The outline reveals the plot; the glossary gives a consolidated guide to recurring terms.

### Parallel pages and digital reading

The French is placed on even, left-hand pages and the English on the facing odd pages. Pagination is planned in paired passages: a shorter text leaves space instead of being allowed to run independently into the next chapter or spread. Added paragraph locators provide a shared point of reference when the languages divide sentences differently. They should not be confused with the printed page numbers of the 1912 volume.

The Markdown file pairs source passages with their English renderings in reading order. The bilingual EPUB pairs corresponding passages and can stack the two languages on a narrow display. The English-only EPUB contains the complete English translation, notes and editorial matter without the parallel French text. These digital arrangements preserve the order of the work while allowing readers to change type size.

### Authorship and editorial status

The English translation and editorial matter were generated and revised with AI for Diotimos Editions in 2026. The edition records the source checks and review work actually performed; no human translator or external scholarly endorsement is credited. Anatole France’s original French novel is in the public domain, and no copyright claim in that original is made.

<a id="source-colophon"></a>

## Source Colophon

The following printer’s colophon is retained as evidence about the volume underlying the complete French transcription. It is printer’s matter and does not belong to the narrative of Chapter XXIX. The extraction identifier c29p075 is preserved in the edition audit.

### French

*Imprimé en France*

BRODARD & TAUPIN

Coulommiers-Paris

### English

*Printed in France*

BRODARD & TAUPIN

Coulommiers-Paris

<a id="glossary"></a>

## Glossary of Key Terms

### Active citizen  citoyen actif

A category of the early revolutionary franchise linked to a direct-tax qualification; its survival in this 1793 scene requires the chronological caution in the notes. References I.21.

### after the antique  d’après l’antique

Using ancient Greek or Roman art as a model. References III.12.

### anathema  anathème

A curse, or a person devoted to condemnation. References XXV.23.

### architectural features  fabriques

Buildings and related structures composing a landscape or garden. References IX.46.

### assembly signal  générale

Drum call summoning troops. References XXVII.9.

### assignat  assignat

Revolutionary paper currency; called square money by the innkeeper. References X.70.

### attorney’s clerk  clerc de procureur

Junior worker in a legal practitioner’s office. References V.30.

### batch  fournée

Group of accused tried together, with a suggested image of an oven-load. References XXII.11.

### Benedicite  Benedicite

Latin blessing or grace said before a meal. References V.53.

### bill of exchange  lettre de change

Written instrument ordering payment through another party. References XVIII.39.

### biribi  biribi

Gambling game named among Rochemaure’s entertainments. References VII.15.

### bisque  biscuit

Unglazed porcelain used for small sculptures. References XXI.25.

### black and white chalk  aux deux crayons

Two-colour drawing technique, rendered here as black and white chalk. References II.12.

### bouts-rimés  bouts-rimés

Verse composed using prescribed rhyme words. References VIII.19.

### Bridoie  Bridoie

France’s spelling of Rabelais’ dice-judging Bridoye. References VIII.39.

### Brissotins  Brissotins

Partisan designation for the Girondins associated with Brissot. References IX.25.

### busk  busc

Stiff strip supporting the front of a bodice or stays. References II.48.

### cabriolet  cabriolet

Light carriage, here hired for the journey. References IV.33.

### Capet  Capet

Name applied to Louis XVI in Henry’s republican speech. References VIII.27.

### capon  chapon

Castrated male chicken raised for the table. References V.44.

### Carmagnole  carmagnole

A short jacket associated with revolutionary dress; also the name of a revolutionary song and dance in other contexts. References I.2, X.10, XI.31.

### carrick  carrick

Travelling overcoat with several shoulder capes. References XVIII.4.

### cenotaph  cénotaphe

Empty tomb or memorial for a person buried elsewhere. References XXIX.24.

### Certificate of civic loyalty  certificat de civisme

An attestation of political reliability, distinct from citizenship or voting eligibility. References I.4.

### cervelat  cervelas

Type of sausage sold among the fair’s provisions. References VIII.12.

### chain lines  pontuseaux

Widely spaced mould marks in laid paper. References III.4.

### Clerk Regular  clerc régulier

Cleric belonging to an order governed by a religious rule. References VI.35.

### Committee of General Security  Comité de sûreté générale

National committee, distinguished from a section’s local Surveillance Committee. References VIII.7, XI.30.

### Compagnie des Indes  Compagnie des Indes

Trading company whose shares are objects of the narrated speculation. References VII.29.

### constitutional oath  serment constitutionnel

The oath associated with the revolutionary reorganisation of the Church. References XII.22.

### creed  symbole

A formal statement of belief, here transferred from theology to politics. References XIII.12.

### deist  déiste

Believer in God without necessarily adhering to a revealed religion. References V.2, XIII.14.

### eustache  eustache

Inexpensive folding knife, here with a horn handle. References VI.61.

### fall-front breeches  culotte à pont

Breeches fastened with a front flap. References VII.16.

### fasces  faisceaux

Bundles of rods, ancient emblems of authority reused in republican iconography. References XV.1, XXVIII.3.

### favourite lover  greluchon

A woman's secretly favoured lover, distinguished from other lovers who support her. References XI.7.

### florence  florence

A period silk fabric name retained within the fashion conversation. References X.23.

### Friend of the People  Ami du peuple

Marat’s identifying political title in the narrative. References IV.38.

### full-length mirror  psyché

Tall mirror in which a person can see their whole figure. References VII.21.

### garden side  côté jardin

Stage left as viewed by the audience, or the performer’s right. References XXIX.34.

### gilded youth  jeunesse dorée

Fashionable young anti-Jacobins prominent after Thermidor. References XXVIII.11.

### god-eaters  théophages

Brotteaux’s irreverent designation for believers in Eucharistic doctrine. References X.43, XIV.34.

### hurdy-gurdy  vielle

String instrument sounded by a rotating wheel. References XXVI.1.

### Incorruptible  Incorruptible

Epithet of Maximilien Robespierre. References XX.2.

### intaglio  taille-douce

Printing from incised lines in a plate. References III.38.

### jumping jack  pantin

Jointed toy figure moved by pulling strings. References II.8, XVII.40.

### laid lines  vergeures

Fine parallel mould marks in laid paper. References III.4.

### liard  liard

A small monetary unit worth three deniers, or a quarter of a sou. References XVI.17.

### libertinage  libertinage

Sexual licence with associations of freethought and religious scepticism. References XXIV.4.

### low-life genre picture  bambochade

Painting of ordinary, rustic or lower-class life. References VI.13.

### maenad  ménade

Ecstatic female follower of Dionysus. References XXV.39.

### maximum  maximum

Legal ceiling on prices, here distinguished from rationing. References VI.2.

### mirliton  mirliton

Small tube-like musical or decorative object evoked by the hat’s ribbons. References VII.3.

### morocco  maroquin

Fine leather used in bookbinding. References VI.57.

### muscadin  muscadin

Fashionable anti-Jacobin young man. References XXIX.14.

### nankeen  nankin

Yellowish cotton cloth, here used for breeches. References III.42, XXVI.7.

### outlawry  mise hors la loi

Formal exclusion from legal protection, here exposing the proscribed to execution without trial. References XXVII.38.

### Parlement  Parlement

A sovereign court of the ancien régime, not a modern legislature. References IX.13.

### parlement member  parlementaire

Member of an old-regime sovereign court. References XXIV.2.

### patent to wash away common birth  savonnette à vilain

Derisive expression for a purchased ennobling office. References II.8.

### paying quarters  pistole

Improved prison accommodation obtained for payment. References XIX.6.

### permanent sittings  permanence

The sections’ continued or permanent assembly, as distinct from scheduled meetings. References VII.35.

### pistole  pistole

Historic monetary term retained without a modern-value conversion. References VI.39.

### pleasures  plaisirs

Name for thin wafers sold by an itinerant vendor. References IV.5.

### pomegranate blossom  fleur de grenadier

A flower of the pomegranate tree, misidentified as a carnation in Maubel’s file. References XVI.61a.

### price controls  taxe

Official fixing of a commodity’s price, not a levy on it. References II.27.

### publican  publicain

Tax collector or tax contractor; enables the allusion to Saint Matthew. References VI.40.

### Punchinello  polichinelle

Comic puppet type; here the toys Brotteaux manufactures. References XVII.11a.

### quarter-pound  quarteron

A quarter of a livre as a unit of weight; no modern conversion implied. References VI.26.

### quenouille  quenouille

A distaff, or by analogy a tree pruned into a tapering form. References X.47.

### regular clergy  réguliers

Members of religious orders bound by a rule. References XIX.10.

### requisition  réquisition

Compulsory mobilisation of people or resources for public purposes. References XV.7.

### revolutionary rebirth  palingénésie révolutionnaire

The imagined inward regeneration of people through the Revolution. References IX.6.

### savorados  savorados

Regional term for a marrowbone, recalled from Rabelais. References V.47.

### Section  section

A neighbourhood unit of Parisian political and municipal organisation. References I.1.

### seller of refreshments  limonadier

Proprietor serving drinks and refreshments, not limited to lemonade. References IV.3.

### sequence of three to the king  tierce au roi

Three-card run whose highest card is the king. References VIII.31.

### sheep  mouton

Prison informer disguised as a fellow inmate. References XIX.28.

### stipple engraving  gravure au pointillé

An engraved image modelled in dots. References XXIX.2.

### superior general  général de l’ordre

The head of a religious order. References XIV.15.

### Surveillance Committee  Comité de surveillance

A local committee concerned with political supervision; distinct from the national committees of the Convention. References I.2.

### tally board  planchette

Small wooden board notched to keep account of deliveries. References XIII.6.

### tax-gatherer  publicain

A tax collector, here with biblical associations and self-mockery. References XII.11.

### temporal safety  salut temporel

Preservation of worldly life, distinguished from eternal salvation. References XIV.60.

### thyrsus  thyrse

Bacchic staff or wand carried as a ritual attribute. References III.7.

### trictrac  trictrac

Dice-and-counter board game in the backgammon family. References XXI.5.

### turnkey  porte-clefs

A prison warder or gaoler. References XVI.63.

### withdrawal  récusation

Stepping aside from judging a case because of a possible disqualifying connection. References XXII.14.

<a id="sources"></a>

## Sources and Further Reading

The register identifies the digital sources linked from the annotations and the editorial matter. Source identifiers in square brackets refer to the entries below. A source is evidence for the particular point for which it is cited; archival catalogue descriptions are distinguished from consultation of the underlying document.

### Source register

<a id="S001"></a>

[S001] Anatole France, Les Dieux ont soif, Calmann-Lévy printing with 1912 copyright page, Google Books CUNMAAAAMAAJ. [Online source](https://books.google.com/books?id=CUNMAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP9)

<a id="S002"></a>

[S002] Google Books CUNMAAAAMAAJ, copyright page dated 1912. [Online source](https://books.google.com/books?id=CUNMAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP10)

<a id="S003"></a>

[S003] BnF catalogue, Les dieux ont soif, Paris C. Lévy, dépôt légal 1912, FRBNF30457694. [Online source](https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30457694m)

<a id="S004"></a>

[S004] Project Gutenberg 36477, French transcription of Les Dieux ont soif. [Online source](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36477)

<a id="S005"></a>

[S005] Wikisource, Les dieux ont soif, complete French transcription. [Online source](https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_dieux_ont_soif/Texte_entier)

<a id="S006"></a>

[S006] Internet Archive, Les dieux ont soif, University of Toronto copy, catalogue date 1921. [Online source](https://archive.org/details/lesdieuxontsoif00franuoft)

<a id="S007"></a>

[S007] BnF CCFr, manuscript and publication dossier for Les dieux ont soif, 1911–12 serialisation and 1912 volume. [Online source](https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/ark%3A/16871/004b2059642)

<a id="S008"></a>

[S008] Académie française, Anatole France, biographical record. [Online source](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/les-immortels/anatole-france)

<a id="S009"></a>

[S009] Sénat, Anatole France 1844–1924, writer and librarian. [Online source](https://www.senat.fr/connaitre-le-senat/lhistoire-du-senat/dossiers-dhistoire/leconte-de-lisle-bibliothecaire-du-senat/les-ecrivains-bibliothecaires-du-senat/anatole-france-1844-1924.html)

<a id="S010"></a>

[S010] Kathryn Calley Galitz, The Legacy of Jacques Louis David, Metropolitan Museum of Art. [Online source](https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-legacy-of-jacques-louis-david-1748-1825)

<a id="S011"></a>

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<a id="edition-note"></a>

## Note on this Edition

### The volume

This edition contains all twenty-nine chapters of the French novel with a new English translation. The English text has approximately 64,704 words, excluding the annotations and editorial matter. There are 431 notes to the novel. Those counts are generated from the edition files rather than inferred from page length.

### Design and formats

The design follows the Diotimos Symposium reference: a compact 5½ by 8½ inch page, a restrained serif face, facing original and translation, small explanatory notes and Roman preliminary pagination. Palatino is used in the print files. The parallel text is divided into corresponding passages with shared paragraph locators. The source is not reproduced as facsimile images.

The PDF and Word files carry the facing-page edition. The Markdown file supplies the full paired text and linked note definitions. The bilingual EPUB and English-only EPUB use reflowable text, navigation and linked notes. Device settings can change their line and page divisions.

### Source and review

The complete French transcription was compared with a second transcription. Its underlying impression is undated and bears a later Brodard & Taupin printer’s colophon, preserved separately in the source apparatus. The eight printed pages of Chapter I alone were visually collated with a separate verified 1912 printing. Embedded letters and songs were checked during extraction. Every narrative paragraph identifier is paired with an English paragraph, and every note marker is matched to a note. These checks establish coverage and consistency; they do not amount to a manuscript-based critical edition.

The English was translated directly from French in chapter groups under a shared style guide and reviewed for completeness and recurrent terminology. The earlier chapter I sample also received separate accuracy and literary reviews. Historical assertions in the notes have linked sources, while literary interpretations are presented as readings of the text.

### Editorial responsibility

The English translation and editorial matter were generated and revised with AI for Diotimos Editions in 2026. No human translator’s name, invented ISBN or external scholarly endorsement has been supplied. The files are intended to support Diotimos’s editorial reading and decisions about publication.