Anatole France
The gods are thirsty
Évariste Gamelin, painter, student of David, member of the Neu Pont section, formerly of Henry IV's section, set out early in the morning for former church Varnavites, which for three years, from May 21, 1790, served as a place general meetings sections. This church was located in a cramped, gloomy square, near the lattice of the Court. On the facade, composed of two classical orders, decorated with overturned consoles and artillery rockets, damaged by time, injured by people, the religious emblems were knocked down, and in their place, above the main entrance, the republican motto was displayed in black letters: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death." Évariste Gamelin stepped inside: the vaults that had once listened to the services of the surplice-clad clergymen of the congregation of St. Paul now watched the red-capped patriots who gathered here to elect municipal officials and to discuss the affairs of the section. The saints were pulled out of their niches and replaced with busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Pelletier. On the ruined altar stood a plaque with the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Here, twice a week, from five to eleven in the evening, public meetings took place. Chair, decorated national flags, served as a tribune for the speakers. Opposite her, to the right, they built a platform of unhewn planks for women and children who appeared in a rather large numbers to these meetings. This morning, at a table at the very foot of the pulpit, in a red cap and pocketbook, sat a carpenter from Thionville Square, Citizen Dupont Sr., one of the twelve members of the Supervisory Committee. On the table stood a bottle, glasses, an inkwell, and a notebook with the text of a petition offering the Convention the removal of twenty-two unworthy members from its bosom.
Évariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.
I was sure, - said the committeeman, - that you would add your signature, Citizen Gamelin. You are a true patriot. But there is little ardor in the section; she lacks courage. I suggested to the Oversight Committee not to issue certificates of civil integrity to those who do not sign the petitions.
I am ready with my own blood to sign the verdict on the federalist traitors,” said Gamelin. - They wanted the death of Marat: let them die themselves.
Indifference - that's what ruins us, - answered Dupont Sr. “In a section with nine hundred full members, there will not be fifty attending meetings. Yesterday there were twenty-eight of us.
Well, - observed Gamelin, - it is necessary under the threat of a fine to oblige citizens to come to meetings.
Well, no, - objected the carpenter, knitting his brows, - if everyone comes, then the patriots will be in the minority ... Citizen Gamelin, would you like to drink a glass of wine for the health of the glorious sans-culottes? ..
On the church wall, to the left of the altar, next to the inscriptions “Civil Committee”, “Supervisory Committee”, “Charity Committee”, there was a black hand with an outstretched index finger pointing towards the corridor connecting the church with the monastery. A little further, above the entrance to the former sacristy, an inscription was displayed: "The Military Committee." Entering through this door, Gamelin saw the secretary of the committee at a large table littered with books, papers, steel blanks, cartridges and samples of saltpeter rocks.
Hello Citizen Truber. How are you doing?
I'm great.
The secretary of the Military Committee, Fortune Truber, invariably responded in this way to all who inquired about his health, and did so not so much to satisfy their curiosity as from a desire to stop further talk on the subject. He was only twenty-eight years old, but he was already beginning to go bald and hunched over; his skin was dry, and his cheeks were flushed with fever. The owner of an optical workshop on Jewelers' Embankment, he sold his old firm in the ninety-first year to one of the old clerks in order to devote himself entirely to public duties. From his mother, a lovely woman who died at the age of twenty and whom the local old-timers remembered with tenderness, he inherited beautiful eyes, dreamy and languid, pallor and shyness. His father, a learned optician, court purveyor, who died before the age of thirty from the same disease, he resembled with diligence and a precise mind.
And you, citizen, how are you? he asked, continuing to write.
Wonderful. What's new?
Absolutely nothing. As you can see, everything is calm here.
What is the position?
The situation is still unchanged. The situation was terrible. The best army the republic was blockaded in Mainz; Valenciennes - besieged, Fontenay - captured by the Vendeans, Lyon revolted, Cévennes - too, the Spanish border was exposed; two-thirds of the departments were in revolt or in the hands of the enemy; Paris - without money, without bread, under the threat of Austrian guns.
Fortune Truber continued to write calmly. By decree of the Commune, the sections were asked to recruit twelve thousand men to be sent to the Vendée, and he was busy drawing up instructions on the recruitment and supply of arms for the soldiers that the New Bridge section, the former section of Henry IV, was obliged to field from itself. All military-style guns were to be handed over to the newly formed detachments. The National Guard kept only hunting rifles and pikes.
I have brought you, said Gamelin, a list of bells to be sent to Luxembourg to be made into cannons.
Evariste Gamelin, for all his poverty, was a full member of the section: according to the law, only a citizen who paid a tax in the amount of three days' earnings could be an elector; for passive suffrage, however, the qualification was raised to the sum of ten days' wages. However, the section of the New Bridge, carried away by the idea of equality and zealously guarding its autonomy, granted both an active and a passive right to any citizen who acquired at his own expense the full uniform of the national guard. This was the case with Gamelin, who was a full member of the section and a member of the Military Committee.
Fortune Trubert laid aside his pen.
Citizen Evariste, go to the Convention and ask for instructions for surveying the soil in the cellars, leaching the earth and stones in them, and extracting saltpeter. Guns are not everything: we also need gunpowder.
The little hunchback, with a pen behind his ear and papers in his hand, entered the former sacristy. It was Citizen Beauvisage, a member of the Supervisory Committee.
Citizens, he said, we have received bad news: Custine has withdrawn troops from Landau.
Custine is a traitor! exclaimed Gamelin.
He will be guillotined,” Beauvisage said. Trubert said in a broken voice with his usual calmness:
It was not for nothing that the Convention established the Committee of Public Safety. They are investigating the question of the behavior of Kyustin. Regardless of whether Custine is a traitor or simply an incapable person, a commander who is determined to win will be appointed in his place, and Sa ira! .
After sorting through several papers, he glided over them with a weary gaze.
In order for our soldiers to do their duty without embarrassment or hesitation, they need to know that the fate of those whom they left at home is assured. If you, citizen Gamelin, agree with this, then at the next meeting demand with me that the Charity Committee, together with the Military Committee, establish the issuance of benefits to poor families whose relatives are in the army.
He smiled and began to sing:
Sa ira! Caira!
Sitting twelve, fourteen hours a day at his unpainted desk, guarding his country in danger, the modest secretary of the section committee did not notice the discrepancy between the enormity of the task and the insignificance of the means at his disposal - he felt so united in a single impulse with all the patriots, to such an extent he was an inseparable part of the nation, to such an extent his life was dissolved in the life of a great people. He was one of those patient enthusiasts who, after each defeat, prepared for an unthinkable and at the same time inevitable triumph. After all, they had to win at all costs. This need is erratic, destroying royalty, overturned old world, this insignificant optician Trubert, this obscure artist Evariste Gamelin did not expect mercy from enemies. Victory or death - there was no other choice for them. Hence - and their ardor and peace of mind.
A real character of the same name, an artist, a student of David, who remained completely unknown, the author made an exemplary young Republican patriot during the French Revolution. E. G., naive and timid in love, clumsy with women, outraged by the frivolities of the old regime, embraced by love for the destitute and Elodie, the broken daughter of a print merchant. But this holy hermit of the revolution, given over to political passions, turns out to be an ardent supporter of terror. When he was appointed to the jury, he began to act in the tribunal in the interests of the state, sending even his acquaintances to death.
In his eyes, terror has mystical redemptive virtues. He sees the guillotine as the only way into the coming age of purity. Even the growing dissatisfaction of the people with the excesses of Jacobinism does not open the eyes of this supporter of democracy, dreamer and visionary. Rising in turn to the scaffold to share the fate of Robespierre, E. G. regrets only his “betrayal of the Republic” - the sin of condescension. The hero, described with sympathy by the author, carries the fanaticism of all converts, he embodies that type of too chaste, too clean people who dream of transforming the world at any cost in the name of their beliefs.
The abbe Lantaigne, rector of the theological seminary in the city of ***, wrote a letter to the monsignor cardinal-archbishop, in which he bitterly complained about the abbe Guitrel, a teacher of spiritual eloquence. Through the aforementioned Guitrel, disgracing good name The clergyman, Madame Worms-Clavelin, the wife of the prefect, acquired the vestments that had been kept for three hundred years in the sacristy of the church of Luzan, and put them on the upholstery of furniture, from which it is clear that the teacher of eloquence is not distinguished by either the strictness of morals or the firmness of convictions. In the meantime, Abbé Lantenu learned that this unworthy pastor was going to lay claim to the episcopal rank and the see of Tourcoing, which was empty at that moment. Needless to say, the rector of the seminary - an ascetic, ascetic, theologian and the best preacher of the diocese - would not refuse to take on his shoulders the burden of heavy episcopal duties. Moreover, it is difficult to find a more worthy candidate, because if the Abbé Lantin is capable of harming his neighbor, then only to increase the glory of the Lord.
The abbe Guitrel did indeed constantly see the prefect of Worms-Clavelin and his wife, whose main sin was that they were Jews and Freemasons. Friendly relations with a representative of the clergy flattered the Jewish official. The abbot, with all his humility, was on his mind and knew the price of his deference. She was not so great - the episcopal dignity.
There was a party in the city that openly called the Abbé Lantena a shepherd worthy of occupying the empty pulpit of Tourcoing. Since the city of *** had the honor of giving Tourcoing a bishop, the faithful were willing to part with the rector for the benefit of the diocese and the Christian homeland. The problem was only the stubborn General Cartier de Chalmot, who did not want to write to the minister of cults with whom he was in good relations, and put in a good word for the applicant. The general agreed that Abbé Lantaigne was an excellent shepherd and, had he been a military man, he would have made an excellent soldier, but the old warrior had never asked anything from the government and was not going to ask now. So the poor abbot, deprived, like all fanatics, of the ability to live, had no choice but to indulge in pious reflections and pour out bile and vinegar in conversations with M. Bergeret, a teacher in the philological faculty. They understood each other very well, for although M. Bergeret did not believe in God, he was an intelligent man and disappointed in life. Having been deceived in his ambitious hopes, having tied the knot with a real vixen, failing to become pleasant to his fellow citizens, he found pleasure in the fact that little by little he tried to become unpleasant to them.
The Abbé Guitrel, the obedient and respectful child of His Holiness the Pope, lost no time and unobtrusively brought to the attention of the Prefect of Worms-Clavelin that his rival Abbé Lantaigne was disrespectful not only to his spiritual superiors, but even to the Prefect himself, whom he could not forgive neither belonging to Freemasons, nor Jewish origin. Of course, he repented of what he had done, which, however, did not prevent him from considering the following wise moves and promising himself that, as soon as he acquired the title of prince of the church, he would become irreconcilable with secular power, freemasons, the principles of free thought, republic and revolution. - The struggle around the Tourcoing pulpit was serious. Eighteen applicants sought episcopal vestments; the president and the papal nuncio had their own candidates, the bishop of the city *** had his own. Abbé Lantenu managed to enlist the support of General Cartier de Chalmo, who is highly respected in Paris. So Abbé Guitrel, with only the Jewish prefect behind him, fell behind in this race.
Willow Mannequin
M. Bergeret was not happy. He didn't have any honorary titles and was unpopular in the city. Of course, as a true scientist, our philologist despised honors, but still he felt that it was much more beautiful to despise them when you have them. Mr. Bergeret dreamed of living in Paris, meeting the metropolitan scientific elite, arguing with them, being published in the same journals and surpassing everyone, for he realized that he was smart. But he was unrecognized, poor, his life was poisoned by his wife, who believed that her husband was a brain and a nonentity, whose presence next to her she was forced to endure. Bergeret studied the Aeneid, but never visited Italy, devoted his life to philology, but had no money for books, and shared his office, already small and uncomfortable, with his wife's willow mannequin, on which she tried on skirts of her own work.
Dejected by the ugliness of his life, M. Bergeret indulged in sweet dreams of a villa on the shores of a blue lake, of a white terrace where one could immerse himself in serene conversation with selected colleagues and students, among myrtles flowing with a divine aroma. But on the first day of the new year, fate dealt a crushing blow to the modest Latinist. Returning home, he found his wife with his favorite student, Mr. Ru. The unambiguity of their posture meant that M. Bergeret grew horns. At the first moment, the newly minted cuckold felt that he was ready to kill the wicked adulterers at the scene of the crime. But considerations of a religious and moral order supplanted instinctive bloodthirstiness, and disgust filled the flames of his anger with a powerful wave. M. Bergeret silently left the room. From that moment on, Madame Bergeret was plunged into the abyss of hell that opened up under the roof of her house. A deceived husband does not kill herds unfaithful spouse. He just shut up. He deprived Madame Bergeret of the pleasure of seeing her faithful rage, demand explanations, and emanate bile... for the husband excluded the fallen spouse from his outward and inner world. Just abolished. Silent evidence of the coup that had taken place was the new maid who was brought into the house by Mr. Bergeret: a village cowgirl who knew how to cook only stew with bacon, understood only the common dialect, drank vodka and even alcohol. The new maid entered the house like death. The unfortunate Madame Bergeret could not bear silence and solitude. The apartment seemed to her a crypt, and she fled from it to the salons of city gossips, where she sighed heavily and complained about her tyrant husband. In the end, the local society established itself in the opinion that Madame Bergeret was a poor thing, and her husband was a despot and a debauchee who kept his family starving for the sake of satisfying his dubious whims. But at home, deathly silence, a cold bed and an idiot servant waited for her ...
And Madame Bergeret could not stand it: she bowed her proud head of the representative of the glorious Pouilly family and went to her husband to make peace. But M. Bergeret was silent. Then, driven to despair, Madame Bergeret announced that she was taking with her youngest daughter and leaves home. Hearing these words, M. Bergeret realized that by his wise calculation and perseverance he had achieved the desired freedom. He didn't answer, just tilted his head in agreement.
Amethyst ring
Madame Bergeret, as she said, did exactly that - she left the family hearth. And she would have left a good memory in the city, if on the eve of her departure she had not compromised herself with a rash act. Arriving on a farewell visit to Madame Lacarelle, she found herself alone in the living room with the owner of the house, who enjoyed the fame of a merry fellow, warriors and an inveterate kisser in the city. To maintain his reputation at the proper level, he kissed all the women, girls and girls he met, but he did it innocently, because he was a moral person. That is how M. Lacarelle kissed Mme. Rergere, who took the kiss for a declaration of love and passionately answered it. Just at that moment Madame Lacarelle entered the drawing-room.
M. Bergeret did not know sadness, for he was finally free. He was absorbed by the device new apartment to your liking. The terrifying cowgirl maid was paid, and the virtuous Madame Bornish took her place. It was she who brought to the house of the Latinist a creature that became him best friend. One morning, Mrs. Bornish laid a puppy of indeterminate breed at the feet of her master. While M. Bergeret climbed onto a chair to get a book from the top shelf, the dog settled comfortably in the chair. M. Bergeret fell from his rickety chair, and the dog, despising the peace and comfort of the chair, rushed to save him from terrible danger and, as a consolation, lick his nose. So the Latinist acquired a true friend. To crown it all, M. Bergeret received the coveted position of ordinary professor. Joy was overshadowed only by the cries of the crowd under his windows, which, knowing that the professor of Roman law sympathized with a Jew convicted by a military tribunal, demanded the blood of a venerable Latinist. But he was soon freed from provincial ignorance and fanaticism, for he received a course not just anywhere, but at the Sorbonne.
While the events described above were developing in the Bergeret family, Abbé Guitrel did not waste time. He took a lively part in the fate of the Belfi chapel Mother of God, which, according to the abbe, was miraculous, and won the respect and favor of the Duke and Duchess de Brece. Thus, a seminary teacher became necessary for Ernst Bonmont, son of the Baroness de Bonmont, who with all his heart aspired to be accepted into the house of de Brece, but his Jewish origin prevented this. The persistent young man made a deal with the cunning abbot: a bishopric in exchange for the de Brece family.
So the clever abbot Guitrel became Monsignor Guitrel, Bishop of Tourcoing. But the most striking thing is that he kept his word, given to himself at the very beginning of the struggle for episcopal vestments, and blessed the congregations of his diocese to resist the authorities, who refused to pay the exorbitant taxes imposed on them by the government.
Mister Bergeret in Paris
M. Bergeret settled in Paris with his sister Zoe and daughter Pauline. He received a chair at the Sorbonne, his article in defense of Dreyfus was published in Le Figaro, among the honest people of his quarter he earned the glory of a man who broke away from his brethren and did not follow the defenders of the saber and sprinkler. M. Bergeret hated falsifiers, which, it seemed to him, is permissible for a philologist. For this innocent weakness, the newspaper of the Rights immediately declared him a German Jew and an enemy of the fatherland. M. Bergeret took this insult philosophically, for he knew that these miserable people had no future. With all his being, this modest and fair man longed for change. He dreamed of a new society in which everyone would receive the full price for their work. But, like a true sage, Mr. Bergeret understood that he would not be able to see the kingdom of the future, since all changes in the social system, as in the structure of nature, occur slowly and almost imperceptibly. Therefore, a person must work on creating the future the way carpet weavers work on tapestries - without looking. And his only tool is the word and thought, unarmed and naked.
Anatole France
The gods are thirsty
Évariste Gamelin, artist, student of David, member of the New Bridge section, formerly of Henry IV's section, went early in the morning to the former Barnavite church, which for three years, from May 21, 1790, served as the general meeting place of the section. This church was located in a cramped, gloomy square, near the lattice of the Court. On the facade, composed of two classical orders, decorated with overturned consoles and artillery rockets, damaged by time, injured by people, the religious emblems were knocked down, and in their place, above the main entrance, the republican motto was displayed in black letters: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death." Évariste Gamelin stepped inside: the vaults that had once listened to the services of the surplice-clad clergymen of the congregation of St. Paul now watched the red-capped patriots who gathered here to elect municipal officials and to discuss the affairs of the section. The saints were pulled out of their niches and replaced with busts of Brutus, Jean-Jacques and Le Pelletier. On the ruined altar stood a plaque with the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Here, twice a week, from five to eleven in the evening, public meetings took place. The pulpit, decorated with national flags, served as a tribune for the speakers. Opposite it, on the right, a scaffold was built of unhewn planks for the women and children who came in fairly large numbers to these meetings. This morning, at a table at the very foot of the pulpit, in a red cap and pocketbook, sat a carpenter from Thionville Square, Citizen Dupont Sr., one of the twelve members of the Supervisory Committee. On the table stood a bottle, glasses, an inkwell, and a notebook with the text of a petition offering the Convention the removal of twenty-two unworthy members from its bosom.
Évariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.
I was sure, - said the committeeman, - that you would add your signature, Citizen Gamelin. You are a true patriot. But there is little ardor in the section; she lacks courage. I suggested to the Oversight Committee not to issue certificates of civil integrity to those who do not sign the petitions.
I am ready with my own blood to sign the verdict on the federalist traitors,” said Gamelin. - They wanted the death of Marat: let them die themselves.
Indifference - that's what ruins us, - answered Dupont Sr. “In a section with nine hundred full members, there will not be fifty attending meetings. Yesterday there were twenty-eight of us.
Well, - observed Gamelin, - it is necessary under the threat of a fine to oblige citizens to come to meetings.
Well, no, - objected the carpenter, knitting his brows, - if everyone comes, then the patriots will be in the minority ... Citizen Gamelin, would you like to drink a glass of wine for the health of the glorious sans-culottes? ..
On the church wall, to the left of the altar, next to the inscriptions “Civil Committee”, “Supervisory Committee”, “Charity Committee”, there was a black hand with an outstretched index finger pointing towards the corridor connecting the church with the monastery. A little further, above the entrance to the former sacristy, an inscription was displayed: "The Military Committee." Entering through this door, Gamelin saw the secretary of the committee at a large table littered with books, papers, steel blanks, cartridges and samples of saltpeter rocks.
Hello Citizen Truber. How are you doing?
I'm great.
The secretary of the Military Committee, Fortune Truber, invariably responded in this way to all who inquired about his health, and did so not so much to satisfy their curiosity as from a desire to stop further talk on the subject. He was only twenty-eight years old, but he was already beginning to go bald and hunched over; his skin was dry, and his cheeks were flushed with fever. The owner of an optical workshop on Jewelers' Embankment, he sold his old firm in the ninety-first year to one of the old clerks in order to devote himself entirely to public duties. From his mother, a lovely woman who died at the age of twenty and whom the local old-timers remembered with affection, he inherited beautiful eyes, dreamy and languid, pallor and shyness. His father, a learned optician, court purveyor, who died before the age of thirty from the same disease, he resembled with diligence and a precise mind.
And you, citizen, how are you? he asked, continuing to write.
Wonderful. What's new?
Absolutely nothing. As you can see, everything is calm here.
What is the position?
The situation is still unchanged. The situation was terrible. The best army of the republic was blockaded in Mainz; Valenciennes - besieged, Fontenay - captured by the Vendeans, Lyon revolted, Cévennes - too, the Spanish border was exposed; two-thirds of the departments were in revolt or in the hands of the enemy; Paris - without money, without bread, under the threat of Austrian guns.
Fortune Truber continued to write calmly. By decree of the Commune, the sections were asked to recruit twelve thousand men to be sent to the Vendée, and he was busy drawing up instructions on the recruitment and supply of arms for the soldiers that the New Bridge section, the former section of Henry IV, was obliged to field from itself. All military-style guns were to be handed over to the newly formed detachments. The National Guard kept only hunting rifles and pikes.
I have brought you, said Gamelin, a list of bells to be sent to Luxembourg to be made into cannons.
Evariste Gamelin, for all his poverty, was a full member of the section: according to the law, only a citizen who paid a tax in the amount of three days' earnings could be an elector; for passive suffrage, however, the qualification was raised to the sum of ten days' wages. However, the section of the New Bridge, carried away by the idea of equality and zealously guarding its autonomy, granted both an active and a passive right to any citizen who acquired at his own expense the full uniform of the national guard. This was the case with Gamelin, who was a full member of the section and a member of the Military Committee.
Fortune Trubert laid aside his pen.
Citizen Evariste, go to the Convention and ask for instructions for surveying the soil in the cellars, leaching the earth and stones in them, and extracting saltpeter. Guns are not everything: we also need gunpowder.
The little hunchback, with a pen behind his ear and papers in his hand, entered the former sacristy. It was Citizen Beauvisage, a member of the Supervisory Committee.
Citizens, he said, we have received bad news: Custine has withdrawn troops from Landau.
Custine is a traitor! exclaimed Gamelin.
He will be guillotined,” Beauvisage said. Trubert said in a broken voice with his usual calmness:
It was not for nothing that the Convention established the Committee of Public Safety. They are investigating the question of the behavior of Kyustin. Regardless of whether Custine is a traitor or simply an incapable person, a commander who is determined to win will be appointed in his place, and Sa ira!1.
After sorting through several papers, he glided over them with a weary gaze.
In order for our soldiers to do their duty without embarrassment or hesitation, they need to know that the fate of those whom they left at home is assured. If you, citizen Gamelin, agree with this, then at the next meeting demand with me that the Charity Committee, together with the Military Committee, establish the issuance of benefits to poor families whose relatives are in the army.
He smiled and began to sing:
Sa ira! Caira!
Sitting twelve, fourteen hours a day at his unpainted desk, guarding his country in danger, the modest secretary of the section committee did not notice the discrepancy between the enormity of the task and the insignificance of the means at his disposal - he felt so united in a single impulse with all the patriots, to such an extent he was an inseparable part of the nation, to such an extent his life was dissolved in the life of a great people. He was one of those patient enthusiasts who, after each defeat, prepared for an unthinkable and at the same time inevitable triumph. After all, they had to win at all costs. This erratic folly that destroyed royalty, overturned the old world, this insignificant optician Trubert, this obscure artist Evariste Gamelin did not expect mercy from enemies. Victory or death - there was no other choice for them. Hence - and their ardor and peace of mind.
Leaving the church of the Barnavites, Evariste Gamelin went to the Place Dauphine, renamed Thionville in honor of the city that steadfastly withstood the siege.
Located in one of the most crowded quarters of Paris, this square has lost its good looks: mansions, all as one, of red brick with supports of white stone, built on three sides of it in the reign of Henry IV for prominent magistrates, now either replaced noble slate roofs with miserable stucco superstructures two or three stories high, or were torn down until foundations, ingloriously giving way to houses with irregular, poorly whitewashed facades, wretched, dirty, cut through by many narrow windows of different sizes, in which flower pots, bird cages and drying laundry were full of. The houses were densely populated with craftsmen: goldsmiths, chasers, watchmakers, opticians, printers, seamstresses, milliners, laundresses, and a few old solicitors, spared by the squall that carried away the representatives of royal justice.
First published in the book: Anatole France, Poln. coll. cit., vol. XIII. The gods are thirsty, translated from French by B. Livshits, Goslitizdat, M.–L. 1931.
Published according to the text of the first publication.
The novel The Gods Are Thirsty occupies one of the first places in the brilliant series of works by Anatole France. This is the most tragic romance issued from his pen. Anatole Francis was largely alien to tragedy. This does not mean that he sought to avoid difficult phenomena, serious and even cruel questions - in the worldview of Anatole France there is a very great place occupies a rather thick shadow of pessimism.
In general, the world and life seemed to Anatole France to be adorned with countless beauties that are pleasant to layer on. At the same time, enjoying them, through the cult of the ability to perceive and through artistic processing elements environment, can be brought to an extraordinary subtlety, to an intoxicating and refined power that can make life happy, or at least enrich it with frequent and long moments of high, varied and bright pleasure. But all this is embroidered as if with a pattern of semi-precious stones on a black background. The main black top, the transience of everything that exists, a terrible turmoil, all kinds of beats and dissonances social life and even the life of nature, the existence of a whole arsenal of torture in the form of physical and moral suffering, inevitable old age, frightening death - all this was not only acutely and painfully felt by Anatole France, but was also recognized by him as the fundamental principle of a strange and flying fairy tale, which is called reality, life.
In this sense, Anatole France can be called a tragic thinker and artist. He reconciles himself with life only by appreciating and trying as high as possible to raise each separate moment pleasures (in which the enjoyment of knowledge occupies a very large place) and often turning our eyes into the distance, into the future, to the flickering light of hope for the victory of the human mind and the well-being emanating from man over the chaos of that piece of the universe where we live. But these are precisely the hopes of Anatole France for the future, and not absolute certainty in it; often these hopes were replaced by almost complete hopelessness. One has only to recall such works of his as "On the White Stone" and the end of "Penguin Island".
And yet, despite the fact that, in his very essence, at the root of his worldview, Anatole France is tragic, in general, he has few tragic works. The very aspiration of Anatole France as a writer, the passion that pushed him to take up the pen, consisted precisely in the fact that with wonderful multi-colored patterns woven from thoughts, feelings and fantasies, to console himself and his readers in the existence of this black background.
To great passions, to great ideals that seize people with the force of fanaticism, to great suffering, Anatole France approaches in order to throw over them a thin golden net of his smiles, his doubts, his conciliatory words - in a word, his aesthetic, a little sad, but at the same time clearly smiling wisdom.
In the novel The Gods Thirst, Anatole France approached such an amazing, contradictory, glorious and terrible era as the terror during the French Revolution.
His main task was to give an objective artistic coverage of this grandiose and painful episode in the history of mankind.
Anatole France had a lot of data to carry out this exceptionally significant task.
First of all, he could not fall into the easy and despicable genre of desecration of the bloody days of the apogee of the French Revolution. He could not even slip into that tone of philistine horror before the crimson glow of terror, which, for example, destroys famous novel Dickens "Two Cities". Anatole France was packed highest respect to revolution and revolutionaries. From the time of his friendship with Jaurès, especially since the Dreyfus affair, Anatole France became a sincere friend of socialism, and not only as an order of life, but precisely as a revolutionary idea, he began to be very inclined to the idea that without an uprising, without violence from the masses the rotten and dirty bourgeois world, in which Anatole France became more and more disillusioned, cannot be healed.
If Anatole France in the most last days of his life, being a weak old man, preoccupied with his past and future end, and departed, at least practically, from revolutionary ideas, then we must not for a minute forget that glorious time when, at the end of the war and immediately after it, Anatole France expressed his ardent sympathy for the Russian revolution, for communism, and even declared his readiness to join the communist party.
Sympathy for the great revolutionary ideas, Frans had an understanding of the burning and straightforward enthusiasm inherent in the leaders of the revolution. He also had that vigilance of the eye, which, even in the absence of a Marxist school, often allowed him, as a historian, to rise to an amazing depth and correctness of the analysis of events. And even more than on these properties, Anatole France probably internally relied, when he took on the indicated task, on his skepticism, on his irony, on his scientific and atheistic wisdom.
The French Revolution for Anatole France was the expression of a certain faith. In addition to the fact that it grew out of certain spontaneous historical conditions, as a consciousness, as an ideology, it was precisely faith, even "faith in the gods." The French Revolution for the central detachments proceeded under quite definite slogans, which purely metaphysically divided the world into good and evil. Due to this strong religiosity, which is quite close in essence to the religiosity of the English Puritans, the revolutionaries of the Jacobin persuasion received an extra fanatical hardening. But, of course, before the gaze of an objective thinker, and even one like Anatole France, that is, infected with a special hostility to any religion and metaphysics, this "faith" could not fail to appear in all its groundlessness, in all its illusory nature. Anatole France was not afraid to fall into the network of the ideology of the French Revolution, precisely because he perfectly saw the illusory nature of its ideals. We emphasize once again: this does not mean at all that Anatole France considered the ideals of a more perfect social order. The reader must be warned against any transfer whatsoever of the facts depicted by Anatole France in his novel, and the judgments that he expresses about them, for example, to our revolution.
If in some places external parallels between the events of the first years after October and the paintings Parisian life, picturesquely depicted by Anatole France, these parallels are still very superficial. Indeed, between the petty-bourgeois French Revolution, tragically condemned to death due to internal contradictions, and our revolution, which is the undoubted transition to the last and victorious revolution of the world proletariat, lies a whole abyss.
But there is no doubt that some of the features that bring the revolutionary XVIII century with us, evoked on the part of Anatole France a sad smile of understanding, which, however, was not without irony. "The Gods are thirsty" - he called his novel. Title in the highest degree good, meaningful. There is no doubt that by "gods" Anatole France here means the great, impersonal elements of history, those huge, primarily economic, layers and currents, which then take the form of philosophical doctrines, parties, groups, etc., life and interaction which is the main fabric of history.
Anatole France - just like we revolutionaries - knows perfectly well that the life of the individual, her convictions, all her actions are dictated by her era. The epoch is formed under the influence of these supra-personal social forces.
"But an epoch is not like an epoch. There are peaceful, boring epochs, during which life trudges "at a trot somehow", people live and live. victims - eras that not only crush their with iron steps accidentally falling under the feet of their inhabitants, but who complicated ways destroy even the most conscious of their sons and spokesmen. In these epochs, lives are broken; history seems to tear at every step the human organism and pours out the most precious of liquids - human blood - into the ruts of its path.
This phenomenon is artistically denoted by Anatole France with his expression "The gods are thirsty." “The fate of redemptive victims asks,” exclaims Nekrasov. Such epochs are always significant and leave behind a deep and important mark on human destinies. But in human consciousness they are reflected by the colossal strain of human efforts and numerous and painful sacrifices, of which the most difficult and most painful are those brought by the so-called "executioners" of such epochs.
The most tragic thing that lies in these turbulent epochs, in these revolutionary periods, is that the advanced fighters and leaders of these epochs strive to establish peace, love, order, but they stumble upon the furious resistance of conservative forces, are drawn into the struggle and often perish in it, flooding the entire battlefield with their own and other people's blood, without having time to break through the ranks of enemies to the desired goal.
The whole situation in France, all the relationships between the classes of society condemned the Jacobins to just such a fate. That is why Anatole France was able to relate objectively to the era. On the one hand, he was imbued with great respect for genuine revolutionaries, on the other hand, he was well aware of the illusory nature of their self-consciousness and the disproportionateness of their hopes and the sacrifices they made (his own and others') with the results achieved.
And that is why Anatole France's novel becomes truly tragic.
Despite the same methods, the same search for reconciliation, the highest wisdom, the understanding, so to speak, of the natural connection of events, the highest kindness, which understands everything and therefore forgives everything - this time Anatole France nevertheless rose to the most real pathos. Usually Anatole France shines with his wit, endlessly amuses with the variety of his colors and drawings, touches with his gentle humor, but rarely shocks. The novel "The Gods Are Thirsty" is one of the most amazing works French literature generally.
In the first place in the novel, of course, are the figures of the most true revolutionaries: Trubert, pure, devoted, businesslike to holiness (we see a lot of such Trubers around us now) and masterfully outlined in the background, with a few strokes, the grandiose figures of Marat and Robespierre.
The fact that Anatole France sends Robespierre a reproach for his excessive adherence to the word, to parliamentarism, to a legal act, a reproach for the lack of a real grasp of an active leader, a military man, which a revolutionary leader must necessarily be, does not detract from the greatness of the silhouettes created by the author.
Finally, central figure- Gamelin. Gamelin is narrow. He sometimes seems to the reader (and probably the author) somewhat callous in the one-sidedness of his psychology. But what a monumental unity, what a burning bitterness, what a wealth of truly lofty feelings, what disinterestedness, what touching beauty and tenderness in love for a woman, what an unforgettable pathos, pure as a diamond, in the famous scene of Hamelin with a child!
And let it not be said that Gamelin's behavior towards Maubel is a stain on him. True, Anatole Fraquet probably wanted to show by this that even the most just among the just, becoming a judge (a figure generally hated by France), not only naturally submits, according to Anatole France, to the disgusting practice of judging, but also: he can easily, almost himself unknowingly use his judicial power for personal gain. But still, Anatole France does not at all want to stigmatize Gamelin with this, for Gamelin, sending Maubel to the scaffold and driven in this case by his mistake regarding the role of seducer, which Maubel supposedly played in relation to Elodie, acts like a knight of the revolution and is sincerely convinced that in this (imaginary) act of Mobel, the hated aristocracy, "monarchic depravity" affected.
The horror into which Gamelin comes in relation to his own exploits, to his terrorist acts, only the most vulgar layman can understand as "remorse" or something like that. Anatole France achieves real genius when he makes Gamelin, on the way to the guillotine, repent not that he shed blood, that he was an executioner, but that he shed not enough, that he was too weak. This completes the amazing heroic image of Gamelin.
The attentive reader will notice that Gamelin, by the way, suffers from the thought of condemnation or some kind of disgust that he can inspire in the future to those very descendants for whose happiness he lived and fought. Moreover, he not only suffers, he comes to terms with it in advance. Best for yourself historical monument he considers complete oblivion. But again, it would be completely stupid to see in this condemnation by Gamelin of himself the recognition of the deed he had done superfluous. Not at all. Gamelin only has an understanding of the gigantic distance that stretches between his goal - the world of complete humanity - and the means that lead to this goal, that is, terror. Terror is the only tool that can break the gates to the coming paradise. Gamelin thinks so. But when humanity, pure and beautiful, enters this paradise, it must even forget about that bloody dagger with which the lock was broken.
Different people will relate differently to the magnificent figure sculpted by Anatole France. We revolutionaries regard it, with all the consciousness of its narrowness and one-sidedness, with infinite love, with fraternal respect, and we cannot but feel gratitude to Anatole France, not only for the fact that in such a truly monumental style he created such an exceptional figure, but also for the fact that he was able to treat her with complete truthfulness with deep respect.
The revolution at that moment was heavily tarnished by unpleasant elements. Anatole France presented them in sufficient abundance. The most interesting thing here is the group surrounding Madame Rochemore. With a few strokes, a vile company is outlined, from the speculator Batz to Henri Exagere, who was even able to put Gamelin as a judge. It is well conceived that Gamelin then turns out to be the sword that destroys all this warm company.
On the other hand, Anatole France dwells with special love on the passive counter-revolutionaries - on Brotto and his retinue, Father Longmare and the charming Athenais.
Brotteau is the central figure of the novel as much as Gamelin. This is an absolutely free-thinking man, an atheist, a man who wholeheartedly is ready to welcome justice, if it were possible, a man of exceptional objectivity and amazing kindness, reaching holiness, at the same time - a man of great erudition, a sadly smiling Epicurean, - a kind of mask of Anatole himself France.
Brotto stands at a great height above the events. He evaluates everything that happens from the point of view of heroic philosophy. He cannot but arouse sympathy, Anatole France described him to such an extent with charming features. And yet it leaves us revolutionaries cold.
Of course, there is a certain amount of truth in his skeptical attitude towards the fanaticism of Gamelin, who was limited by his time, and his associates. But nevertheless, Brotto also has the enormous coldness of an ahistorical figure. He is a savorer of life and a refined observer of it, who, perhaps, is kind because he finds no reason to be angry at anything in such an accidental and fugitive world as ours. There is no doubt that Anatole France, in this smiling, always sublime, strong and complacent figure, before all the blows of fate, wanted to create a person of an incomparably higher type than Gamelin. There is also no doubt that many will give the palm to Brotto. But he does not convince us. Revolutionary passions are akin to us, but Brotto seems to us a figure of little courage, some kind of historical castrato, who floats over life like a cloud, but does not change anything in it, does not hurt it in any way. But we must still do justice to Anatole France: in itself, the figure of Brotto is written with classical certainty and great culture, without which it would be impossible to start creating a character of such exceptional power of thought and such broad education. Without this power of thought and amazing culture, Brotto would have been a pathetic figure.
In the small figure of the prostitute Athenais, Anatole France gives an idea of the deep counter-revolutionary ferment that took place among the most disadvantaged part of the Parisian population, forgotten and partly even downtrodden by the Jacobins. A glimpse is given of Robespierre's teaching on the need to preserve a certain trust and friendship of the wealthy part of the population, a tactically deep teaching and by no means dropping Robespierre as a revolutionary strategist, but a teaching that shows what contradictions the policy of the Jacobins had to fight against. Athenais does not know the king, does not love the king, has every reason to hate the king, but she shouts at the top of her lungs: "Long live the king!" - just to protest against the government, from which she sees only grievances.
