THE BOON OF DEATH BESTOWED
By Anatole France
TO ALBERT TOURNIER
When he had for a long while tramped through the deserted streets, André at last went and sat down on the bank of the Seine and watched the water lapping the base of the hill where, in the vanished days of joy and hope, Lucie, his dear mistress, had her home.
For long enough he had not felt so restful.
At eight o’clock he took a bath. Then he strolled into a restaurant in the Palais Royal, and glanced through the newspapers whilst his meal was preparing. In the Courier of Equality he read the list of the condemned prisoners who had been executed on the Place de la Révolution on the 24th of Floréal.
He ate his breakfast heartily. Then he rose, looked in a glass to make sure that he was presentably dressed, and that his colour was not likely to betray him, and set out at an easy pace to the other side of the river towards the low house at the corner of the Rue de Seine and the Rue Mazarine. Here were the quarters of Citizen Lardillon, deputy public prosecutor at the revolutionary tribunal, a man well disposed towards André, who had known him first as a capuchin at Angers, and later as a sans-culotte in Paris.
He rang, and after an interval of some few minutes, a figure appeared behind a grating commanding the entrance, and Citizen Lardillon, having prudently satisfied himself as to the appearance and name of his visitor, at length threw open the door. His face was broad, his colour high, his eyes glittering, his lips moist, and his ears red. He looked a jovial but worried man. He led André into his ante-chamber.
There, on a small round table, a meal for two was set out. There was a chicken, a pie, a ham, a terrine of foie-gras and various cold meats in aspic. On the floor six bottles were cooling in a pail. A pineapple, cheese of various kinds, and preserved fruits occupied the mantelpiece, and flasks of liqueurs were deposited on a desk littered with papers.
Through the half-open door of the adjoining room a large bed was visible, not yet made.
“Citizen Lardillon,” began André, “I have come to beg a favour of you.”
“I am quite ready to grant it, citizen, provided it involves no risk to the security of the Republic.”
André smilingly replied—
“The service I ask you to do me is not in the least compromising to the safety of either the Republic or yourself.”
At a sign from Lardillon, André sat down. “Citizen deputy,” he said, “you are aware that for the last two years I have been conspiring against your friends, and that I am the author of the pamphlet entitled, The Altars of Fear. You will not be doing me a favour in having me arrested. You will only be doing your duty. Moreover, that is not the service I ask at your hands. But listen: my mistress, to whom I am devoted, is in prison.”
Lardillon nodded his head to indicate that he approved of the devotion André confessed to.
“I am sure that you are not unfeeling, Citizen Lardillon. I beg you to procure my reunion with the woman I love, and to have me conveyed to Port Libre as speedily as may be.”
“Come, come,” said Lardillon, and a smile played upon his lips, which were both delicate and firm, “it is a greater boon than life that you demand of me. You require me to bestow happiness on you, citizen!”
He stretched out the arm nearest to the bedroom, and called—
“Epicharis! Epicharis!”
A big, dark woman entered, her arms and throat still bare, for she had only got as far with her toilette as a chemise and petticoat, though a cockade was fastened in her hair.
“Nymph of mine,” said Lardillon as he drew her on to his knees, “look upon the face of this citizen, and never forget it! Like us, Epicharis, he is tender-hearted; like us, he realizes that the greatest of ills is to be separated from the beloved one. He wishes to go to prison—ay, to the guillotine—with his mistress, Epicharis. Can I withhold this boon from him?”
“No!” answered the girl, as she tapped the cheeks of the carmagnole-clad monk.
“You are right, my goddess. We shall be earning the gratitude of two devoted lovers. Citizen Germain, give me your address, and this very night you shall sleep in the Bourbe.”
“That is agreed?” said André.
“That is agreed,” replied Lardillon as he offered him his hand. “Go and find your fair friend, and tell her how you saw Epicharis in Lardillon’s embrace. I trust that that recollection may stir your hearts to joyous measures.”
André replied that possibly they would be able to call up even more affecting memories, but that he was none the less grateful to Lardillon, and that he only regretted that it was not likely to be in his power to be of service to him in return.
“A humane action needs no recompense,” replied Lardillon.
Then he rose, and clasping Epicharis to his heart, said—
“Who knows when our own turn may come?”
Omnes eodem cogimur: omnium
Versatur urna; serius ocius
Sors exitura, et nos in æternum
Exilium impositura cymbæ.
“In the meanwhile, let us drink! Citizen, will you join us at table?”
Epicharis said it would only be polite of him, and made to seize him by the arm. But he tore himself away, relying on the promise the deputy public prosecutor had made.
22.
We all must tread the paths of Fate,
And ever shakes the mortal Urn,
Whose Lot embarks us, soon or late,
On Charon’s Boat, ah! never to return.
FRANCIS’S Horace.