At the start he had demanded justice and loudly protested hisinnocence. But he had come to realize at last that justice hadno concern with his case or that of the priests and gendarmesconfined within the same walls. He had given up all thought ofpersuading the savage frenzy of the Commune to listen to reason,and deemed it the wisest thing to hold his tongue and the bestto be forgotten. He trembled to think how easily it might endin tragedy, and his anguish seemed to choke him.
Sometimes, as he sat dreaming, he could see a tree against a patchof blue sky, and great tears would rise to his eyes.
It was there, in his prison cell, Jean learned to know the shadowyjoys of memory.
He thought of his good old father sitting at his work-bench ortightening the screw of the press; he thought of the shop packedwith bound volumes and bindings, of his little room where ofevenings he read books of travel--of all the familiar things ofhome. And every time he reviewed in spirit the poor thin romanceof his unpretending life, he felt his cheeks burn to think howit was all dominated, almost every episode controlled, by thisdrunken parasite of a Tudesco! It was true nevertheless! Paramountover his studies, his loves, his dangers, over all his existence,loomed the rubicund face of the old villain! The shame of it!
He had lived very ill! but what a meagre life it had been too.
How cruel it was, how unjust! and there was more of self-pityin the poor, sore heart than of anger.
Every day, every hour he thought of Gabrielle; but how changedthe complexion of his love for her! Now it was a tender, tranquilsentiment, a disinterested affection, a sweet, soothing reverie.
It was a vision of a wondrous delicacy, such as loneliness andunhappiness alone can form in the souls they shield from therude shocks of the common life--the dream of a holy life, a lifedim and overshadowed, vowed wholly and completely, without rewardor recompense, to the woman worshipped from afar, as that of thegood country _curé_ is vowed to the God who never steps downfrom the tabernacle of the altar.
His gaoler was a good-natured _sous-officier_ who, amazed andhorrified at what was going forward, clung to discipline as asheet-anchor in the general shipwreck. He felt a rough, uncouthpity for his prisoners, but this never interfered with the strictperformance of his duties, and Jean, who had no experience ofsoldiers' ways, never guessed the man's true character. However,he grew less and less unbending and taciturn the nearer the armyof order approached the city.
Finally, one day he had told his prisoner, with a wink of theeye:
"Courage, lad! something's going to turn up soon."The same afternoon Jean heard a distant sound of musketry; then,all in a moment, the door of his cell opened and he saw an avalancheof prisoners roll from one end of the corridor to the other. Thegaoler had unlocked all the cells and shouted the words, "Everyman for himself; run for it!" Jean himself was carried along,down stairs and passages, out into the prison courtyard, andpitched head foremost against the wall. By the time he recoveredfrom the shock of his fall, the prisoners had vanished, and hestood alone before the open wicket.
Outside in the street he heard the crackle of musketry and sawthe Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burningParis. Red uniforms appeared on the _Quai de l'école_. The_Pont-au-Change_ was thick with _fédérés_. Not knowing whereto fly, he was for going back into the prison; but a body of_Vengeurs de Lutèce_, in full flight, drove him before theirbayonets towards the _Pont-au-Change_. A woman, a _cantinière_,kept shouting: "Don't let him go, give him his gruel. He's aVersaillais." The squad halted on the _Quai-aux-Fleurs_, and Jeanwas pushed against the wall of the _H?tel-Dieu_, the _cantinière_dancing and gesticulating in front of him. Her hair flying looseunder her gold-laced _képi_, with her ample bosom and her elasticfigure poised gallantly on the strong, well-shaped limbs, she hadthe fierce beauty of some magnificent wild animal. Her littleround mouth was wide open, yelling menaces and obscenities, as shebrandished a revolver. The _Vengeurs de Lutèce_, hard-pressedand dispirited, looked stolidly at their white-faced prisoneragainst the wall, and then looked in each other's faces. Herfury redoubled; threatening them collectively, addressing eachman by some vile nickname, pacing in front of them with a boldswing of the powerful hips, the woman dominated them, intoxicatedthem with her puissant influence.
They formed up in platoon.
"Fire!" cried the _cantinière_.
Jean threw out his arms before him.
Two or three shots went off. He could hear the balls flatten againstthe wall, but he was not hit.
"Fire! fire!" The woman repeated the cry in the voice of an angry,self-willed child.
She had been through the fighting, this girl, she had drunk herfill from staved-in wine-casks and slept on the bare ground,pell-mell with the men, out in the public square reddened withthe glare of conflagration. They were killing all round her,and nobody had been killed yet _for her_. She was resolved theyshould shoot her someone, before the end! Stamping with fury,she reiterated her cry:
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"Again the guns were cocked and the barrels levelled. But the_Vengeurs de Lutèce_ had not much heart left; their leader hadvanished; they were disorganized, they were running away;sobered and stupefied, they knew the game was up. They were quitewilling all the same to shoot the bourgeois there at the wall,before bolting for covert, each to hide in his own hole.
Jean tried to say: "Don't make me suffer more than need be!" buthis voice stuck in his throat.
One of the _Vengeurs_ cast a look in the direction of the_Pont-au-Change_ and saw that the _fédérés_ were losing ground.
Shouldering his musket, he said:
"Let's clear out of the bl--y place, by God!"The men hesitated; some began to slink away.
At this the _cantinière_ shrieked:
"Bl--sted hounds! Then _I'll_ have to do his business for him!"She threw herself on Jean Servien and spat in his face; she abandonedherself to a frantic orgy of obscenity in word and gesture andclapped the muzzle of her revolver to his temple.
Then he felt all was over and waited.
A thousand things flashed in a second before his eyes; he sawthe avenues under the old trees where his aunt used to take himwalking in old days; he saw himself a little child, happy andwondering; he remembered the castles he used to build with stripsof plane-tree bark... The trigger was pulled. Jean beat the airwith his arms and fell forward face to the ground. The men finishedhim with their bayonets; then the woman danced on the corpsewith yells of joy.
The fighting was coming closer. A well-sustained fire swept the_Quai_. The woman was the last to go. Jean Servien's body laystretched in the empty roadway. His face wore a strange look ofpeacefulness; in the temple was a little hole, barely visible;blood and mire fouled the pretty hair a mother had kissed withsuch transports of fondness.