38、Grave of Andre's ...
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On the tenth day of Thermidor Year II of the Republic, at noon, the road leading from the prison to the execution grounds was tightly packed with an impassable crowd.
The people hurled fruits and filth at those inside each passing tumbrel, unleashing drastic shouts and reproaches upon them.
Most of the crowd congregated around the tumbrel carrying prominent figures, incessantly demanding to be shown the individuals corresponding to those infamous names. The gendarmes, with great amusement, pointed at the people in the tumbrels with the tips of their blades, explaining to the commoners the identities of the condemned.
These prisoners, for the most part, were already gravely injured during the struggles of their arrest, rendering them unable to stand. Some were barely clinging to life, sprawling on the ground in the middle of the tumbrel, devoid of any semblance of consciousness.
The procession of tumbrels was blocked on the Street of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, as adults and children held hands, circling around the vehicles, singing and dancing. The executioner, old Sanson, implored the crowd to show a last bit of respect and reverence for the dying. His voice was drowned amidst a deluge of cheers and curses, rising wave after wave.
Any righteous heart witnessing such a spectacle would tremble with indignation.
On the trailing tumbrel, Edith caught sight of her lover. He was so far away from her that she could not even discern his visage.
Andre was one of the few condemned among them who remained unscathed, standing tall and proud in the midst of the tumbrel. He did not flinch in the face of the terrifying curses hurled by the crowd, appearing detached from the storm raging around him.
His thick, blonde curls had been shorn before leaving the prison, now hanging loosely on either side of his pale cheeks, obscuring his face. The youth's countenance displayed neither resentment nor despair, as if he remained lost in his own contemplation, unaffected by the crowd, and did not search for her figure among them.
"Bloodsuckers! Go straight to hell!" Several voices from the crowd bellowed at the tumbrel carrying Quenet and the others.
Suddenly, a woman dressed as a bourgeoisie emerged from the crowd, disregarding anyone hindering her, and tightly grabbed onto the edge of the tumbrel, spitting towards Andre.
Her spittle landed on the torn edge of his collar as he peered down at the assailant, his face displaying a compassionate expression.
The woman, still seething with anger, continued to point at Quenet's nose and curse, "Pah! Terrorist! Give my son back to me!"
The carts came to a halt for several minutes before slowly resuming their journey towards the the place of execution.
As they passed through the next street, a bucket of foul blood was emptied from a third-floor window, drenching those below, accompanied by laughter and mocking shouts,
"Here's the blood you want, scoundrels! You must be thirsty!"
The people on the tumbrel made no attempt to evade the deluge. The two commissioners at the rear end were almost entirely soaked in blood, presenting a both comical and horrible appearance. Quenet's white shirt was only sprinkled with scattered droplets. He calmly lowered his head.
One of the members of Paris Commune, his face stern like bronze, glared angrily at the onlookers, filled with a helpless indignation at the betrayal he had endured.
Even if they were facing the most ferocious of beasts, these eyes of a brave would never avert their gaze. However, what they beheld was only disdainful expressions and wicked smiles, so a single murky teardrop rolled down his cheeks.
An assistant prosecutor from the Revolutionary Tribunal, with a blood-soaked bandage suspending his injured arm, clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms, and his jaw trembled uncontrollably.
When his friend lying beneath him struggled to open one swollen and bruised eye, and lifted a hand to reach for his, he finally let out a sigh:
"This is the people we fought for!"
His lips curled into a few forced smirks, attempting to display an indifferent sneer, but his voice wavered, then he bit down hard on his lips, desperately suppressing the sobbing that threatened to escape.
It wasn't until the tumbrels arrived at the Place of the Revolution that Andre seemed to return to reality. Before descending from the tumbrel, the few who were still able to move exchanged brief farewells.
No one came to embrace or kiss Andre. He got off alone, facing away from the guillotine, standing in front of the tumbrel with a religious martyr's expression upon his face.
Edith tried to take a few steps closer to her beloved, but the vast sea of people prevented her from getting near.
Andre was the second to last on this tumbrel. He was uninjured, not in need of support, yet the two gendarmes roughly forced him up the steps, almost lifting him. Until the very last moment, he never turned his head to look at her.
Every time the guillotine blade fell, the dense crowd below erupted into thunderous cheers. Just last year, they had celebrated the king's death in the same place with the same jubilation. For most people, there was no distinction between the two events.
When it was Quenet's turn, the executioner also lifted his head out of the basket by a strand of his golden hair, as he did with some big shots, and held it aloft as he paraded it along the edge of the platform, displaying it to the ecstatic audience.
Edith stood amidst the crowded masses below the platform, wailing, yet unable to hear her own voice at all. Was her throat hoarse, or was it drowned out by the deafening cheers of the crowd? Why were they constantly jostling her, tossing cheerful children high in the air, and showering her head with ribbons and flowers from the baskets above?
She felt a wet stickiness beneath her feet and looked down to see a crimson-black stream of blood weaving its way through the layers of people, slowly spreading beneath her, branching out to the sides, and continuing its flow towards a lower ground in the distance.①
"Everything is all over! Everything I have ever loved, ever believed!" the girl silently cried out in her heart, as her overwhelming despair brought her a strange calmness.
After what felt like an eternity, Edith slowly emerged from her numbness and found the crowd dispersing. She followed the cart as it departed from the guillotine, walking unsteadily towards the direction of the cemetery.
A few militiamen were removing the bodies from the cart, sprinkling quicklime over the heads, covering and scorching their faces.
"What are you doing lingering around here, Mademoiselle?" one of them asked, alertly eyeing Edith.
"What have you done to him?" she asked dazedly.
The militiaman shrugged impatiently. "We're just following the committee's orders."
Edith lowered her gaze to the corpses strewn about in disarray. Her mind was foggy, and it took a while for her to realise their intention - to obliterate the appearance of these executed, preventing their advocates from recognising their remains.
"There's nothing left! Even his head was not left for me!" she murmured expressionlessly to herself.
She wandered home like a ghost, searching everywhere for anything related to Andre. Yet all she found was a small notebook left behind by him in the study of the Percys.
This notebook, with its cover of red leather, was always kept in his jacket pocket, serving as a vessel for recording impromptu messages and musings. His splendid youth was so fleeting, just as the fate of this republic of liberty, that this thin notebook was not yet filled with words on every page.
The front page was inscribed with a few neatly written words: Love, Compassion, Liberty.
Most of the inner pages contained notes on military and political affairs, interspersed with occasional jottings on the conception of the system of republic. The penmanship was particularly earnest, with some entries capturing discussions and dreams they had shared, while others he had never mentioned to her.
"Those who beat women, children, and the elderly should be forever deprived of their liberty."
"The oath of peace must be promptly fulfilled. Public morality must be swiftly restored."
"Degradation due to hunger is not a guilt. It is the law that is guilty of them. The republic must close the brothels."
"All children should receive proper education. The responsibility of education should rest with the state. It is necessary to teach children to love liberty and abhor oppression."
...
The final pages remained blank, but at the very end was a small line of pencil writing, already smudged and faded, indicating that it had been written a long time ago. Each letter was bold and alive, revealing the profound happiness and fervor of the writer: "Liberty is the right to love and to be loved."
On the final page, Andre carefully transcribed the last stanza of the poem, Ode to Lady Liberty, which he dedicated to her in the beginning. Judging from the handwriting, it was written around the same time as the line at the end.
In the past, whenever she complained about his overwhelming busyness, he would smile and repeat the famous saying, "A revolutionary only finds rest in his grave." In this verselet, he also joyfully mentioned his desire to carve her lovely name on his tombstone.
As if an ominous omen, he ultimately had neither a grave, nor a tombstone.
Edith slumped onto the icy ground, her heart as lifeless as ashes. She rested her head against the sofa behind her, her gaze vacant as she stared at the wall. She had no strength left, no thoughts remaining.
Since her son's death, Aunt Adele had lost consciousness. Margot sat desolate by the closed curtains, her face washed with tears.
They no longer felt hunger or fatigue, nor did they perceive the passage of day and night. It wasn't until the evening of 11th Thermidor that several policemen sent by the Committee of General Security rudely dragged them away.
Andre was mistaken. Driven by his good will to protect them, he had distanced himself from the Percys, but he underestimated the heartlessness of the Thermidorists.
The three women of the Percys, labeled as "accomplices of conspirators Quenet and Philippe Percy", were thrown together into prison.
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第38章 Grave of Andre's
