ANTOINE PERSEGOL
On June 9, 1793, under the rule of the one and indivisible republic, the Montagnards have swept away the Girondists, the Commune rules, Robespierre rules, compassionate zeal toward the unfortunate rules, and Antoine Persegol is walking on the Causse de Sauveterre. He is walking in the company of twenty-one lads from La Malène and some others, from Saint-Chély and Laval — forty-seven in all. They have weapons and they are drunk: they were plied with drink down in La Malène to incite them to join the troops of the True Friends of the Monarchy, the army led by Charrier who was député for Mende and is now a Chouan. It wasn’t difficult to persuade them: they are peasants or carders, weavers paid by the piece; poverty is their lot; and the great upheavals, the foreign wars, and the Law of the Maximum have made their poverty twice as bad. Down in the town an hour ago in front of the pitchers of wine, it was child’s play to get them to blame the republic for the grim poverty that only recently they blamed on the king.
Antoine Persegol is walking over the Causse de Sauveterre with his scythe on his shoulder fashioned into a pike, the tip of the blade in the longer part of the handle. Others have bayonets. They all have the white cockade. The open air has sobered him up a little, and he is very uneasy: he is secretly fond of the republic. He thinks about the republic the way he thinks about his mother, who has stayed behind down in La Malène and wept when he left: something old and frail yet constantly fresh, that always needs him. He thinks that the republic has occasionally asked his opinion, like his mother when she is preparing dinner and asks him whether he would prefer broad beans or lentils. He thinks that the republic regards him exactly the same way it regards Baptiste Flourou, even though he is the lowliest of the carders and Baptiste Flourou owns twenty carders, all the wool that they card, and the mills where they card it: the republic regards both of them the way his mother regards him and his brother André, who has been an imbecile since birth.
The wine is wickeder. It is absolute like the king. Wine made him take the white cockade and put his scythe together back to front.
They reach La Capelle. They enter the village. From each house, from behind each stone wall, and from under each tree there emerge the blue uniforms with the red trimmings of the one and indivisible republic. It’s the Bleus. They have cavalry. They have a superintendent with a tricolor sash who gives orders in the language that is spoken in Paris. The forty-seven men surrender without a fight: the wine has drained away, abandoned them in the June sunshine, and without the wine they suspect that the republic is not the only cause of grim poverty. Antoine Persegol feels as if a great burden has been lifted from him.
They are parked in a small sloping field with stone walls. The roll is called, then they are left for a while, with a Bleu posted at every second stone along the wall. They do not speak. Antoine Persegol tells himself that everything will be straightened out, since the republic loves the truth, and the truth is that he loves the republic. Truth is the mother of freedom. The truth will appear, and this evening he’ll be free; he’ll see his mother. He can see the superintendent with the sash walking to and fro beneath the elm tree on the square, a lad his own age with worn hands like those of the carders. He looks like a decent fellow. He loves the unfortunate, that’s for sure. Antoine Persegol walks up to the wall to get a better view of him: he’ll signal to him and the other man will come over; he’ll talk to him, and they will patiently allow the truth to emerge between them, lovely and indubitable like the tricolor silk. A Bleu roughly pushes him away; he goes back and sits down. Toward evening, carts arrive. As they are being led away he finds himself by chance in front of the superintendent. He says in patois that he’d been drunk and that he loves the republic. “What’s this scoundrel saying?” asks the superintendent in the language that is spoken in Paris. The sergeant shrugs his shoulders, and the superintendent turns away. They are loaded into carts and taken to Florac. So now he will explain everything in Florac, and he’ll see his mother tomorrow.
The reality is otherwise. Reality is a cruel stepmother. The next morning at Florac five men sitting in black hats speak in an incomprehensible language to forty-seven men standing before them. They are pushed into the June day with their hands tied. On the cart he thinks about his mother standing in the June day on the doorstep of her house in La Malène, looking toward the far end of the empty track. The huge machine with the swift bevel is set up on the square in Florac. Forty-seven times the iron blade of Mother Death severs a head from a trunk, forty-seven times a head severed from a trunk violently confirms the law of falling bodies. Antoine Persegol is the fortieth.
ÉDOUARD MARTEL
At Le Rozier on the River Tarn and the River Jonte, where the three major causses meet — Sauveterre, Méjan, and Noir—Édouard Martel is sitting on the terrace of the Hôtel des Voyageurs. It’s September. He is in his prime; he’s about to succeed in life, and he knows it: that is what he is telling himself on this sunny terrace in September, between the vast sky above and the sparkling waters below. He proudly contemplates September. He holds his head high with its fine Roman features and blond goatee. He is one of those men who love glory. He has abandoned the sad profession of scribe at the court of law in Paris; it seemed to him that for a man of his caliber the profession of explorer was the shortest path to glory; it also seemed to him that the surface of the earth, the ground on which you walk beneath the sun, was too easy a terrain for the explorer’s quest, too obvious and somehow duplicitous: he has taken the darker part of exploration, the caves and the chasms, Erebus and Tartarus, the kingdom of the dead. Within this kingdom he is searching for his own, like Dante or Orpheus. He has founded speleology. A hundred feet below ground he has created a reputation for himself.
He loves the causse where this reputation originated when he discovered Dargilan ten years back. He is looking for other holes. He has made the Hôtel des Voyageurs his headquarters, like his African colleagues, the discoverers in pith helmets, who pitch their tents in Timbuktu or Zanzibar and from there gather information about the desert in the North, the forest in the West, send out patrols and wait for the dry season. The shepherds from the causse know the man with the blond goatee who has a liking for the Underworld, and sits with his legs crossed under the arbor on the terrace waiting for them to bring him news of the Underworld: if the earth opens up under a lamb, or if a stone dropped down a shaft is swallowed up without a sound, they come running to the Hôtel des Voyageurs and talk to the blond goatee with the crossed legs clad in gaiters. And on this very day, September 18, a man who has news of the Underworld is walking into the village of Le Rozier.