American Gothic, page 85
There was nothing more that could serve him as projectile, and for want of such Lauth’s madness – it had amounted to that – began to abate. Panting, he closed his eyes and passed his hand over his face, then – for the crisis passing left him exhausted – withdrew to the centre of the roof and sat down.
When he again looked over into the street, he saw it deserted. Both parties had withdrawn to their strongholds. It was dusk. The rioting for the day was over. The white horse yet lay upon the pavement, a formless gray mass in the obscurity, but still, at last. Upward of forty bodies were scattered helter-skelter upon the bridge, a few of them moving. The long, slitlike windows of the Châtelet began to shine, while a ruddy vibrating glow behind the barricade announced the usual evening camp fire of the mob. It had begun to grow still again, and with every minute the liquid rustling of the Seine seemed to grow louder and more distinct.
Lauth now found himself in a situation of no little difficulty and danger. The house that he had occupied throughout the afternoon was situated about midway between the Châtelet and the barricade, in such a manner that in order to reach his friends he would have to cross the bridge within sight and bow shot of his enemies. His first thought was to wait until dark before making the attempt, but he recollected that the moon was at her full at this time of the month, and that her light would be far more brilliant than the half gloom of the present twilight. He did not know what had become of the archers who had entered with him. He only knew that he was alone in the house now, and that it was full of shadows and echoes.
He descended to the ground floor. A haze of silver over the Tour de Nesle warned him to be quick. He went to the back of the house and looked over upon the Seine beneath, and then up and down the line of the rear parts of the houses stretching toward the banks. No, there was no passage there, and no boat at the foot of the water stairs that led down from several of them, for many had been taken to help build the barricade, those that had not been thus employed being cut adrift to prevent the crossing of the men-at-arms.
He returned through the house and peered out into the street through the half open door in front. Unfortunately for him, he saw that the house stood upon the right hand side of the bridge, the entrance of the barricade upon the left, and that therefore he would have to traverse the full diagonal width of the bridge to gain it; right out into the open, with no shadow to hide him. Although he knew that no one at the Châtelet would be prepared for his dash across, and was sure that a running mark such as his figure would present would be unusually hard of attaint, yet he felt horribly afraid of being hit. He kept saying to himself, half-aloud, “There is no other course; it must be done,” as though by a verbal repetition of the fact he could bring himself to face it with greater courage.
However, the moon had risen.
From where he stood, he could see the shadow from a sharp gable thrown across the street. He said to himself, “When that shadow has passed over ten of the paving stones, then I will run across.” But first he recollected his prayers. He went back into the house, knelt, and repeated two paters and an ave, and commended himself to Athanasius, his patron saint, vowing twelve red candles to his altar and ten sols parisis to the Hôtel Dieu in case of his deliverance. When he returned to the door the shadow had traversed seven out of the ten squares of paving stones. That would not do. When the shadow had covered ten more, then surely he would start. But when the tenth was reached, and looking out he saw the sentries of the Châtelet turning in the moonlight, his heart failed him. Then he grew angry with himself, again made resolve, and sat down to count squares.
One, two, five, seven, eight, and he rose to his feet prepared for the dash; nine, ten, and drawing back into the house to gain greater impetus he darted out toward the gate of the barricade.
Halfway across the bridge he trod with one foot upon the scabbard of a sword lying there, and caught his other in the belt to which it was attached. A bolt from an arbalist hit him in the side as he rose to his feet. “It is not a bad hit – it’s not a bad hit,” he muttered between his teeth as he ran on, though he knew it was. An arrow sang past his face, another bolt struck out a long train of sparks at his feet; he could hear other shots striking into the houses upon his right. Fearing to be hit again he dodged into a doorway of one of them and ran into the back room. “It was an ambuscade,” he said to himself, “and they were waiting for me to come out.”
In spite of his efforts his knees bent under him and he sank upon the floor. “Sang Dieu!” he cried desperately. “It’s not to the death, I am not hurt to the death. This is no mortal wound. Mortal!” He laughed aloud incredulously as though to deceive himself. “Why, if it were mortal there would be more pain – a mere flesh wound. The hauberk broke most of the force. There is scarcely any blood. Mortal! Why, I know I am able to rise.
He did so, and felt a great grateful wave of genuine hope, and heaved a sigh of relief. “But I thought for a moment it was to the death,” he said. “Why, I am all right,” he continued, “of course I’m all right.”
He took a step forward, another, and then it seemed as if a red-hot knife were suddenly driven through his entrails. What was that so warm in his mouth? Blood! A great weakness came over him; he felt as though a thousand unseen hands were dragging him to the floor. But he ground his teeth and stood upright. “It will pass soon,” he muttered. “I am not going to die this time. That little scratch is not to kill me.” He would not let his mind rest upon the possibility of death. He kept saying, “I’m all right; I am not to die yet.” Only when men were hit to the death did they fall, and he would not let himself fall, for he was going to live. If he could stand, that would be proof of it. Another thought that gave him courage was that he was perfectly conscious. When men were to die they lost control of their faculties. He still possessed all of his.
To test them and to take his mind from his wound, he looked about the room in which he found himself, now lighted by the moon. It had been pillaged, like the rooms of all the houses; a broken gridiron, a bottle, and an odd shoe, lay on the bare floor. The wall was painted green, and here and there in lead frames, hung all askew, were gaudy little pictures of St. Julian, St. Chrysostom, and an allegorical figure representing Traffic.4 The names of these were painted upon the hems of their garments. “Je mi appele St. Julianus” “Je mi appele St. Chrysostom,” etc., and each had a cloud-shaped inscription coming out of its mouth.
It suddenly occurred to him to examine and dress his wound. Even if it were not unusually serious he ought to do this. He unfastened his belt and turned back the clothing from the spot; there was very little blood. Some three inches above the hip he saw a hole about as big as a sou piece, but blue about the edges. He tried to bandage it, but succeeded only partially. “Bah! it did not need it; it was but a scratch.” He even thought he could feel the iron bolt scarcely half an inch beneath the skin. It should be probed out to-morrow, he thought. It was nothing; he was not to die yet; a few miserable ounces of metal could not kill him. He grew impatient with himself for thinking about his wound. Sang Dieu! Was there any reason why he should so foolishly keep telling himself that he was not to die? He would think no more about it, but would go to the front of the house and for a second time try to regain the barricade. He turned about and fell flat upon his face with a great noise. He had been standing almost motionless in the centre of the room, and his first movement had destroyed his balance.
Then, as he lay with his face upon the floor, there came to him for the first time, like a great flash of light, the absolute certainty that he was to die; there, in that room, perhaps in a minute, perhaps in an hour. For a moment only he realized this, and an instant afterward was despairingly struggling against it as before. “The wound might be very dangerous, certainly, but not necessarily mortal; no, not that, surely.” He swiftly recalled to mind all the cases he had heard of men recovering from worse wounds than this; and just as he had hoodwinked himself into a delusive hope, he began to be conscious of a horrible thirst. This in a moment reawakened all the apprehensions that he had so desperately tried to allay. He had always heard it said and always believed that this thirst was the inevitable fore-runner of death upon the battlefield.
For some time past he had felt, though he strove to think that he had not, an ever-growing sense of suffering all about the lower part of his side and back. All at once this increased – it was impossible to conceal it longer from himself. It became worse, and he could feel his blood throb and pulse all through his body. Every breath was an agony. The pain increased, he ground his teeth, and in spite of himself a groan escaped him; and even yet he kept saying again and again betwixt his clenched jaws: “It will pass; I am all right; I am not to die yet.” His suffering grew more and more horrible. He beat his hands upon the floor, panted, and rolled his head. He shifted his body about, as though a different position might bring him relief. Fiercer and fiercer grew the torture; he howled and bit his fingers. He began to wonder how it was possible that one could endure such suffering and yet live, and to think that as a relief from them death might not be undesirable. But the instant that this alternative presented itself to his mind he strove to banish it. “No, no,” he cried, through all the red whirl of torment, “I am not to die, I will not die. Life at any cost! Life, even though maimed and crippled! Life, even though it were passed in rayless dungeons.”
Then, as suddenly as it had come on, the paroxysm left him. Oh, the blessedness of that moment when the pain was gone! He drew long sighs of pure delight. He was better now, he was not going to die after all. The crisis had been passed. “I am all right now,” he said. Life had never seemed sweeter than now. He must not, no, he must not die. He had a notion that by thinking hard enough he could keep himself alive. Again and again he prayed for life, not in the formal orisons of the Church, but with fierce, passionate outbursts, and with the words of a child beseeching a parent.
By and by there began to steal over him a strange chilling and indefinable sensation, which, he knew not why, struck him with awe. What was this? What was going to happen? Why was he suddenly so afraid? Was it the pain coming on again? Was he about to faint? Was it – was it the approach of death?
Yes, death at last. It was all over now; he could no longer deceive himself. He knew now that he was going to die; fool that he had been ever to have thought otherwise. For a moment he looked calmly at his approaching end; then suddenly became filled with confusion, terror, and despair, and the most violent agitation. A thousand rapidly succeeding impressions began to rush across his brain, impressions as transient and momentary as words and fragments of sentences caught here and there in a book whose leaves are rapidly turned. He could not think connectedly. He wondered how the end would feel: would his breath cease and would he die of suffocation? Would the spasm of pain come on again? They would find his body all cold in this room some day, perhaps gnawed with rats. “This is death,” he said aloud. “I am going to meet death. Oh, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.”
He remembered having heard and read how men died in battle. Some of them had made long and beautiful speeches welcoming death, recommending their souls to heaven, and addressing last words to their friends. He could do nothing of this. Conflicting ideas and emotions hustled together in his brain like frightened rats in a trap. He had heard, too, how soldiers with their last breath defied their enemies and cheered their friends; he only felt a fierce hatred for them all. They and their miserable quarrel had been the cause of his death, and, involved in their petty strife, they cared nothing for his life, which was ebbing away. This brought him back to his present situation again. Once more he repeated, “This is death; this is death. I am dying.” He looked at the wound that had caused it; touched it with his fingers. There was a hole in the hauberk where the bolt had entered. He remembered where and under just what circumstances he had first put the hauberk on; in the public room of the Hostel des Quatre filz d’Aymon in the Rue St. Honoré, opposite the Quinze-Vingts, and nearly fifty scholars had been there, and arms, offensive and defensive, were being distributed by the committee. D’Orsay had handed him this hauberk, and he recollected just how he laughed, and the peculiar heavy and clinging texture of the steel shirt. He remembered the deaf-and-dumb girl who ran back and forth in the room with drinking cups and stout mugs. They had tested the hauberk, too, with a poniard.
It seemed a long time ago, many weeks, since he had attempted the fatal run across the bridge. What would his father and La Vingtrie say when they heard of his death?
A slight shiver shook his limbs. Was that death? No, not yet. What would the symptoms be like? He began to watch himself in order to detect their approach, feeling his own pulse with one hand to catch its first failing quiver. He was going to die without confession or absolution – he had not thought of that. How fierce had been the press in the fight of that afternoon! Where would they bury him, he wondered? Suppose he should fall into a comatose state and they should bury him alive? He wondered whether the white horse on the bridge was dead yet. Yes, he remembered seeing him still and stiff. He was going to die, too; he was no better then than the horse. With all his superior intelligence he could not avoid death. The horse was white, and like those of all white horses his mane and tail were tinged with yellow. The barricade had been very still. He remembered trivial things long past – a summer’s day in the forest of Fontainebleau, a lecture in the École de Médecine, the branding of a Jew at the Croix Trahoir when it had rained. He thought that, when death approached, all the events of one’s life passed before the mind’s eye; it was not so with him now.
All the projects he had formed for the future were to come to nought. He was about to drop out of the race of life. “This is death.” The great revolving cycle of life had flung him off its whirling circumference – out into the void. He was to die like the millions before him. He had to face it alone. And after? – Oh, the horrible blackness and vagueness of that region after death. He was to see for himself the solution of that tremendous mystery that for ages had baffled far greater intelligences than his. “This is death.” Every person who had lived upon the earth had passed through this same experience, everyone who lived at that time was to undergo it likewise. “This is death.” What time was it? He heard the river below him gurgling. Let us see, today was Wednesday – no, Thursday – that was it. Thursday, the fifteenth of August. That was to be the date of his death. It would read that way upon his gravestone – “Killed upon the Grand Pont on the fifteenth of August.” Or would he have any gravestone? Perhaps they might throw his body into the river. When he had first entered the schools, Marcellot had said to him – what was it he had said to him? He wore a long black gown; everybody in the room wore long black gowns … Stop, stop – his mind was wandering. With a sudden effort he steadied himself.
A feeling as of cold, commencing at his feet, began to creep upward upon his body. “There, it’s coming now,” he said; and again he repeated, “This is death; I am dying now; this is what death is like.” He found it hard to get his breath; suddenly it grew dark. “It’s almost here,” he said expectantly and aloud. He felt his heart begin to beat violently. “When it stops I shall be dead,” he thought. How long it was to come! He felt so cold. It was very hard to think. His lower jaw dropped.
He was dead.
It was about half-past four o’clock.
II
How terrible death must have seemed before it had been given a name! How fearfully it must have dawned upon the minds of our first fathers. Picture to yourself the awe and horror with which man must have looked upon the first corpse, and think how that mysterious negative state of body and mind must have overwhelmed him with fear and wonder. Life had been suddenly cut short; what was the matter with his friend that he could not speak, could not see, could not live? And this was to continue forever! Where was his friend now? What was this mysterious, dreadful force that had brought him to this state?
Some such thoughts as these incessantly filled the mind of Jacquemart de Chavannes, Doctor of Medicine and lecturer on chemistry at the École de Boissy, as he watched at the bier of Lauth two nights after the riot upon the Grand Pont. His prolonged reflections upon death in course of time naturally suggested the opposite state of being. “Yes, there was one thing more mysterious than death. That was life. Life, oh, what was it?” Did he, Chavannes, or anybody know what it was? After all, the greatest wonder in life was life itself. “We know that it is,” he said, half aloud, “not what.” And it is everywhere. From the mightiest limbed oaken giant to the tiniest blade of grass; from the stag of ten5 to the red ant, is this marvellous force that we call “life,” this unknown motor that animates inanimate bodies, teeming and fulfilling that end to which it was destined since the beginning of time. Life, life, everywhere life, and we who enjoy it in its highest development can never understand it. What is it? What is its nature? In what way and through what means does it animate our bodies? It is a force, too, completely under our control; formulate in the mind the desire to stretch forth the arm, and straightway it is done.
And when we are dead, he continued, what becomes of this life, this force? Science will tell you that, like matter, force is inexhaustible; where then does it go after quitting its earthly tenement? Is it one of the demonstrations of a soul? Is it the soul itself? “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Is it then a form of the Deity that enters into our composition, yet obedient to our will? And does it, after death, return again to God, and reabsorbed into the great Giver of all life, thus attain to a second and immortal existence, upon which the shadow of death never falls?
