Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Despite the smallness of his body, there lay in his whole
posture something respectful and compelling, which was
difficult to escape from. Thus, his appearance captivated me in
the highest degree. He wore a very simple uniform unknown to
me, and had his arms crossed over his chest.
“You’re a stranger?” he addressed me, smiling barely
perceptibly.
“I am a German,” I answered him.
“Ah, a German!”
He nodded his head.
“A fine people, clever, warlike and obedient at the same
time. Excellent soldiers. You witnessed these executions, mein
Herr?”
In spite of the danger that such frankness could bring me,
I did not hide my disgust from him.
“Yes, yes,” he smiled gloomily, “By the actions of these
beasts you must have formed an excellent opinion of the
French nation. But that doesn’t do anything. These people are
good. Only they have a fever at this moment. They will cure it;
let it bleed a little -“
I hesitated to answer him, even though there were no
listeners nearby. For I was well aware of the fact that the so-
called Well-being Committee maintained numerous agents,
whose task it was to listen to the speeches of the people and to
induce the discontented to make statements, the reproduction
of which provided the means to render them harmless. But
immediately afterwards I was ashamed of a suspicion over
which this man was certainly above. As far as my knowledge
of man, I read in this face ruthlessness, indomitable will, and
the power to remove unpleasant obstacles by force. Perhaps the
little man with the hard mouth was capable of a gigantic
despicability when his certainly unusual plans required it, but
hardly of a petty action against someone whose path did not
cross his. All this I read in the dark abyss of his eyes, from
which shone the spark of a genius.
“I deplore it,” I said to him, “that bloodlust and
vindictiveness sully the garb of the goddess of liberty, and that
it is precisely the ugliest drives that are the shoots that appear
most conspicuously in the disintegration of a fixed order. Thus
it happens to me that what seems great and sublime to me from
a distance, appears frightening and devoid of all greatness up
close. The freedom of a people –“
“Oh, freedom!” he interrupted me. “Those are silly
phrases. The people do not need Freedom, but the firm hand of
a leader. Centuries will pass before the people will be ready for
the ideals for which the unfounded enthusiasts believe the time
has already come. It does not do much harm, however. The
heads that are now falling are not worth much, except for a few
whose loss is deplorable, and the riffraff are in their own way
for the time being. Nevertheless, mein Herr German, I say to
you that with this very valuable, fiery and easily treated
material the world can be conquered, if it comes into the right
hands. Out of these lousy, jeering, broken lads an army of
heroes can be created like no other that has ever stomped the
ground. The monstrous body, unconscious of its strength lacks
only the head to make it insurmountable.”
“Surely this head also sits on mortal shoulders,” I replied.
“And it is, as you know, a bad time for heads.”
Again the man’s lips twisted into an almost perceptible
smile.
“I have good reason to hope that the head I mean will not
fall into Samson’s basket,” he said.
Slowly we walked in the direction of a side alley. Wild,
long-drawn out screaming and the wailing of a woman’s voice,
coming from an old house, made me stop. As we came closer,
we saw in the dark hallway a young woman in the labor of
childbirth lying on the brick pavement. Under her pain, new
life pressed towards the light. Neighboring women took care of
the woman in labor, and an old woman told us to unwillingly
go on.
“Fat Margot is having another baby! Every year she gives
birth to a piglet!” shouted an alley boy and danced on one foot,
delighted to be present at this event.
The officer grabbed the boy by the arm, turned him
towards him, looked him in the face with a terrible look and
said:
“Why are you pleased, cretin? Is it because your
replacement is born? He will take your place in the regiment
when you are buried in the clay after the battle!”
I saw the lad turn pale under the icy gaze of my
companion, as if he had seen the Medusa’s head. Shrieking and
flailing his arms, he ran down the alley.
I watched him go. When I turned around, the officer had
disappeared.
After that day, I did not go out much on the street.
Several times at night I heard the pounding of rifle butts at the
front doors, the wild weeping of women and the horrified
objections of those suddenly arrested who had been dragged
out of their beds.
My reclusive behavior noticeably increased the distrust
of the house inhabitants. Nevertheless, it was the hardest thing
for me to overcome, to enter the streets, where one could see
almost only drunken rabble and meddlesome women. One was
begged for, harassed in every way, insulted and suspected for
no reason.
But on this early autumn day there was such an
oppressive sultriness that the stay in my upper level room
became quite unpleasant. I chose my most inconspicuous
garment, the brown, already damaged travel suit, a simple rain-
soaked hat and a crude stick, to distinguish myself as little as
possible from those who spoke the big words in the streets. I no
longer wore my hair coiffed and powdered, but, according to
the new fashion, falling on the shoulders.
Today, too, the streets were full of shouting and partly
armed mobs. Recruits, adorned with bows and ribbons, were
marching off to the threatened frontiers, and the excitement of
the first days of September had increased still further.
Especially near the prison of La Force, all the scum of
Saint Antoine and other suburbs seemed to have gathered. The
closer I came to the small gate of the prison, the wilder the
raving, singing and shouting swelled. Ragged sansculottes-
radicals stood here, armed with pikes and rusty sabers, in dense
mobs and apparently waiting for something special. A
disgustingly overgrown man, who had a cockscomb like violet
growth hanging down over his left eye, as I could clearly
observe, sneaked around from one group of people to another
and everywhere spoke a few words, which were taken up with
ear-tearing howls. I deliberately placed myself in the vicinity of
such a confluence, in the midst of which a fury with flying
strands of hair wielded a butcher’s axe, and struggled to hear
what the people were so excited about. As soon as I arrived the
crooked monster started on the group and whispered:
“Citizens, do you want to see the aristocrat who will soon
come out of this prison door, escape to England once more?
She will help the fat Capet and the Austrian woman escape
from under your noses. Down therefore with the Intendant of
the Austrian whore! Down with Lamballe!” Unanimous
shouting announced that they were of one mind with him and
not one was willing to let the princess Lamballe go, who was
the subject of much talk at the time.
“Enough of this gossip, you with your violet growth on
your eye!” shouted a person thin as a skeleton. “We want to
make cocards out of her guts if she gets into our hands.”
“Let me, me!” hoarsely cried a wolf face with enormous
jaws and low forehead. “You are all worthless, overcome with
pity, when she puts on her little mask -“
“Hey, is your heart made of stone and do you have iron
veins, Ruder-Mathieu?” a sloppy woman laughed and pushed
the man to the side.
“Do you want to see Louis Capet’s souvenir, you
pavement kicker?” barked the guy, stretching out a hand
surrounded by blue-red rings of scars. “I wore his bracelet for
six years, here and on the back of my foot -do you think that
makes sugar daddies out of people?”
The smell of liquor, old clothes, and the smoke of bad
tobacco wafted around me along with the roar of laughter that
rose.
“Murderers of women. By the grace of the king,” a voice
said softly at my ear. “Look at the cattle, the forehead, the thick
eyebrows, the bit -“
“What are you whispering about, old fish-head?”
The galley convict shook his fist at the human beside me.
A small, stooped man quickly ducked into the crowd.
“Out with Lamballe! We want the intendant! Break down
the door! We want to have a close look at her, back and front,
just like her lovers!”
“The judges in there are asleep,” crowed the abomination
with the facial outgrowth. “We will wake them up!”
“Out with her! Make it snappy, you donkey heads in
there! Give her to us!”
In the roaring and pushing of the supremely heated
masses, in the midst of brandished sabers, knives, and lances, I
stood and gazed at the door as if paralyzed. I was afraid; a
devouring fear seized me, literally crushed me. It was an
indescribably horrible feeling, a feeling in which dark
knowledge was hidden. I knew what had to come unstoppably,
as if I had already experienced it all. A beardless, cheeky face
emerged inside me, a receding forehead sown with ulcers,
beneath sand-colored stubble hair. I looked around and
immediately looked into the middle of the face, which already
existed in my imagination. But I resisted, again and again and I
succeeded in pushing back the certainty coming from within
my inner being, without this effort of the will, I could have said
at any moment, blow by blow, what was going to happen now.
All this was like a dream within a dream yet of shuddering
physicality.