LES ENFANTS DE LA PATRIE

This is a short story I wrote in my teens, when I learned about the French Revolution at class. It was first written by hand in Catalan, then my mother translated it into French... then I Englished it and put it on the cloud.
The story is about how two young men cross paths because of the Revolution: an aristocratic fortress prisoner and a common-born officer of the garrison.
The illustration is mine as well, I drew it with Paint to illustrate the story.

LES ENFANTS DE LA PATRIE

A STORY FROM THE 1790S

By Sandra Dermark

It was quite dark and lonely in there, but René had got finally used to it. Though he wasn’t certain of when, he was sure he should be executed.

Suddenly, he caught sight of the candle-light. It was a little flickering flame that gave away some of its precious glow and warmth to all of his self.

Through the faint light of the candle, René could discern some glittering bayonets and the shimmering lace on the officer’s uniform, and the keyring on the officer’s waist.

Then he felt once more the temptation of snatching the keychain, but this time the officer looked at his blemished face with uncanny sympathy.

This evening, as he was offered supper, the officer was there, staring at René through the bars and introducing himself:

-Me, Lieutenant Étienne Leroux. Been here for three weeks.

-Me, Viscount René Charles D’Arcy. Been here for...

The most surprising thing was their resemblance to each other. Stripped of his wig and face paint, the aristocrat was the spitting image of the lieutenant. Both were in their early twenties, well-shaped, and handsome, with nut-brown hair, hazel eyes, and fine features. They could as well have been twin brothers.

-What’s going on, Lieutenant? -both could hear. Looking over his shoulder slightly, Étienne replied:

-Nothing at all...

Then the candle-light was out of sight and one of them returned upstairs, to the officers’ quarters, while the other lay down on the cold, hard floor that bruised his fair skin.

Evenings came and went as they learned to know each other, wishing for the grate to vanish and staring at each other by the mild candle-light.

René, in those tattered and old-fashioned frilly garments, and Étienne, in that handsome blue uniform with glittering epaulettes and short sword by his side, burst one of those evenings into laughter at unison... perchance because, through elusive appearances, the past self of each one was betrayed through the eyes and clothes of the other. And one turned out to be more refined, the other more modest.

Their complementary stories resounded through the conscience of both when the time to say goodbye came every night.

The young viscount, René, was known throughout the Château Versailles for his extravagant form of acting. He was seen in the ballrooms, at the tennis court, in the woods during the deer hunt, by foreign dignitaries' side, with the royal children when the Queen had too much to do...

He was fiancé to a colonel’s daughter, a fine damsel, and never in his lifetime had he been forced to struggle for life. He was also an only child. In the wake of revolution, he had lost the only lifestyle (an ostentatious, extravagant, and decadent one) he had ever known.

And now he had got used to struggle by instinct within the confined space of three walls and a grate, where traitors to the Republic were locked in. The slate-stone floor and the soup he drank twice a day had changed his state of health, and made his skin look like a brittle silk cloth.

However, what René Charles d’Arcy missed the most wasn’t macaroons or downy beds, but contact with others. And now this problem belonged to the past as well...

...with that commoner, lovechild of an actress, turned lieutenant a few weeks ago. Étienne didn’t recall how hard he had tried to succeed as a boy-player, dressing in petticoats on stage, and live without worries or sorrows, which had then been a dream beyond his reach.

That strife was part of the past and forgotten amidst glasses of liquor drunk at officers’ suppers and jokes, having his boots blacked and his uniform cared for by a servant of his own.

They had, like Pyramus and Thisbe, to see each other in secret, both certain that one of them should die. And it seemed that René should be that one.

The revolution had uplifted the humble and struck down the haughty, like the wrath of the now-fabled Lord would have done on the Judgment Day. Only that the new régime had placed the righteous on its left and the damned on its right.

The young viscount and that officer looked like each other’s reflection. Many a time, after passing his empty bowl of soup through the grate, René responded to Étienne by passing his smooth and pale hands through it by faint candle-light.

That night the lieutenant lay in his downy feather-bed, and the convict lay on the hard floor. And both thought of the ironic fact that a republic of freedom, equality, and brotherhood could take innocent prisoners and execute them.

Weeks passed on and the execution of Marie Antoinette led Austria, allied with Prussia, to declare war on France.

And thus, Étienne was transferred to another regiment and sent to the frontline, to fulfil once more his patriotic ambitions and rise to a higher level of the officer class.

And so, both took farewell of each other.

It was a fresh and cloudy spring day. Étienne and his detachment hadn’t done anything more than run forward, amidst cornflower stalks, in their blue uniforms. Shouting, leaping, singing “Allons enfants de la patrie”, they followed their officer across the plains, looking forward, with glittering fixed bayonets and the wish to rise through the ranks.

Then... Bang!

His cheeks pale as white rose petals and a bright red stain on the middle of his blue coat, he collapsed and was utterly still. His men and his sergeant turned towards him, seized his wrists, but he couldn’t be healed: a Prussian bullet had entered the lieutenant’s heart.

It all lasted one second. The last he ever saw, and he ever heard, was the fatal gunshot. And he passed away instantly, without a fever, without feeling anything. He had given his life for the sake of the régime he had contributed to create.

Meanwhile, René was trying hard to take a stone from the wall. He had been doing that for a few weeks. Every day, he took out a different stone and set it back in its place. Those stones were easy to recognize, since they were bloodstained. Due to the effort he had to make, René’s hands bled when he took out those stones.

Some light from the sun was filtered through the cracks the convict had made. He had obviously lost weight and strength the last days, and rested for a long time between stone removals. And he had completely forgotten Étienne.

Now unrecognizable (his ribs and cheek-bones were seen through the thin skin, and he had turned pale as if he were wearing face paint again), he looked just like a commoner. And he expected the day when he had taken out enough stones to escape through the hole.

Then, René would take a stagecoach to Calais, and after that a ship bound for more northern climates.

But he was discovered by the garrison in the act of removing one of those stones.

Then they unexpectedly opened the grate. They flanked him with their bayonets when he made his first steps to the freedom he had been denied.

The light of the sun dazzled his eyes.

Soon he wasn’t aware that he was on a scaffold, above a crowd, before a guillotine.

He didn’t listen to the charges against him, nor to the crowds demanding his execution.

He laid his head down and, without resisting, let the hastily descending steel blade enter the back of his neck... because he was already dying of exhaustion, after many a day of struggle, the floréal afternoon when he was put to death.