It is at this moment that Proli, from the depths of his ceremonial armchair, stops him curtly and speaks up again. He adds that the contract has two minor but imperative clauses, to which Corentin is bound.
First of all, he must paint this painting in the greatest secrecy, as a conspirator, without informing anyone at all, and he must keep it concealed until someone comes to collect it from him.
The second clause is that the Robespierrots, Saint-Just, Couthon, Robespierre, must be painted more visibly and centrally, more magisterially than the other members of the Committee, who should appear in it as minor figures.
Corentin agrees. He says that is how it will be.
Finally, Sir, I want to repeat here the reason for the commission, its small necessary and sufficient cause, the design of its sponsors. Who they are. And I know very well that you have read it in the little antechamber, that you are supposed to have read it — but I know you, Sir, you and your kind: in your reading you go immediately to what shines and what you crave, the skirts of maman-putain, the plume, the gold coins; or to what is perfectly matte black, the guillotine, Shakespeare; but the political quibbling you find tiresome, you skim over it. The drab history and theory, the class struggle and the infighting, you tell yourself you will read all that tomorrow. And I know very well that you do not need to hear it, but I need to tell you.
So here it is: no one knew yet in Nivôse if Robespierre was going to be triumphant or perish; and everyone’s fate hung on that knowledge. The roles were assigned, the hands were dealt, but the bets were not yet placed. In the panic, fleeting alliances were forged, those who wanted to compromise with Robespierre, those who wanted his defeat, those who wanted to pull out. Among those alliances, the one that concerns us — that concerns The Eleven — had found its source in one of the desperadoes of the Commune, among the delegates of the sections, vandals and melters of bells, those who had chanted ça ira in 1790, for whom ça was no longer fine at all; that handful of Communards who had put their trust in the most impassioned of the Hébertists, who lived under threat of the guillotine and were beyond worrying about costs. So much for the left wing of the alliance, those who would be toppled in two months’ time, in Germinal, into Hébert’s cart. As for the right wing, which would not be toppled in Germinal and would close the hand of Thermidor, the desperadoes had had the marvelous idea of appealing to Collot d’Herbois, a man whose sentiments were to the left and even beyond, but who had been driven by the reality of the situation to forge alliances on the right: as a representative returning from a mission, he overshadowed Robespierre; although he came back from Lyons penniless, he was grouped by Robespierre together with the most corrupt, Tallien, Fouché, Barras, and had to join forces with these men whom he disliked. Thus Collot joined Tallien and Barras; who then rallied the powers they had brought back from Bordeaux and Toulon, clinging to the slatted sides of oxblood carriages full of the ringing coins — the elite of the right wing, the bankers, the backbone of war. All this fine society had plotted together to save their heads from the basket. And among their devious plots (said to be Collot’s idea, the enigmatic Collot) was this one: to secretly commission a painting of the Committee in which Robespierre and his cronies would be represented in all their glory, a painting giving official existence to the Committee that theoretically did not exist, but by the simple fact of appearing in a painting would be taken for what it was: an executive power seated in the contemptible place of the tyrant, a tyrant with eleven heads, existing and well and truly reigning, and even presenting an image of its reign in the fashion of tyrants — or perhaps, if things took a different turn, if Robespierre affirmed his power without possible recourse, by means of the painting the Committee would appear as a very legally sanctioned executive power, the cream of the Representatives, fraternal, paternal, and legitimate as syndics or a conclave.
It was a joker, do you understand? This painting was a joker to be played at a crucial moment: if Robespierre really took power, the painting could be brought out publicly as spectacular proof of his grandeur and the reverence in which his grandeur had always been held; it would be declared that the painting had been commissioned in secret to pay homage to his grandeur, and to the great role for which he was destined; and it would tell him clearly that these men were with him, that they had even been represented with him, that they had insisted on the honor of appearing at his side. The fraternal alibi would be played. If on the contrary Robespierre faltered, if he was brought down, the painting could also be produced, but as proof of his unbridled ambition for tyranny, and it would shamelessly be claimed that it was Robespierre himself who had commissioned it secretly to have it hung behind the presidential rostrum in the subjugated Assembly, and to be worshipped in the abhorred palace of tyrants. And thus this painting, The Great Committee of Year II Seated in the Pavilion of Equality, as it was originally to be called, suddenly made public, would be evidence of flagrant abuse of power — the scene of the crime, you could say. That is the reason for The Eleven. Ah yes, Sir, we have to accept it, the world’s most famous painting was commissioned by the dregs of the earth with the world’s worst intentions.
I will add this: in either case, Robespierre’s annihilation or apotheosis, it was necessary that the painting be right, that it work; that Robespierre and the others be seen there either as magnanimous Representatives or as bloodthirsty tigers, according to which reading events would require. And that Corentin painted it and succeeded in this way, in both ways, that is undoubtedly one of the reasons why The Eleven is in the last chamber of the Louvre, the holy of holies, under protective glass five inches thick.
Proli says none of that. He has put his greatcoat back on and has mounted one of the phantom horses, he is galloping toward Passy where he is hiding out, from the warrant for his arrest, from the guillotine. He is already passing through the Saint-Martin gates at a gallop. And neither does Bourdon stay to talk, he has left as well, on foot into the night of wolves to yelp with some other pack or to sleep with his own. All that — the trap in the form of a painting, the political joker — we can suppose it is Collot who explains it to Corentin, accompanying him back to the porch of Saint-Nicolas. Because they remain there a moment, the two of them among the opaque masses of the lowered bells; and we can see them distinctly, the big lantern has followed them that far, it is on the ground and projects the large shadows of the bells upon the three walls of the porch and upon the night, which is the fourth walclass="underline" black greatcoat and greatcoat the color of the smoke of hell, two-cornered hat on Collot’s head, three-cornered hat on Corentin’s, even the little theatrical plumes of breath from their mouths, under the porch of Saint-Nicolas, which is like the stage of a theater with its double doors open at the deadest hour of the night of wolves, erstwhile the Night of the Three Kings. They are very cold. Collot does not forget that he is in Shakespeare, a country where it is cold as well, he is leaning theatrically with his back against the mantle of the largest bell. The Elizabethan ruff blossoms at his neck. He is more garrulous than earlier. He has found the appropriate grand gestures again, the appropriate grand sentences. In hushed tones he has explained the trap, the tactic by which the painting is a war machine, and now he raises his voice, he exaggerates a bit: he speaks as the wind blows, in gusts, as if on a rostrum or a stage. He says laughing: “So you are going to represent us. Take care, citizen painter, representing the Representatives is not something to take lightly.” He tells him that he wishes him much pleasure in painting these portraits, because he, Collot, no longer dares to look at himself in a mirror, and in a voice too low to be heard Corentin says that neither does he. Collot remains silent for a moment, then he goes on in an affectionate tone: “We have pulled through, the two of us, since the beginning, and here we are already in ’94.” He speaks with a hesitant tenderness, as one would recall a night of carousing or a murder committed together: Do you remember Macbeth in Orléans in ’84? Yes, Corentin looks at him affectionately too, remembering: Collot’s youthfulness, his self-assurance, his irrepressible laughter in the darkest scenes, his rough and tender soul; and his madness, his constant drunkenness, on words, on wine. And suddenly the mixture of all these things, the bells, Orléans, Macbeth, come together and awaken a very old memory.