‘The mutineers of Fouesnant arrested by the National Guard of Quimper’, by Jules Girardet (1856-1938). The revolt took place in Brittany on July 10th, 1792, when ordinary labourers rebelled against the Parisian republican elite.
Part 1 of 2
“WILL you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me — just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. What I have been thinking as we came along is this: — If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
Précis
Sydney Carton went to the guillotine in France’s Reign of Terror accompanied by a seamstress. As they rode the tumbril together, she told him that her chief regret was leaving behind her young cousin, an orphan like herself, and asked Carton whether waiting in heaven to see her little cousin again would be difficult to bear. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Sewing’, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905). On the way to the guillotine, Sydney Carton befriends a seamstress whose greatest regret is leaving behind a younger cousin, her only relative and an orphan just as she is.
“IT cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him — is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”*
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.
From St John’s account of the raising of Lazarus. See John 11.
Précis
Sidney Carton assured the seamstress who rode with him to the guillotine that she would not grieve long years for those she had left behind, as there is no Time in the afterlife. Then their summons to the guillotine came, the seamstress first and Carton second, and they parted with blessings and a kiss. (54 / 60 words)
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