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Updated: June 6, 2025
Thereupon everyone tried to think of some hiding place in which to secure whatever he held most precious. The Père Longuemare carried away his defence in armfuls to a rain-gutter, while Brotteaux slipped his Lucretius among the ashes on the hearth.
On his arrival, he found the Père Longuemare in the garret reading his breviary. Holding Athenaïs by the hand, he drew the other's attention to her: "Father," he said, "here is a girl from the Rue Fromenteau who has been shouting: 'Vive le roi! The revolutionary police are on her track. She has nowhere to lay head. Will you allow the girl to pass the night here?"
Brotteaux gathered from the citoyen Delourmel's questions the quarter from which the blow had come and saw too late how unwise it is to confide in women. He obeyed the citoyen Commissary's order to go with him, first picking up his Lucretius and his three shirts. "The citoyen," he said, pointing to the Père Longuemare, "is an assistant I have taken to help me make my marionettes.
I kept a chaplain at Les Ilettes, where Mass was said every Sunday and all my guests attended. The philosophers were the most devout while the opera girls showed the most fervour. I was prosperous then and had crowds of friends." "Friends," exclaimed the Père Longuemare, "friends!
"Sir," said the Père Longuemare, "do not talk of Nature; you do not know what Nature is." "Egad, I know it as well as you do, Father." "You cannot know it, because you have not religion, and religion alone teaches us what Nature is, wherein it is good, and how it has been made evil.
I gladly return to Nature the atoms of my composition, only hoping she will make a better use of them for the future, for it must be owned she did not make much of a job of me." So he went on his way to the gaoler's room, leaving Brotteaux sorrowful and the Père Longuemare trembling and green as a leaf, more dead than alive to see the impious wretch laugh on the brink of the abyss.
While the Père Longuemare and the girl Athenaïs were examined at the Section, Brotteaux was led off between two gendarmes to the Luxembourg, where the door-keeper refused to admit him, declaring he had no room left. The old financier was next taken to the Conciergerie and brought into the Gaoler's office, quite a small room, divided in two by a glazed partition.
When the Commissaries, wearing tricolour ribands at their necks, arrived to carry out their perquisition, they found scarcely anything but such trifles as it had been deemed judicious to let them discover. On their departure, the Père Longuemare ran to his rain-pipe and rescued as much of his defence as wind and water had spared.
All he did was to amplify the details of the act of accusation and then to put the question: "Is it proven that Maurice Brotteaux, Louise Rochemaure, Louis Longuemare, Marthe Gorcut, known as Athenaïs, Eusèbe Rocher, Pierre Guyton-Fabulet, Marcelline Descourtis, etc., etc., are guilty of forming a conspiracy, the means whereof are assassination, starvation, the making of forged assignats and false coin, the depravation of morals and public spirit; the aim and object, civil war, the abolition of the National representation, the re-establishment of Royalty?"
But as they could not conceive, either one or the other, of anybody being so absurd as to believe in any revealed religion, seeing that the Père Longuemare was no fool, they took him to be a knave. By way, no doubt, of preparing for martyrdom, he made confession of faith at every opportunity, and the more sincerity he displayed, the more like an impostor he seemed.
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