To make matters worse, in an unpublished Treatise on Political Economy (1849–55) Proudhon even contemplated a secret band of vigilantes to enforce public opinion. This puritanical elite would ensure that the individual conscience would be taught to identify with the social conscience for the sake of social survival. The vigilantes would be involved in the private execution of the wicked as well as punishing treason and adultery. Proudhon here reached his lowest ebb.
Men like Coppe and Clarkson were far from despairing and for a time after the execution of the king it seemed possible in England that true levelling could lead to a genuine commonwealth of free and equal individuals. In the event, as in so many later revolutions, the military dictator Cromwell crushed the extreme left which had helped to bring him to power.
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A final discovery: that the objects of these diverse and specific causes are human bodies. The forces that drive our history do not so much operate on our thoughts or social institutions, or even our environment, as on our individual bodies. So, for example, punishment in the 18th century is a matter of violent assaults on the body, branding, dismemberment, execution, whereas in the 19th century it takes the apparently gentler but equally physical form of incarceration, ordered assemblies, and forced labor.
Bétizac was privately informed that he would surely be sentenced to die and that his only hope was to declare himself a heretic. If he did, he would be handed over to the Church and sent for judgment to Avignon, where no one would dare condemn him because of the Pope’s dependence on Berry, the most powerful and zealous of his supporters. Believing what he was told, “because those in peril of their lives are much confused in mind,” Bétizac did as advised. He affirmed his guilt in errors of faith before the Bishop of Béziers, who, according to Church practice with confessed heretics, promptly handed him back to the civil arm for execution. Dragged to the stake in the public square, fastened by collar and chain and piled with faggots, Bétizac was burned and his bones hanged, to the joy of the populace.
The lihgtning girl
Our first few steps into the crowded, dim market lead us right past a signboard. Usually filled with notices of sale, news scraps, memorials, the Red noise has been covered up by a checkered swath of printings. A few children mill about the signboard, ripping up the bits of paper in reach. They toss the scraps at each other like snowballs. Only one of the kids, a girl with ragged black hair and bare, brown feet, bothers to look at what they’re doing. She stares at two familiar faces, each glaring down from a dozen huge posters. They are stark and grim, headlined with big black letters that read “WANTED BY THE CROWN, for TERRORISM, TREASON, and MURDER.” I doubt many of the people swarming the Paltry can read, but the message is clear enough.
Cal’s picture isn’t his royal portrait, which made him appear strong, kingly, and dashing. No, the image of him is grainy but distinct, a frozen still from one of the many cameras that captured him in the moments before his failed execution in the Bowl of Bones. His face is haggard, pulled by loss and betrayal, while his eyes spark with unchecked rage. The muscles stand out as his neck, straining. There might even be dried blood on his collar. It makes him look every inch the murderer Maven wants him to seem. The lower posters of him are torn up or covered in graffiti, in spiky, scratched handwriting almost too violently etched to make out. The Kingkiller, The Exile. The titles rip at the paper, as if the words could make the photographed skin bleed. And weaving among the titles—find him, find him, find him.
Like Cal, the picture of me is taken from the Bowl of Bones. I know exactly which moment. It was before I walked through the gates of the arena, when I stood and listened to Lucas take a bullet to the brain. In that second, I
Sayfa 183
Je me dis : à quoi Thomas a-t-il pensé, quand ça a été le dernier moment ? après avoir passé la corde autour de son cou ? avant de renverser la chaise ? et d'abord, combien de temps cela a-t-il duré ? une poignée de secondes ? puisqu'il ne servait à rien de perdre du temps, la décision avait été prise, il fallait la mettre à exécution, une minute ? mais c'est interminable, une minute, dans ces circonstances, et alors comment l'a-t-il remplie ? avec quelles pensées ?
