CHAPTER XV.
I GO TO THE JACOBINS’ CLUB.
At nine o’clock, we left the house, and walked up the Rue St. Honoré towards the Palais Royal.
A current of people pointed the way, stopping at the little door of the Jacobin convent, which exists to this day.
I knew not that this was the place where the aristocratic and literary assembly held their meetings until told so by Duplay.
The entry was as difficult as that of a sanctuary. By special favor, as chief carpenter to the Duke of Orleans, Duplay had a card of admission.
At the door, Cornelie, Estelle, and the two apprentices left us, plunging down a staircase veritably built in the thickness of the wall.
I asked M. Duplay where they were going. He told me that there was, under the church, a smaller hall—a sort of crypt—where the workmen and their wives held a club—the workmen attending in the day, their wives at night. They there explained to each other the constitution.
Two ushers kept guard on each side of the door.
One, small and fat, with a bass voice, was the famous singer, Lais, whom the habitués of the Opera applauded up to 1825.
The other, a handsome young man with wavy hair, undisfigured by powder, and a generally aristocratic air, was a pupil of Madame de Genlis, the son of the Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Chartres, the conqueror of Jemappes, and the future King of France.
By his side was his young brother, the Duke of Montpensier, for whom, with great trouble, he had obtained admittance, notwithstanding his extreme youth.
On entering, at sight of the orator, who occupied the tribune, I cried out, “Ah! there is M. Robespierre.”
In fact, after the portrait M. Duplay had given me, it was impossible not to recognize him. The impression he produced upon me was profound.
Yes, it was he, although his face had not yet assumed the grim and fantastic appearance that it did later on. There he was, with that primly-brushed olive-colored coat, and that waistcoat of snowy whiteness, with his hair powdered, and thrown back from his brow, the skin of which, in its hideous wrinkles, reminded one of the parchment on a death’s head.
It was that wrinkled face, sullen and acute; that eye, with its tawny yellow pupil, which shot between its retracted lids a glance replete with malice, that seemed to wound aught it fell upon; it was that mouth, broad and stern, with its compressed lips; it was that voice, harsh in all its notes, and resembling the laugh of a hyena, or the scream of a jackal; it was the whole figure of the man, quivering with a nervous spasm, which caused his fingers to be continually drumming on the ledge of the rostrum, like a pianist on the keys of a spinnet; it was, in short, the revolution incarnate with his implacable good faith, his freshness of blood, his mind determined, bloodthirsty, and cruel.
As we entered, he finished his speech, and descended amid shouts of applause.
I followed him with my eyes, in spite of myself, into the midst of the crowd, through which, small and thin as he was, he easily passed. Not a hand but was stretched out to grasp his, not a voice that did not address him. One man, dressed in black, stopped him, as he passed the desk, and said one word to him. He started, his face expressed hatred and disgust, and he passed on without replying.
“Who was that sombre-looking man who spoke to M. de Robespierre?” said I, to M. Duplay.
He smiled.
“It is a customer of mine, to whose intervention with the Duke of Orleans I owe the right of coming here. His name is M. de Laclos, and he has written a very bad book.”
“What book?” asked I.
“‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses.’”
“Well, what then? Speak lower.”
“He is the man of the Duke of Orleans; he it was who, in the Cour des Fontaines, under the shadow of the Palais Royal, published Le Journal des Amis de la Constitution. Robespierre hates him on account of his fame, but he is all-powerful here. It is he who disposes of the purse of the Prince. Hush! M. de Sillery, the husband of Madame de Genlis, is listening to us.”
All this was Hebrew to me. I asked who M. de Sillery and Madame de Genlis were.
“Ah! of course,” said he; “I forgot that you had only just arrived in Paris, from the depths of some impenetrable forest, and of course know not the names of those who are around us.”
“I fancy that I know the name of M. de Sillery. If I do not deceive myself, he has been sent by the nobility of Champagne.”
“Good, my boy, good!”
“But it is the man,” continued I, “that I do not know.”
“Well, I will tell you all about the man. We begin to know names, as well as men. Charles Alexis Brulart is a marquis, like Lafayette, but having, like him, renounced his title, on the night of the 4th of August, he calls himself Sillery, as I call myself Duplay. As to his courage, it cannot be doubted. At twenty years of age, he assisted in the campaign of the Indies, and gained his rank at the point of the sword.”
“What rank did he gain?” asked I.
“Captain in the navy.”
“But he wears the uniform of a colonel of grenadiers.”
“Yes. He has left the navy for the army; he is the accredited agent of the Duke of Orleans. In his youth, he was called Comte de Genlis; that, as I have told you, is the name of his wife. She has acquired a double, and doubtful, celebrity, as the friend of the Duke of Orleans, whose children she has educated, and as a writer, in which occupation she is at present engaged.”
“But what does M. de Sillery say to all this?” asked I.
Duplay lifted his brows.
“No wonder M. Robespierre is not his friend!”
“One cannot be friendly with Robespierre and the Duke of Orleans at the same time,” said Duplay, shaking his head. “But patience!” All eyes are turned towards a man who enters. One felt, at first sight, without knowing him, that he was some great personage.
An immense forest of hair; a head resembling, for size and marked outline, a lion’s or a bull’s, indicated a ruler of the multitude. I had not time to ask Duplay who he was, for every mouth murmured the word “Mirabeau!—Mirabeau!”
“Ah!” cried Duplay; “there is the hurricane that brings us news. Draw near to him, that you may say, when you return home, that you have not only seen and heard Mirabeau, but that you have touched him.”
We approached; but, of a truth, it was necessary to approach in order to hear.
All the audience collected round him.
I looked for M. de Robespierre, to see if he pressed round like the others.
He was isolated, alone, leaning against the rostrum, with a disdainful air, watching the men following the idol of popularity, like a shower of leaves after an autumn storm.
He knew that the crowd never drew near him, incorruptible; but it rushed after Mirabeau, the corrupted; and, at the same time, he both envied and blamed him.
The debate of the National Assembly had been stormy. There were a few nobles there, who witnessed, with profound grief, that union of all the parties of France.
Mirabeau had been insulted in the rostrum. A gentleman, M. Dambly, had threatened him with his walking-stick. Mirabeau stopped his speech, drew his tablets from his pocket, and demanded M. Dambly’s address.
He cried it out from one end of the hall to the other.
“Very good!” said Mirabeau; “you are the one hundred and fiftieth person who has insulted me, and with whom I will fight when I have the time. Until your turn has come, hold your peace. I ask the President to make you pass your word to that effect.”
Mirabeau related the story with incredible irony. All laughed—all said he was in the right.
“And Lameth?” asked several members.
“Which?—Alexander or Charles?”
“Charles.”
“Oh, that is another matter! After practising with the rapier for two days, he could not decide upon anything; and, at the close of the Assembly, M. de Castrie cried out that he was a coward. They went out, and fought, and Lameth received a rapier thrust in his arm.”
“Is it true that the sword was poisoned?” asked one voice.
“I know not that; but I do know that they are preparing to raze M. de Castrie’s house to the ground.”
This news was greeted with a shout of laughter.
At this moment, an eager voice was heard, urging the debate. Robespierre was on the forum.
He began to speak in the midst of the noise. As far as I could judge, he spoke for union; but the noise and excitement were so great, that it was almost impossible to hear what he said.
But, accustomed to noise and interruptions, Robespierre continued, with that indefatigable perseverance, and that indomitable stubbornness which made his greatness, and, finally, his triumph.
Robespierre had spoken for ten minutes, and would, probably, have eventually succeeded in gaining silence, had not all attention been distracted from him by another arrival.
This was one of the heroes of the duel which Mirabeau had spoken of—Charles Lameth. He carried his right arm in a sling; but, with that exception, looked and walked wonderfully well.
All crowded round him, as they had done round Mirabeau, but with a different sentiment.
Charles Lameth was the friend of all the intelligent young men who composed the majority of the Jacobin Club.
Duplay pointed out to me, successively, Laharpe; the poet, Chénier; the painter, David; the tragedian, Talma; Audrien, Ledaine, Larive, Vernet, Chamfort—all men of intellect. Then I returned to the rostrum. Completely abandoned, Robespierre had descended, after throwing upon that gathering of life, hope, and activity, a glance that seemed to presage evil to come.
No one knew that he had ascended the rostrum; all were equally ignorant of his descent. Perhaps I was the only one who noticed the look of malignant hatred with which he regarded that knot of literary and scientific men, who had utterly disregarded—whether wilfully or not—himself and his discourse.
Presently, Duplay took my arm, and led me out of the hall.
“Return in a year,” he said, “and your eyes will be opened. There will be fewer plumes, fewer epaulets, less embroidery, but more men.”