THE COMMUNE OF PARIS DECIDES AND DECREES:
ARTICLE 1. All horses fit for service are required at once to be turned over to the citizens who depart for the front.
ARTICLE 2. All citizens shall hold themselves in readiness to march at the first call.
ARTICLE 3. Those, who by reason of age or infirmity are unable to join the march, shall deposit their arms with their Sections, to equip those more fortunate citizens ready to go to the front.
ARTICLE 4. The ramparts shall be closed.
Paris, September 2, 1792,
COULOMBEAU.
The last paragraph, ordering the closing of the ramparts, caused a shudder not unmingled with savage joy to shoot through the crowd. Through all minds flashed the thought: "The Commune orders the ramparts to be closed in order to prevent our enemies within from escaping. The work of justice will be the easier!"
Another decree which was posted, read:
THE COMMUNE OF PARIS
Decrees:
1.º Enlistment shall go on in the Sections, in the theaters, in the churches and in the public places.
2.º Foreign citizens shall enrol at the City Hall.
3.º The Department of Paris shall furnish at once sixty thousand men.
4.º The armorers, iron-workers and blacksmiths shall report to the Military Committee how fast they can turn out guns, pikes, swords, etc.
5.º All leaden coffins shall be melted up for bullets. The retired soldiers will take charge of this work.
Paris, September 2, 1792,
COULOMBEAU.
On this terrible day, everything converged to throw the population into a somber vertigo. There was not an event which did not drive fatally onward to the massacres in the prisons.
"Long live the Nation! Death to the traitors!" rose the cry.
The delegates of the Luxembourg Section declared to the Commune that they had adopted and recorded in their minutes the resolution "That it was urgent to purge the prisons before marching to the front." Three committee-men were sent to notify the Commune of this decision. The Sections of the Julian Hot-Baths, the Blind Asylum, and Ill-Counsel took the same action. The crowd about me echoed the cry:
"To the prisons! To the prisons!"
"Exterminate the rogues!"
"Purge the prisons!"
"Down with the black caps!"
"Death to the aristocrats!"
I sank into a stupor of despair. There was room for doubt no longer; public opinion was pronouncing itself for the mass extermination of the prisoners. The Sections were despatching their delegates to the Commune to notify it of the urgency of the move. The Commune, through Tallien's organ, approved the massacre; finally, Danton also approved it, Danton, the Minister of Justice, elected by the Assembly. How could I stem such a tide? Still I tried, not without the knowledge that I thereby risked my life; for in moments of popular impulse and enthusiasm, to pronounce oneself in opposition to the general opinion is to court being taken for a traitor. Nevertheless, I leaped upon a bench hard by, and cried in a voice vibrating with all the anguish of my heart:
"Citizens, in the name of the country, in the name of the Revolution, hear me!"
My paleness, my tears, my supplicating accents impressed the crowd; silence was given me, and I continued:
"Citizens, suppose that we all, patriots here present, were incarcerated by our triumphant enemies. Our enemies rush into our prison, surprise us without defense, without means of escape, and massacre us all! Would that not be a cowardly, a horrible deed? Would you commit a like atrocity?"
Outcries, hisses and curses drowned my voice.
"He is a wheedler!"
"A traitor!"
"A royalist in disguise!"
"Death to the traitors!"
I believed my last hour was come. Thrown down from my bench, I was surrounded, seized, mauled back and forth by the crowd in its fury. My uniform was torn to shreds. A sword was already raised over my head when some patriots, interposing between my adversaries and me, tore me from the hands that grasped me, protected me with their own bodies, and pushed me under the arch of a carriage-gate, which they slammed upon me. I fell battered and almost fainting; and soon I heard the throng disperse, crying:
"Long live the Nation!"
"To the prisons, to the prisons!"
"Death to the royalists!"
So, indeed, it occurred. The massacre was carried out.
CHAPTER IX.
"TO THE FRONT!"
The porter of the house in which I had thus compulsorily found asylum, a house neighboring on my own, gave me, together with his wife, his solicitous care. Both knew me by sight as a child of the quarter. I recovered little by little from my commotion. The porter offered me a jacket to replace the ruined tunic of my uniform. Never shall I forget the words the worthy people uttered as I bade them good-bye, thanking them for their attentions.
"What the devil, my dear neighbor! Between you and me, you were on the wrong side, this time!" said the brave fellow, who from his door-sill had taken in the whole scene. "Eh! Without a doubt, you were in the wrong, although you did it out of your good heart! My God! I also have a good heart, and, such as you see me, I couldn't cut the head off a chicken. Nevertheless, I say to myself: Those who, at this moment, have the courage to purge the prisons, are saving the country and our Revolution, by preventing our enemies from letting loose a civil war upon France, and joining themselves to the out-landers to combat us. Alas, it is indeed hard to be driven to it, but 'Necessity knows no law.' It is either kill or be killed. In such a case, each for his own skin!"
"Goodness me, yes!" put in the portress, a debonair matron, taking up her knitting again. "And then, whose fault is it? The nobles and the priests haven't stopped for three years conspiring with Veto and the Austrian woman. They loose the Prussians and Huns upon our poor country. God! Listen, you, neighbor—we are getting tired, and it is high time that, one way or another, this all be put an end to."
"My wife is right. And then, do you see, neighbor, when the Sections, and even the Commune and Monsieur Danton, everyone, in fact, says it is necessary to purge the prisons, one must believe that so many persons would not agree on one and the same course, were it not at bottom just, or at least necessary."
I have cited these good people's words because they are a faithful expression of the general sentiment on the subject of the massacres.
On leaving the house where I had found a refuge, I set out, not for my Section, to join my comrades of the Guard as I had at first intended; but, acting on the subsequent call of the Commune to all the armorer, blacksmith and iron-worker artisans, who were to take in hand the manufacture in haste of the greatest possible number of arms, I turned my steps toward the National Assembly, where the Military Committee sat in permanent session. I hoped that the number of workmen in these trades who reported would be over-sufficient for the turning out of the arms; in that case I was resolved to leave the next day for the army. Two motives impelled me to that resolution. First, my duty to my country; second the profound chagrin into which the aberration of my sister Victoria had thrown me. At that very moment, doubtless, she was—frightful thought—assisting at the massacre in the prisons, calm and terrible as the goddess of Retribution. Moreover, I had received, two days earlier, a letter from Charlotte Desmarais. She was living still at Lyons, with her mother; she assured me of her affection, of her unshakable constancy, and added that, in view of the perils with which the allied arms threatened the country, my duty as a citizen was marked out for me; she would support with firmness the new trials that would await her should I go to the front. Unhappily, I could not enrol. The number of mechanics skilled in iron working would hardly suffice for getting out the arms; by a decree of the Assembly, rendered on September 4, it was forbidden to them to leave Paris.
Behold the spectacle that I was to witness on my way to the Assembly—a spectacle moving in its very simplicity:
In the middle of Vendome Place was raised a tent, supported at each corner by a pike surmounted with a red bonnet. Under this tent, municipal officers, girt with the tricolor scarf, were receiving the enlistments of citizens. Two drums, piled one on the other, served as table. On the upper drum lay an ink-well, a pen, and the register in which were inscribed the names of the volunteers. Each of these received a fraternal embrace from one of the councilmen, and departed amid the cheers of "Long live the Nation!" uttered by the crowd which filled the place. Day without equal in history! Strange day! in which love of country, heroism, civic devotion, and the exaltation of the holiest virtues of the family, were intermingled with the thirst for vengeance and extermination. I heard uttered here and there about me, here with savage satisfaction, there with the accent of indifference or the resignation born of painful necessity: "They are going to execute the conspirators and purge the prisons." "Death to the priests and nobles!"
Into the tent of the municipal officers I saw a distinguished-looking old man enter. His five sons accompanied him. The youngest seemed about eighteen; the eldest, aged perhaps forty, held by the hand his own son, hardly out of his boyhood. These seven persons, completely armed and equipped out of their own purse, carried on their backs their soldiers' knapsacks. The old man acted as spokesman, and addressed one of the officers:
"Citizen, I am named Matthew Bernard, master tanner, No. 71 St. Victor Street, where I live with my five sons and my grandson. We come, they and I, to enlist; we leave for the frontier."
The wife of the brave citizen, his daughter, a young girl of seventeen, and his son's wife, awaited them outside. On the countenances of the three women was legible neither fear nor regret; the tears that shone in their eyes were tears of enthusiasm.
"Farewell, wife! Farewell, daughter and daughter-in-law! We depart assured of your safety. The prisons are purged," said the old man in a voice calm and strong. "We have none now to fight but the Prussians on the frontier. Adieu till we meet again. Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic! Death to the priests and the aristocrats!"
In the midst of the procession of recruits, I heard the snapping of a whip, and these words, shouted out in deep and joyous tones:
"Make way, citizens, make way, please! Oh, hey! Alright, Double-grey! Alright, Reddy!" And soon I saw drawing near, through the crowd which fell back to give him passage, a man in the hey-day of his strength, with an open and martial countenance, clad in a great-coat and an oilskin hat. He rode a grey horse, and led by the bridle a bay, both harnessed for the carriage. Across the crupper of one of the animals were slung a saddle-bag of oats and a bale of grass tied with a cord; the other horse carried a valise. The great-coat of the rider was drawn-tight at the waist by the belt of a cavalry saber that hung beside him. I remarked with surprise that the white leather of his sword-tassel was red, as if wet with blood.
"Citizen officers," called the rider without descending from the horse he rode, and which he reined in on the threshold of the tent, "Write as a voluntary recruit James Duchemin, stage driver by occupation and formerly an artilleryman; I have sold my coach to pay my expenses on the way. I am off to the frontier with my horses Double-grey and Reddy, of whom I make an offering to the country, asking only the favor not to be separated from them and to be enrolled with them in a regiment of field artillery. You'll see them do famously in the harness when they're hitched up to a four-pounder. So, then, citizen officers, write us down, my horses and me. I have just lent a hand to the patriots who are working down there, at the Abbey," added the stage driver, carrying his hand to the blood-reddened saber. "The business is done. The prisons are purged;—now, to the front!"
The day was nearly over when I arrived at the Assembly to put myself at the disposal of the Military Committee. While awaiting my turn for enrolment, I wandered into the Assembly galleries. I was anxious to know whether the massacre in the prisons was known to the popular Representatives. I then learned that the Assembly, informed as to the occurrences at the Abbey, at La Force, and at the Chatelet, had sent to these places, with instructions to oppose the carnage, a commission composed of Citizens Bazire, Dussaulx, Francis of Neufchateau, Isnard and Lequino.
Soon several of the commissioners entered the chamber, accompanied by Tallien, a member of the Commune, who took the floor and said:
"Citizens, the commissioners of the Assembly are powerless to turn aside the vengeance of the people, a vengeance in some sort just, for, we must say it, these blows have fallen upon the issuers of false notes, whom the law condemns to death. What excited the vengeance of the people was that they found in the prisons none but recognized criminals!"
I left the Assembly chamber and returned to take my place in the line and pass before the Committee. The Committee was presided over, that day, by Carnot the elder, an officer of genius, and one of the greatest captains of the time. I had myself inscribed as an iron-worker, and received the order to appear next morning at daybreak, at the green-house of the Louvre, where they were setting up the forges and work-benches for the fashioning of the munitions of war.
While awaiting Victoria, at our lodging, I busied myself with recording in my journal the various events of the day. One in the morning sounded; my sister had not returned. Up till now, I had felt no anxiety for her; only those who would attempt to disarm the popular anger, only those, on that day, ran any danger; and Victoria partook of the general sentiment of Paris on the subject of a mass extermination. But suddenly there flashed back to my mind Jesuit Morlet and his tool Lehiron. I knew the hatred entertained by the reverend Father for my sister. These thoughts threw me into deep anxiety. The Jesuit Morlet and Lehiron were capable of any crime; and on this unlucky day, when blood flowed in torrents, nothing would have been easier than for the wretches to make away with Victoria. Faithful to his hope of seeing the Revolution besmirch itself or lose itself in excesses, Abbot Morlet would not fail to be on hand to urge on the carnage of the prisoners; he could easily, under a new disguise, repair to the prisons with Lehiron and his cut-throats, and, on encountering my sister, point her out to their weapons.
The gloomiest of apprehensions were raised in me by these reflections. My alarm increased from minute to minute. There was, alas, no way to still it. My anguish had almost reached the breaking point when I heard hurried steps on the stair-landing. I ran to the door. It flew open. Victoria uttered a cry of joy, threw herself into my arms, pressed me convulsively to her breast, and broke into tears. Then, between her sobs, she murmured in a voice choked with joy:
"Brother, my poor brother, I find you again! God be praised!"
As her emotion subsided, Victoria acquainted me in the following words with the source of her alarm:
"Just now, on my way here, I met, ten steps from the house, our neighbor Dubreuil. On seeing me he stopped, looked at me an instant with an expression of surprise and grief, and said, 'Are you coming to see John?' 'Surely,' answered I. 'Alas, poor John harangued the crowd this morning at this very place; he spoke against the massacre in the prisons; they took him for a traitor, and the crowd, in its temper—' and our neighbor buried his face in his hands and did not finish. I understood everything. Yielding to the goodness of your heart, desiring to oppose popular justice in its course, you had paid for the attempt with your life!—such was my first thought. For an instant I stood motionless with stupor, my soul in a whirl. I felt I should go mad. Then I ran to our door. 'Brother, brother!' I cried. 'Whence your alarm, mademoiselle?' the porter asked me; 'Monsieur John is upstairs since ten o'clock.' My heart bounded with joy;—but I was not completely reassured till I saw you."
I recounted to my sister the cause of our neighbor's mistake in thinking I had lost my life in the attempt to intervene in favor of the prisoners. And I followed by confiding to Victoria the fears which her own prolonged absence had caused me.
"True," Victoria answered, "the Jesuit did appear once at the Abbey Prison with Lehiron and some of his brigands. But they soon saw that that was not the place for them, for at the Abbey there was no pillaging, there was no assassination. We judged and condemned the guilty; we freed the innocent."
"Alas, and in the name of what law did you condemn the ones, and acquit the others?"
"In the name of Eternal Justice, which smites the wicked and spares the good."
I heard Victoria in a sort of daze. "And even if," exclaimed I, "a semblance of justice did preside over the carnage, by what right did these men constitute themselves the accusers, judges and executioners of the prisoners?"
"Brother, by what right did the jurors who assisted at the sessions of the revolutionary tribunal instituted on August the 17th of this year, declare the accused innocent or guilty?"
"They exercised a right conferred on them by the law."
"Then the law confers in certain cases, and on citizens elected by the people, the right to judge or to absolve?"
"In certain cases, yes; and the present case is not of their number."
"John, those are the subtleties of a lawyer. Listen to what passed before my eyes: The people elected by acclamation and installed in the prison a revolutionary tribunal of eleven jurors. The prisoners were brought before them. Then—I saw everything, I heard everything, and I swear before God, aye, on my soul and conscience, that all those who were sentenced deserved the death. My mind is clear, my thoughts calm. Hear what I have to tell you, then you shall pronounce between those who glorify the events of September and those who condemn them:
"Three carriages bearing priests accused of having fomented civil war, were driving towards the Abbey. As the vehicles approached the prison, one of the priests, who was braving the crowd with the violence of his discourse, was cursed by it. In a passion he raised his cane and struck one of those who insulted him over the head. The crowd, exasperated, followed the vehicles into the Abbey and massacred all the priests in them."
Victoria gasped for breath and continued:
"It was at this moment that I entered the prison. Almost at the same time as I, Manuel, the attorney-at-law for the Commune, arrived. The people called on the guards to deliver the prisoners to them. Manuel asked to be heard. He began by reading a decision of the Commune, which declared:
"'In the name of the people, citizens, you are enjoined to pass judgment on all the prisoners in the Abbey Prison without distinction; with the exception of Abbot Lenfant, whom you shall bestow in a safe place.
"'At the City Hall, September 2, 1792.
"'Signed, Panis, Sergent, administrators.'
"Having read the decree, Manuel continued:
"'Citizens, your resentment is just. Wage, if you will, war without let upon the enemies of the public weal! Fight them to the death; they must perish. But you love justice, and you would shudder at the thought of imbruing your hands with innocent blood. Cease, then, from throwing yourselves like tigers upon men, your brothers.'"
Victoria, after accentuating this fact, went on:
"A court elected by those present and presided over by Maillard, convened in the registrar's office; one enters the place by a grating communicating with the interior of the prison, and leaves it by a door opening on the prison courtyard. It was in the latter place that the justiciaries awaited the condemned, to execute them. Maillard laid before him the prison register; this gave the charge against each inmate, and the cause of his arrest. A warder, as each prisoner's name was called, went to fetch him. He was led before the tribunal, which proceeded in this wise:
"For instance, they brought in a Knight of St. Louis, an ex-captain of the King's Huntsmen. The accused, formerly the seigneur of several parishes, enjoyed still a large fortune. His name was Journiac of St. Meard. Here he comes before the tribunal. He gives his name and surname. 'Are you a royalist?' asks Maillard. And as, at that question, St. Meard seemed troubled, Maillard adds: 'Answer truthfully and without fear. We are here to judge not opinions but their consequences.' The Chevalier of St. Meard, a firm and loyal man, replies: 'I am a royalist, I mourn the old regime. I believe that France is essentially monarchist. I have never concealed my regrets. I have a naturally satirical spirit, and I have published in several miscellanies, adhering to my opinion, several mocking verses against the Revolution. Those are the principal facts charged against me. As to the rest, I have here papers which will, happily, make clear to you my innocence.' And St. Meard drew from a portfolio several sheets. They were carefully examined. Some witnesses, brought there by the merest chance, were heard for and against the accused. His defense, worked out in much detail, occupied over half an hour, and ended with these words: 'I mourn the old regime; but I have never conspired against the new. I did not flee the country; I regard as a crime the appeal to foreign arms. I hope I have proved to you, citizens, my innocence, and I believe that you will set me at liberty, to which I am much inclined both by principle and by nature.' The jurors conferred in a low voice, and in a few seconds Maillard rose, removed his hat, and said aloud, 'Prisoner at the bar, you are free.' Then, addressing three patriots armed with pikes and bloody swords, Maillard added, 'Watch over the safety of this citizen; conduct him to his home.'—"
"Ah," I broke in, experiencing a mingled sensation of compassion and horror, "the heart of man is an abyss—an abyss—one's reason is lost in trying to fathom it!"
"That is how things were conducted at the Abbey," proceeded Victoria. "After examination and free defense I saw set at liberty Bertrand La Molleville, brother of the minister; Maton La Varenne, a lawyer; Abbot Solomon Duveyrier; and the Count of Afry, a colonel in the Swiss regiments, after he had proven an alibi from Paris during the events of the 10th of August."
And Victoria completed the account of the things she witnessed while the prisoners were being judged:
"I told you, brother, how they acquitted the innocent; now I shall show you how they performed sentence on the guilty. Let me take the case of Montmorin, the double traitor absolved by the Orleans High Court. That scandalous acquittal was one of the causes of to-day's events. The people, tired and irritated at seeing the criminals pass scatheless under the sword of the law, has done justice to itself, by striking them! Montmorin, brought before the court, showed himself haughty and arrogant; a contemptuous smile contracted his lips. 'You are Citizen Montmorin? The crimes of which you are accused are notorious. What have you to say in your defense?' Maillard asked the former minister. 'I refuse to reply; I do not recognize your right to sit upon me,' retorted Montmorin. In vain Maillard urged him to speak; the prisoner maintained an obstinate silence. 'Take the accused to La Force,' ordered Maillard, after with a look consulting the jurors, all of whom gave, by an affirmative nod of the head, their approval of the sentence of the Count of Montmorin."
"But Maillard had just ordered the prisoner to be taken to La Force?"
"A conventional phrase, to spare the condemned up to the last moment the agonies of death. 'Take the accused to La Force,' or 'Release the accused,' were the formulas for the supreme penalty. They opened before them the door that gave on the courtyard; the door closed on them, and the justiciaries performed their office."
"Strange contradiction—pity and ferocity!"
"Misled by the words pronounced by Maillard, Montmorin quoth in a supercilious voice, 'I do not go on foot; let them call a coach.' 'It awaits you at the door,' responded Maillard. Montmorin was pushed into the courtyard, where they ended him. Bakman, the Swiss regimental colonel, also acquitted by the High Court of Orleans, underwent the same fate as Montmorin; also Protot and Valvins, both counterfeiters; Abbot Bardy, a monster who had cut his own brother to pieces, and—but we can content ourselves with these examples."
Victoria sank into somber silence; I pressed her hand compassionately, and passed to my own room to seek in repose forgetfulness from this wretched day.
CHAPTER X.
ROYALTY ABOLISHED.
Tallien, in his account of the times, traces the events leading up to these September days; he marks among the causes of the public indignation the scandalous acquittals of the Orleans High Court, and the approach of the foreign armies, after the capture of Longwy and Verdun. Then he proceeds:
"At the same time, a criminal exposed in the public place had the temerity to cry on the scaffold, 'Long live the King! Long live the Queen! Long live Lafayette! Long live the Prussians! To the devil with the Nation!' These utterances provoked the anger of the people, and the wretch would have perished on the instant had not the attorney of the Commune shielded him with his own body, and had him taken back to prison to be turned over to the judges. In the course of his examination he declared that for several days money had been scattered profusely in the prisons, and that, at the first opportunity, the brigands there held in durance were to be armed in the service of the counter-revolutionists!
"Moreover, no one is ignorant that it was in the prisons that the false notes put in circulation were forged; and, in fact, during the expedition of the 2nd of September, there were found in the prisons plates, paper, and all the necessary apparatus for issuing the notes. These articles are in existence now, and are deposited in the archives of the courts....
"Soon thousands of citizens were assembled under the banners of liberty, ready to march. But before their departure, a simple and natural reflection occurred to them:
"'At the very moment that we march against the enemy,' they said, 'when we go to shed our blood in defense of the country, we do not wish to leave our fathers, our wives, our children, our old folks, exposed to the onslaughts of the reprobates shut up in the prisons. Before setting out against the foreign enemies, we must first wipe out those in our midst.'
"Such was the language of these citizens, when two refractory priests whom they were taking to the Abbey Prison, hearing some seditious cries, offered insults to the Revolution. The rage of the people was at white heat....
"The Swiss, the assassins of the people on the 10th of August, imprisoned to the number of some three hundred, were set free and incorporated in the national battalions....
"Such were the circumstances which preceded and provoked the events of September, events unquestionably terrible, and which, in time of peace would demand legal vengeance, but which, in a period of agitation, it is better to draw the veil over, leaving to the historian the task of appreciating this period of the Revolution, which, however, had many more uses than one thinks."
To wind up the portrayal of this redoubtable evolution, I take this extract from a speech of Robespierre's:
"They have spoken to you often of the events of September 2. That is the subject at which I am impatient to arrive. I shall treat it in an absolutely disinterested manner....
"The general council of the Commune, far from exciting the events of September, did its levellest to prevent them. In order to form a just idea of these occurrences, one must seek for truth not alone in calumnious orations in which they are distorted, but in the history of the Revolution. If you have the idea that the mental impulse given by the insurrection of August 10 had not entirely subsided by the beginning of September, you are mistaken. There is not a single likeness between the two periods....
"The greatest conspirators of August 10 were withdrawn from the wrath of the victorious people, who had consented to place them in the hands of a new tribunal. Nevertheless, after judging three or four minor criminals, the tribunal rested. Montmorin was acquitted, the Prince of Poix and other conspirators of like importance were fraudulently set free. Vast impositions of this character were coming to light, new proofs of the conspiracy of the court were developing daily. Nearly all the patriots wounded at the Tuileries died in the arms of their brother Parisians. Indignation was smouldering in all hearts. A new cause burst it into flame. Many citizens had believed that the 10th of August would break the thread of the royalist conspiracies, they considered the war closed. Suddenly the news of the taking of Longwy hurtled through Paris; Verdun had been given up, Brunswick with his army was headed for Paris. No fortified place interposed between us and our enemies. Our army, divided, almost ruined by the treasons of Lafayette, was lacking in everything. Arms had to be found, camp equipments, provisions, men. The Executive Council dissimulated neither its fears nor embarrassment. Danton appeared before the Assembly, graphically pictured to it its perils and resources, and besought it to take vigorous measures. He went to the City Hall, rang the alarm bell, fired the guns, and declared the country in danger. In an instant forty thousand men, armed and equipped, were on the march to Chalons. In the midst of this universal enthusiasm the approach of the out-land armies reawakened in every breast sentiments of indignation and vengeance against the traitors who had beckoned in the enemy. Before leaving their wives and children, the citizens, the vanquishers of the Tuileries, desired the punishment of the conspirators, which had been promised them. They ran to the prisons. Could the magistrates halt the people! for it was a movement of the people; not, as some have ridiculously supposed, a fragmentary sedition of a few rascals paid to assassinate their fellows. The Commune, they say, should have proclaimed martial law. Martial law against the people, with the enemy drawing nigh! Martial law after the 10th of August! Martial law in favor of the accomplices of a tyranny dethroned by the people! What could the magistrates do against the determined will of an indignant population, which opposed to the magistrates' talk the memory of its own heroism on August 10, its present devotion in rushing to the front, and the long-drawn-out immunity from punishment enjoyed by the traitors?...
"They protest that innocent persons perished in these executions; they have been pleased to exaggerate the number of these. Even one, no doubt, is too many, citizens! Mourn that cruel mistake, as we have for long mourned it! Mourn even the guilty ones reserved for the law's retribution, who fell under the sword of popular justice!"
The volunteers, who in those September days enrolled in multitudes, were sent first to the intermediary camps, where they received the rudiments of military training. Thence they were sent to the army. Their courage saved France and inaugurated the victories of the Republic.
Thanks, O, God! To-day I have seen the triumph which crowns fifteen centuries of struggle maintained by our oppressed fathers against their oppressors; by slaves, serfs, and vassals against Kings, nobles and clergy; by the descendants of the conquered Gauls against the descendants of the Frankish conquerors.
Gaul was a slave—I see her sovereign! Her casqued and mitred tyrants are cut off.
The new National Convention assembled at the palace of the Tuileries, and went into session on Friday, September 21, 1792, at quarter past twelve.
Petion presided; the secretaries were Condorcet, Rabaud St. Etienne, Vergniaud, Camus, and Lassource.
Couthon took the floor, and exhorted his colleagues: "Citizens, our mission is sublime! The people has reposed its confidence in us—let us approve ourselves worthy of it!"
"There is one act which you can not put off till to-morrow, without betraying the will of the nation," declared Collot D'Herbois. "That is the abolition of royalty."
"Certes," assented Abbot Gregory, "no one intends to preserve the race of Kings in France. We know that all dynasties are but broods of vampires; we must reassure the friends of liberty; we must destroy this talisman, whose magic power is still capable of stupefying so many. I ask, then, that by a solemn law, you consecrate the abolition of royalty."
The whole Assembly rose with a spontaneous movement, and with cheers acclaimed the motion of Gregory, who continued:
"Kings are to the moral order what monsters are to the physical. Courts are the smithy of crimes and the fastness of tyrants. The history of Kings is the martyrdom of nations. We are all penetrated with this truth—why further discuss it? I ask that my motion be put to a vote, after it shall have been drafted with a preamble comportable to the solemnity of the decision."
"The preamble of your motion, citizen, is the history of the crimes of Louis XVI," said Ducot.
The president rose and read:
"THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY DECREES:
"ROYALTY IS ABOLISHED IN FRANCE."
Shouts of joy, cries of "Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic!" rang from every throat, members of the Convention and spectators in the galleries alike. The tumultuous rejoicing lasted for several minutes.
The session adjourned.
The members of the Convention passed out to cries of:
"Long live the Nation!"
"Long live the Republic!"
CHAPTER XI.
BOURGEOIS TURNED SANS-CULOTTE.
It was the evening of December 10, 1792. Monsieur Desmarais sat talking with his wife in the parlor of their dwelling. The attorney, elected to the Convention in September, no longer was content to affect patriotism in his acts and words; his very appearance now breathed a sans-culottism of the deepest dye. Thus he, once so precise about his person, shaved but once a week; his hair, now powderless, was clipped close like a Roundhead's; he wore a carmagnole jacket, hob-nailed shoes, wide pantaloons, a distinctive sign of the sans-culottes, and a red-checkered handkerchief rolled around his neck, after the style of Marat. In one of the corners of the parlor, now without mirrors or curtains and almost stripped of furniture, reposed a large square deal box, whose cover bore the words in large penciled characters: "Breakable. Handle with care." The chest seemed to be built with more care and solidity than is usual with packing-cases. Its cover, instead of being merely nailed, was fastened with hinges; a strong lock held it shut. Madam Desmarais, arrived from Lyons a brief half hour before, had not yet removed her traveling garments. Her face breathed anxiety. Her husband's features were pale and glowering; he seemed worked up, agitated. His wife continued the conversation:
"You understand, my friend, that, frightened at the rumors which were rife in Lyons on the subject of the triumph of a royalist conspiracy—that Paris was given up to fire and blood, the Convention dissolved, its members exposed to the greatest dangers—"
"It is incomprehensible to me what object anyone could have in propagating such sinister rumors," replied Desmarais. "We are on the tracks of a royalist plot, built, for a pretext, upon the trial of this unfortunate King; but the plot can not but miscarry. Paris seems seized with vertigo since August 10!"
"However that may be, my friend, frightened by these rumors, I set out for Paris. Besides, it costs me too much to live far from you in these terrible times. The reasons for our separation were the hope of allaying the passion of our daughter for that young Lebrenn, and your lively desire to shield me from the spectacle of the insurrections, the popular passions which were about to sweep over Paris. But our principal aim has not been attained. Charlotte persists in her determination to remain unmarried or to wed that ironsmith. She writes to him and receives his letters. So, then, whether she be at Paris or at Lyons, she will be neither nearer nor further from the scene of her love-affair. And finally, by the very fact that you are exposed to dangers of all sorts, my place is beside you, my friend. I have, then, resolved to leave you no longer. I also am much alarmed on my brother's score. Here it is more than a month that I haven't heard from him. Can you tell me what has become of him?"
"I know that he was denounced as a suspect; he probably has remained in Paris, where he is in hiding, and conspiring in favor of the monarchy. I do not in the least doubt it."
"What do you tell me! My brother denounced! My God! In these times such an accusation is a thing of terror—it may lead to the scaffold!"
"No doubt. But why doesn't he consent to resign himself, as I have, to howl with the wolves, and roar with the tigers?"
"Poor Hubert," replied Madam Desmarais in tears. "In the midst of the mortal dangers which he runs, he thinks of my birthday; he sends me a token of his brotherly affection." And the attorney's wife, casting her eyes towards the box in the corner, added, "Dear, good brother! How sensible I am of this new proof of his affection!"
"If he truly loved you, he would not risk causing you the greatest chagrin, and compromising me into the bargain!"
"My friend, I can not listen to reproaches against my brother, when he is exposed to such grave perils—"
"And whose fault is it, if not his own, due to his own violent and obstinate character? He abhors, says he, the excesses of the Revolution! Alas, I also execrate them—yet I feign to applaud them. That will at least do to insure our repose and steer clear of the guillotine. Thus, to-morrow, the members of the Convention will hale before the bar the unfortunate Louis XVI, he will be examined in due form, they will give him his trial, and he will be condemned to death. And well, I shall vote for death."
"O, my God!" murmured Madam Desmarais in cold fear. "My husband a regicide!"
"But how can I escape the fatal necessity?"
"Let the fatality fall, then!" answered Madam Desmarais mournfully, her voice broken with sobs.
"Let us go on," said advocate Desmarais after a long silence, during which his agitation slowly got the better of itself, "let us go on. Our daughter is then still infatuated with this Lebrenn?"
"She loves Lebrenn as much as, if not more than, before. He informed her in one of his last letters that he had been promoted to certain duties in the Commune of Paris, and she glories in his advancement."
"In truth, the workingman has been elected a municipal officer. They even proposed to him, such is his influence in the quarter and in the Jacobin Club, to run as candidate for the Convention, but he declined the offer. For the rest, his position with the Jacobins has put him in touch with several leading spirits of the Revolution—Tallien, Robespierre, Legendre, Billaud-Varenne, Danton, and other rabid democrats."
"Have you renewed your relations with the young man since the day you refused him our daughter's hand?"
"No; we have met several times at the Jacobins, but I have avoided speaking with him. He has imitated my reserve. For the rest, I must do him this justice—he has always expressed himself in favorable terms concerning me, true to his promise, that, however little reliance he placed in my uprightness and the sincerity of my convictions, he would hold his opinion secret until my acts themselves denounced me. Well, my acts and speeches have been, and will be, in conformity with the necessities of my position. But, too much of this Lebrenn;—I have told you that your unlooked-for return surprised me, but that it chimed in with my recent projects. I have in view for our daughter a marriage to which I attach great importance, for I would become, by the alliance, the father-in-law of a man destined to count among the most influential personages of the Revolution. This future son-in-law is very young, and remarkably good looking; he belongs to the upper bourgeois, even bordering on the nobility. He is, in fine, the intimate friend, the pupil, the devoted supporter, the right arm of Robespierre. This young man, who has already made his mark in the Assembly in two speeches of immense influence,—is Monsieur St. Just."
"Alas, my friend, in Lyons I heard tell of this young man. His name excites the same execration as that of Robespierre and Marat among the royalists, and even among the moderate republicans of the complexion of the Girondins. Have you considered that?"
"It is precisely because of the aversion which he inspires in the royalists, the Girondins, and the moderates, that I have fixed my eyes upon St. Just. One of our common friends, Billaud-Varenne, is to make, this very day, overtures to my young colleague on the subject of this marriage, which will be so much to my advantage."
"My friend, all that you say causes me a surprise and bewilderment that puts my mind in a whirl. You own to experiencing great regret at entering on the path of the Revolution; and, by a strange contradiction, you speak of marrying your daughter to one of the men whom honest folks hold most in horror."
"No contradiction there, at all. Facts are facts. I am unhappy enough to have for brother-in-law a mad-cap counter-revolutionist. Hubert is a denounced man, and at this very hour, no doubt, is intriguing against the Revolution. All this may compromise me most perilously. Marat has his eye on me. Now, if Marat penetrates my innermost thoughts, I am in great danger. The influence of St. Just, once my son-in-law, would save my head."
Gertrude the serving-maid interrupted her master by entering the room with an air at once of mystery and affright, and saying to him in a startled voice:
"Monsieur, madam's brother is here."
"Hubert here!" cried Desmarais with a start. "I don't want to see him! Tell him I'm out!"
"Alas, sir, your brother-in-law said to me that he was pursued by the police, and that they were hard on his tracks."
"Great God!" murmured Madam Desmarais faintly. "My brother!"
"Let him get out of here!" cried the attorney, pale with terror. "Let him get out this instant!"
"You repulse my brother, when he is in danger of his life, perhaps!" exclaimed Madam Desmarais indignantly. And running to Gertrude she demanded, "Where is my brother?"
"In the dining room, taking off his cloak—" But interrupting herself she exclaimed, "Here is Monsieur Hubert, now!"
In fact, it was none other than Hubert himself who appeared in the parlor door. He was laboring under strong emotion; he received his sister in his arms and embraced her effusively.
Advocate Desmarais, a prey to the keenest anxiety, was as yet uncertain as to how his troublesome brother-in-law was to be received. In a whisper he interrogated Gertrude:
"Do you think the porter recognized Monsieur Hubert?"
"With his slouch hat pulled over his eyes, blue glasses on, and his chin hidden in the collar of his great-coat, Monsieur Hubert was unrecognizable."
The attorney pondered a few seconds, and continued his conversation with Gertrude: "You have a key to the little garden gate? Go open it, and leave it ajar. In ten minutes run to the janitor with a great air of alarm and tell him that the person who just asked for me was a robber, that you just surprised him with his hand in the drawer of the dining-room buffet; that he took flight as soon as discovered, that he ran down stairs in a hurry, and that he probably made good his escape by scaling the garden wall. You understand all I've told you? Execute my orders precisely, and not a word on my brother-in-law's presence."
"It shall all be done as you wish."
"Not a word of all this to Jeanette or Germain. Let no one into the parlor for any reason whatsoever, and do not come in yourself until I ring for you." Then Desmarais added, as one who had a brilliant idea, "For greater safety, I'll bolt the door, Go!"
Gertrude went out, and Desmarais cautiously bolted the door of the parlor.
"To see you again brother, perhaps at the moment of losing you forever!" sobbed Madam Desmarais addressing Hubert; "the thought is misery to me."
"Reassure yourself, sister. I know how to baffle the pursuits of which I am the object. I have thrown off the scent the spies who dogged my steps. And certes, they will never come to seek me in the house of a member of the Convention. I ask asylum of your husband till midnight only. At that hour I shall quit his house."
"Ah, I swear, that do I, that you will have quit it in ten minutes!" retorted the attorney, going over slowly to his wife's side, at the same moment that Hubert, perceiving the wooden packing-case, said to his sister:
"Ah, there is my box!"
"Poor brother," began Madam Desmarais, interrupting the financier. "In the midst of your anxieties, you still remembered my birthday. How can I tell you how touched I am at this proof of your affection!"
"I deserve no thanks, my dear sister. The case is not intended for you; it contains some precious objects which I wish to save from the domiciliary visits they make upon suspects."
"Compromising papers, no doubt!" gasped Desmarais, aside. "Such an object to drop upon me!"
"I thought these things would be safer here than anywhere else, that is why I sent them in the case," continued Hubert; "but for reasons useless to tell you, your servant and the porter must transport it at once to a house at an address I shall give you."
"I shall go at once to tell our men," said Madam Desmarais, moving toward the door. But the lawyer stopped her with his hand, and said coldly:
"Madam, you shall not go out!"
"Pardon, my dear brother-in-law, my not yet having pressed your hand, you whose hospitality I shall share for a few hours," spoke up Hubert, stepping to meet the lawyer; "but it was so long since I saw my sister, that my first movement was to run to her, and—"
"Citizen Hubert," broke in the attorney, pale and trembling between rage and fear, "the house of a Mountainist of the Convention shall not serve as the refuge of traitors."
"Good God!" Madam Desmarais murmured, clasping her hands in fright.
"What, brother-in-law, I ask you for shelter for a few hours, you, my relative, you, erstwhile my friend, and you dare drive me from your door?"
"Citizen Hubert, the enemies of the Republic are my enemies; I shall treat them as political enemies when they fall into my hands. Out you go!"
"Such greetings from you!" stammered Hubert, dazed.
"Brother," cried Madam Desmarais, "do not believe what my husband says! He is incapable of committing such an act of infamy. It was only a few moments ago that he was cursing the excesses of the Revolution."
"Wretch!" shrieked Desmarais, seizing his wife by the wrist. "Will you hold your peace!" Then, turning to his brother-in-law, "Citizen Hubert, if you do not leave this building on the instant, I shall send for the patrol of the Section, and have you arrested."
"Ah!" cried Hubert with indignation. "I come to ask a relative for a few hours' refuge, and the coward, for fear of being compromised, wishes to send me to the scaffold!"
As Hubert pronounced these last words, Gertrude rapped at the door and called in a quaking voice:
"Open, open! The commissioner of the Section, in his scarf of office, is here with the mounted police. He is coming upstairs."
Hubert drew from his coat pockets a brace of double-barreled pistols, cocked them, and said in a low voice:
"I shall sell my life dear; but, by the thousand gods! my first bullet will be for you, my coward and traitor brother-in-law!"
Advocate Desmarais leaped to the door and drew back the bolt. His wife, struck with a sudden inspiration, and displaying, in the terror which seized her, an unwonted strength, dragged her brother into her bed-chamber, which opened on the parlor, slammed the door after her, and shot the bolt into its socket.
CHAPTER XII.
HOWLING WITH THE WOLVES.
While Hubert was thus perforce following his sister to safety, Desmarais did not notice his brother-in-law's disappearance; for the lawyer, at the moment, was leaving the parlor to meet the commissioner. Contrary to his expectations, he did not find the officer in the ante-room, and was compelled to go as far as the stair-landing, where he encountered him and accompanied him back to the parlor.
The commissioner was a man of cold and rigid physiognomy; in his suite were some gendarmes of the Republic, and several police agents. Bowing to the commissioner, the advocate said:
"Citizen, if I had a son a traitor to the nation, I would myself give him up to the public powers. I would follow the example of Brutus the Roman." Then stopping short and casting about him looks of stupefaction, he added: "But where has my brother-in-law gone to?"
"That is for me to ask you, Citizen Representative of the people," rejoined the commissioner. "This disappearance is strange!"
"I commence to see! My wife has let out her brother by her bed-chamber; the rear staircase descends to the court, and from the court the rascal will gain the garden!"
The advocate flung himself against the bedroom door, and beating upon it with both fists, cried breathlessly, "God be praised, the traitor will not escape us!"
"Go tell our people to redouble their watchfulness," the commissioner ordered two of his men, who went out quickly. Just then the sleeping room door fell beneath the blows of the lawyer. The chamber was empty.
Suddenly one of the two agents burst in out of breath, crying, "Treason! Our man has escaped! Just now two women, one of whom was enveloped in a long furred pelisse, wearing a hat with a heavy veil, appeared at the carriage gate, where two gendarmes were posted. One of the women said: 'I am Madam Desmarais; I am going out with my daughter.'"
"A lie! for my daughter is here and could not have left her room!"
"Pursue the fugitives," said the commissioner to some of the men around him; then, turning back toward Desmarais, he continued, in a tone of suspicion: "Citizen Representative, this escape seems to me cleverly planned; but there is still something else to your charge," indicating the deal chest. "In the name of the law, I summon you to tell me the contents of that case."
Remembering that Hubert had told his sister he had used the pretext of a birthday present to her to remove some precious articles from domiciliary visitation, the attorney was staggered by the question. But driven by the logic of his hypocrisy further and further along the path in which he thought lay his safety, the miserable man recovered himself with an effort, and said firmly to the commissioner: "Citizen, before replying to your question about the chest, I ask the arrest of my wife, as an accomplice in the escape of a conspirator."
"I have no warrant for the arrest of Citizeness Desmarais. I shall refer the matter to the attorney for the Commune."
"As to the chest, the object of your interrogation, I answer that it belongs not to me. It was sent here by my brother-in-law several days ago. It should contain, according to what has been told us, a birthday present for my wife; but I hasten to add that I have every ground for believing that Citizen Hubert, taking advantage of my confidence, has sought to conceal from investigation certain compromising papers, by sending them to me in that box. I learned of this circumstance only by certain words let fall by my brother-in-law just now, when I threatened to cause his arrest. I have nothing else to add."
"Lift the cover off the box," ordered the commissioner.
Several gendarmes thrust their bayonets between the cover of the chest and the lock, which yielded to their pressure. The case flew open. Advocate Desmarais threw an unquiet look into its interior, which was filled to the brim with daggers, pistols, and boxes of cartridges. Among these were several packages of proclamations issued by the royalist insurrectionary committee.
Despite his profound dissimulation and the extraordinary command he exercised over himself, Desmarais could not conceal the fright into which he was thrown by the exposure of the contents of the chest. But curbing his anxiety by a powerful effort, he feigned indifference, and tossed back into the box a copy of the proclamation, which he had hastily read.
The commissioner seated himself by a table, drew out an inkhorn, and began to write.
All at once Madam Desmarais appeared at the door of the parlor, pale, fainting, hardly able to keep her feet. Nevertheless in her face could be read the joy she felt over her brother's escape, and as she entered she said, raising her eyes to heaven:
"Blessed be Thou, my God! He is saved!"
At the sight of his wife Desmarais leaped with rage, ran to her, seized her roughly by the arm and cried in a voice that betrayed the extent of his terror:
"Citizeness Desmarais, you are guilty of a crime against the nation. I call for your imprisonment."
Madam Desmarais looked at her husband in amazement, unable, at first, to grasp the import of his words. Just at this moment Charlotte, informed by Gertrude of what was taking place, entered the room. She was in time to hear the last words of the advocate; she ran to Madam Desmarais, clasped her in her arms, and exclaimed:
"Great heaven! Imprison mother! Is it you, father, who thus threaten her!"
"Leave the room," retorted the lawyer, accompanying the words with an imperious gesture. "Leave the room, my girl. Your presence is not needed."
"I, leave the room, when you threaten mother? Never! Where she remains, I remain."
"My child, be reassured," replied Madam Desmarais in an undertone, giving her daughter a look of intelligence which included the commissioner. "Your father is not speaking seriously. Everything will come out to our satisfaction."
These words, which might have been heard by the commissioner, still further exasperated the lawyer, who, under the double goad of his hypocrisy and trepidation, cried: "Citizeness Desmarais, in making yourself the confederate in the escape of a criminal, you have exposed yourself to carrying your head to the scaffold!"
At these words Charlotte uttered a piercing cry, and fell upon the neck of her mother, whom she still held in a tight embrace. But the latter, firmly persuaded that her husband was playing a role to conjure away the dangers which surrounded him, again said to her daughter, in order to calm her anguish:
"But, poor child, know that your father is forced to talk this way in the presence of a commissioner of police."
Overwhelmed by so many emotions, Madam Desmarais forgot this time to lower her voice sufficiently as she spoke to her daughter. Her words fell with distinctness on the ears of her husband, standing near the commissioner of the Section, who was still occupied in writing his report. False and cowardly men, when in the grip of fear, are capable of any act of brutality to protect their own lives. So it now was with Desmarais; for, leaden pale with fright, he said to himself:
"I am lost! The commissioner heard my wife's words." Then, addressing the magistrate: "Citizen, I have called upon you for the arrest of Citizeness Desmarais, my wife."
"And I have already told you, citizen," rejoined the commissioner, "that I have no warrant for her arrest."
"My dear girl," whispered Madam Desmarais to her daughter, "your father insists on my arrest, knowing that he will not obtain it; be at ease."
"Since, then, you refuse to arrest my wife, citizen commissioner, I call upon you to leave here two of your men to keep watch on Citizeness Desmarais until her case is settled."
"I consent to leave two agents at your disposal for the surveillance of Citizeness Desmarais, since you insist upon it," agreed the magistrate. Then, rising and passing the pen to the advocate, he continued: "Please sign the record of this seizure of arms, ammunition, and proclamations which has just taken place in your dwelling."
"I wish to read the record carefully before I sign it, citizen commissioner; we may not agree on the wording of the document."
"I shall wait while you read it," the magistrate replied. And while the attorney made himself acquainted with the contents of the record, the commissioner approached Madam Desmarais, and said with a good-natured and meaning smile: "You are not frightened, citizeness, at the rigor of your husband?"
"Sir," replied Madam Desmarais hesitantly, not knowing whether to distrust the officer or not, "my husband's conduct does in truth seem to me a little strange."
"Eh! by heaven! that's very simple. Alas, in these unhappy times, honest men are often obliged to wear certain masks."
"It was thanks to your generous intervention that my brother owes his safety."
"Have a care, madam, that my men do not hear you; they are not all sure. But I have a last word of advice to give you: Try to warn monsieur, your brother, to leave Paris as soon as possible, and by the St. Victor barrier."
"Ah, monsieur, what goodness!"
"I know that Monsieur Desmarais affects of necessity opinions far removed from his heart. Have no fear, then, madam; I caught his meaning when he asked for your arrest. So I am going to give you two jailers, the best men in the world. Adieu, madam, keep the secret for me, and count on my devotion;" and the magistrate added, half aloud: "One must howl with the wolves."
As the commissioner moved away, Madam Desmarais said to her daughter joyfully, "What an excellent man! Thanks to him my brother will perhaps be able to leave Paris to-night without danger. What gratitude we all owe him!"
"By the St. Victor barrier, mother; doubtless, that barrier is less closely watched than the others. But how can we convey to uncle this precious information? There is the difficulty."
"He gave me the number of a place, the home of one of his friends, where I might address a letter. I shall go write it at once, and Gertrude shall carry it."
These various undertone conversations, and especially the conversation of his wife with the commissioner, put Desmarais on the griddle. But, obliged to pay all his attention to the police record, he could do no more than throw, from time to time, a hurried glance upon the speakers. He finally concluded the reading of the report, and having no fault to find with its contents, he signed it, saying once more, as he handed it back to the commissioner:
"I would remind you, citizen, that I request the arrest of Citizeness Desmarais, and in the meanwhile, I insist that two of your agents remain here at my disposition."
"I have just issued orders to that effect. I leave you two men who will know how to perform their duty in every respect. Adieu, citizen; I shall not forget your request, nor the good example you present to the patriots in asking the arrest of Citizeness Desmarais. This very day Citizen Marat shall be enlightened by me on your patriotism."
With these words, which bore a double significance, the commissioner bowed low to Madam Desmarais and her daughter, marched out with his men, who carried with them the chest of arms, and said to two of the agents who accompanied him:
"You are to remain outside the parlor at the orders of Citizen Desmarais;" and added in a lower tone: "Keep watch around the house; follow the young woman who will go out."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE HOWL RINGS FALSE.
At the same instant Madam Desmarais was saying to herself:
"Let me hasten to write to my brother that he may even to-night quit Paris, by the St. Victor barrier." And, rushing to her husband as the double doors of the parlor swung to, she exclaimed joyfully:
"Ah, my friend, what a fine fellow that commissioner is! He does like you—he roars with the tigers and howls with the wolves!"
"What!" exploded the lawyer, taken aback. "Do you mean to say—?"
"I mean this worthy man understood that in demanding my arrest, poor friend, you were only playing a role. Not so, Charlotte?"
"Oh, yes! For he said to mother, 'In these times of revolution, honest men are obliged to wear a mask.'"
"And I made answer," continued Madam Desmarais, "that, in fact, you were obliged to howl with the wolves, as you have so often repeated to me to-day."
"Wretched woman!" screamed the lawyer, as he sprang at his wife, his fist raised in a paroxysm of rage.
"Father, recollect yourself, for pity!"
A moment later Desmarais's fury gave way to prostration. His features were overspread with an ashen pallor, he reeled, and had barely time to throw himself into an arm-chair, mumbling as if his senses had forsaken him—"I am lost!—The guillotine!"
Madam Desmarais and her daughter flew to the advocate's side, raised his inert head, and made him breathe their salts. Hardly had he come to himself when Gertrude entered and announced:
"Monsieur Billaud-Varenne asks to speak with monsieur, on a very urgent matter."
The announcement of the visit of his colleague seemed to reanimate the lawyer. A glow of hope shone in his almost deathly countenance. He rose abruptly, saying:
"Billaud must have seen St. Just. If he accepts my proposition, I am saved!" Then, in a curt, hard voice he addressed his wife: "Retire to your apartment, madam; I have to talk business, grave political business, with Citizen Billaud-Varenne."
Followed by her daughter, Madam Desmarais went out, and her husband ordered Gertrude to show Citizen Billaud-Varenne into the parlor. As the maid left, the two police agents placed on watch were seated near the parlor door.
"Come now, let's compose ourselves," muttered the advocate, mopping the perspiration which beaded his brow. "Billaud-Varenne is another sort of monster, and perhaps more dangerous than Marat. What answer will he bring me? If St. Just consents to be my son-in-law, I have nothing more to fear! If not—ah! What a hell!"
Billaud-Varenne entered. The Representative of the people was not a monster, as the advocate had christened him; but a man of inflexible convictions and rigid probity, besides being the possessor of some fortune. He did not touch, any more than Lepelletier St. Fargeau, Herault of Sechelles, and other wealthy citizens, the compensation allowed to a Representative. Gifted with natural eloquence, always sanguine, there was no patriot more devoted to the Revolution than Billaud-Varenne. He wore a short-haired black wig, and a maroon suit with steel buttons; like Robespierre, St. Just, Camille Desmoulins and other Jacobins, he carried dignity even into the care of his person and his clothes.
"Eh, well, colleague," quoth Billaud-Varenne on entering, "what am I to surmise by this visit of the Section commissioner, whom I just met leaving your rooms?"
"Confess that it is a spicy incident to find, in the house one of us Mountainists a deposit of royalist poniards!"
"That is very easily explained: You receive a case from the depot, you don't know what is in it—nothing simpler."
"Do you think, my dear colleague, that it seemed so simple to the commissioner?"
"He could know nothing to the contrary. But, between ourselves, you exhibited extreme rigor towards your wife."
"You know that also—?"
"I know that you applied for her arrest, and that you demanded two watchmen, whom I found out there, in the ante-room. The precaution seems to me excessive."
"You disapprove of this measure, you, Billaud-Varenne, you, man of iron?"
"I disapprove of your whole procedure. My dear colleague, there are painful duties to which one resigns himself; but there are useless harshnesses which one does not call down upon his dear ones. That is my way of looking at it." Without noticing, or without seeming to notice, the uneasiness which his last words produced in Desmarais, Billaud-Varenne proceeded:
"But, let us speak of the object of my visit. I am just from the Jacobins, where I saw St. Just. He was highly sensible of the honor of the advances I made him on your part, on the subject of his marrying your daughter; but he refused to contract any union whatsoever."
"He refuses!" gasped Desmarais, pale with consternation. "Is not the refusal perhaps revokable?"
"St. Just never turns back on a determination once taken."
"But, at least, I may know the cause of his declination? Answer my question, my dear colleague."
"St. Just would have been happy to enter your family, he told me, if Mademoiselle Desmarais had looked favorably upon his court; but he thinks that under the grave circumstances in which we now find ourselves, a man of politics should remain free from all bonds, even those of the family, in order to consecrate himself wholly to public affairs. He wishes to hold himself ready for all sacrifices, even that of his life."
"Perhaps St. Just deems my daughter has not been brought up in principles of civic duty sufficiently pure. Had he regarded me as a better patriot, his answer would have no doubt been different?"
"Of a truth, my dear colleague, you are a singular fellow. In the Constituent Assembly, you voted with the extreme Left; at the Jacobins, I have heard you propose and support the most revolutionary motions; you vote with us of the Mountain; and yet you seem to fear lest we suspect the sincerity of your convictions!"
"And why, then, should I fear that anyone doubted my sincerity?"
"My faith, you must answer that question yourself!"
"Oh, then the answer is easy, my dear Billaud: The Revolution is, and should be, a jealous, distrustful, exacting mistress to those devoted to her; and I continually fear not having done enough, and being accused of lukewarmness." Then, anxious to escape from a subject that embarrassed him, and to hide the cruel disappointment occasioned by St. Just's refusal, Desmarais added, "What is new to-night at the Jacobins?"
"A speech of hardly a quarter of an hour in length, but which created an incalculable impression upon its hearers."
"On what subject?"
"Louis XVI's penalty."
"And the speaker was—?"
"A young man whom I am proud to number among my friends, for his modesty equals his patriotism and merit. He is a simple iron-worker. We wished to nominate him for the Convention; he refused our offer, but consented to accept municipal office."
"John Lebrenn!"
"Precisely. He was the orator in question."
"He is my pupil, my dear pupil!" returned Desmarais. "It is I who put him through his revolutionary education."
"This young man, ardent, generous, yet tender and delicate as he is by nature, has but one rule of conduct—eternal justice and morality. He is a lofty soul. Marat and Robespierre both congratulated him upon his speech, which concluded with these words:
"'Louis XVI was born kind, humane, and graced with parts, and behold what corrupting, subversive, detestable influences lurk in the very essence of kingship. It has turned this man, so happily made up, into a traitor, a perjurer, a murderer, a parricide who has unchained against his mother country the arms of foreigners and emigrants. Ah, citizens, in judging, in condemning this guilty one of high rank, it is less the man than the King and still less the King than royalty itself that you smite. The ax that will strike off the head of Louis XVI will decapitate the monarchy, that dynasty of a foreign race imposed on Gaul for so many centuries by violence and conquest.'"
"That's superb!" exclaimed the lawyer. "That's fine! Lo, the fruit of my lessons!"
"Your pupil closed by ably contrasting with the days of September the judicial condemnation of Louis Capet: 'Before August 10 the crimes of Louis XVI were notorious; they merited death,' quoth Lebrenn. 'Suppose the people in its fury had taken summary justice on the guilty one. Suppose he had been stricken down during the insurrection. Compare that death, almost furtive, half veiled by the murk of battle, with the august spectacle which the Convention is now about to offer to the world, before God and man! A people calm in its sovereignty, judging and condemning, in the name of the law, the criminal who was its King. To the dagger of Brutus we shall oppose the sword of Justice! The tyrant shall be smitten in the name of all, in the public place. He shall pass from the throne to the scaffold. May in like manner the heads of all tyrants fall!'"