September in Paris.
At Paris, by lying Rumour which proved prophetic and veridical,
the fall of Verdun was known some hours _before_ it happened. It
is Sunday the second of September; handiwork hinders not the
speculations of the mind. Verdun gone (though some still deny
it); the Prussians in full march, with gallows-ropes, with fire
and faggot! Thirty thousand Aristocrats within our own walls; and
but the merest quarter-tithe of them yet put in Prison! Nay there
goes a word that even these will revolt. Sieur Jean Julien,
wagoner of Vaugirard,[525] being set in the Pillory last Friday,
took all at once to crying, That he would be well revenged ere
long; that the King’s Friends in Prison would burst out; force
the Temple, set the King on horseback; and, joined by the
unimprisoned, ride roughshod over us all. This the unfortunate
wagoner of Vaugirard did bawl, at the top of his lungs: when
snatched off to the Townhall, he persisted in it, still bawling;
yesternight, when they guillotined him, he died with the froth of
it on his lips.[526] For a man’s mind, padlocked to the Pillory,
may go mad; and all men’s minds may go mad; and “believe him,” as
the frenetic will do, “_because_ it is impossible.”
So that apparently the knot of the crisis, and last agony of
France is come? Make front to this, thou Improvised Commune,
strong Danton, whatsoever man is strong! Readers can judge
whether the Flag of Country in Danger flapped soothing or
distractively on the souls of men, that day.
But the Improvised Commune, but strong Danton is not wanting,
each after his kind. Huge Placards are getting plastered to the
walls; at two o’clock the stormbell shall be sounded, the
alarm-cannon fired; all Paris shall rush to the Champ-de-Mars,
and have itself enrolled. Unarmed, truly, and undrilled; but
desperate, in the strength of frenzy. Haste, ye men; ye very
women, offer to mount guard and shoulder the brown musket: weak
clucking-hens, in a state of desperation, will fly at the muzzle
of the mastiff, and even conquer him,—by vehemence of character!
Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of
courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to Poet Milton,
will _burn_.—Danton, the other night, in the Legislative
Committee of General Defence, when the other Ministers and
Legislators had all opined, said, It would not do to quit Paris,
and fly to Saumur; that they must abide by Paris; and take such
attitude as would put their enemies in fear,—_faire peur;_ a word
of his which has been often repeated, and reprinted—in
italics.[527]
At two of the clock, Beaurepaire, as we saw, has shot himself at
Verdun; and over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon
sermon. But at Paris, all steeples are clangouring not for
sermon; the alarm-gun booming from minute to minute;
Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland’s Altar boiling with desperate
terror-courage: what a _miserere_ going up to Heaven from this
once Capital of the Most Christian King! The Legislative sits in
alternate awe and effervescence; Vergniaud proposing that Twelve
shall go and dig personally on Montmartre; which is decreed by
acclaim.
But better than digging personally with acclaim, see Danton
enter;—the black brows clouded, the colossus-figure tramping
heavy; grim energy looking from all features of the rugged man!
Strong is that grim Son of France, and Son of Earth; a Reality
and not a Formula he too; and surely now if ever, being hurled
_low_ enough, it is on the Earth and on Realities that he rests.
‘Legislators!’ so speaks the stentor-voice, as the Newspapers yet
preserve it for us, ‘it is not the alarm-cannon that you hear: it
is the _pas-de-charge_ against our enemies. To conquer them, to
hurl them back, what do we require? _Il nous faut de l’audace, et
encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace_, To dare, and again
to dare, and without end to dare!’[528]—Right so, thou brawny
Titan; there is nothing left for thee but that. Old men, who
heard it, will still tell you how the reverberating voice made
all hearts swell, in that moment; and braced them to the
sticking-place; and thrilled abroad over France, like electric
virtue, as a word spoken in season.
But the Commune, enrolling in the Champ-de-Mars? But the
Committee of Watchfulness, become now Committee of Public
Salvation; whose conscience is Marat? The Commune enrolling
enrolls many; provides Tents for them in that Mars’-Field, that
they may march with dawn on the morrow: praise to this part of
the Commune! To Marat and the Committee of Watchfulness not
praise;—not even blame, such as could be meted out in these
insufficient dialects of ours; expressive silence rather! Lone
Marat, the man forbid, meditating long in his Cellars of refuge,
on his Stylites Pillar, could see salvation in one thing only: in
the fall of “two hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat heads.”
With so many score of Naples Bravoes, each a dirk in his
right-hand, a muff on his left, he would traverse France, and do
it. But the world laughed, mocking the severe-benevolence of a
People’s-Friend; and his idea could not become an action, but
only a fixed-idea. Lo, now, however, he has come down from his
Stylites Pillar, to a _Tribune particulière;_ here now, without
the dirks, without the muffs at least, were it not grown
possible,—now in the knot of the crisis, when salvation or
destruction hangs in the hour!
The Ice-Tower of Avignon was noised of sufficiently, and lives in
all memories; but the authors were not punished: nay we saw
Jourdan Coupe-tete, borne on men’s shoulders, like a copper
Portent, “traversing the cities of the South.”—What phantasms,
squalid-horrid, shaking their dirk and muff, may dance through
the brain of a Marat, in this dizzy pealing of tocsin-miserere,
and universal frenzy, seek not to guess, O Reader! Nor what the
cruel Billaud “in his short brown coat was thinking;” nor
Sergent, not yet _Agate_-Sergent; nor Panis the confident of
Danton;—nor, in a word, how gloomy Orcus does breed in her gloomy
womb, and fashion her monsters, and prodigies of Events, which
thou seest her visibly bear! Terror is on these streets of Paris;
terror and rage, tears and frenzy: tocsin-miserere pealing
through the air; fierce desperation rushing to battle; mothers,
with streaming eyes and wild hearts, sending forth their sons to
die. “Carriage-horses are seized by the bridle,” that they may
draw cannon; “the traces cut, the carriages left standing.” In
such tocsin-miserere, and murky bewilderment of Frenzy, are not
Murder, Ate, and all Furies near at hand? On slight hint, who
knows on how slight, may not Murder come; and, with _her_
snaky-sparkling hand, illuminate this murk!
How it was and went, what part might be premeditated, what was
improvised and accidental, man will never know, till the great
Day of Judgment make it known. But with a Marat for keeper of the
Sovereign’s Conscience—And we know what the _ultima ratio_ of
Sovereigns, when they are driven to it, is! In this Paris there
are as many wicked men, say a hundred or more, as exist in all
the Earth: to be hired, and set on; to set on, of their own
accord, unhired.—And yet we will remark that premeditation itself
is not performance, is not surety of performance; that it is
perhaps, at most, surety of _letting_ whosoever wills perform.
From the purpose of crime to the act of crime there is an abyss;
wonderful to think of. The finger lies on the pistol; but the man
is not yet a murderer: nay, his whole nature staggering at such
consummation, is there not a confused pause rather,—one last
instant of possibility for him? Not yet a murderer; it is at the
mercy of light trifles whether the most fixed idea may not yet
become unfixed. One slight twitch of a muscle, the death flash
bursts; and he is it, and will for Eternity be it;—and Earth has
become a penal Tartarus for him; his horizon girdled now not with
golden hope, but with red flames of remorse; voices from the
depths of Nature sounding, Wo, wo on him!
Of such stuff are we all made; on such powder-mines of bottomless
guilt and criminality, “if God restrained not; as is well
said,—does the purest of us walk. There are depths in man that go
the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach
highest Heaven;—for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him,
made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is?—But
looking on this Champ-de-Mars, with its tent-buildings, and
frantic enrolments; on this murky-simmering Paris, with its
crammed Prisons (supposed about to burst), with its
tocsin-miserere, its mothers’ tears, and soldiers’ farewell
shoutings,—the pious soul might have prayed, that day, that God’s
grace would restrain, and greatly restrain; lest on slight hest
or hint, Madness, Horror and Murder rose, and this Sabbath-day of
September became a Day black in the Annals of Men.—
The tocsin is pealing its loudest, the clocks inaudibly striking
_Three_, when poor Abbé Sicard, with some thirty other Nonjurant
Priests, in six carriages, fare along the streets, from their
preliminary House of Detention at the Townhall, westward towards
the Prison of the Abbaye. Carriages enough stand deserted on the
streets; these six move on,—through angry multitudes, cursing as
they move. Accursed Aristocrat Tartuffes, this is the pass ye
have brought us to! And now ye will break the Prisons, and set
Capet Veto on horseback to ride over us? Out upon you, Priests of
Beelzebub and Moloch; of Tartuffery, Mammon, and the Prussian
Gallows,—which ye name Mother-Church and God! Such reproaches
have the poor Nonjurants to endure, and worse; spoken in on them
by frantic Patriots, who mount even on the carriage-steps; the
very Guards hardly refraining. Pull up your carriage-blinds!—No!
answers Patriotism, clapping its horny paw on the carriage blind,
and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has limits: we
are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long: a poor Nonjurant, of
quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane; nay, finding
solacement in it, smites the unkempt head, sharply and again more
sharply, twice over,—seen clearly of us and of the world. It is
the last that we see clearly. Alas, next moment, the carriages
are locked and blocked in endless raging tumults; in yells deaf
to the cry for mercy, which answer the cry for mercy with
sabre-thrusts through the heart.[529] The thirty Priests are torn
out, are massacred about the Prison-Gate, one after one,—only the
poor Abbé Sicard, whom one Moton a watchmaker, knowing him,
heroically tried to save, and secrete in the Prison, escapes to
tell;—and it is Night and Orcus, and Murder’s snaky-sparkling
head _has_ risen in the murk!—
From Sunday afternoon (exclusive of intervals, and pauses not
final) till Thursday evening, there follow consecutively a
Hundred Hours. Which hundred hours are to be reckoned with the
hours of the Bartholomew Butchery, of the Armagnac Massacres,
Sicilian Vespers, or whatsoever is savagest in the annals of this
world. Horrible the hour when man’s soul, in its paroxysm, spurns
asunder the barriers and rules; and shews what dens and depths
are in it! For Night and Orcus, as we say, as was long
prophesied, have burst forth, here in this Paris, from their
subterranean imprisonment: hideous, dim, confused; which it is
painful to look on; and yet which cannot, and indeed which should
not, be forgotten.
The Reader, who looks earnestly through this dim Phantasmagory of
the Pit, will discern few fixed certain objects; and yet still a
few. He will observe, in this Abbaye Prison, the sudden massacre
of the Priests being once over, a strange Court of Justice, or
call it Court of Revenge and Wild-Justice, swiftly fashion
itself, and take seat round a table, with the Prison-Registers
spread before it;—Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero, famed Leader
of the Menads, presiding. O Stanislas, one hoped to meet thee
elsewhere than here; thou shifty Riding-Usher, with an inkling of
Law! This work also thou hadst to do; and then—to depart for ever
from our eyes. At _La Force_, at the _Châtelet_, the
_Conciergerie_, the like Court forms itself, with the like
accompaniments: the thing that one man does other men can do.
There are some Seven Prisons in Paris, full of Aristocrats with
conspiracies;—nay not even _Bicêtre_ and _Salpêtrière_ shall
escape, with their Forgers of Assignats: and there are seventy
times seven hundred Patriot hearts in a state of frenzy.
Scoundrel hearts also there are; as perfect, say, as the Earth
holds,—if such are needed. To whom, in this mood, law is as
no-law; and killing, by what name soever called, is but work to
be done.
So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the
Prison-Registers before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all
round: the Prisoners in dread expectancy within. Swift: a name is
called; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there. A few questions are
put; swiftly this sudden Jury decides: Royalist Plotter or not?
Clearly not; in that case, Let the Prisoner be enlarged With
_Vive la Nation_. Probably yea; then still, Let the Prisoner be
enlarged, but without _Vive la Nation;_ or else it may run, Let
the prisoner be conducted to La Force. At La Force again their
formula is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.—‘To La
Force then!’ Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at
the outer gate; “enlarged,” or “conducted,”—not into La Force,
but into a howling sea; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes
and pikes; and sinks, hewn asunder. And another sinks, and
another; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the
kennels begin to run red. Fancy the yells of these men, their
faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these women,
for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it
all! Jourgniac de Saint Méard has seen battle, has seen an
effervescent Regiment du Roi in mutiny; but the bravest heart may
quail at this. The Swiss Prisoners, remnants of the Tenth of
August, “clasped each other spasmodically,” and hung back; grey
veterans crying: ‘Mercy Messieurs; ah, mercy!’ But there was no
mercy. Suddenly, however, one of these men steps forward. He had
a blue frock coat; he seemed to be about thirty, his stature was
above common, his look noble and martial. ‘I go first,’ said he,
‘since it must be so: adieu!’ Then dashing his hat sharply behind
him: ‘Which way?’ cried he to the Brigands: ‘Shew it me, then.’
They open the folding gate; he is announced to the multitude. He
stands a moment motionless; then plunges forth among the pikes,
and dies of a thousand wounds.”[530]
Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the
killers refresh themselves from wine jugs. Onward and onward goes
the butchery; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls. A
sombre-faced, shifting multitude looks on; in dull approval, or
dull disapproval; in dull recognition that it is Necessity. “An
_Anglais_ in drab greatcoat” was seen, or seemed to be seen,
serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;—for what purpose, “if
not set on by Pitt,” Satan and himself know best! Witty Dr. Moore
grew sick on approaching, and turned into another
street.[531]—Quick enough goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The
brave are not spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak. Old M. de
Montmorin, the Minister’s Brother, was acquitted by the Tribunal
of the Seventeenth; and conducted back, elbowed by howling
galleries; but is not acquitted here. Princess de Lamballe has
lain down on bed: ‘Madame, you are to be removed to the Abbaye.’
‘I do not wish to remove; I am well enough here.’ There is a
need-be for removing. She will arrange her dress a little, then;
rude voices answer, ‘You have not far to go.’ She too is led to
the hell-gate; a manifest Queen’s-Friend. She shivers back, at
the sight of bloody sabres; but there is no return: Onwards! That
fair hindhead is cleft with the axe; the neck is severed. That
fair body is cut in fragments; with indignities, and obscene
horrors of moustachio _grands-lèvres_, which human nature would
fain find incredible,—which shall be read in the original
language only. She was beautiful, she was good, she had known no
happiness. Young hearts, generation after generation, will think
with themselves: O worthy of worship, thou king-descended,
god-descended and poor sister-woman! why was not I there; and
some Sword Balmung, or Thor’s Hammer in my hand? Her head is
fixed on a pike; paraded under the windows of the Temple; that a
still more hated, a Marie-Antoinette, may see. One Municipal, in
the Temple with the Royal Prisoners at the moment, said, ‘Look
out.’ Another eagerly whispered, ‘Do not look.’ The circuit of
the Temple is guarded, in these hours, by a long stretched
tricolor riband: terror enters, and the clangour of infinite
tumult: hitherto not regicide, though that too may come.
But it is more edifying to note what thrillings of affection,
what fragments of wild virtues turn up, in this shaking asunder
of man’s existence, for of these too there is a proportion. Note
old Marquis Cazotte: he is doomed to die; but his young Daughter
clasps him in her arms, with an inspiration of eloquence, with a
love which is stronger than very death; the heart of the killers
themselves is touched by it; the old man is spared. Yet he was
guilty, if plotting for his King is guilt: in ten days more, a
Court of Law condemned him, and he had to die elsewhere;
bequeathing his Daughter a lock of his old grey hair. Or note old
M. de Sombreuil, who also had a Daughter:—My Father is not an
Aristocrat; O good gentlemen, I will swear it, and testify it,
and in all ways prove it; we are not; we hate Aristocrats! ‘Wilt
thou drink Aristocrats’ blood?’ The man lifts blood (if universal
Rumour can be credited);[532] the poor maiden does drink. ‘This
Sombreuil is innocent then!’ Yes indeed,—and now note, most of
all, how the bloody pikes, at this news, do rattle to the ground;
and the tiger-yells become bursts of jubilee over a brother
saved; and the old man and his daughter are clasped to bloody
bosoms, with hot tears, and borne home in triumph of _Vive la
Nation_, the killers refusing even money! Does it seem strange,
this temper of theirs? It seems very certain, well proved by
Royalist testimony in other instances;[533] and very significant.