In Death-Grips.
It proves what strength, were it only of inertia, there is in
established Formulas, what weakness in nascent Realities, and
illustrates several things, that this death-wrestle should still
have lasted some six weeks or more. National business, discussion
of the Constitutional Act, for our Constitution should decidedly
be got ready, proceeds along with it. We even change our
Locality; we shift, on the Tenth of May, from the old Salle de
Manége, into our new Hall, in the Palace, once a King’s but now
the Republic’s, of the Tuileries. Hope and ruth, flickering
against despair and rage, still struggles in the minds of men.
It is a most dark confused death-wrestle, this of the six weeks.
Formalist frenzy against Realist frenzy; Patriotism, Egoism,
Pride, Anger, Vanity, Hope and Despair, all raised to the
frenetic pitch: Frenzy meets Frenzy, like dark clashing
whirlwinds; neither understands the other; the weaker, one day,
will understand that _it_ is verily swept down! Girondism is
strong as established Formula and Respectability: do not as many
as Seventy-two of the Departments, or say respectable Heads of
Departments, declare for us? Calvados, which loves its Buzot,
will even rise in revolt, so hint the Addresses; Marseilles,
cradle of Patriotism, will rise; Bourdeaux will rise, and the
Gironde Department, as one man; in a word, who will _not_ rise,
were our _Représentation Nationale_ to be insulted, or one hair
of a Deputy’s head harmed! The Mountain, again, is strong as
Reality and Audacity. To the Reality of the Mountain are not all
furthersome things possible? A new Tenth of August, if needful;
nay a new Second of September!—
But, on Wednesday afternoon, twenty-fourth day of April, year
1793, what tumult as of fierce jubilee is this? It is Marat
returning from Revolutionary Tribunal! A week or more of
death-peril: and now there is triumphant acquittal; Revolutionary
Tribunal can find no accusation against this man. And so the eye
of History beholds Patriotism, which had gloomed unutterable
things all week, break into loud jubilee, embrace its Marat; lift
him into a chair of triumph, bear him shoulder-high through the
streets. Shoulder-high is the injured People’s-friend, crowned
with an oak-garland; amid the wavy sea of red nightcaps,
carmagnole jackets, grenadier bonnets and female mob-caps;
far-sounding like a sea! The injured People’s-friend has here
reached his culminating-point; he too strikes the stars with his
sublime head.
But the Reader can judge with what face President Lasource, he of
the “painful probabilities,” who presides in this Convention
Hall, might welcome such jubilee-tide, when it got thither, and
the Decreed of Accusation floating on the top of it! A National
Sapper, spokesman on the occasion, says, the People know their
Friend, and love his life as their own; ‘whosoever wants Marat’s
head must get the Sapper’s first.’[643] Lasource answered with
some vague painful mumblement,—which, says Levasseur, one could
not help tittering at.[644] Patriot Sections, Volunteers not yet
gone to the Frontiers, come demanding the ‘purgation of traitors
from your own bosom;’ the expulsion, or even the trial and
sentence, of a factious Twenty-two.
Nevertheless the Gironde has got its Commission of Twelve; a
Commission specially appointed for investigating these troubles
of the Legislative Sanctuary: let Sansculottism say what it will,
Law shall triumph. Old-Constituent Rabaut Saint-Etienne presides
over this Commission: ‘it is the last plank whereon a wrecked
Republic may perhaps still save herself.’ Rabaut and they
therefore sit, intent; examining witnesses; launching
arrestments; looking out into a waste dim sea of troubles.—the
womb of _Formula_, or perhaps her grave! Enter not that sea, O
Reader! There are dim desolation and confusion; raging women and
raging men. Sections come demanding Twenty-two; for the _number_
first given by Section Bonconseil still holds, though the names
should even vary. Other Sections, of the wealthier kind, come
denouncing such demand; nay the same Section will demand today,
and denounce the demand tomorrow, according as the wealthier sit,
or the poorer. Wherefore, indeed, the Girondins decree that all
Sections shall close “at ten in the evening;” before the working
people come: which Decree remains without effect. And nightly the
Mother of Patriotism wails doleful; doleful, but her eye
kindling! And Fournier l’Americain is busy, and the two Banker
Freys, and Varlet Apostle of Liberty; the bull-voice of Marquis
Saint-Huruge is heard. And shrill women vociferate from all
Galleries, the Convention ones and downwards. Nay a “Central
Committee” of all the Forty-eight Sections, looms forth huge and
dubious; sitting dim in the _Archevêché_, sending Resolutions,
receiving them: a Centre of the Sections; in dread deliberation
as to a New Tenth of August!
One thing we will specify to throw light on many: the aspect
under which, seen through the eyes of these Girondin Twelve, or
even seen through one’s own eyes, the Patriotism of the softer
sex presents itself. There are Female Patriots, whom the
Girondins call Megaeras, and count to the extent of eight
thousand; with serpent-hair, all out of curl; who have changed
the distaff for the dagger. They are of “the Society called
Brotherly,” _Fraternelle_, say _Sisterly_, which meets under the
roof of the Jacobins. “Two thousand daggers,” or so, have been
ordered,—doubtless, for them. They rush to Versailles, to raise
more women; but the Versailles women will not rise.[645]
Nay, behold, in National Garden of Tuileries,—Demoiselle
Théroigne herself is become as a brownlocked Diana (were that
possible) attacked by her own dogs, or she-dogs! The Demoiselle,
keeping her carriage, is for Liberty indeed, as she has full well
shewn; but then for Liberty with Respectability: whereupon these
serpent-haired Extreme She-Patriots now do fasten on her, tatter
her, shamefully fustigate her, in their shameful way; almost
fling her into the Garden-ponds, had not help intervened. Help,
alas, to small purpose. The poor Demoiselle’s head and
nervous-system, none of the soundest, is so tattered and
fluttered that it will never recover; but flutter worse and
worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in
madhouse, and straitwaistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such
brownlocked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and
gesticulate, little able to _speak_ the obscure meaning it had,
through some segment of that Eighteenth Century of Time. She
disappears here from the Revolution and Public History, for
evermore.[646]
Another thing we will not again specify, yet again beseech the
Reader to imagine: the reign of Fraternity and Perfection.
Imagine, we say, O Reader, that the Millennium were struggling on
the threshold, and yet not so much as groceries could be
had,—owing to traitors. With what impetus would a man strike
traitors, in that case? Ah, thou canst not imagine it: thou hast
thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no hope of a
Millennium ever coming!—But, indeed, as to the temper there was
in men and women, does not this one fact say enough: the height
SUSPICION had risen to? Preternatural we often called it;
seemingly in the language of exaggeration: but listen to the cold
deposition of witnesses. Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a
snatch of melody from the French Horn, sitting mildly pensive on
the housetop, but Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which
one Plotting Committee is making to another. Distraction has
possessed Harmony herself; lurks in the sound of _Marseillese_
and _ça-ira_.[647] Louvet, who can see as deep into a millstone
as the most, discerns that we shall be invited back to our old
Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation; and then the Anarchists will
massacre Twenty-two of us, as we walk over. It is Pitt and
Cobourg; the gold of Pitt.—Poor Pitt! They little know what work
he has with his own Friends of the People; getting them bespied,
beheaded, their habeas-corpuses suspended, and his own Social
Order and strong-boxes kept tight,—to fancy him raising mobs
among his neighbours!
But the strangest fact connected with French or indeed with human
Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins. Camille’s head,
one of the clearest in France, has got itself so saturated
through every fibre with Preternaturalism of Suspicion, that
looking back on that Twelfth of July 1789, when the thousands
rose round him, yelling responsive at his word in the Palais
Royal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it explicable only on
this hypothesis, That they were all hired to do it, and set on by
the Foreign and other Plotters. “It was not for nothing,” says
Camille with insight, “that this multitude burst up round me when
I spoke!” No, not for nothing. Behind, around, before, it is one
huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots; Pitt pulling the
wires.[648] Almost I conjecture that I Camille myself am a Plot,
and wooden with wires.—The force of insight could no further go.
Be this as it will, History remarks that the Commission of
Twelve, now clear enough as to the Plots; and luckily having “got
the threads of them all by the end,” as they say,—are launching
Mandates of Arrest rapidly in these May days; and carrying
matters with a high hand; resolute that the sea of troubles shall
be restrained. What chief Patriot, Section-President even, is
safe? They can arrest him; tear him from his warm bed, because he
has made irregular Section Arrestments! They arrest Varlet
Apostle of Liberty. They arrest Procureur-Substitute Hébert,
_Père Duchesne;_ a Magistrate of the People, sitting in Townhall;
who, with high solemnity of martyrdom, takes leave of his
colleagues; prompt he, to obey the Law; and solemnly acquiescent,
disappears into prison.
The swifter fly the Sections, energetically demanding him back;
demanding not arrestment of Popular Magistrates, but of a
traitorous Twenty-two. Section comes flying after
Section;—defiling energetic, with their Cambyses’ vein of
oratory: nay the Commune itself comes, with Mayor Pache at its
head; and with question not of Hébert and the Twenty-two alone,
but with this ominous old question made new, ‘Can you save the
Republic, or must we do it?’ To whom President Max Isnard makes
fiery answer: If by fatal chance, in any of those tumults which
since the Tenth of March are ever returning, Paris were to lift a
sacrilegious finger against the National Representation, France
would rise as one man, in never-imagined vengeance, and shortly
‘the traveller would ask, on which side of the Seine Paris had
stood!’[649] Whereat the Mountain bellows only louder, and every
Gallery; Patriot Paris boiling round.
And Girondin Valazé has nightly conclaves at his house; sends
billets; “Come punctually, and well armed, for there is to be
business.” And Megaera women perambulate the streets, with flags,
with lamentable _alleleu_.[650] And the Convention-doors are
obstructed by roaring multitudes: find-spoken _Hommes d’état_ are
hustled, maltreated, as they pass; Marat will apostrophise you,
in such death-peril, and say, Thou too art of them. If Roland ask
leave to quit Paris, there is order of the day. What help?
Substitute Hébert, Apostle Varlet, must be given back; to be
crowned with oak-garlands. The Commission of Twelve, in a
Convention overwhelmed with roaring Sections, is broken; then on
the morrow, in a Convention of rallied Girondins, is reinstated.
Dim Chaos, or the sea of troubles, is struggling through all its
elements; writhing and chafing towards some creation.