To Finish the Terror.
It is very remarkable, indeed, that since the _Être-Suprême_
Feast, and the sublime continued harangues on it, which Billaud
feared would become a bore to him, Robespierre has gone little to
Committee; but held himself apart, as if in a kind of pet. Nay
they have made a Report on that old Catherine Théot, and her
Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets; not in the best
spirit. This Théot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot; but
have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter,
not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her
Regenerative Man! Barrère’s light pen was perhaps at the bottom
of it: read through the solemn snuffling organs of old Vadier of
the _Sûreté Générale_, the Théot Report had its effect; wrinkling
the general Republican visage into an iron grin. Ought these
things to be?
We note farther that among the Prisoners in the Twelve Houses of
Arrest, there is one whom we have seen before. Senhora Fontenai,
_born_ Cabarus, the fair Proserpine whom Representative Tallien
Pluto-like did gather at Bourdeaux, not without effect on
himself! Tallien is home, by recall, long since, from Bourdeaux;
and in the most alarming position. Vain that he sounded, louder
even than ever, the note of Jacobinism, to hide past
shortcomings: the Jacobins purged him out; two times has
Robespierre growled at him words of omen from the Convention
Tribune. And now his fair Cabarus, hit by denunciation, lies
Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do!—Shut in horrid
pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy
Tallien the most pressing entreaties and conjurings: Save me;
save thyself. Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed; thou
with a too fiery audacity; a Dantonist withal; against whom lie
grudges? Are ye not all doomed, as in the Polyphemus Cavern; the
fawningest slave of you will be but eaten last!—Tallien feels
with a shudder that it is true. Tallien has had words of omen,
Bourdon has had words, Fréron is hated and Barras: each man
“feels his head if it yet stick on his shoulders.”
Meanwhile Robespierre, we still observe, goes little to
Convention, not at all to Committee; speaks nothing except to his
Jacobin House of Lords, amid his bodyguard of _Tappe-durs_. These
“forty-days,” for we are now far in July, he has not shewed face
in Committee; could only work there by his three shallow
scoundrels, and the terror there was of him. The Incorruptible
himself sits apart; or is seen stalking in solitary places in the
fields, with an intensely meditative air; some say, “with eyes
red-spotted,”[750] fruit of extreme bile: the lamentablest
seagreen Chimera that walks the Earth that July! O hapless
Chimera; for thou too hadst a life, and a heart of flesh,—what is
this the stern gods, seeming to smile all the way, have led and
let thee to! Art not thou he who, few years ago, was a young
Advocate of promise; and gave up the Arras Judgeship rather than
sentence one man to die?—
What his thoughts might be? His plans for finishing the Terror?
One knows not. Dim vestiges there flit of Agrarian Law; a
victorious Sansculottism become Landed Proprietor; old Soldiers
sitting in National Mansions, in Hospital Palaces of Chambord and
Chantilly; peace bought by victory; breaches healed by Feast of
_Être Suprême;_—and so, through seas of blood, to Equality,
Frugality, worksome Blessedness, Fraternity, and Republic of the
virtues! Blessed shore, of such a sea of Aristocrat blood: but
how to land on it? Through one last wave: blood of corrupt
Sansculottists; traitorous or semi-traitorous Conventionals,
rebellious Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my _Être Suprême_ I
have become a bore; with my Apocalyptic Old Woman a
laughing-stock!—So stalks he, this poor Robespierre, like a
seagreen ghost through the blooming July. Vestiges of schemes
flit dim. But _what_ his schemes or his thoughts were will never
be known to man.
New Catacombs, some say, are digging for a huge simultaneous
butchery. Convention to be butchered, down to the right pitch, by
General Henriot and Company: Jacobin House of Lords made
dominant; and Robespierre Dictator.[751] There is actually, or
else there is not actually, a List made out; which the
Hairdresser has got eye on, as he frizzled the Incorruptible
locks. Each man asks himself, Is it I?
Nay, as Tradition and rumour of Anecdote still convey it, there
was a remarkable bachelor’s dinner one hot day at Barrère’s. For
doubt not, O Reader, this Barrère and others of them gave
dinners; had “country-house at Clichy,” with elegant enough
sumptuosities, and pleasures high-rouged![752] But at this dinner
we speak of, the day being so hot, it is said, the guests all
stript their coats, and left them in the drawing-room: whereupon
Carnot glided out; driven by a necessity, needing of all things
_paper;_ groped in Robespierre’s pocket; found a list of Forty,
his own name among them; and tarried not at the wine-cup that
day!—Ye must bestir yourselves, O Friends; ye dull Frogs of the
Marsh, mute ever since Girondism sank under, even ye now must
croak or die! Councils are held, with word and beck; nocturnal,
mysterious as death. Does not a feline Maximilien stalk there;
voiceless as yet; his green eyes red-spotted; back bent, and hair
up? Rash Tallien, with his rash temper and audacity of tongue; he
shall _bell the cat_. Fix a day; and be it soon, lest never!
Lo, before the fixed day, on the day which they call Eighth of
Thermidor, 26th July 1794, Robespierre himself reappears in
Convention; mounts to the Tribune! The biliary face seems clouded
with new gloom; judge whether your Talliens, Bourdons listened
with interest. It is a voice bodeful of death or of life.
Long-winded, unmelodious as the screech-owl’s, sounds that
prophetic voice: Degenerate condition of Republican spirit;
corrupt moderatism; _Sûreté, Salut_ Committees themselves
infected; back-sliding on this hand and on that; I, Maximilien,
alone left incorruptible, ready to die at a moment’s warning. For
all which what remedy is there? The Guillotine; new vigour to the
all-healing Guillotine: death to traitors of every hue! So sings
the prophetic voice; into its Convention sounding-board. The old
song this: but today, O Heavens! has the sounding-board ceased to
act? There is not resonance in this Convention; there is, so to
speak, a gasp of silence; nay a certain grating of one knows not
what!—Lecointre, our old Draper of Versailles, in these
questionable circumstances, sees nothing he can do so safe as
rise, “insidiously” or not insidiously, and move, according to
established wont, that the Robespierre Speech be “printed and
sent to the Departments.” Hark: gratings, even of dissonance!
Honourable Members hint dissonance; Committee-Members, inculpated
in the Speech, utter dissonance; demand “delay in printing.” Ever
higher rises the note of dissonance; inquiry is even made by
Editor Fréron: ‘What has become of the Liberty of Opinions in
this Convention?’ The Order to print and transmit, which had got
passed, is rescinded. Robespierre, greener than ever before, has
to retire, foiled; discerning that it is mutiny, that evil is
nigh.
Mutiny is a thing of the fatallest nature in all enterprises
whatsoever; a thing so incalculable, swift-frightful; not to be
dealt with in _fright_. But mutiny in a Robespierre Convention,
above all,—it is like fire seen sputtering in the ship’s
powder-room! One death-defiant plunge at it, this moment, and you
may still tread it out: hesitate till next moment,—ship and
ship’s captain, crew and cargo are shivered far; the ship’s
voyage has suddenly ended between sea and sky. If Robespierre
can, tonight, produce his Henriot and Company, and get his work
done by them, he and Sansculottism may still subsist some time;
if not, probably not. Oliver Cromwell, when that Agitator
Serjeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, and
began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouthpiece of
Thousands expectant there,—discerned, with those truculent eyes
of his, how the matter lay; plucked a pistol from his holsters;
blew Agitator and Agitation instantly out. Noll was a man fit for
such things.
Robespierre, for his part, glides over at evening to his Jacobin
House of Lords; unfolds there, instead of some adequate
resolution, his woes, his uncommon virtues, incorruptibilities;
then, secondly, his rejected screech-owl Oration;—reads this
latter over again; and declares that he is ready to die at a
moment’s warning. Thou shalt not die! shouts Jacobinism from its
thousand throats. ‘Robespierre, I will drink the hemlock with
thee,’ cries Painter David, ‘_Je boirai la cigue avec toi;_’—a
thing not essential to _do_, but which, in the fire of the
moment, can be said.
Our Jacobin sounding-board, therefore, does act! Applauses
heaven-high cover the rejected Oration; fire-eyed fury lights all
Jacobin features: Insurrection a sacred duty; the Convention to
be purged; Sovereign People under Henriot and Municipality; we
will make a new June-Second of it: to your tents, O Israel! In
this key pipes Jacobinism; in sheer tumult of revolt. Let Tallien
and all Opposition men make off. Collot d’Herbois, though of the
supreme _Salut_, and so lately near shot, is elbowed, bullied; is
glad to escape alive. Entering Committee-room of _Salut_, all
dishevelled, he finds sleek sombre Saint-Just there, among the
rest; who in his sleek way asks, ‘What is passing at the
Jacobins?’—‘What is passing?’ repeats Collot, in the unhistrionic
Cambyses’ vein: ‘What is passing? Nothing but revolt and horrors
are passing. Ye want our lives; ye shall not have them.’
Saint-Just stutters at such Cambyses’-oratory; takes his hat to
withdraw. That _Report_ he had been speaking of, Report on
Republican Things in General we may say, which is to be read in
Convention on the morrow, he cannot shew it them this moment: a
friend has it; he, Saint-Just, will get it, and send it, were he
once home. Once home, he sends not it, but an answer that he will
not send it; that they will hear it from the Tribune tomorrow.
Let every man, therefore, according to a well-known good-advice,
“pray to Heaven, and keep his powder dry!” Paris, on the morrow,
will see a thing. Swift scouts fly dim or invisible, all night,
from _Sûreté_ and _Salut;_ from conclave to conclave; from Mother
Society to Townhall. Sleep, can it fall on the eyes of Talliens,
Frérons, Collots? Puissant Henriot, Mayor Fleuriot, Judge
Coffinhal, Procureur Payan, Robespierre and all the Jacobins are
getting ready.