When Gerald gained the street, it was to find it crammed with a dense
mob, whose wild cries and screams filled the air. No sooner was he
perceived by some of the multitude than a hundred yells saluted him,
with shouts of ‘Down with the aristocrat; down with the tyrant, who
insults the friend of the people.’ It was a mob who, in fervour of
enthusiasm for Mirabeau’s memory, had closed each of the theatres in
succession, dispersed all meetings of public festivity, and even invaded
the precincts of private houses, to dictate a more becoming observance
toward the illustrious dead. Few men could bear such prescription less
patiently than Fitzgerald. The very thought of being ruled and directed
by the ‘canaille’ was insupportably offensive, and he drove back those
who rudely pressed upon him, and answered with contempt their words of
insult and outrage.
‘Who is it that insults the majesty of the people?’ cried one; ‘let us
hear his name.’
‘It is Louvet’--‘It is Plessard’--‘It is Lestocq’--‘It is that miserable
Custine ‘--shouted several together.
‘You are all wrong. I am a stranger, whose name not one of you has ever
heard----’
‘A spy! an emissary of Pitt and Cobourg!’
‘I am a foreigner, with whose sentiments you have no concern. I do not
obtrude my opinions upon you.’
‘What do we care for that?’ shouted a deep voice. ‘You have dared to
offend the most sacred sentiments of a nation, and to riot in a festive
orgie while we weep over the deathbed of a patriot.’
‘_A la Grue! à la Grue!_’ screamed the wild mass in a yell of passion.
Now the Grue was an immense crane--used in some repairs of the Pont
Neuf--which still held its place at the approach to the bridge. It was
here that a sort of public tribunal held its nightly sittings by the
light of a gigantic lantern, suspended from the crane; and which, report
alleged, had more than once given way to a very different pendant. It
is certain that two men, taken in the act of robbery, had been hanged by
the sentence of this self-constituted tribunal, which, in open defiance
of the authorities, continued to assemble there. The cry, ‘_A la Grue!
à la Grue!_’ had, therefore, a dreadful significance; and there was
a terrible import in the savage roar of the mob as they ratified the
proposal.
‘We will try him fairly. He shall be judged deliberately, and be allowed
to speak in his own defence,’ said several, who believed that their
words were those of moderation and equity:
Powerless against the overwhelming mass, and too indignant to proffer
one single word of palliation, Gerald was hurried along towards the
quay.
There was something singularly solemn in the measured tread of that vast
multitude, as, in a mockery of justice, they marched along. At first not
a word was spoken; but suddenly a deep voice in the front rank began one
of the popular chants of the day, the whole dense mass joining in the
refrain. Nothing could be ruder than the verses, save the accents that
intoned them; but there was in the very roar and resonance a depth that
imparted a sense of force and power.
We offer a rough version of the unpolished chant--
‘The Cour Royale has a princely hall,
And many come there to sue;
But I love the sight of a stilly night,
And the crowd beneath the Grue.
No lawyer clown, with his cap and gown,
Has complex work to do;
For the horny hand and the face that’s tanned
Are the judges beneath the Grue.
At best, this life is a fleeting strife,
For me as well as for you;
But our work is brief with a rogue or thief
When he stands beneath the Grue.
No bribes resort to our humble court,
All is open and plain to view;
And the people’s voice and the people’s choice
Are the law beneath the Grue.
The Grue! the Grue! the Grue!
I ween there are but few
Who have hearts for hope as they see the rope
That dangles beneath the Grue.’
As they sang a number of voices in front of them took up the strain,
till the crowd seemed to make the very air ring with their hoarse chant.
In this way they reached the Seine, over whose dark and rapid flood the
fatal crane seemed to droop sadly. Several hundred people were assembled
here, a confused murmur showing that they were engaged in conversing
rather than in that judicial function it was their pride to discharge.
‘A rebel against the majesty of the people and the fame of its greatest
martyr,’ said a deep voice, as he announced the crime of Fitzgerald,
and pushed him forward to the place reserved for the accused. ‘While a
nation humbles itself in sorrow, this man chooses the hour for riotous
dissipation and excess. We met him as he issued forth from the woman
Roland’s house, so that he cannot deny the charge.’
‘Accused, stand forward,’ said a coarse-looking man, in a mechanic’s
dress, but whose manner was not devoid of a certain dignity. ‘You are
here before the French people, who will judge you fairly.’
‘Were I even conscious of a crime, I would deny your right to try me.’
‘Young man, you do but injury to yourself in insulting us, was the grave
rebuke, delivered with a calm decorum which seemed to have its influence
on Fitzgerald.
‘Who accuses him?’ asked the judge aloud.
‘I’--‘and I ‘--‘and I’--‘all of us,’ shouted a number together, followed
by a burst of, ‘Let Lamarc do it; let Lamarc speak’; and a pale, very
young man, of gentle look and slight figure, came forward at the call.
With the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to address public assemblies,
and with an eloquence evidently cultivated in very different spheres,
the young man pronounced a glowing panegyric on Mirabeau. It was really
a fine and scarce exaggerated appreciation of that great man. Haughtily
disclaiming the right of any less illustrious than Riquetti himself to
sit in judgment upon the excesses of his turbulent youth, the
orator even declared that it was in the passionate commotion of such
temperaments that grand ideas were fostered, just as preternatural
fertility is the gift of countries where earthquakes and volcanoes have
convulsed them.
‘Deplore, if you will,’ cried he, ‘his faults, for his own sake; sorrow
over the terrible necessities of a nature whose excitements must be
sought for even in crime; mourn over one whose mysterious being demanded
for mere sustenance the poisoned draughts of intemperance; but for
yourselves and for your own sakes, rejoice that the age has given you
Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau.’
‘Who is it dares to say such words as these, cried a hoarse, discordant
voice, as forcing his way through the dense mass, a small, misshapen
figure stood forward. Though bespeaking in his appearance a condition
considerably above those around him, his dress was disordered, his
cravat awry, and his features trembling with recent excitement. As
the strong light fell upon him, Gerald could mark a countenance whose
features once seen were never forgotten. The forehead was high, but
retreating, and the eyes so sunk within their sockets that their
colour could not be known, and their only expression a look of wolfish
ferocity; to this, too, a haggard cheek and long, lean jaw contributed.
All these signs of a harsh and cruel nature were greatly heightened by
his mode of speaking, for his mouth opened wide, exposing two immense
rows of teeth, a display which they who knew him well said he was
inordinately vain of.
‘Is it to men and Frenchmen that any dares to speak thus?’ yelled he, in
a voice that overtopped the others, and was heard far and wide through
the crowd. ‘Listen to me, people,’ screamed he again, as, ascending
the sort of bench on which the judge was seated, he waved his hand to
enforce silence. ‘Kneel down and thank the gods that your direst enemy
is dead!’
A low murmur--it was almost like the growl of a wild beast--ran through
the assembly; but such was the courage of the speaker that he waited
till it had subsided, and then in accents shriller than before repeated
the same words. The hum of the multitude was now reduced to a mere
murmuring sound, and he went on. It was soon evident how inferior the
polished eloquence of the other must prove before such an audience to
the stormy passion of this man’s speech. Like the voice of a destroying
angel scattering ruin and destruction, he poured out over the memory
of Mirabeau the flood of his invective. He reproduced the vices of his
youth to account for the crimes of his age, and saw the treason to his
party explained in his falsehood to his friends. There was in his words
and in all he said the force of a mad mountain torrent, bounding wildly
from crag to crag, sweeping all before it as it went, and yet ever
pouring its flood deeper, fuller, and stronger. From a narrative of
Riquetti’s early life, with every incident of which he was familiar, he
turned suddenly to show how such a man must, in the very nature of his
being, be an enemy to the people. A noble by birth, an aristocrat in all
his instincts, he could never have frankly lent himself to the cause of
liberty. It was only a traitor he was, then, within their camp; he was
there to learn their strength and their weakness, to delude them by
mock concessions. It was, as he expressed it, by the heat of their own
passions that he welded the fetters for their own limbs.
‘If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and
it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you,
nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you
should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of
him, in this hour of bastard grief, that he should stand forth to tell
you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who
dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage
grander than his who storms a breach. My friendship is his own from this
hour,’ and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms
around Fitzgerald.
Shouts of ‘Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!’ rent the air, and a
hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its
course.
‘Let us not tarry here, young man,’ said Marat. ‘Come along with me;
there is much to be done yet.’
While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty
and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that
he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time,
however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long
trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along by the friends
of Marat, who, speedily making way for their chief, issued into the open
street.
‘Whither now!’ cried one aloud.
‘To the Bureau--to the Bureau!’ said another.
‘Be it so,’ said Marat. ‘The _Ami du Peuple_--so was his journal
called--’ must render an account of this night to its readers. I have
addressed seven assemblies since eleven o’clock, and save that one in
the Rue de Grenelle, all successfully. By the way, who is our friend?
What is he called? Fitzgerald--a foreign name--all the better; we can
turn this incident to good account. Are Frenchmen to be taught the
path to liberty by a stranger, eh, Favart? That’s the keynote for your
overture!’
‘The article is written--it is half-printed already,’ said Favart. ‘It
begins better--“The impostor is dead: the juggler who gathered your
liberties into a bundle and gave them back to you as fetters, is no
more! “’
‘_Ah, que c’est beau_, that phrase!’ cried two or three together.
‘I will not have it,’ said Marat impetuously; ‘these are not moments
for grotesque imagery. Open thus: “Who are the men that have constituted
themselves the judges of immortality? Who are these, clad in shame and
cloaked in ignominy, who assume to dispense the glory of a nation? Are
these mean tricksters--these fawners on a corrupted court--these
slaves of the basest tyranny that ever defaced a nation’s image, to be
guardians at the gate of civic honours?”
‘Ah! there it is. It was Marat himself spoke there,’ said one.
‘That was the clink of the true metal,’ said Chaptal.
And now, in the wildest vein of rhapsody, Marat continued to pour forth
a strange confused flood of savage invective. For the most part the
language was coarse and ill-chosen and the reasoning faulty in the
expression, but here and there would pierce through a phrase or an image
so graphic or so true as actually to startle and amaze. It was these
improvisations, caught up and reproduced by his followers, which
constituted the leading articles of his journal. Too much immersed in
the active career of his demagogue life to spare time for writing, he
gave himself the habit of this high-flown and exaggerated style, which
wore, so to say, a mock air of composition.
Pointing to the immense quantity of this sort of matter which his
journal contained, Marat would boast to the people of his unceasing
labours in their cause, his days of hard toil, his nights of unbroken
exertion. He artfully contrasted a life thus spent with the luxurious
existence of the pampered ‘rich.’ Such were the first steps of one who
journeyed afterward far in crime--such the initial teachings of one who
subsequently helped mainly to corrupt a whole people.
A strange impulse of curiosity to see something of these men of whom he
had heard so much, influenced Gerald, while he was also in part swayed
by the marvellous force of that torrent which never ceased to flow from
Marat’s lips. It was a sort of fascination, not the less strong that it
imparted a sense of pain.
‘I will see this night’s adventure to the end,’ said he to himself, and
he went along with them.