Qui suis-je, moi qu’on accuse? Un esclave de la Liberte, un
martyr vivant de la Republique.
--“Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.”
(Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse? A slave of Liberty,--a living
martyr for the Republic.)
It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the
gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair
hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy
dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit
Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into
fruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent
Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits,
philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for
which ye dared and laboured!
I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children (“La Revolution
est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans.”--Vergniaud.), and
lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!
It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles
between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion,
and is heavy with the gorge,--Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.
Danton had said before his death, “The poltroon Robespierre,--I alone
could have saved him.” From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead
giant clouded the craft of “Maximilien the Incorruptible,” as at last,
amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. (“Le sang
de Danton t’etouffe!” (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnier
de l’Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feebly
forth, “Pour la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demande
la parole.” (For the last time, President of Assassins, I demand to
speak.)) If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his
safety, Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror,
and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might have
lived and died a monarch. But the prisons continued to reek,--the glaive
to fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted to
satiety with death, and the strongest excitement a chief could give
would be a return from devils into men.
We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic,
One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished and
decorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement.
It seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what was
mean and rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim,
orderly, precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the
ample draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust
and bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there
with well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. An
observer would have said, “This man wishes to imply to you,--I am
not rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolent
Sybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense;
I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the
echo. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses
of the ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste!
Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of their
habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and
honest,--reflect, and admire me!”
On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many
busts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber
Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in
a chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original of
bust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat
erect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not at
ease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it
affected a neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions
of the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes.
Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodged
on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowy
vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, you
might have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a
sickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that
it had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligence
which, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almost
invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yet
ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen
and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour that
did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness
of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.
Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier’s
shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of
his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the
virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was
the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died
five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and
careful citizens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed
to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two
which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a
man’s heart,--Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to be
traced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of
a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most
unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced;
a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a
hero,--physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger
threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger
to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean
fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space,
their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally
moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals’, to catch every sound,--a
Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every
formal hair in its frizzled place.
“Yes, yes,” he said in a muttered tone, “I hear them; my good Jacobins
are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law
against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must
be reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good
Jacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!
Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the
very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!”
The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume;
he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his
hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door,
and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
Robespierre’s hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
exclaimed,--
“What! Rousseau’s Heloise? A love-tale!”
“Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but
lived to see this day!”
While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled
into the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the
prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in
the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time
soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human
smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his
features (“Figure d’ange,” says one of his contemporaries, in describing
Couthon. The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9),
after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague:
“Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N’A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE
VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme” (Couthon, that virtuous
citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses
these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of
kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole
into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him. With the
most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
admirer of Jean Jacques.
“Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS the
love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! the
sublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all that
lives!”
And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that he
invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for
the exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart.
(This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to
Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of
the Revolution. M. George Duval informs us (“Souvenirs de la Terreur,”
volume iii page 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted
his harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a
pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who
would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded,
REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an
amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of
the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one
of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to
her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw of
his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious,
exclaimed, “MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?”)
“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre, tenderly.
“Good Couthon,--poor Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!--how we are
misrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!
Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the
enemies of our country,--THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror
to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the
most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest
heart!” (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe
that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be
found expressed in his various discourses.)
“How I love to hear him!” ejaculated Couthon.
“Hem!” said Payan, with some impatience. “But now to business!”
“Ah, to business!” said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his
bloodshot eyes.
“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the Republic
demands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the
Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They
hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy
by institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the
acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in
heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked
an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step
towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we
deliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack the
handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions
they may raise to-morrow.”
“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of
Payan; “I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor;
on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete
Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the
young pupils de l’Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to
strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the
same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient
number of ‘the suspect’ to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the
revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The
10th shall be the great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits,
have you prepared a list?”
“It is here,” returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. “Collot d’Herbois!--good!
Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, ‘Let us strike: the dead alone
never return.’ [‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient
pas.’--Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of the
Mountain. He has called me ‘Mahomet!’ Scelerat! blasphemer!”
“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthon, with his silvery
accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
“But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,--I hate
that man; that is,” said Robespierre, correcting himself with the
hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this
phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,--“that is,
Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention
who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a
thousand Dantons where Tallien sits!”
“Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,” said
Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not
unaccompanied by talents of no common order. “Were it not better to
draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him
better when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!”
“No,” said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien,
with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; “that
one head IS MY NECESSITY!”
“I have a SMALL list here,” said Couthon, sweetly,--“a VERY small
list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few
examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the
wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little
terror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no
ill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!”
The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of
sensibility submitted to him. “Ah, these are well chosen; men not of
mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics
of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY have no parents in
Paris. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their
complaints demoralise the guillotine!”
“Couthon is right,” said Payan; “MY list contains those whom it will be
safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list
selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be
signed at once?”
“It IS signed,” said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the
inkstand. “Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no
excitement; but Collot d’Herbois, Bourdon De l’Oise, Tallien,” the
last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, “THEY are the heads of
parties. This is life or death to us as well as them.”
“Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,” said Payan, in
a half whisper. “There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all
have been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the
other, the law. Your voice yet commands the people--”
“The poor and virtuous people,” murmured Robespierre.
“And even,” continued Payan, “if our design at the Fete fail us, we must
not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot,
the general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest;
the Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges
who never acquit. We must be bold!”
“And we ARE bold,” exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and
striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a
serpent in the act to strike. “In seeing the multitude of vices that
the revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be
sullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these
perverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of
humanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! I
thank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! These
men,”--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--“these!--not
WE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers
of France!”
“True, we must reign alone!” muttered Payan; “in other words, the state
needs unity of will;” working, with his strong practical mind, the
corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.
“I will go to the Convention,” continued Robespierre. “I have absented
myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have
created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will
blast the traitors with a look!”
He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never
failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At
that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened
it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the
anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive
to threaten tortured the death-giver.
“Thou art smeared,” ran the lines, “with the best blood of France. Read
thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the
doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read!
This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall
pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,--I am with thee every day. At
each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile,
though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to
dream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy
doom. Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!” (See
“Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 155.
(No. lx.))
“Your lists are not full enough!” said the tyrant, with a hollow voice,
as the paper dropped from his trembling hand. “Give them to me!--give
them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right--right!
‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!’”