In poppa quella
Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
“Ger. Lib.” cant. xv. 3.
(By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with
her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to
Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He
himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his
own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder
and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his
meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her
on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them
in less unhallowed lands.
“And thy fair friend,” said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
smile, “who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot
tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?”
“He told thee this!” returned Glyndon, evasively. “Well! does the change
content thee?”
“Traitor!” muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him,
parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
convulsively on his brow.
“This were too fair a head for the doomsman,” said she, with a slight
laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
departure.
The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for
Nicot’s participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have
arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not
one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile
to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as
it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst
every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew
how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately
one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a
splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various
reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took
this trouble only for the rich. “The incorruptible Maximilien,” who did
not want the tyrant’s faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
worthy Citizen C--.
To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
just return for Fillide’s devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future,
and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of
the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured
by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the
relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
He thought with Barrere, “Il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.”
In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be
a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually
this energy is concentrated on the objects of their professional
ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits
of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its
legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole
being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by
conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in
the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence,
in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted states,--the
peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every
science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and
thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a
picture but coloured canvas,--nothing in a problem but an ingenious
puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should
be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or
personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And
here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the most
degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust
deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in the
company especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless and
revengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collot
d’Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance
of a class.
Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to
the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political
disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the more
tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embittered
his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience.
For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of the
Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a
hope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of
the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here,
and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--and
what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without
patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous,
aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation
to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and
unenduring,--woe to both!
Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned,
there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true
delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull
minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold,
and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some
adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the
general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish
end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up
his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him
curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or
happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers
griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
passions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart a
deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to
make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no
man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great
an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the
well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect,
ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt
most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this
life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion,
thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the
pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would
despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the
throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the
Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to
the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he
began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not
that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE
he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but
never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him,
Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerable
to him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly from
France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon’s gold; he doubted not
that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he
could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had
purloined--Desmoulins’ correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the
fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopes
of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This
correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins’ death, was
written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the
spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;
it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext
to crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the
Incorruptible?
Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen
Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion,
some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of
Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that
reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed,
who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile,
to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it
seem, was the idol of the sex!
Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the
stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre’s apartments were not
spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous
and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or
flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
“Aha, le joli Polichinelle!” said a comely matron, whose robe his
obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. “But how could one
expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!”
“Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was
proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever
used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of
the public administrations and popular societies was written up, “Ici on
s’honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye”!!! (“Here they respect the title
of Citizen, and they ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ one another.”) Take away Murder
from the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon,
but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide enough for them.”
“Ho! Citizen Nicot,” cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
bludgeon, “and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that Hebert’s
crimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the Etre
Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to be forgiven.”
“A pretty face to look out of the National Window” (The Guillotine.),
said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
“Citizens,” said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining himself so
that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, “I have the honour
to inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of the
utmost importance to the public and himself; and,” he added slowly and
malignantly, glaring round, “I call all good citizens to be my witnesses
when I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
some amongst you.”
There was in the man’s look and his tone of voice so much of deep
and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurred
to them, several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and ragged
painter that nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offer
affront to a citizen whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplary
sans-culotte. Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence, and,
folding his arms, leaned against the wall, waiting in grim patience for
his admission.
The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and three;
and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless whistle of
the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an old
woman and a young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and the
atheist painter chuckled inly to overhear their discourse.
“I assure thee, my dear,” said the crone, with a mysterious shake of
head, “that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute,
is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom Dom
Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grand
prophets, will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their
enemies. There is no doubt of it,--not the least!”
“How delightful!” said the girl; “ce cher Robespierre!--he does not look
very long-lived either!”
“The greater the miracle,” said the old woman. “I am just eighty-one,
and I don’t feel a day older since Catherine Theot promised me I should
be one of the elect!”
Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud and
eagerly.
“Yes,” cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a butcher,
with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; “I am come to warn
Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the Palais
National. ‘On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais.’” (“No
one can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace.”--“Papiers
inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 132.)
“No, indeed,” answered a cordonnier; “I like him best in his little
lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US.”
Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in the
vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louder
than the rest.
“But my plan is--”
“Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is--”
“Nonsense!” cried a third. “When Robespierre understands MY new method
of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--”
“Bah! who fears foreign enemies?” interrupted a fourth; “the enemies
to be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at a
time!”
“But MY new Constitution!” exclaimed a fifth.
“MY new Religion, citizen!” murmured, complacently, a sixth.
“Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!” roared forth one of the Jacobin guard.
And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to
the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at
his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen and purple with
intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture’s. There was a still
pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot.
(Or H_a_nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the
characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their
names. With the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of
the time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre,--with
another Robe_r_spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of the
tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect and
agitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with
the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but
neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no
pastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd
shrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that
slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and
pressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and
the huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. On
he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we follow him.