SCENES IN PRISON.
A.D. 1794
Convent of the Carmelites.--Quality of the prisoners.--Cheerfulness
of Josephine.--Reading the daily journal.--Scenes from the prison
windows.--Anecdote of Hortense.--Letter from Josephine to Hortense.--
Mitigation of severity.--Josephine appeals to the Committee.--She is
summoned to trial.--The unexpected interview.--Feeling manifested
by Beauharnais.--Trial of M. Beauharnais and Josephine.--Hopes
cherished.--Beauharnais's last letter to Josephine.--Brutality of
the executioners.--Removal of the guillotine.--Execution of M.
Beauharnais.--Josephine becomes informed thereof.--Her grief.--Her
despair.--Preparations for the execution of Josephine.--She becomes
cheerful.--Credulity of Josephine.--The unexpected deliverance.--A
miraculous change.--Deliverance to the captives.
The Convent of the Carmelites, in which Josephine was imprisoned, had
acquired a fearful celebrity during the Reign of Terror. It was a vast
and gloomy pile, so capacious in its halls, its chapel, its cells, and
its subterranean dungeons, that at one time nearly ten thousand
prisoners were immured within its frowning walls. In every part of the
building the floors were still deeply stained with the blood of the
recent massacres. The infuriated men and women, intoxicated with rum and
rage, who had broken into the prison, dragged multitudes of their
victims, many of whom were priests, into the chapel, that they might, in
derision of religion, poniard them before the altar. About three hundred
thousand innocent victims of the Revolution now crowded the prisons of
France. These unhappy captives, awaiting the hour of their execution,
were not the ignorant, the debased, the degraded, but the noblest, the
purest, the most refined of the citizens of the republic. Josephine was
placed in the chapel of the convent, where she found one hundred and
sixty men and women as the sharers of her captivity.
The natural buoyancy of her disposition led her to take as cheerful a
view as possible of the calamity in which the family was involved. Being
confident that no serious charge could be brought against her husband,
she clung to the hope that they both would soon be liberated, and that
happy days were again to dawn upon her reunited household. She wrote
cheering letters to her husband and to her children. Her smiling
countenance and words of kindness animated with new courage the
grief-stricken and the despairing who surrounded her. She immediately
became a universal favorite with the inmates of the prison. Her
instinctive tact enabled her to approach all acceptably, whatever their
rank or character. She soon became prominent in influence among the
prisoners, and reigned there, as every where else, over the hearts of
willing subjects. Her composure, her cheerfulness, her clear and
melodious voice, caused her to be selected to read, each day, to the
ladies, the journal of the preceding day. From their windows they could
see, each morning, the carts bearing through the streets their burden
of unhappy victims who were to perish on the scaffold. Not unfrequently
a wife would catch a glimpse of her husband, or a mother of her son,
borne past the grated windows in the cart of the condemned. Who can tell
the fear and anguish with which the catalogue of the guillotined was
read, when each trembling heart apprehended that the next word might
announce that some loved one had perished? Not unfrequently a piercing
shriek, and a fainting form falling lifeless upon the floor, revealed
upon whose heart the blow had fallen.
Hortense, impetuous and unreflecting, was so impatient to see her
mother, that one morning she secretly left her aunt's house, and, in a
market cart, traveled thirty miles to Paris. She found her mother's
maid, Victorine, at the family mansion, where all the property was
sealed up by the revolutionary functionaries. After making unavailing
efforts to obtain an interview with her parents, she returned the next
day to Fontainebleau. Josephine was informed of this imprudent act of
ardent affection, and wrote to her child the following admirable letter:
"I should be entirely satisfied with the good heart of my
Hortense were I not displeased with her bad head. How is it,
my daughter, that, without permission from your aunt, you
have come to Paris? This was very wrong! But it was to see
me, you will say. You ought to be aware that no one can see
me without an order, to obtain which requires both means and
precautions. And, besides, you got upon M. Dorcet's cart, at
the risk of incommoding him and retarding the conveyance
of his merchandise. In all this you have been very
inconsiderate. My child! observe, it is not sufficient to do
good; you must also do good properly. At your age, the first
of all virtues is confidence and docility toward your
relations. I am therefore obliged to tell you that I prefer
your tranquil attachment to your misplaced warmth. This,
however, does not prevent me from embracing you, but less
tenderly than I shall do when I learn that you have returned
to your aunt."
There was at this time, for some unknown reason, a little mitigation in
the severity with which the prisoners were treated, and Josephine was
very sanguine in the belief that the hour of their release was at hand.
Emboldened by this hope, she wrote a very earnest appeal to the
Committee of Public Safety, before whom the accusations against M.
Beauharnais would be brought. The sincerity and frankness of the
eloquent address so touched the feelings of the president of the
committee, that he resolved to secure for Josephine and her husband the
indulgence of an interview. The greatest caution was necessary in doing
this, for he periled his own life by the manifestation of any sympathy
for the accused.
The only way in which he could accomplish his benevolent project was to
have them both brought together for trial. Neither of them knew of this
design. One morning Josephine, while dreaming of liberty and of her
children, was startled by the unexpected summons to appear before the
Revolutionary tribunal. She knew that justice had no voice which could
be heard before that merciless and sanguinary court. She knew that the
mockery of a trial was but the precursor of the sentence, which was
immediately followed by the execution. From her high hopes this summons
caused a fearful fall. Thoughts of her husband and her children rushed
in upon her overflowing heart, and the tenderness of the woman for a few
moments triumphed over the heroine. Soon, however, regaining in some
degree her composure, she prepared herself, with as much calmness as
possible, to meet her doom. She was led from her prison to the hall
where the blood-stained tribunal held its session, and, with many
others, was placed in an ante-room, to await her turn for an examination
of a few minutes, upon the issues of which life or death was suspended.
While Josephine was sitting here, in the anguish of suspense, an
opposite door was opened, and some armed soldiers led in a group of
victims from another prison. As Josephine's eye vacantly wandered over
their features, she was startled by the entrance of one whose wan and
haggard features strikingly reminded her of her husband. She looked
again, their eyes met, and husband and wife were instantly locked in
each other's embrace. At this interview, the stoicism of M. Beauharnais
was entirely subdued--the thoughts of the past, of his unworthiness, of
the faithful and generous love of Josephine, rushed in a resistless
flood upon his soul. He leaned his aching head upon the forgiving bosom
of Josephine, and surrendered himself to love, and penitence, and tears.
This brief and painful interview was their last. They never met again.
They were allowed but a few moments together ere the officers came and
dragged M. Beauharnais before the judges. His examination lasted but a
few minutes, when he was remanded back to prison. Nothing was proved
against him. No serious accusation even was laid to his charge. But he
was a noble. He had descended from illustrious ancestors, and therefore,
as an aristocrat, he was doomed to die. Josephine was also conducted
into the presence of this sanguinary tribunal. She was the wife of a
nobleman. She was the friend of Marie Antoinette. She had even received
distinguished attentions at court. These crimes consigned her also to
the guillotine. Josephine was conducted back to her prison, unconscious
of the sentence which had been pronounced against her husband and
herself. She even cherished the sanguine hope that they would soon be
liberated, for she could not think it possible that they could be doomed
to death without even the accusation of crime.
Each evening there was brought into the prison a list of the names of
those who were to be led to the guillotine on the ensuing morning. A
few days after the trial, on the evening of the 24th of July, 1794,
M. Beauharnais found his name with the proscribed who were to be led
to the scaffold with the light of the next day. Love for his wife and
his children rendered life too precious to him to be surrendered
without anguish. But sorrow had subdued his heart, and led him with
prayerfulness to look to God for strength to meet the trial. The native
dignity of his character also nerved him to meet his fate with
fortitude.
He sat down calmly in his cell, and wrote a long, affectionate, and
touching letter to his wife. He assured her of his most heartfelt
appreciation of the purity and nobleness of her character, and of her
priceless worth as a wife and a mother. He thanked her again and again
for the generous spirit with which she forgave his offenses, when, weary
and contrite, he returned from his guilty wanderings, and anew sought
her love. He implored her to cherish in the hearts of his children the
memory of their father, that, though dead, he might still live in their
affections. While he was writing, the executioners came in to cut off
his long hair, that the ax might do its work unimpeded. Picking up a
small lock from the floor, he wished to transmit it to his wife as his
last legacy. The brutal executioners forbade him the privilege. He,
however, succeeded in purchasing from them a few hairs, which he
inclosed in his letter, and which she subsequently received.
In the early dawn of the morning, the cart of the condemned was at the
prison door. The Parisians were beginning to be weary of the abundant
flow of blood, and Robespierre had therefore caused the guillotine to
be removed from the Place de la Revolution to an obscure spot in the
Faubourg St. Antoine. A large number of victims were doomed to die that
morning. The carts, as they rolled along the pavements, groaned with
their burdens, and the persons in the streets looked on in sullen
silence. M. Beauharnais, with firmness, ascended the scaffold. The slide
of the guillotine fell, and the brief drama of his stormy life was
ended.
While the mutilated form of M. Beauharnais was borne to an ignoble
burial, Josephine, entirely unconscious of the calamity which had
befallen her, was cheering her heart with the hope of a speedy union
with her husband and her children in their own loved home. The morning
after the execution, the daily journal, containing the names of those
who had perished on the preceding day, was brought, as usual, to the
prison. Some of the ladies in the prison had received the intimation
that M. Beauharnais had fallen. They watched, therefore, the arrival of
the journal, and, finding their fears established, they tried, for a
time, to conceal the dreadful intelligence from the unconscious widow.
But Josephine was eagerly inquiring for the paper, and at last obtaining
it, she ran her eye hastily over the record of executions, and found the
name of her husband in the fatal list. She fell senseless upon the
floor. For a long time she remained in a swoon. When consciousness
returned, and with it a sense of the misery into which she was plunged,
in the delirium of her anguish she exclaimed, "Oh God! let me die! let
me die! There is no peace for me but in the grave."
Her friends gathered around her. They implored her to think of her
children, and for their sake to prize a life she could no longer prize
for her own. The poignancy of her grief gradually subsided into the calm
of despair. A sleepless night lingered slowly away. The darkness and
the gloom of a prison settled down upon her soul. The morning dawned
drearily. A band of rough and merciless agents from the Revolutionary
Assembly came to her with the almost welcome intelligence that in two
days she was to be led to the Conciergerie, and from thence to her
execution. These tidings would have been joyful to Josephine were it
not for her children. A mother's love clung to the orphans, and it was
with pain inexpressible that she thought of leaving them alone in this
tempestuous world--a world made so stormy, so woeful, by man's
inhumanity to his fellow-man.
The day preceding the one assigned for her execution arrived. The
numerous friends of Josephine in the prison hung around her with tears.
The heartless jailer came and took away her mattress, saying, with a
sneer, that she would need it no longer, as her head was soon to repose
upon the soft pillow of the guillotine. It is reported that, as the hour
of execution drew nearer, Josephine became not only perfectly calm, but
even cheerful in spirit. She looked affectionately upon the weeping
group gathered around her, and, recalling at the moment the prediction
of the aged negress, gently smiling, said, "We have no cause for alarm
my friends; I am not to be executed. It is written in the decrees of
Fate that I am yet to be Queen of France." Some of her friends thought
that the suppressed anguish of her heart had driven her to delirium, and
they wept more bitterly. But one of the ladies, Madame d'Aiguillon, was
a little irritated at pleasantry which she deemed so ill timed. With
something like resentment, she asked, "Why, then, madame, do you not
appoint your household?" "Ah! that is true," Josephine replied. "I had
forgotten. Well, you, my dear, shall be my maid of honor. I promise you
the situation." They both lived to witness the strange fulfillment of
this promise. Josephine, however, who, from the circumstances of her
early life, was inclined to credulity, afterward declared that at the
time her mind reposed in the full confidence that in some way her life
would be saved, and that the prediction of the negress would be
virtually realized.
The shades of night settled down around the gloomy convent, enveloping
in their folds the despairing hearts which thronged this abode of woe.
Suddenly the most exultant shout of joy burst from every lip, and echoed
along through corridors, and dungeons, and grated cells. There was
weeping and fainting for rapture inexpressible. The prisoners leaped
into each other's arms, and, frantic with happiness, clung together in
that long and heartfelt embrace which none can appreciate but those who
have been companions in woe. Into the blackness of their midnight there
had suddenly burst the blaze of noonday. What caused this apparently
miraculous change? The iron-hearted jailer had passed along, announcing,
in coarsest phrase, THAT ROBESPIERRE WAS GUILLOTINED. There had been a
new revolution. The tyrant had fallen. The prisons which he had filled
with victims were to be emptied of their captives.