“Ah, monsieur!” said the tall, nervous prisoner with the ravaged
face, “the rights of one man are very well the wrongs of another--that
is a new discovery; but you did not make it. Even God--who,
nevertheless, does not exist just at present--could not invent a gale
that would favour all ships; and yet you have thought yourself
cleverer than God.”
“I do not know you,” interrupted his hearer and fellow-captive
peevishly. “Why do you presume to address yourself to me?”
“Why?” The other lifted a little broken plaque or medallion which hung
by a spoiled tricolour ribbon from his neck. “Do you observe this, M.
Paine? I am one Garat, ex-President of the Sectional Committee of the
Bonnet-Rouge, and this is my badge of office--or what remains of it.
It represented the table of the law, _en précis_, as revealed to Mr.
Paine on Sinai. Wearing it, I symbolised the Rights of Man. Well, what
I say is, ‘Damn the Rights of Man!’”
“O! certainly, if you wish,” responded Mr. Paine coolly.
“They are fragile, are they not?” said the ex-President, with feverish
derision; “they are apt to be broken in any scuffle. And where is
there not a scuffle where opinions differ--which they always do? The
_Rights_ of Man have not, I perceive, altered the _nature_ of man,
which is to have his way wherever he can get it. Observe: I desired to
do justice according to this tablet, but the mob would not permit me.
Instead they haled away their suspect, unheard; and I, because I would
not commit him unheard, was pronounced a traitor to the principles I
represented and was despatched to this Luxembourg, where, to my
profound amazement, I find incarcerated before me the lawgiver
himself! Now I think I begin to understand everything. Your Rights of
Man could not even save yourself. What the devil did you want
redeeming others with them? For me, I would welcome all my ancient
wrongs to find myself once more a prosperous barber in the Marche
Neuf.”
* * * * *
In Paris on the 28th July, 1794, at six o’clock in the evening, ended
at a stroke the Terror, lopped off by the head. It had been virile and
active up to that last moment, prepared with its daily _fournée_, all
chosen and set out for the baking; only in the result the order had
been somewhat changed. Messieurs the Triumvirs and their following had
been called upon to take the place of their destined victims--that was
the difference.
But the evening before the death-carts had jolted as usual on their
monotonous way to the Place du Trône; and therein surely the
insensate tragedy of the guillotine had found its crowning expression.
For at that time the dissolution of the Terror had actually begun, and
the smallest gift of fortune or of foresight might have saved the
lives of a half-hundred innocents. There is no sorrier fate than to
perish in the lash of a just expiring monster’s tail.
There was one man appointed to figure in those tragic last tumbrils
who had the best reason in the world for considering himself a spoilt
child of Fortune. This was Mr. Deputy Thomas Paine, some time fallen
from his popular estate, and since January imprisoned in the
Luxembourg. We see him, as he stands in the courtyard of the old
palace nominally taking exercise, an aloof, self-complacent little man
of fifty-seven, dressed in plain brown, and wearing his own brown
hair, which nature has curled. His eyes are large, dreamy, and bagged
underneath; his drooping nose has a suggestion of red in its fall; he
has a moist, temulent mouth, rather weighed down at the corners by
pursey cheeks.
It is evening of the 26th July, and the prisoners, their brief liberty
ended, are filing back to their cells. There is an unwonted excitement
abroad. Some rumour of it has penetrated the walls, and fluttered the
breasts of the poor caged birds within. A change is imminent; they
know not what; but scarce any could be for the worse. Meanwhile,
nevertheless, Fouquier’s emissary is up above, condemned list in hand,
waiting to prick off the names for the morrow’s batch. The procedure
is quite simple; it consists in a chalk-mark made on the door of each
victim’s cell, whence on the following morning its inmate will pass to
the Conciergerie, to the Revolutionary Tribunal, back to the
Conciergerie, and thence the same evening to the scaffold. That is a
predestined course, which much treading has made monotonous and much
philosophy smoothed. It is possible even to walk it with a gay
fatalism--under prescriptive circumstances. Supposing, however, that
there _be_ truth in the reports; that the Triumvirs are threatened and
the Terror itself doomed? What tragedy on tragedy, then, to drown in
the turn of the tide! The prisoners, yesterday resigned, to-day are
pacing their cells like wild beasts. Yet nothing will avail them. The
last tumbrils must have their load.
Paine was sensible of their misery; he believed in the imminence of a
political _volte-face_, and he pitied them. For himself he had not,
nor ever had had, the least apprehension. As he lingered in
abstraction, the last to withdraw, his own security, his own
importance, were the first of convictions in his mind. As a moderate,
he was unacceptable to the extremists--it amounted to no more than
that. He had been put out of the way because he was in the way. But
they would never dare more than to coerce into silence so notable an
apostle of liberty. He reviewed, with some smug satisfaction, the
processes of his own career. By origin a Norfolk staymaker, by chance
an exciseman, by nature a demagogue, his inherent force of character
had lifted him to a position which suffered at the moment only a
temporary eclipse. Was it to be believed that he who had forcibly
contributed to the Declaration of American Independence, who had been
honoured and rewarded by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, who had
earned Franklin’s friendship and Burke’s hostility, who had been
elected by the Department of Calais to sit in the French Convention,
and whose bold assertion of the Rights of Man had been accepted for
the very ritual of the Revolution, would be let to be snuffed out by
the dirty fingers of a murdering attorney? Fouquier dare not do it;
Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, the all-powerful Triumvirate, were not
assured enough for such a venture. Besides, they represented, in an
age of reason, the crowning expression of reason--that government by
minority which had always been a pet theory of his.
He frowned, then lifted his eyebrows with a smile. Something in the
connection, a memory of his own once discomfiture on a certain
occasion, had recurred to him. It had happened in London, in a Fleet
Street tavern, two or three years before. How remote it all seemed!
Dr. Wolcot--he who called himself Peter Pindar--had been there--a
huge, overbearing old voluptuary, with flashing eyes, and a flashing
wit, and a scurrilous tongue. Paine had been discoursing to an
admiring audience on the reasonableness of deciding questions in
Parliament by minorities instead of majorities, “since,” said he, “the
proportion of men of sense to ignoramuses is but as one to ten.
Wherefore the wisest portion of mankind are always in the minority in
debate”--a statement which the Doctor disputed. “Still,” said the
latter, “I will assert nothing for myself, but leave the question to
the company.”
Now, at that, Paine, confident of his surroundings, had risen, and put
the question to the vote, those who agreed with him to hold up their
hands. Whereupon every hand had gone up, and the Doctor had arisen,
with a bow. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I thank you for this decision in my
favour. The wise minority, as represented in my person, carries the
vote. I pronounce Mr. Paine wrong.” And he had swallowed his glassful
and lumbered out.
Somehow the prisoner remembered that occasion with pleasure. It
suggested a form of liberty much more in accord with his real nature
than a world of abstract utilitarianisms. The wine in the Luxembourg
was thin; indulgences were few; they often dined off stale sprats. The
end of his own nose, touched by a ray of the slanting sun, caught his
eye as with the glint of a ruby. He pished under his breath.
“Bah!” he muttered. “He was a domineering beast; but I wish I were
with him now at Dick’s in Fleet Street.”
He sighed and stirred; and it was at that moment that the stranger of
the broken plaque had approached and accosted him. He was a newcomer,
and unknown to the ex-Deputy.
“To the devil with your Rights of Man!” ended the tall prisoner. He
caught at Paine, who had turned an angry shoulder to him and was
going. “Is it not so?” he demanded. “They are just one’s right, it
appears, to run with the crowd the crowd’s way. If one takes the
_Liberty_ to pause a moment for reflection, one is trampled underfoot
by _Fraternity_ and packed off to discuss _Equality_ with the other
heads in the basket.”
“I would have you observe,” said Paine frigidly, “that the turnkey is
summoning us to return to our cells.”
He moved away, but the other followed close beside him, agitated and
voluble.
“Cells!” he cried--“cells! But is not that a fine comment on your
propaganda? I interpret your Rights according to the tables, and you
send me to the guillotine for it.”
“_I?_” said Paine. He stopped in desperation.
“Is not your emissary up there now,” cried Garat, “marking off the
doomed?”
“_My_ emissary?” said Paine.
“You are as responsible as any for him,” said the ex-President,
kneading his damp palms together. “If you _would_ try to blow east and
west at once, meddling with unknown forces. You should have
remembered, monsieur, that the first right of man is to existence.
There would have been a fine air of originality about that precept. It
has always been the easiest thing in the world to solve human problems
by killing.”
The demagogue took refuge behind derision.
“I perceive you are simply a coward,” he said.
“Yes,” cried Garat, his lips trembling. “I am simply that. What can
you expect, who have decreed us annihilation for our despair? Our
ancient wrongs conceded us a heaven after all; your modern rights have
taken it away. It is all very well for you, safeguarded by your
position, to pretend to despise death; it would be another matter, I
expect, if you feared, like me, to find the chalk-mark on your door.”
“Rest assured,” said Paine contemptuously. “If you have sought to
serve Justice, Justice will not destroy her own.”
“But there are accidents.”
“I answer for her, I say,” insisted the demagogue, with an air of
pompous finality. “You may, trust to my own share, citizen--grossly as
you libel it--in her modern scheme, which provides against such
possibilities. No trick of Fortune is permitted nowadays to spare the
guilty or condemn the innocent.”
“But are you sure, monsieur? Monsieur, in God’s name!”
Paine waved the creature aside with a peremptory gesture, and
continued his way across the yard. They were the last to enter the
prison, and they mounted the naked stairs almost together. In the same
corridor above were their cells situated, and Torné, the surly
gaoler, was already holding half-closed the door of Garat’s, which
came first. It was bare of the fatal sign, and Garat ran into his fold
with a bleat like a comforted sheep.
Mr. Thomas Paine, with a shrug and sneer, tripped on his way to his
own cell. Reaching it, he raised his eyes, staggered slightly, and
gave a single gasp. Its door was flung back against the outer wall,
_and the mark was on it_.
_Inside!_ He had but to close it upon himself, and the mark would
vanish. Fouquier’s hurrying emissary, not being of the wise minority,
had overlooked that contingency.
Torné, having locked in Garat, was coming down the corridor.
Screening the sign with his arm, the ex-Deputy swung round the door
and shut himself in.
He died a dozen deaths before he heard the key turn in the lock
outside--a hundred before the news of next day’s _coup d’état_ came
to restore life to ten thousand withering hopes.
But the tumbrils went on the morrow, and for the last time, all the
same--only he was not a passenger by them. It was just his luck that
Fortune was offered such a characteristic way of retaliating upon him
for his boasted command of her.