A BREAK.
Here comes a break in my personal adventures during the course of the
great struggle for liberty throughout France. I leading the way, and
St. Just following, we went down the Rue St. Anne, and had almost
reached the Rue Neuve des Augustins, when the powerful voice of St.
Just (one that was soon to be heard by the Nation, which was to hush
at his first word) addressed me.
“Citizen!”
“Citizen St. Just?”
“Give me the address whither we are going!” he said.
“Why, I am leading you! Do you mistrust me?”
His face flushed.
“I mistrust no man,” he replied.
“Then why do you ask for the address?”
“By way of precaution.”
“What need is there of precaution?”
“Was not the Citizen Robespierre in danger not an hour since, by
being in the streets?”
“Yes.”
“Then the Citizen St. Just is equally in danger of a bullet from the
barrel of a paid guard.”
“I shall not desert you.”
“But——”
“Yes, citizen.”
“What if _you_ are killed?” St. Just replied calmly. “I should not
know whither you came.”
“True,” I replied; and he taking out his tablets, wrote upon them,
from my dictation, the address of the Citizen Duplay.
In this act may be seen an example of that forethought and
preparation which gave St. Just a position to which otherwise he
never would have attained.
“Good!” he said, having carefully taken down every particular. “Go
forward.”
How necessary was his precaution, the next few minutes showed.
We had only reached the end of the Rue St. Anne, when a sudden rush
of people along the Rue Neuve des Augustins warned us that danger was
at hand.
I turned and looked at St. Just.
Without regarding me, while apparently his sight was on the alert on
all sides, he repeated his direction, “Go forward.”
Suddenly, shots were heard, and, in a few moments, the street surged
with people, who poured out from the houses and joined those who were
speeding down the street, running by their sides and asking what the
commotion meant. So far, very few of the citizens were aware of the
massacres that had taken place upon the altar of the country.
Paris, in fact, was that day, for the first time, wholly shadowed
by the red flag—which was not to be furled again until a reign
of terror, never equalled in the history of the world, was to be
followed by the inauguration of Napoleon’s splendor.
We were proceeding as rapidly as possible past the current of excited
people, when, unquestionably, a deadly fire opened from a small
turning on the left.
Suddenly, I turned to the left, to see who had struck me; for I felt
that a blow had been aimed at my shoulder which had nearly sent me
off my feet.
As I turned, no man faced me, and I was wondering where the blow came
from; when, as suddenly and unexpectedly as I received the blow, I
felt sick and weak.
It was a woman who screamed, “Blood!”
She pointed to the ground.
As though looking through a mist, I followed the direction of her
pointing finger.
There was blood upon the ground.
All this had passed in a space not longer than six moments.
“Citizen” said the voice of St. Just, “you are wounded; the ball,
however, was meant for me.”
The last words sounded faintly in my ears, and I thought that he,
too, was hurt.
“And you, citizen—are you wounded?”
“No,” he replied, in a still fainter voice, as it appeared to me; but
it was my senses forsaking me.
“Citizens,” I heard him say, “if I fall, you will find an address in
my pocket, which is the home of this lad.”
That was all I heard. Suddenly, the earth appeared to slip from under
me, and there was an end of my consciousness.
When next I knew myself, I awoke to life with the feeling of a
beating red-hot hammer upon my left shoulder; I appeared to be
struggling out of a state of fearful horror. When this cleared off
and I knew myself to be once more alive, once more Citizen Réné
Besson, I was in a little room, which I soon learnt was an apartment
belonging to Citizen Duplay; and, at my side, reading a book, was
Citizeness Cornelie Duplay, who had constituted herself my nurse.
And inasmuch as this history is not so much one of myself as of the
Revolution, and of my part in it, I will only briefly recount the
events of the next few weeks—of the next few months, in relation to
myself.
It appeared that I had been wounded in the shoulder, not dangerously;
but the loss of blood was very great, and I was weak as a little
child. I could not raise my hand even to my head, while I had
scarcely voice sufficient with which to thank my kind nurse for the
offices she performed about me.
For weeks I lay upon that narrow bed, my constitution, and the
temperate life I had hitherto led, fighting well in my favor. I could
tell through chapters how gradually the memory of Sophie Gerbaut
faded from my mind, and of how Cornelie Duplay took her place in my
heart.
But I said nothing of my love; and when, weak, but quite safe, I
sat once more at Citizen Duplay’s hospitable table, I still kept my
passion to myself.
Released, however, as I was, from my bed, I was still a prisoner in
the house, which I did not quit for a couple more months.
Meanwhile the Revolution was progressing.
The sight of the altar of the country, after the flight of the people
from its steps, was terrible. It is said that the great mass of the
dead lying bleeding upon that mighty structure was composed of women
and children.
As the National Guard marched back to the city, after this massacre
of many hundreds—a massacre which would have been multiplied by ten,
had not Lafayette thrown himself before the cannon—they were greeted
with low cries of “Murder!” “Murder!” “Vengeance!”
That day utterly parted the people from the thought of royalty. Paris
was now ready to spill blood, for massacre would now take the name of
vengeance. In many a street in the common parts of Paris were to be
found the surviving relatives of those who had been slain. These were
naturally prompted by a spirit of revenge—by a determination to pay
blood with blood.
Nothing could wash out this hate—no words uttered by the weak and
vacillating King could now stem the torrent of hate. Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette were already condemned to death in the hearts of the
people. Nothing could save them.
The people were now ripe for rage, and therefore the terrible Danton
gained power. The total reverse of Robespierre, they were to rise to
power together. Robespierre was feeble, small, thin, and excessively
temperate. Habitually, he ate little, drank water, and used perfumes
when he was not surrounded by flowers; for he was as passionate an
admirer of flowers as Mirabeau himself. Danton, on the other hand,
was a huge monster—athletic, rude, coarse. He pleased the worst
rabble of the city, because he resembled them. His eloquence was as
thunder, and his very phrases were short, clear, and plain, like
the words of a general accustomed to command. His very gestures
intoxicated the people, who, however, more than by anything, were
attracted by his wit, which, coarse, brutal, and often unjust, was
never obscure, and always to the point. Men who went to hear his wit,
remained to be converted to his ways of thinking.
His one quality was ambition—his one passion, excitement. He was
quite devoid of honor, principles, or morality—he was already
drunk with the Revolution; but it was a drunkenness which produced
madness—not sleep. Moreover, he had the peculiar power of controlling
himself even in his most excited moments—times when he would launch
a bitter joke in the midst of his denunciations—a joke which should
compel his hearers to yell with laughter, while he himself remained
perfectly impassive. He laughed contemptuously at all honesty. He
despised a man who could pity. In a word, he was a wild beast gifted
with speech, but who could no more think beyond himself and his wants
or desires, than can the beasts that perish.
The first great act of the people after the massacre upon the altar
of the country, was the expression of a desire to honor the remains
of Voltaire—the man whose writings, together with those of Rousseau,
had actually sown the seed of revolution against that royalty which
in Gaul and France had unceasingly mastered the people through two
weary thousand years, before the death of Voltaire, in 1778—thirteen
years before the events I am now recording. The power of the Court
and the Church still maintained such sway over the minds and hearts
of the people, that it was impossible to hope to bury the great man
without creating a popular outrage. His nephew, therefore, secretly
removed the body from Paris, where Voltaire died, and bore it far
away to the Abbey of Sellières, in Champagne, where it found a
resting-place.
Now it was the National Assembly ordered the removal of Voltaire’s
remains to the Pantheon, the cathedral of philosophy, where lie
buried many great men—that building upon the face of which has been
carved “France, in gratitude to great men.”
“The people owe their freedom to Voltaire!” cried Regnault de St.
Jean d’Angely; “for by enlightening them he gave them power. Nations
are enthralled by ignorance alone; and when the torch of reason
displays to them the ignominy of bearing these chains, they blush to
wear them, and they snap them asunder!”
Like a conqueror, seated on his trophies, they placed Voltaire’s
coffin in the midst of the spot upon which the horrible Bastille had
stood, and upon a great heap of stones which had formed part of that
stronghold; and thus Voltaire, dead, triumphed over those stones
which had gained a victory over him in life, for Voltaire had been a
prisoner in the Bastille.
On one of the blocks which formed this second altar of the country
they carved this inscription:
“RECEIVE ON THIS SPOT, WHERE DESPOTISM ONCE FETTERED THEE, THE
HONORS DECREED TO THEE BY THY COUNTRY.”
All Paris poured out to walk in the triumphal procession which
accompanied the quiet ashes to their last resting-place. The car upon
which the coffin lay was harnessed by twelve horses, four abreast,
their manes plaited with golden tassels and beautiful flowers, the
reins being held by men dressed in ancient Greek costume. On the car
was a sort of altar upon which lay a waxen statue of the philosopher
crowned with laurel. This was placed over the remains.
The money spent upon this pageant was immense; whence it came, no one
has ever learnt. It was almost miraculous. Meanwhile, the people were
living upon a couple of ounces of bread apiece, and a few miserable
vegetables. That passion and vengeance could have been kept alive
upon such reducing diet, is the truest evidence of the justice of the
national cause.
The military formed a portion of the procession, while cannon boomed
incessantly during the march. Finally—and it is the most significant
fact of this remarkable pageant—a _printing-press_ was made to take
part in the procession. At this press, agile printers were taking off
impressions of sentences in honor of Voltaire, the printed papers
being cast to the seething multitude fresh printed as they were.
Here and there the red cap—the cap of liberty—might be seen,
surmounting the ominous pike.
Every actor and actress in Paris followed, dressed in the costumes of
the characters of Voltaire’s plays. Members of all the learned bodies
followed; a gigantic pyramid was carried along, bearing the titles
of all his works; and, finally, the statue of the demigod himself—a
statue of gold—was borne upon the shoulders of men dressed in Grecian
costume, this being followed by a casket of gold, containing a copy
of each of his works.
Troops of singing-girls dressed in white met the quiet cause of all
this demonstration, and showered white flowers upon the catafalque;
hymns to his genius were sung, the air was sick with perfume, and the
city trembled with the roar of adoration.
Night fell before the procession reached the temple dedicated to the
remains of great men, and here Voltaire was enthroned, for he was
King of France in that hour; and the weak, vacillating, and kindly
Louis XVI, away there in the Tuileries, was crownless, awaiting to
pay in his person—he the least odious of his race—for the unceasing
crimes and cruelties of his forefathers.