Gaul was a slave--I see her sovereign! Her casqued and mitred tyrants are cut off.
The new National Convention a.s.sembled at the palace of the Tuileries, and went into session on Friday, September 21, 1792, at quarter past twelve.
Petion presided; the secretaries were Condorcet, Rabaud St. Etienne, Vergniaud, Camus, and La.s.source.
Couthon took the floor, and exhorted his colleagues: "Citizens, our mission is sublime! The people has reposed its confidence in us--let us approve ourselves worthy of it!"
"There is one act which you can not put off till to-morrow, without betraying the will of the nation," declared Collot D"Herbois. "That is the abolition of royalty."
"Certes," a.s.sented Abbot Gregory, "no one intends to preserve the race of Kings in France. We know that all dynasties are but broods of vampires; we must rea.s.sure the friends of liberty; we must destroy this talisman, whose magic power is still capable of stupefying so many. I ask, then, that by a solemn law, you consecrate the abolition of royalty."
The whole a.s.sembly rose with a spontaneous movement, and with cheers acclaimed the motion of Gregory, who continued:
"Kings are to the moral order what monsters are to the physical. Courts are the smithy of crimes and the fastness of tyrants. The history of Kings is the martyrdom of nations. We are all penetrated with this truth--why further discuss it? I ask that my motion be put to a vote, after it shall have been drafted with a preamble comportable to the solemnity of the decision."
"The preamble of your motion, citizen, is the history of the crimes of Louis XVI," said Ducot.
The president rose and read:
"THE NATIONAL a.s.sEMBLY DECREES:
"ROYALTY IS ABOLISHED IN FRANCE."
Shouts of joy, cries of "Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic!"
rang from every throat, members of the Convention and spectators in the galleries alike. The tumultuous rejoicing lasted for several minutes.
The session adjourned.
The members of the Convention pa.s.sed out to cries of:
"Long live the Nation!"
"Long live the Republic!"
"Down with Kings and n.o.bles!"
CHAPTER XI.
BOURGEOIS TURNED SANS-CULOTTE.
It was the evening of December 10, 1792. Monsieur Desmarais sat talking with his wife in the parlor of their dwelling. The attorney, elected to the Convention in September, no longer was content to affect patriotism in his acts and words; his very appearance now breathed a sans-culottism of the deepest dye. Thus he, once so precise about his person, shaved but once a week; his hair, now powderless, was clipped close like a Roundhead"s; he wore a carmagnole jacket, hob-nailed shoes, wide pantaloons, a distinctive sign of the sans-culottes, and a red-checkered handkerchief rolled around his neck, after the style of Marat. In one of the corners of the parlor, now without mirrors or curtains and almost stripped of furniture, reposed a large square deal box, whose cover bore the words in large penciled characters: "Breakable. Handle with care."
The chest seemed to be built with more care and solidity than is usual with packing-cases. Its cover, instead of being merely nailed, was fastened with hinges; a strong lock held it shut. Madam Desmarais, arrived from Lyons a brief half hour before, had not yet removed her traveling garments. Her face breathed anxiety. Her husband"s features were pale and glowering; he seemed worked up, agitated. His wife continued the conversation:
"You understand, my friend, that, frightened at the rumors which were rife in Lyons on the subject of the triumph of a royalist conspiracy--that Paris was given up to fire and blood, the Convention dissolved, its members exposed to the greatest dangers--"
"It is incomprehensible to me what object anyone could have in propagating such sinister rumors," replied Desmarais. "We are on the tracks of a royalist plot, built, for a pretext, upon the trial of this unfortunate King; but the plot can not but miscarry. Paris seems seized with vertigo since August 10!"
"However that may be, my friend, frightened by these rumors, I set out for Paris. Besides, it costs me too much to live far from you in these terrible times. The reasons for our separation were the hope of allaying the pa.s.sion of our daughter for that young Lebrenn, and your lively desire to shield me from the spectacle of the insurrections, the popular pa.s.sions which were about to sweep over Paris. But our princ.i.p.al aim has not been attained. Charlotte persists in her determination to remain unmarried or to wed that ironsmith. She writes to him and receives his letters. So, then, whether she be at Paris or at Lyons, she will be neither nearer nor further from the scene of her love-affair. And finally, by the very fact that you are exposed to dangers of all sorts, my place is beside you, my friend. I have, then, resolved to leave you no longer. I also am much alarmed on my brother"s score. Here it is more than a month that I haven"t heard from him. Can you tell me what has become of him?"
"I know that he was denounced as a suspect; he probably has remained in Paris, where he is in hiding, and conspiring in favor of the monarchy.
I do not in the least doubt it."
"What do you tell me! My brother denounced! My G.o.d! In these times such an accusation is a thing of terror--it may lead to the scaffold!"
"No doubt. But why doesn"t he consent to resign himself, as I have, to howl with the wolves, and roar with the tigers?"
"Poor Hubert," replied Madam Desmarais in tears. "In the midst of the mortal dangers which he runs, he thinks of my birthday; he sends me a token of his brotherly affection." And the attorney"s wife, casting her eyes towards the box in the corner, added, "Dear, good brother! How sensible I am of this new proof of his affection!"
"If he truly loved you, he would not risk causing you the greatest chagrin, and compromising me into the bargain!"
"My friend, I can not listen to reproaches against my brother, when he is exposed to such grave perils--"
"And whose fault is it, if not his own, due to his own violent and obstinate character? He abhors, says he, the excesses of the Revolution!
Alas, I also execrate them--yet I feign to applaud them. That will at least do to insure our repose and steer clear of the guillotine. Thus, to-morrow, the members of the Convention will hale before the bar the unfortunate Louis XVI, he will be examined in due form, they will give him his trial, and he will be condemned to death. And well, I shall vote for death."
"O, my G.o.d!" murmured Madam Desmarais in cold fear. "My husband a regicide!"
"But how can I escape the fatal necessity?"
"Let the fatality fall, then!" answered Madam Desmarais mournfully, her voice broken with sobs.
"Let us go on," said advocate Desmarais after a long silence, during which his agitation slowly got the better of itself, "let us go on. Our daughter is then still infatuated with this Lebrenn?"
"She loves Lebrenn as much as, if not more than, before. He informed her in one of his last letters that he had been promoted to certain duties in the Commune of Paris, and she glories in his advancement."
"In truth, the workingman has been elected a munic.i.p.al officer. They even proposed to him, such is his influence in the quarter and in the Jacobin Club, to run as candidate for the Convention, but he declined the offer. For the rest, his position with the Jacobins has put him in touch with several leading spirits of the Revolution--Tallien, Robespierre, Legendre, Billaud-Varenne, Danton, and other rabid democrats."
"Have you renewed your relations with the young man since the day you refused him our daughter"s hand?"
"No; we have met several times at the Jacobins, but I have avoided speaking with him. He has imitated my reserve. For the rest, I must do him this justice--he has always expressed himself in favorable terms concerning me, true to his promise, that, however little reliance he placed in my uprightness and the sincerity of my convictions, he would hold his opinion secret until my acts themselves denounced me. Well, my acts and speeches have been, and will be, in conformity with the necessities of my position. But, too much of this Lebrenn;--I have told you that your unlooked-for return surprised me, but that it chimed in with my recent projects. I have in view for our daughter a marriage to which I attach great importance, for I would become, by the alliance, the father-in-law of a man destined to count among the most influential personages of the Revolution. This future son-in-law is very young, and remarkably good looking; he belongs to the upper bourgeois, even bordering on the n.o.bility. He is, in fine, the intimate friend, the pupil, the devoted supporter, the right arm of Robespierre. This young man, who has already made his mark in the a.s.sembly in two speeches of immense influence,--is Monsieur St. Just."
"Alas, my friend, in Lyons I heard tell of this young man. His name excites the same execration as that of Robespierre and Marat among the royalists, and even among the moderate republicans of the complexion of the Girondins. Have you considered that?"
"It is precisely because of the aversion which he inspires in the royalists, the Girondins, and the moderates, that I have fixed my eyes upon St. Just. One of our common friends, Billaud-Varenne, is to make, this very day, overtures to my young colleague on the subject of this marriage, which will be so much to my advantage."
"My friend, all that you say causes me a surprise and bewilderment that puts my mind in a whirl. You own to experiencing great regret at entering on the path of the Revolution; and, by a strange contradiction, you speak of marrying your daughter to one of the men whom honest folks hold most in horror."
"No contradiction there, at all. Facts are facts. I am unhappy enough to have for brother-in-law a mad-cap counter-revolutionist. Hubert is a denounced man, and at this very hour, no doubt, is intriguing against the Revolution. All this may compromise me most perilously. Marat has his eye on me. Now, if Marat penetrates my innermost thoughts, I am in great danger. The influence of St. Just, once my son-in-law, would save my head."
Gertrude the serving-maid interrupted her master by entering the room with an air at once of mystery and affright, and saying to him in a startled voice:
"Monsieur, madam"s brother is here."
"Hubert here!" cried Desmarais with a start. "I don"t want to see him!
Tell him I"m out!"