"Citizens, in the name of the country, in the name of the Revolution, hear me!"
My paleness, my tears, my supplicating accents impressed the crowd; silence was given me, and I continued:
"Citizens, suppose that we all, patriots here present, were incarcerated by our triumphant enemies. Our enemies rush into our prison, surprise us without defense, without means of escape, and ma.s.sacre us all! Would that not be a cowardly, a horrible deed? Would you commit a like atrocity?"
Outcries, hisses and curses drowned my voice.
"He is a wheedler!"
"A traitor!"
"A royalist in disguise!"
"Death to the traitors!"
I believed my last hour was come. Thrown down from my bench, I was surrounded, seized, mauled back and forth by the crowd in its fury. My uniform was torn to shreds. A sword was already raised over my head when some patriots, interposing between my adversaries and me, tore me from the hands that grasped me, protected me with their own bodies, and pushed me under the arch of a carriage-gate, which they slammed upon me.
I fell battered and almost fainting; and soon I heard the throng disperse, crying:
"Long live the Nation!"
"To the prisons, to the prisons!"
"Death to the royalists!"
So, indeed, it occurred. The ma.s.sacre was carried out.
CHAPTER IX.
"TO THE FRONT!"
The porter of the house in which I had thus compulsorily found asylum, a house neighboring on my own, gave me, together with his wife, his solicitous care. Both knew me by sight as a child of the quarter. I recovered little by little from my commotion. The porter offered me a jacket to replace the ruined tunic of my uniform. Never shall I forget the words the worthy people uttered as I bade them good-bye, thanking them for their attentions.
"What the devil, my dear neighbor! Between you and me, you were on the wrong side, this time!" said the brave fellow, who from his door-sill had taken in the whole scene. "Eh! Without a doubt, you were in the wrong, although you did it out of your good heart! My G.o.d! I also have a good heart, and, such as you see me, I couldn"t cut the head off a chicken. Nevertheless, I say to myself: Those who, at this moment, have the courage to purge the prisons, are saving the country and our Revolution, by preventing our enemies from letting loose a civil war upon France, and joining themselves to the out-landers to combat us.
Alas, it is indeed hard to be driven to it, but "Necessity knows no law." It is either kill or be killed. In such a case, each for his own skin!"
"Goodness me, yes!" put in the portress, a debonair matron, taking up her knitting again. "And then, whose fault is it? The n.o.bles and the priests haven"t stopped for three years conspiring with Veto and the Austrian woman. They loose the Prussians and Huns upon our poor country.
G.o.d! Listen, you, neighbor--we are getting tired, and it is high time that, one way or another, this all be put an end to."
"My wife is right. And then, do you see, neighbor, when the Sections, and even the Commune and Monsieur Danton, everyone, in fact, says it is necessary to purge the prisons, one must believe that so many persons would not agree on one and the same course, were it not at bottom just, or at least necessary."
I have cited these good people"s words because they are a faithful expression of the general sentiment on the subject of the ma.s.sacres.
On leaving the house where I had found a refuge, I set out, not for my Section, to join my comrades of the Guard as I had at first intended; but, acting on the subsequent call of the Commune to all the armorer, blacksmith and iron-worker artisans, who were to take in hand the manufacture in haste of the greatest possible number of arms, I turned my steps toward the National a.s.sembly, where the Military Committee sat in permanent session. I hoped that the number of workmen in these trades who reported would be over-sufficient for the turning out of the arms; in that case I was resolved to leave the next day for the army. Two motives impelled me to that resolution. First, my duty to my country; second the profound chagrin into which the aberration of my sister Victoria had thrown me. At that very moment, doubtless, she was--frightful thought--a.s.sisting at the ma.s.sacre in the prisons, calm and terrible as the G.o.ddess of Retribution. Moreover, I had received, two days earlier, a letter from Charlotte Desmarais. She was living still at Lyons, with her mother; she a.s.sured me of her affection, of her unshakable constancy, and added that, in view of the perils with which the allied arms threatened the country, my duty as a citizen was marked out for me; she would support with firmness the new trials that would await her should I go to the front. Unhappily, I could not enrol. The number of mechanics skilled in iron working would hardly suffice for getting out the arms; by a decree of the a.s.sembly, rendered on September 4, it was forbidden to them to leave Paris.
Behold the spectacle that I was to witness on my way to the a.s.sembly--a spectacle moving in its very simplicity:
In the middle of Vendome Place was raised a tent, supported at each corner by a pike surmounted with a red bonnet. Under this tent, munic.i.p.al officers, girt with the tricolor scarf, were receiving the enlistments of citizens. Two drums, piled one on the other, served as table. On the upper drum lay an ink-well, a pen, and the register in which were inscribed the names of the volunteers. Each of these received a fraternal embrace from one of the councilmen, and departed amid the cheers of "Long live the Nation!" uttered by the crowd which filled the place. Day without equal in history! Strange day! in which love of country, heroism, civic devotion, and the exaltation of the holiest virtues of the family, were intermingled with the thirst for vengeance and extermination. I heard uttered here and there about me, here with savage satisfaction, there with the accent of indifference or the resignation born of painful necessity: "They are going to execute the conspirators and purge the prisons." "Death to the priests and n.o.bles!"
Into the tent of the munic.i.p.al officers I saw a distinguished-looking old man enter. His five sons accompanied him. The youngest seemed about eighteen; the eldest, aged perhaps forty, held by the hand his own son, hardly out of his boyhood. These seven persons, completely armed and equipped out of their own purse, carried on their backs their soldiers"
knapsacks. The old man acted as spokesman, and addressed one of the officers:
"Citizen, I am named Matthew Bernard, master tanner, No. 71 St. Victor Street, where I live with my five sons and my grandson. We come, they and I, to enlist; we leave for the frontier."
The wife of the brave citizen, his daughter, a young girl of seventeen, and his son"s wife, awaited them outside. On the countenances of the three women was legible neither fear nor regret; the tears that shone in their eyes were tears of enthusiasm.
"Farewell, wife! Farewell, daughter and daughter-in-law! We depart a.s.sured of your safety. The prisons are purged," said the old man in a voice calm and strong. "We have none now to fight but the Prussians on the frontier. Adieu till we meet again. Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic! Death to the priests and the aristocrats!"
In the midst of the procession of recruits, I heard the snapping of a whip, and these words, shouted out in deep and joyous tones:
"Make way, citizens, make way, please! Oh, hey! Alright, Double-grey!
Alright, Reddy!" And soon I saw drawing near, through the crowd which fell back to give him pa.s.sage, a man in the hey-day of his strength, with an open and martial countenance, clad in a great-coat and an oilskin hat. He rode a grey horse, and led by the bridle a bay, both harnessed for the carriage. Across the crupper of one of the animals were slung a saddle-bag of oats and a bale of gra.s.s tied with a cord; the other horse carried a valise. The great-coat of the rider was drawn-tight at the waist by the belt of a cavalry saber that hung beside him. I remarked with surprise that the white leather of his sword-ta.s.sel was red, as if wet with blood.
"Citizen officers," called the rider without descending from the horse he rode, and which he reined in on the threshold of the tent, "Write as a voluntary recruit James d.u.c.h.emin, stage driver by occupation and formerly an artilleryman; I have sold my coach to pay my expenses on the way. I am off to the frontier with my horses Double-grey and Reddy, of whom I make an offering to the country, asking only the favor not to be separated from them and to be enrolled with them in a regiment of field artillery. You"ll see them do famously in the harness when they"re hitched up to a four-pounder. So, then, citizen officers, write us down, my horses and me. I have just lent a hand to the patriots who are working down there, at the Abbey," added the stage driver, carrying his hand to the blood-reddened saber. "The business is done. The prisons are purged;--now, to the front!"
The day was nearly over when I arrived at the a.s.sembly to put myself at the disposal of the Military Committee. While awaiting my turn for enrolment, I wandered into the a.s.sembly galleries. I was anxious to know whether the ma.s.sacre in the prisons was known to the popular Representatives. I then learned that the a.s.sembly, informed as to the occurrences at the Abbey, at La Force, and at the Chatelet, had sent to these places, with instructions to oppose the carnage, a commission composed of Citizens Bazire, Dussaulx, Francis of Neufchateau, Isnard and Lequino.
Soon several of the commissioners entered the chamber, accompanied by Tallien, a member of the Commune, who took the floor and said:
"Citizens, the commissioners of the a.s.sembly are powerless to turn aside the vengeance of the people, a vengeance in some sort just, for, we must say it, these blows have fallen upon the issuers of false notes, whom the law condemns to death. What excited the vengeance of the people was that they found in the prisons none but recognized criminals!"
I left the a.s.sembly chamber and returned to take my place in the line and pa.s.s before the Committee. The Committee was presided over, that day, by Carnot the elder, an officer of genius, and one of the greatest captains of the time. I had myself inscribed as an iron-worker, and received the order to appear next morning at daybreak, at the green-house of the Louvre, where they were setting up the forges and work-benches for the fashioning of the munitions of war.
While awaiting Victoria, at our lodging, I busied myself with recording in my journal the various events of the day. One in the morning sounded; my sister had not returned. Up till now, I had felt no anxiety for her; only those who would attempt to disarm the popular anger, only those, on that day, ran any danger; and Victoria partook of the general sentiment of Paris on the subject of a ma.s.s extermination. But suddenly there flashed back to my mind Jesuit Morlet and his tool Lehiron. I knew the hatred entertained by the reverend Father for my sister. These thoughts threw me into deep anxiety. The Jesuit Morlet and Lehiron were capable of any crime; and on this unlucky day, when blood flowed in torrents, nothing would have been easier than for the wretches to make away with Victoria. Faithful to his hope of seeing the Revolution besmirch itself or lose itself in excesses, Abbot Morlet would not fail to be on hand to urge on the carnage of the prisoners; he could easily, under a new disguise, repair to the prisons with Lehiron and his cut-throats, and, on encountering my sister, point her out to their weapons.
The gloomiest of apprehensions were raised in me by these reflections.
My alarm increased from minute to minute. There was, alas, no way to still it. My anguish had almost reached the breaking point when I heard hurried steps on the stair-landing. I ran to the door. It flew open.
Victoria uttered a cry of joy, threw herself into my arms, pressed me convulsively to her breast, and broke into tears. Then, between her sobs, she murmured in a voice choked with joy:
"Brother, my poor brother, I find you again! G.o.d be praised!"
As her emotion subsided, Victoria acquainted me in the following words with the source of her alarm:
"Just now, on my way here, I met, ten steps from the house, our neighbor Dubreuil. On seeing me he stopped, looked at me an instant with an expression of surprise and grief, and said, "Are you coming to see John?" "Surely," answered I. "Alas, poor John harangued the crowd this morning at this very place; he spoke against the ma.s.sacre in the prisons; they took him for a traitor, and the crowd, in its temper--"
and our neighbor buried his face in his hands and did not finish. I understood everything. Yielding to the goodness of your heart, desiring to oppose popular justice in its course, you had paid for the attempt with your life!--such was my first thought. For an instant I stood motionless with stupor, my soul in a whirl. I felt I should go mad. Then I ran to our door. "Brother, brother!" I cried. "Whence your alarm, mademoiselle?" the porter asked me; "Monsieur John is upstairs since ten o"clock." My heart bounded with joy;--but I was not completely rea.s.sured till I saw you."
I recounted to my sister the cause of our neighbor"s mistake in thinking I had lost my life in the attempt to intervene in favor of the prisoners. And I followed by confiding to Victoria the fears which her own prolonged absence had caused me.
"True," Victoria answered, "the Jesuit did appear once at the Abbey Prison with Lehiron and some of his brigands. But they soon saw that that was not the place for them, for at the Abbey there was no pillaging, there was no a.s.sa.s.sination. We judged and condemned the guilty; we freed the innocent."
"Alas, and in the name of what law did you condemn the ones, and acquit the others?"
"In the name of Eternal Justice, which smites the wicked and spares the good."
I heard Victoria in a sort of daze. "And even if," exclaimed I, "a semblance of justice did preside over the carnage, by what right did these men const.i.tute themselves the accusers, judges and executioners of the prisoners?"