At ten minutes past ten in the morning, a dull rumor, drawing nearer and nearer, announced the arrival of the condemned. My sister and I were not far from the scaffold, behind a line of Munic.i.p.al Guards. We beheld a two-horse carriage draw up, accompanied by General Santerre and several officers of his staff. Claude Bernard and James Roux, an ex-priest, the munic.i.p.al officers charged with guarding Capet, alighted first from the carriage, where Louis remained for two minutes" s.p.a.ce with his confessor. Then, with firm tread, and supported by the executioners, he ascended the steps of the platform. He was clad in grey trousers and a soft white waistcoat; his purpled face betrayed intense excitement.
Suddenly he stepped to the edge of the scaffold, and cried to the people:
"Frenchmen, I am innocent--"
At Santerre"s command the roll of drums drowned the rest of the speech.
Louis XVI cast a look of rage at the drummers, and cried to them angrily to desist.
The drumming continued. Louis Capet was turned over to Sampson, the executioner-in-chief, and his aides. A few seconds later, the sixty-sixth of these foreign Kings of Gaul had paid the penalty of his crimes, had expiated the wrongs of the monarchy of which he was the last incarnation.
The King"s head, held up to the people by the headsman, was greeted with the shouts of the mult.i.tude.
No. 155 of Marat"s journal terminates its account of the execution of Capet with the following reflections:
"The head of the tyrant has just fallen under the sword of the law; that same blow has overthrown the foundation of monarchy among us. I now believe in the Republic.... Not a voice cried for grace during the execution; a profound silence reigned about the scaffold. But when the head of Capet was shown to the people, from all sides rose the cries, "Long live the Nation! Long live the Republic!" The execution of Louis XVI is one of those memorable events which mark epochs in the life of nations. It will have an immense influence on the fate of the despots of Europe and on those peoples who have as yet not broken their chains."
Robespierre, in a letter to one of his const.i.tuents (second trimester, page 3), penned the following appreciation of the consequences of the great political occurrence:
"Citizens, the tyrant is fallen under the sword of the law. This great act of justice has struck consternation to the hearts of the aristocracy, annihilated the superst.i.tion of royalty, and created the Republic. It imparts a character of grandeur to the Convention, and makes it worthy the confidence of France. The imposing and majestic att.i.tude of the people in this solemn hour will cause the tyrants of earth more terror than even the death of their fellow. A profound silence surrounded the scaffold up to the moment the head of Louis XVI fell. That instant, the air shook with the unanimous shout of a hundred thousand citizens, "Long live the Republic!" It was not the barbarous curiosity of men who came to feast their eyes on the death of a fellow-being; it was the powerful interest of a people, impa.s.sioned for liberty, and a.s.suring itself of the fact that royalty had breathed its last.... Formerly, when a King died at Versailles, the reign of his successor was immediately ushered in to the tune of "The King is dead, long live the King!" as if to make the nation understand that despotism was immortal. This time, a whole people, with a sublime instinct, acclaimed: "Long live the Republic," to teach a universe that tyranny had died with the tyrant."
May the same lot be reserved for all the Kings.
CHAPTER XX.
MARRIAGE OF JOHN LEBRENN.
Under date of January 26, 1793, the diary of John Lebrenn bears the record, without comment:
"To-day I espoused Charlotte Desmarais."
Despite the circular addressed by advocate Desmarais to his colleagues in the Convention, and in which he fixed as the date for his daughter"s wedding the day of the tyrant"s death, Charlotte, without regard for her father"s very lively disappointment, and unmindful of his reiterated importunities, would not consent to be married until the 26th of January. With his habitual calculation, considering the union merely as a precaution, the lawyer had chosen Robespierre and Marat as witnesses to the ceremony; those selected by John Lebrenn were Billaud-Varenne and Legendre. The munic.i.p.al officer of the Section received the vows of the young couple in his office on the evening after the Convention session of January 26. John Lebrenn had several days previously obtained from his old employer, Master Gervais, the deed of his smithy and the lease of the house. The preparations, the modest embellishments of his future home, were finished on the eve of his marriage.
After returning from the offices of the Section, the young couple received the pledges and felicitations of the witnesses, and presently were left alone with Madam Desmarais and her husband, who said to John:
"My dear son-in-law, I leave you an instant to go to look up my daughter"s dowry and present it to you."
When Desmarais left the room, his wife addressed her daughter and new-found son:
"My children, this is the decisive instant. I would rather die than live any longer with my husband; but I tremble to think of the rage into which our resolution will throw him. Do not forsake me."
"Dear mother," responded Charlotte, "could you really think that of us?
Is not our life bound up with yours?"
"Nevertheless, if he should oppose our separation? He would perhaps be in the right, my children?"
"Rea.s.sure yourself, dear mother," quoth John in his turn. "In the first place, the separation will relieve Monsieur Desmarais of one fear, that of being compromised by his relationship with Monsieur Hubert, your brother; who, unfortunately, as you tell me, has refused to accept the proposal made to him in my name."
"Alas, yes; my brother replied that he appreciated your offer, but that he considered it an act of cowardice to remain pa.s.sive; he wished to retain full freedom to combat the Republic."
"Alas," echoed Charlotte, with a sigh, "I deplore uncle"s blindness, but I can not but pay homage to his strength of character."
"True enough, my dear Charlotte, Monsieur Hubert is one of those adversaries whom one admires while fighting. As I have several times told your mother, I hoped that struck especially by the att.i.tude of the people of Paris on the 21st your uncle, who is a man of sense, would recognize how vain would now be any attempt against the Republic,"
observed John. "In that case, dear mother, Monsieur Desmarais, heretofore so terrified at the perils to which he believed himself exposed by his kinship with Monsieur Hubert, will no doubt see in your determination to leave him nothing but a pledge of his safety for the future, and will hardly dream of holding you back. At least, that is the way it appears to me."
At that moment the attorney returned, holding in his hands a little inlaid casket which he held out to the young artisan with a radiant air, saying:
"My dear son-in-law, I have found in my strong-box, besides the sum I mentioned, a hundred louis, which I add to my daughter"s dower."
But seeing John Lebrenn repulse the proffered casket, the attorney added in great surprise: "Come, take the little chest, my dear pupil. It contains, in fine good louis, the dower I promised you, to which I have just added two thousand four hundred livres. Moreover, it is understood that in recompense for the slimness of the dower Charlotte, you, and your sister will lodge and board with me, without, to put it plainly, any expense to you. We shall live as one family."
"Citizen Desmarais," replied John, "before accepting the dower which you offer me and of which I have no need, it is our duty, my wife"s and mine, to inform you of our plans. First of all, I shall continue in my station as an iron-worker."
"That is admirable, my dear pupil," exclaimed the lawyer with hastily a.s.sumed enthusiasm. "Far from blushing at your condition, far from seeing in the advantage afforded you by your marriage with my daughter an opportunity to renounce honest toil and to live in indolence, you choose to remain a workman. That is indeed admirable!"
"Citizen Desmarais, I hasten to disabuse you of a misunderstanding that exists between us. Upon mature consideration my wife and I have decided to dwell in our own house, completely separated from you."
"What do you mean!"
"I mean, Citizen Desmarais, that my former employer has sold me his establishment. Whence it follows that my labors and the care of my forge will oblige me, as well as my wife, to live elsewhere than here with you. I have, in consequence, hired the house previously occupied by my old master, and this very night my wife and I shall take possession of our new abode. The question has been considered and settled."
"Aye, father," added Charlotte. "Such is, indeed, our firm resolution."
At these words, p.r.o.nounced by John Lebrenn and Charlotte in a voice that admitted of no reply, advocate Desmarais turned livid with rage and amazement. Forgetting now all his tricks of dissimulation, distracted with fear, and exasperated by what he took as an indignity on the part of his daughter and her husband, the lawyer cried to Charlotte, as he shook with anger and fright:
"Treason! Shameful treason! Heartless, unnatural daughter! This is the grat.i.tude with which you repay my bounties to you? You would have the audacity to leave your father"s house, would you! And you----" he added, turning tempestuously upon John Lebrenn, "and you, traitor, how dare you thus abuse my confidence, my generosity?"
"Not another word in that tone, Citizen Desmarais," interposed John. "Do not oblige me to forget the respect I owe the father of my wife; do not oblige me to tell you for what reasons your daughter--and her mother--have resolved to fix their abode elsewhere than with you."
"My wife! She also--would dare----" cried the lawyer, his rage redoubling till it almost choked him.
"Yes, monsieur, I also wish to leave you," replied Madam Desmarais. "You have treated me most cruelly, because my unhappy brother, a proscript and a fugitive, came to ask of you a few hours" shelter. You denounced me to the commissioner of our Section, adjured him to hale me away as a prisoner. You have even gone so far as to declare to me, "If it were necessary, madam, in order to save my life, to send you to the scaffold--I would not hesitate an instant. Just now I must roar with the tigers; but then I should become a tiger.""
"Hold your tongue!" shrieked the advocate, in a frenzy. "Do you wish to get my head cut off, gabbling like that before this man who perhaps awaits but the moment to settle me? Serpent that he is, whom I have warmed in my bosom!"
"Citizen Desmarais," replied Lebrenn, half in pity, half in disgust, "it depends upon you alone to put an end to your alarms, to the terrors by which you are a.s.sailed and of which those about you are the first victims. Cease to display in exaggerated form opinions which are at fisticuffs with your real belief. Renounce your public career. The weakness of your character, the uneasiness of your conscience, evoke fantasms before your eyes."
"It is a plot against my life!" continued Desmarais wildly. "They want to draw upon my head the fury of the Jacobins, and have me packed off to the scaffold. They want to be rid of me so that my dutiful daughter and son-in-law may play ducks and drakes with my fortune! But the old fox knows the trap! I shall stay at the Convention. My daughter and son-in-law may take themselves off, if they so wish; but as for you, Citizeness Desmarais, you shall not leave this house. The wife, according to the law, is bound to reside at the home of her husband."
"I will live with you no longer," resolutely replied Madam Desmarais. "A hundred times rather die!"
"Once would suffice, worthy wife! And it would be good riddance to a most abominable burden."
"Come, mother," said Charlotte, wroth at her father"s brutal language.
"Come. You shall not remain here another instant."
"Your mother shall stop where she is," cried the lawyer threateningly.