Part 31 (1/2)
”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'