Part 51 (1/2)

Aupres d'un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des chances pour que Robespierre sort.i.t vainqueur de cette lutte.

Lacretelle, volume xii.

(Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in the struggle.)

As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous silence in the crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success; and the rats run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wanted courage, never wanted pride, and the last often supplied the place of the first; thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he pa.s.sed through the throng, leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following him.

As they got into the open s.p.a.ce, Robespierre abruptly broke the silence.

”How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?”

”Eighty,” replied Payan.

”Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire: terrorism must serve us yet!”

He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through the street.

”St. Just,” he said abruptly, ”they have not found this Englishman whose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and the Talliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. But they have seized a woman,--only a woman!”

”A woman's hand stabbed Marat,” said St. Just. Robespierre stopped short, and breathed hard.

”St. Just,” said he, ”when this peril is past, we will found the Reign of Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. David is already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed to instruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated--no, no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us till our work is done. We have recalled L'Etre Supreme; we must now remodel this corrupted world. All shall be love and brotherhood; and--ho! Simon!

Simon!--hold! Your pencil, St. Just!” And Robespierre wrote hastily.

”This to Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These eighty heads must fall TO-MORROW,--TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance their trial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.

We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the Convention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends of liberty and France.”

A shout was heard in the distance behind, ”Vive la republique!”

The tyrant's eye shot a vindictive gleam. ”The republic!--faugh! We did not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!”

THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By the aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated him hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew that Viola was safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of the tyrant. He knew that Robespierre's hours were numbered; that the 10th of Thermidor, on which he had originally designed the execution of his last victims, would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had schemed for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A single word from the tyrant had baffled the result of all. The execution of Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the instrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the tyrant but expedite the doom of his victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, and hers whose pillow has been thy heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safe to-night!

CHAPTER 7.XIII.

Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben; Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.

Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben, Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!

Elegie.

(Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape from its frail tenement. The wind of the storm may scatter his ashes; his being endures forever.)

To-morrow!--and it is already twilight. One after one, the gentle stars come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yet trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue sky gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club.

There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks, a.s.semble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes, raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious populace,--the majority of that audience consisting of the furies of the guillotine (furies de guillotine). In the midst of the hall are the bureau and chair of the president,--the chair long preserved by the piety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seat scowls the harsh bust of Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatter over the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which the fierce faces of that Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard. There, from the orator's tribune, shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!

Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice, in the Committee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt to haunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle group together before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and things of the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry youth--symbol of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the mouldering Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.

All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest had been tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in that Saturnalia of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall of Robespierre could have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall would only serve to avenge.

Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer had plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of those mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced the intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of the mortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a power not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpness of extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bonds of infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!