Part 8 (1/2)
Immediately after the tumult of that dreadful night in which the Convention was inundated with a.s.sa.s.sins clamoring for blood, twenty-one of the Girondists were arrested and thrown into the dungeons of the Conciergerie. Imprisoned together, and fully conscious that their trial would be but a mockery, and that their doom was already sealed, they fortified one another with all the consolations which philosophy and the pride of magnanimity could administer. In those gloomy cells, beneath the level of the street, into whose deep and grated windows the rays of the noonday sun could but feebly penetrate, their faces soon grew wan, and wasted, and haggard, from confinement, the foul prison air, and woe.
There is no sight more deplorable than that of an accomplished man of intellectual tastes, accustomed to all the refinements of polished life, plunged into those depths of misery from which the decencies even of our social being are excluded. These ill.u.s.trious statesmen and eloquent orators, whose words had vibrated upon the ear of Europe, were transformed into the most revolting aspect of beggared and haggard misery. Their clothes, ruined by the humid filth of their dungeons, moldered to decay. Unwashed, unshorn, in the loss almost of the aspect of humanity, they became repulsive to each other.
Unsupported by any of those consolations which religion affords, many hours of the blackest gloom must have enveloped them.
Not a few of the deputies were young men, in the morning of their energetic being, their bosoms glowing with all the pa.s.sions of this tumultuous world, buoyant with hope, stimulated by love, invigorated by perfect health. And they found themselves thus suddenly plunged from the heights of honor and power to the dismal darkness of the dungeon, from whence they could emerge only to be led to the scaffold.
All the bright hopes of life had gone down amid the gloom of midnight darkness. Several months lingered slowly away while these men were awaiting their trial. Day after day they heard the tolling of the tocsin, the reverberations of the alarm gun, and the beating of the insurrection drum, as the demon of lawless violence rioted through the streets of the blood-stained metropolis. The execrations of the mob, loud and fiend-like, accompanied the cart of the condemned, as it rumbled upon the pavements above their heads, bearing the victims of popular fury to the guillotine; and still, most stoically, they struggled to nerve their souls with fort.i.tude to meet their fate.
From these ma.s.sive stone walls, guarded by triple doors of iron and watched by numerous sentinels, answerable for the safe custody of their prisoners with their lives, there was no possibility of escape.
The rigor of their imprisonment was, consequently, somewhat softened as weeks pa.s.sed on, and they were occasionally permitted to see their friends through the iron wicket. Books, also, aided to relieve the tedium of confinement. The brother-in-law of Vergniaud came to visit him, and brought with him his son, a child ten years of age. The features of the fair boy reminded Vergniaud of his beloved sister, and awoke mournfully in his heart the remembrance of departed joys. When the child saw his uncle imprisoned like a malefactor, his cheeks haggard and sunken, his matted hair straggling over his forehead, his long beard disfiguring his face, and his clothes hanging in tatters, he clung to his father, affrighted by the sad sight, and burst into tears.
”My child,” said Vergniaud, kindly, taking him in his arms, ”look well at me. When you are a man, you can say that you saw Vergniaud, the founder of the Republic, at the most glorious period, and in the most splendid costume he ever wore--that in which he suffered unmerited persecution, and in which he prepared to die for liberty.” These words produced a deep impression upon the mind of the child. He remembered them to repeat them after the lapse of half a century.
The cells in which they were imprisoned still remain as they were left on the morning in which these ill.u.s.trious men were led to their execution. On the dingy walls of stone are still recorded those sentiments which they had inscribed there, and which indicate the nature of those emotions which animated and sustained them. These proverbial maxims and heroic expressions, gleaned from French tragedies or the cla.s.sic page, were written with the blood which they had drawn from their own veins. In one place is carefully written,
”Quand il n'a pu sauver la liberte de Rome, Caton est libre encore et suit mourir en homme.”
”_When he no longer had power to preserve the liberty of Rome Cato still was free, and knew how to die for man._”
Again,
”Cui virtus non deest Ille nunquam omnino miser.”
_”He who retains his integrity Can never be wholly miserable.”_
In another place,
”La vraie liberte est celle de l'ame.”
_”True liberty is that of the soul.”_
On a beam was written,
”Dignum certe Deo spectaculum fortem virum c.u.m calamitate colluctantem.”
_”Even G.o.d may look with pleasure upon a brave man struggling against adversity.”_
Again,
”Quels solides appui dans le malheur supreme!
J'ai pour moi ma vertu, l'equite, Dieu meme.”
_”How substantial the consolation in the greatest calamity I have for mine, my virtue, justice, G.o.d himself.”_
Beneath this was written,
”Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon coeur.”
_”The day is not more pure than the depths of my heart.”_
In large letters of blood there was inscribed, in the hand-writing of Vergniaud,
”Potius mori quam foedari.”
_”Death is preferable to dishonor.”_