Part 9 (1/2)
”What shall we be doing to-morrow at this time?” said Ducos.
All paused. Religion had its hopes, philosophy its dreams, infidelity its dreary blank. Each answered according to his faith. ”We shall sleep after the fatigues of the day,” said some, ”to wake no more.”
Atheism had darkened their minds. ”Death is an eternal sleep,” had become their gloomy creed. They looked forward to the slide of the guillotine as ending all thought, and consigning them back to that non-existence from which they had emerged at their creation. ”No!”
replied Fauchet, Carru, and others, ”annihilation is not our destiny.
We are immortal. These bodies may perish. These living thoughts, these boundless aspirations, can never die. To-morrow, far away in other worlds, we shall think, and feel, and act and solve the problems of the immaterial destiny of the human mind.” Immortality was the theme.
The song was hushed upon these dying lips. The forced laughter fainted away. Standing upon the brink of that dread abyss from whence no one has returned with tidings, every soul felt a longing for immortality.
They turned to Vergniaud, whose brilliant intellect, whose soul-moving eloquence, whose spotless life commanded their reverence, and appealed to him for light, and truth, and consolation. His words are lost. The effect of his discourse alone is described. ”Never,”
said the abbe ”had his look, his gesture, his language, and his voice more profoundly affected his hearers.” In the conclusion of a discourse which is described as one of almost superhuman eloquence, during which some were aroused to the most exalted enthusiasm, all were deeply moved, and many wept, Vergniaud exclaimed,
”Death is but the greatest act of life, since it gives birth to a higher state of existence. Were it not thus there would be something greater than G.o.d. It would be the just man immolating himself uselessly and hopelessly for his country. This supposition is a folly of blasphemy, and I repel it with contempt and horror. No! Vergniaud is not greater than G.o.d, but G.o.d is more just than Vergniaud; and He will not to-morrow suffer him to ascend a scaffold but to justify and avenge him in future ages.”
And now the light of day began to stream in at the windows. ”Let us go to bed,” said one, ”and sleep until we are called to go forth to our last sleep. Life is a thing so trifling that it is not worth the hour of sleep we lose in regretting it.”
”Let us rather watch,” said another, ”during the few moments which remain to us. Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.”
They rose from the table, and most of them retired to their cells and threw themselves upon their beds for a few moments of bodily repose and meditation. Thirteen, however, remained in the larger apartment, finding a certain kind of support in society. In a low tone of voice they conversed with each other. They were worn out with excitement, fatigue, and want of sleep. Some wept. Sleep kindly came to some, and lulled their spirits into momentary oblivion.
At ten o'clock the iron doors grated on their hinges, and the tramp of the gens d'armes, with the clattering of their sabers, was heard reverberating through the gloomy corridors and vaults of their dungeon, as they came, with the executioners, to lead the condemned to the scaffold. Their long hair was cut from their necks, that the ax, with un.o.bstructed edge, might do its work. Each one left some simple and affecting souvenir to friends. Gensonne picked up a lock of his black hair, and gave it to the Abbe Lambert to give to his wife. ”Tell her,” said he, ”that it is the only memorial of my love which I can transmit to her, and that my last thoughts in death were hers.”
Vergniaud drew from his pocket his watch, and, with his knife, scratched upon the case a few lines of tender remembrance, and sent the token to a young lady to whom he was devotedly attached, and to whom he was ere long to have been married. Each gave to the abbe some legacy of affection to be conveyed to loved ones who were to be left behind. Few emotions are stronger in the hour of death than the desire to be embalmed in the affections of those who are dear to us.
All being ready, the gens d'armes marched the condemned, in a column, into the prison-yard, where five rude carts were awaiting them, to convey them to the scaffold. The countless thousands of Paris were swarming around the prison, filling the court, and rolling, like ocean tides, into every adjacent avenue. Each cart contained five persons, with the exception of the last, into which the dead body of Valaze had been cast with four of his living companions.
And now came to the Girondists their hour of triumph. Heroism rose exultant over all ills. The brilliant sun and the elastic air of an October morning invigorated their bodies, and the scene of sublimity through which they were pa.s.sing stimulated their spirits to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. As the carts moved from the court-yard, with one simultaneous voice, clear and sonorous, the Girondists burst into the Ma.r.s.eillaise Hymn. The crowd gazed in silence as this funereal chant, not like the wailings of a dirge, but like the strains of an exultant song, swelled and died away upon the air. Here and there some friendly voice among the populace ventured to swell the volume of sound as the significant words were uttered,
”Contre nous de la tyrannie L'etendard sanglant est leve.”
”And tyranny has wide unfurl'd Her blood-stain'd banner in the sky.”
At the end of each verse their voices sank for a moment into silence.
The strain was then again renewed, loud and sonorous. On arriving at the scaffold, they all embraced in one long, last adieu. It was a token of their communion in death as in life. They then, in concert, loudly and firmly resumed their funereal chant. One ascended the scaffold, continuing the song with his companions. He was bound to the plank. Still his voice was heard full and strong. The plank slowly fell. Still his voice, without a tremor, joined in the triumphant chorus. The glittering ax glided like lightning down the groove. His head fell into the basket, and one voice was hushed forever. Another ascended, and another, and another, each with the song bursting loudly from his lips, till death ended the strain. There was no weakness. No step trembled, no cheek paled, no voice faltered. But each succeeding moment the song grew more faint as head after head fell, and the bleeding bodies were piled side by side. At last one voice alone continued the song. It was that of Vergniaud, the most ill.u.s.trious of them all. Long confinement had spread deathly pallor over his intellectual features, but firm and dauntless, and with a voice of surpa.s.sing richness, he continued the solo into which the chorus had now died away. Without the tremor of a nerve, he mounted the scaffold.
For a moment he stood in silence, as he looked down upon the lifeless bodies of his friends, and around upon the overawed mult.i.tude gazing in silent admiration upon this heroic enthusiasm. As he then surrendered himself to the executioner, he commenced anew the strain,
”Allons! enfans de la patrie, Le jour de glorie est arrive.”
”Come! children of your country, come!
The day of glory dawns on high.”
In the midst of the exultant tones, the ax glided on its b.l.o.o.d.y mission, and those lips, which had guided the storm of revolution, and whose patriotic appeals had thrilled upon the ear of France, were silent in death. Thus perished the Girondists, the founders of the Republic and its victims. Their votes consigned Louis and Maria to the guillotine, and they were the first to follow them. One cart conveyed the twenty-one bodies away, and they were thrown into one pit, by the side of the grave of Louis XVI.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EXECUTION OF THE GIRONDISTS.]
They committed many errors. Few minds could discern distinctly the path of truth and duty through the clouds and vapors of those stormy times. But they were most sincerely devoted to the liberties of France. They overthrew the monarchy, and established the Republic.
They died because they refused to open those sluice-ways of blood which the people demanded. A few of the Girondists had made their escape. Petion, Buzot, Barbaroux, and Gaudet wandered in disguise, and hid themselves in the caves of wild and unfrequented mountains. La Fayette, who was one of the most n.o.ble and ill.u.s.trious apostles of this creed, was saved from the guillotine by weary years of imprisonment in the dungeons of Olmutz. Madame Roland lingered in her cell, striving to maintain serenity, while her soul was tortured with the tidings of carnage and woe which every morning's dawn brought to her ears.
The Jacobins were now more and more clamorous for blood. They strove to tear La Fayette from his dungeon, that they might triumph in his death. They pursued, with implacable vigilance, the Girondists who had escaped from their fury. They trained blood-hounds to scent them out in their wild retreats, where they were suffering, from cold and starvation, all that human nature can possibly endure. For a time, five of them lived together in a cavern, thirty feet in depth. This cavern had a secret communication with the cellar of a house. Their generous hostess, periling her own life for them, daily supplied them with food. She could furnish them only with the most scanty fare, lest she should be betrayed by the purchase of provisions necessary for so many mouths. It was mid-winter. No fire warmed them in their damp and gloomy vault, and this living burial must have been worse than death.
The search became so rigid that it was necessary for them to disperse.