Chapter 3: 2.V

Stretching of Formulas.

But how this Question of the Trial grew laboriously, through the
weeks of gestation, now that it has been articulated or
conceived, were superfluous to trace here. It emerged and
submerged among the infinite of questions and embroilments. The
Veto of Scoundrels writes plaintive Letters as to Anarchy;
“concealed Royalists,” aided by Hunger, produce Riots about
Grain. Alas, it is but a week ago, these Girondins made a new
fierce onslaught on the September Massacres!

For, one day, among the last of October, Robespierre, being
summoned to the tribune by some new hint of that old calumny of
the Dictatorship, was speaking and pleading there, with more and
more comfort to himself; till, rising high in heart, he cried out
valiantly: Is there any man here that dare specifically accuse
me? ‘_Moi!_’ exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence: a lean angry
little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the
tribune, taking papers from its pocket: ‘I accuse thee,
Robespierre,’—I, Jean Baptiste Louvet! The Seagreen became
tallow-green; shrinking to a corner of the tribune: Danton cried,
‘Speak, Robespierre, there are many good citizens that listen;’
but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill
tone, read and recited crime after crime: dictatorial temper,
exclusive popularity, bullying at elections, mob-retinue,
September Massacres;—till all the Convention shrieked again, and
had almost indicted the Incorruptible there on the spot. Never
did the Incorruptible run such a risk. Louvet, to his dying day,
will regret that the Gironde did not take a bolder attitude, and
extinguish him there and then.

Not so, however: the Incorruptible, about to be indicted in this
sudden manner, could not be refused a week of delay. That week,
he is not idle; nor is the Mother Society idle,—fierce-tremulous
for her chosen son. He is ready at the day with his written
Speech; smooth as a Jesuit Doctor’s; and convinces some. And now?
Why, now lazy Vergniaud does not rise with Demosthenic thunder;
poor Louvet, unprepared, can do little or nothing: Barrère
proposes that these comparatively despicable “personalities” be
dismissed by order of the day! Order of the day it accordingly
is. Barbaroux cannot even get a hearing; not though he rush down
to the Bar, and demand to be heard there as a petitioner.[587]
The convention, eager for public business (with that first
articulate emergence of the Trial just coming on), dismisses
these comparative _misères_ and despicabilities: splenetic Louvet
must digest his spleen, regretfully for ever: Robespierre, dear
to Patriotism, is dearer for the dangers he has run.

This is the second grand attempt by our Girondin Friends of
Order, to extinguish that black-spot in their domain; and we see
they have made it far blacker and wider than before! Anarchy,
September Massacre: it is a thing that lies hideous in the
general imagination; very detestable to the undecided Patriot, of
Respectability: a thing to be harped on as often as need is. Harp
on it, denounce it, trample it, ye Girondin Patriots:—and yet
behold, the black-spot will not trample down; it will only, as we
say, trample blacker and wider: fools, it is no black-spot of the
surface, but a well-spring of the deep! Consider rightly, it is
the apex of the everlasting Abyss, this black-spot, looking up as
water through thin ice;—say, as the region of Nether Darkness
through your thin film of Gironde Regulation and Respectability;
trample it _not_, lest the film break, and then—!

The truth is, if our Gironde Friends had an understanding of it,
where were French Patriotism, with all its eloquence, at this
moment, had _not_ that same great Nether Deep, of Bedlam,
Fanaticism and Popular wrath and madness, risen unfathomable on
the Tenth of August? French Patriotism were an eloquent
Reminiscence; swinging on Prussian gibbets. Nay, where, in few
months, were it still, should the same great Nether Deep
subside?—Nay, as readers of Newspapers pretend to recollect, this
hatefulness of the September Massacre is itself partly an
after-thought: readers of Newspapers can quote Gorsas and various
Brissotins approving of the September Massacre, at the time it
happened; and calling it a salutary vengeance![588] So that the
real grief, after all, were not so much righteous horror, as
grief that one’s own power was departing? Unhappy Girondins!

In the Jacobin Society, therefore, the decided Patriot complains
that here are men who with their private ambitions and
animosities, will ruin Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, all
three: they check the spirit of Patriotism, throw
stumbling-blocks in its way; and instead of pushing on, all
shoulders at the wheel, will stand idle there, spitefully
clamouring what foul ruts there are, what rude jolts we give! To
which the Jacobin Society answers with angry roar;—with angry
shriek, for there are Citoyennes too, thick crowded in the
galleries here. Citoyennes who bring their seam with them, or
their knitting-needles; and shriek or knit as the case needs;
famed _Tricoteuses_, Patriot Knitters;—_Mère Duchesse_, or the
like Deborah and Mother of the Faubourgs, giving the keynote. It
is a changed Jacobin Society; and a still changing. Where Mother
Duchess now sits, authentic Duchesses have sat. High-rouged dames
went once in jewels and spangles; now, instead of jewels, you may
take the knitting-needles and leave the rouge: the rouge will
gradually give place to natural brown, clean washed or even
unwashed; and Demoiselle Théroigne herself get scandalously
fustigated. Strange enough: it is the same tribune raised in
mid-air, where a high Mirabeau, a high Barnave and Aristocrat
Lameths once thundered: whom gradually your Brissots, Guadets,
Vergniauds, a hotter style of Patriots in _bonnet rouge_, did
displace; red heat, as one may say, superseding light. And now
your Brissots in turn, and Brissotins, Rolandins, Girondins, are
becoming supernumerary; must desert the sittings, or be expelled:
the light of the Mighty Mother is burning not red but
blue!—Provincial Daughter-Societies loudly disapprove these
things; loudly demand the swift reinstatement of such eloquent
Girondins, the swift “erasure of Marat, _radiation de Marat_.”
The Mother Society, so far as natural reason can predict, seems
ruining herself. Nevertheless she has, at all crises, seemed so;
she has a _preter_natural life in her, and will not ruin.

But, in a fortnight more, this great Question of the Trial, while
the fit Committee is assiduously but silently working on it,
receives an unexpected stimulus. Our readers remember poor
Louis’s turn for smithwork: how, in old happier days, a certain
Sieur Gamain of Versailles was wont to come over, and instruct
him in lock-making;—often scolding him, they say for his
numbness. By whom, nevertheless, the royal Apprentice had learned
something of that craft. Hapless Apprentice; perfidious
Master-Smith! For now, on this 20th of November 1792, dingy Smith
Gamain comes over to the Paris Municipality, over to Minister
Roland, with hints that he, Smith Gamain, knows a thing; that, in
May last, when traitorous Correspondence was so brisk, he and the
royal Apprentice fabricated an “Iron Press, _Armoire de Fer_,”
cunningly inserting the same in a wall of the royal chamber in
the Tuileries; invisible under the wainscot; where doubtless it
still sticks! Perfidious Gamain, attended by the proper
Authorities, finds the wainscot panel which none else can find;
wrenches it up; discloses the Iron Press,—full of Letters and
Papers! Roland clutches them out; conveys them over in towels to
the fit assiduous Committee, which sits hard by. In towels, we
say, and without notarial inventory; an oversight on the part of
Roland.

Here, however, are Letters enough: which disclose to a
demonstration the Correspondence of a traitorous self-preserving
Court; and this not with Traitors only, but even with Patriots,
so-called! Barnave’s treason, of Correspondence with the Queen,
and friendly advice to her, ever since that Varennes Business, is
hereby manifest: how happy that we have him, this Barnave, lying
safe in the Prison of Grenoble, since September last, for he had
long been suspect! Talleyrand’s treason, many a man’s treason, if
not manifest hereby, is next to it. Mirabeau’s treason: wherefore
his Bust in the Hall of the Convention “is veiled with gauze,”
till we ascertain. Alas, it is too ascertainable! His Bust in the
Hall of the Jacobins, denounced by Robespierre from the tribune
in mid-air, is not veiled, it is instantly broken to sherds; a
Patriot mounting swiftly with a ladder, and shivering it down on
the floor;—it and others: amid shouts.[589] Such is _their_
recompense and amount of wages, at this date: on the principle of
supply and demand! Smith Gamain, inadequately recompensed for the
present, comes, some fifteen months after, with a humble
Petition; setting forth that no sooner was that important Iron
Press finished off by him, than (as he now bethinks himself)
Louis gave him a large glass of wine. Which large glass of wine
did produce in the stomach of Sieur Gamain the terriblest
effects, evidently tending towards death, and was then brought up
by an emetic; but has, notwithstanding, entirely ruined the
constitution of Sieur Gamain; so that he cannot work for his
family (as he now bethinks himself). The recompense of _which_ is
“Pension of Twelve Hundred Francs,” and “honourable mention.” So
different is the ratio of demand and supply at different times.

Thus, amid obstructions and stimulating furtherances, has the
Question of the Trial to grow; emerging and submerging; fostered
by solicitous Patriotism. Of the Orations that were spoken on it,
of the painfully devised Forms of Process for managing it, the
Law Arguments to prove it lawful, and all the infinite floods of
Juridical and other ingenuity and oratory, be no syllable
reported in this History. Lawyer ingenuity is good: but what can
it profit here? If the truth must be spoken, O august Senators,
the only Law in this case is: _Væ victis_, the loser pays! Seldom
did Robespierre say a wiser word than the hint he gave to that
effect, in his oration, that it was needless to speak of Law,
that here, if never elsewhere, our Right was Might. An oration
admired almost to ecstasy by the Jacobin Patriot: who shall say
that Robespierre is not a thorough-going man; bold in Logic at
least? To the like effect, or still more plainly, spake young
Saint-Just, the black-haired, mild-toned youth. Danton is on
mission, in the Netherlands, during this preliminary work. The
rest, far as one reads, welter amid Law of Nations, Social
Contract, Juristics, Syllogistics; to us barren as the East wind.
In fact, what can be more unprofitable than the sight of Seven
Hundred and Forty-nine ingenious men, struggling with their whole
force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom
this: To stretch out the old Formula and Law Phraseology, so that
it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely _un_coverable
Thing? Whereby the poor Formula does but _crack_, and one’s
honesty along with it! The thing that is palpably _hot_, burning,
wilt thou prove it, by syllogism, to be a freezing-mixture? This
of stretching out Formulas till they crack is, especially in
times of swift change, one of the sorrowfullest tasks poor
Humanity has.