Chapter 3: 6.iii

The Tumbrils.

Next week, it is still but the 10th of April, there comes a new
Nineteen; Chaumette, Gobel, Hébert’s Widow, the Widow of Camille:
these also roll their fated journey; black Death devours them.
Mean Hébert’s Widow was weeping, Camille’s Widow tried to speak
comfort to her. O ye kind Heavens, azure, beautiful, eternal
behind your tempests and Time-clouds, is there not pity for all!
Gobel, it seems, was repentant; he begged absolution of a Priest;
did as a Gobel best could. For Anaxagoras Chaumette, the sleek
head now stript of its _bonnet rouge_, what hope is there? Unless
Death _were_ “an eternal sleep?” Wretched Anaxagoras, God shall
judge thee, not I.

Hébert, therefore, is gone, and the Hébertists; they that robbed
Churches, and adored blue Reason in red nightcap. Great Danton,
and the Dantonists; they also are gone. Down to the catacombs;
they are become silent men! Let no Paris Municipality, no Sect or
Party of this hue or that, resist the will of Robespierre and
_Salut_. Mayor Pache, not prompt enough in denouncing these Pitts
Plots, may congratulate about them now. Never so heartily; it
skills not! His course likewise is to the Luxembourg. We appoint
one Fleuriot-Lescot Interim-Mayor in his stead: an “architect
from Belgium,” they say, this Fleuriot; he is a man one can
depend on. Our new Agent-National is Payan, lately Juryman; whose
cynosure also is Robespierre.

Thus then, we perceive, this confusedly electric Erebus-cloud of
Revolutionary Government has altered its shape somewhat. Two
masses, or wings, belonging to it; an over-electric mass of
Cordelier Rabids, and an under-electric of Dantonist Moderates
and Clemency-men,—these two masses, shooting bolts at one
another, so to speak, have annihilated one another. For the
Erebus-cloud, as we often remark, is of suicidal nature; and, in
jagged irregularity, darts its lightning withal into itself. But
now these two discrepant masses being mutually annihilated, it is
as if the Erebus-cloud had got to internal composure; and did
only pour its hellfire lightning on the World that lay under it.
In plain words, Terror of the Guillotine was never terrible till
now. Systole, diastole, swift and ever swifter goes the Axe of
Samson. Indictments cease by degrees to have so much as
plausibility: Fouquier chooses from the Twelve houses of Arrest
what he calls Batches, “_Fournées_,” a score or more at a time;
his Jurymen are charged to make _feu de file_, fire-filing till
the ground be _clear_. Citizen Laflotte’s report of Plot in the
Luxembourg is verily bearing fruit! If no speakable charge exist
against a man, or Batch of men, Fouquier has always this: a Plot
in the Prison. Swift and ever swifter goes Samson; up, finally,
to three score and more at a Batch! It is the highday of Death:
none but the Dead return not.

O dusky d’Espréménil, what a day is this, the 22d of April, thy
last day! The Palais Hall here is the same stone Hall, where
thou, five years ago, stoodest perorating, amid endless pathos of
rebellious Parlement, in the grey of the morning; bound to march
with d’Agoust to the Isles of Hieres. The stones are the same
stones: but the rest, Men, Rebellion, Pathos, Peroration, see! it
has all fled, like a gibbering troop of ghosts, like the
phantasms of a dying brain! With d’Espréménil, in the same line
of Tumbrils, goes the mournfullest medley. Chapelier goes,
_ci-devant_ popular President of the Constituent; whom the Menads
and Maillard met in his carriage, on the Versailles Road. Thouret
likewise, _ci-devant_ President, father of Constitutional
Law-acts; he whom we heard saying, long since, with a loud voice,
‘The Constituent Assembly has fulfilled its mission!’ And the
noble old Malesherbes, who defended Louis and could not speak,
like a grey old rock dissolving into sudden water: he journeys
here now, with his kindred, daughters, sons and grandsons, his
Lamoignons, Châteaubriands; silent, towards Death.—One young
Châteaubriand alone is wandering amid the Natchez, by the roar of
Niagara Falls, the moan of endless forests: Welcome thou great
Nature, savage, but not false, not unkind, unmotherly; no Formula
thou, or rapid jangle of Hypothesis, Parliamentary Eloquence,
Constitution-building and the Guillotine; speak thou to me, O
Mother, and sing my sick heart thy mystic everlasting
lullaby-song, and let all the rest be far!—

Another row of Tumbrils we must notice: that which holds
Elizabeth, the Sister of Louis. Her Trial was like the rest; for
Plots, for Plots. She was among the kindliest, most innocent of
women. There sat with her, amid four-and-twenty others, a once
timorous Marchioness de Crussol; courageous now; expressing
towards her the liveliest loyalty. At the foot of the Scaffold,
Elizabeth with tears in her eyes, thanked this Marchioness; said
she was grieved she could not reward her. ‘Ah, Madame, would your
Royal Highness deign to embrace me, my wishes were
complete!’—‘Right willingly, Marquise de Crussol, and with my
whole heart.’[738] Thus they: at the foot of the Scaffold. The
Royal Family is now reduced to two: a girl and a little boy. The
boy, once named Dauphin, was taken from his Mother while she yet
lived; and given to one Simon, by trade a Cordwainer, on service
then about the Temple-Prison, to bring him up in principles of
Sansculottism. Simon taught him to drink, to swear, to sing the
_carmagnole_. Simon is now gone to the Municipality: and the poor
boy, hidden in a tower of the Temple, from which in his fright
and bewilderment and early decrepitude he wishes not to stir out,
lies perishing, “his shirt not changed for six months;” amid
squalor and darkness, lamentably,[739]—so as none but poor
Factory Children and the like are wont to perish, and _not_ be
lamented!

The Spring sends its green leaves and bright weather, bright May
brighter than ever: Death pauses not. Lavoisier famed Chemist,
shall die and not live: Chemist Lavoisier was Farmer-General
Lavoisier too, and now “all the Farmers-General are arrested;”
all, and shall give an account of their monies and incomings; and
die for “putting water in the tobacco” they sold.[740] Lavoisier
begged a fortnight more of life, to finish some experiments: but
‘the Republic does not need such;’ the axe must do its work.
Cynic Chamfort, reading these Inscriptions of _Brotherhood or
Death_, says ‘it is a Brotherhood of Cain:’ arrested, then
liberated; then about to be arrested again, this Chamfort cuts
and slashes himself with frantic uncertain hand; gains, not
without difficulty, the refuge of death. Condorcet has lurked
deep, these many months; Argus-eyes watching and searching for
him. His concealment is become dangerous to others and himself;
he has to fly again, to skulk, round Paris, in thickets and
stone-quarries. And so at the Village of Clamars, one bleared May
morning, there enters a Figure, ragged, rough-bearded,
hunger-stricken; asks breakfast in the tavern there. Suspect, by
the look of him! ‘Servant out of place, sayest thou?’
Committee-President of Forty-Sous finds a Latin Horace on him:
‘Art thou not one of those _Ci-devants_ that were wont to keep
servants? _Suspect!_’ He is haled forthwith, breakfast
unfinished, towards Bourg-la-Reine, on foot: he faints with
exhaustion; is set on a peasant’s horse; is flung into his damp
prison-cell: on the morrow, recollecting him, you enter;
Condorcet lies dead on the floor. They die fast, and disappear:
the Notabilities of France disappear, one after one, like lights
in a Theatre, which you are snuffing out.

Under which circumstances, is it not singular, and almost
touching, to see Paris City drawn out, in the meek May nights, in
civic ceremony, which they call “_Souper Fraternel_,” Brotherly
Supper? Spontaneous, or partially spontaneous, in the twelfth,
thirteenth, fourteenth nights of this May month, it is seen.
Along the Rue Saint-Honoré, and main Streets and Spaces, each
Citoyen brings forth what of supper the stingy _Maximum_ has
yielded him, to the open air; joins it to his neighbour’s supper;
and with common table, cheerful light burning frequent, and what
due modicum of cut-glasses and other garnish and relish is
convenient, they eat frugally together, under the kind
stars.[741] See it O Night! With cheerfully pledged wine-cup,
hobnobbing to the Reign of Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood, with
their wives in best ribands, with their little ones romping
round, the Citoyens, in frugal Love-feast, sit there. Night in
her wide empire sees nothing similar. O my brothers, why is the
reign of Brotherhood _not_ come! It is come, it shall come, say
the Citoyens frugally hobnobbing.—Ah me! these everlasting stars,
do they not look down “like glistening eyes, bright with immortal
pity, over the lot of man!”—

One lamentable thing, however, is, that individuals will attempt
assassination—of Representatives of the People. Representative
Collot, Member even of _Salut_, returning home, “about one in the
morning,” probably touched with liquor, as he is apt to be, meets
on the stairs, the cry ‘_Scélérat!_’ and also the snap of a
pistol: which latter flashes in the pan; disclosing to him,
momentarily, a pair of truculent saucer-eyes, swart grim-clenched
countenance; recognisable as that of our little fellow-lodger,
Citoyen Amiral, formerly “a clerk in the Lotteries!; Collot
shouts _Murder_, with lungs fit to awaken all the _Rue Favart;_
Amiral snaps a second time; a second time flashes in the pan;
then darts up into his apartment; and, after there firing, still
with inadequate effect, one musket at himself and another at his
captor, is clutched and locked in Prison.[742] An indignant
little man this Amiral, of Southern temper and complexion, of
“considerable muscular force.” He denies not that he meant to
‘purge France of a tyrant;’ nay avows that he had an eye to the
Incorruptible himself, but took Collot as more convenient!

Rumour enough hereupon; heaven-high congratulation of Collot,
fraternal embracing, at the Jacobins, and elsewhere. And yet, it
would seem the assassin-mood proves catching. Two days more, it
is still but the 23d of May, and towards nine in the evening,
Cecile Renault, Paper-dealer’s daughter, a young woman of soft
blooming look, presents herself at the Cabinet-maker’s in the Rue
Saint-Honoré; desires to see Robespierre. Robespierre cannot be
seen: she grumbles irreverently. They lay hold of her. She has
left a basket in a shop hard by: in the basket are female change
of raiment and two knives! Poor Cecile, examined by Committee,
declares she ‘wanted to see what a tyrant was like:’ the change
of raiment was ‘for my own use in the place I am surely going
to.’—‘What place?’—‘Prison; and then the Guillotine,’ answered
she.—Such things come of Charlotte Corday; in a people prone to
imitation, and monomania! Swart choleric men try Charlotte’s
feat, and their pistols miss fire; soft blooming young women try
it, and, only half-resolute, leave their knives in a shop.

O Pitt, and ye Faction of the Stranger, shall the Republic never
have rest; but be torn continually by baited springs, by wires of
explosive spring-guns? Swart Amiral, fair young Cecile, and all
that knew them, and many that did not know them, lie locked,
waiting the scrutiny of Tinville.