XV. 1794. 21. And of the who set out tion. so soon become their own. The higher orders in general CHAP. behaved with firmness and serenity; silently they marched to death, with their eyes fixed on the firmament, lest their looks should betray their indignation. Numbers of the lower class piteously bewailed their fate, and called captives heaven and earth to witness their innocence. The pity for execuof the spectators was in a peculiar manner excited by the bands of females led out together to execution; fourteen young women of Verdun, of the most attractive forms, were cut off together. "The day after their execution," says Riouffe," the court of the prison looked like a garden bereaved of its flowers by a tempest." On another occasion, twenty women of Poitou, chiefly the wives of peasants, were placed together on the chariot; some died on the way, and the wretches guillotined their lifeless remains ; one kept her infant in her bosom till she reached the foot of the scaffold; the executioners tore the innocent from her breast, as she suckled it for the last time, and the screams of maternal agony were only stifled with her life. In removing the prisoners from the jail of the Maison Lazare, one of the women declared herself with child, and on the point of delivery: the hard-Riouffe,835, hearted jailers compelled her to move on she did bleau, Hist. so, uttering piercing shrieks, and at length fell on the Lazare, Rev. ground, and was delivered of an infant in presence of 226. her persecutors. 1* 87. Ta de la Maison Mém. xxiii. 22. espionage in Such accumulated horrors annihilated all the charities and intercourse of life. Before daybreak the shops of the Dreadful provision merchants were besieged by crowds of women Paris, and and children clamouring for the food which the law of the the other maximum in general prevented them from obtaining. The farmers trembled to bring their produce to the market, * "Dans une de ces translations imaginées pour molester les malheureux prisonniers, Dumoutier se présenta à quatre heures de matin, suivi d'un grand chariot, pour enlever les citoyennes detenues. Une d'elles qui touchait au terme de sa grossesse, ayant été éveillée sans ménagement, ressentit une commotion subite qui lui présagea son prochain accouchement; elle démanda de rester quelques jours; on l'accusa de feinte, d'imposture; elle ne fut pas écoutée; ses prières réitérées, ses pleurs, les sollicitations de ses compagnons towns. CHAP. XV. 1794. the shopkeepers to expose it to sale. The richest quarters of the town were deserted; no equipages or crowds of passengers were to be seen on the streets; the sinister words, Propriété Nationale, imprinted in large characters on the walls, every where showed how far the work of confiscation had proceeded. Passengers hesitated to address their most intimate friends on meeting; the extent of calamity had rendered men suspicious even of those they loved the most. "Non ausus timuisse palam; vox nulla dolori Credita sed quantum, volucres cum bruma coercet, Rura silent, mediusque jacet sine murmure pontus, Every one assumed the coarsest dress, and the most squalid appearance; an elegant exterior would have been the certain forerunner of destruction. At one hour only were any symptoms of animation to be seen; it was when the victims were conveyed to execution. The humane fled with horror from the sight; the infuriated rushed in crowds to satiate their eyes with the spectacle of human agony. Night came, but with it no diminution of the anxiety of the people. Every family early assembled its 152. Toul members; with trembling looks they gazed round the room, fearful that the very walls might harbour traitors. † Riouffe, 83. Fréron, 49. The sound of a foot, the stroke of a hammer, a voice in Th. vi. 318, 319. Deux the street, froze all hearts with horror. If a knock was heard at the door, every one, in agonised suspense, expected his fate. Unable to endure such protracted misery, num 1 Lac.ii. 151, iv. 235, 236. Amis, xii. 147, 150. tout fut inutile; il fallait cheminer avec les autres. Cette jeune infortunée se XV. 1794. bers committed suicide.* "Had the reign of Robespierre," CHAP. says Fréron," continued longer, multitudes would have thrown themselves under the guillotine; the first of social affections, the love of life, was already extinguished in almost every heart." 23. pierre's the Supreme In the midst of these unparalleled atrocities, the Convention were occupied with the establishment of the civic Robes virtues. Robespierre pronounced a discourse on the speech on qualities suited to a republic. He dedicated a certain Being. number of the decadal fêtes to the Supreme Being, to May 7.. Truth, to Justice, to Modesty, to Friendship, to Frugality, to Good Faith, to Glory, and to Immortality! Barère prepared a report on the suppression of mendicity, and the means of relieving the indigent poor. Robespierre had now reached the zenith of his popularity with his faction; he was denominated the Great Man of the Republic; his virtue, his genius, his eloquence, were in every mouth. The speech which he made on this occasion was one of the most remarkable of his whole career. "The idea," said he, "of a Supreme Being, and of the immortality of the soul, is a continual call to justice; it is therefore a social and republican principle. Who has authorised you to declare that the Deity does not exist? O you who support in such impassioned strains so arid a doctrine, what advantage do you expect to derive from the principle that a blind fatality regulates the affairs of men, and that the soul is nothing but a breath of air impelled towards XV. 1794. CHAP. the tomb? Will the idea of annihilation inspire man with more pure and elevated sentiments than that of immortality? will it awaken more respect for others or himself, more courage to resist tyranny, greater contempt for pleasure or death? You who regret a virtuous friend, can you endure the thought that his noblest part has not escaped dissolution? You who weep over the remains of a child or a wife, are you consoled by the thought that a handful of dust is all that remains of the beloved object? You, the unfortunate, who expire under the strokes of an assassin, is not your last voice raised to appeal to the justice of the Most High? Innocence on the scaffold, supported by such thoughts, makes the tyrant turn pale on his triumphal car. Could such an ascendant be felt, if the tomb levelled alike the oppressor and his victim? "Observe how, on all former occasions, tyrants have sought to stifle the idea of the immortality of the soul. With what art did Cæsar, when pleading in the Roman Senate in favour of the accomplices of Catiline, endeavour to throw doubts on the belief of its immortality; while Cicero invokes against the traitor the sword of the laws and the vengeance of Heaven! Socrates, on the verge of death, discoursed with his friends on the ennobling theme; Leonidas, at Thermopylæ, on the eve of executing the most heroic design ever conceived by man, invited his companions to a banquet in another world. The principles. of the Stoics gave birth to Brutus and Cato, even in the ages which witnessed the expiry of Roman virtue; they alone saved the honour of human nature, almost obliterated by the vices and the corruption of the empire. The Encyclopedists contained some estimable characters, but a much greater number of ambitious rascals. Many of them became leading men in the state. Whoever does not study their influence and policy would form a most imperfect notion of our Revolution. It was they who introduced the frightful doctrine of atheism; they were ever in XV. 1794. politics below the dignity of freedom; in morality they CHAP. went as far beyond the destruction of religious prejudices. Their disciples declaimed against despotism, and received the pensions of despots; they composed alternately tirades against kings, and madrigals for their mistresses; they were fierce with their pens, and rampant in antechambers. That sect propagated with infinite care the principles of Materialism, which spread so rapidly among the great and the beaux-esprits. We owe to them that selfish philosophy which reduced egotism to a system; regarded human society as a game of chance, where success was the sole distinction between what was just and unjust; probity as an affair of taste or good breeding; the world as the patrimony of the most dexterous of scoundrels. Among the great men of that period was one distinguished by the elevation of his soul and the greatness of his character, who showed himself a worthy preceptor of the human race. * He attacked tyranny with boldness; he spoke with enthusiasm of the Deity. His masculine and upright eloquence drew in colours of fire the charms of virtue; it defended the elevated doctrines which reason affords to console the human heart. The purity of his principles; his profound hatred of vice, his supreme contempt for the intriguing sophists who usurped the name of philosophers, drew upon him the hatred and persecution of his rivals and his friends. Could he have witnessed our Revolution, of which he was the precursor, and which bore him to the Pantheon, can we doubt he would have embraced with transport the doctrine of justice and equality? But what have the others done? They have frittered away their opinions, sold themselves to the gold of d'Orléans, or withdrawn into a base neutrality. The * Rousseau, whose remains had shortly before been translated to the Pantheon. Robespierre composed this eloquent speech in the cottage which Rousseau had inhabited at Montmorency, or in the forest of the same name-a striking proof of the influences which directed him, from the opening to the close of his eventful career. See LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, viii. 175. VOL. III. S |