XV. 1794. ever little sums they had been able to secrete about their CHAP. persons, to keep their names out of the black list; but in vain.* The names of such as they chose to denounce were made up in a list, called in the prisons "The Evening Journal," and the public chariots were sent at nightfall to convey them to the Conciergerie, preparatory to their trial on the following morning. When the unfortunate captives heard the rolling of the wheels of the cars which were sent to convey them, the most agonising suspense prevailed in the prisons. They flocked to the wickets of their corridors, placed their ears on the bars to hear the list, and trembled lest their names should be called out by the officers. Those who were named embraced their companions in misfortune, and received their last adieus: often the most heart-rending separations were witnessed; a father tore himself from the arms of his children, a husband from his 1 Deux shrieking wife. Such as survived had reason to envy the lot of those conducted to the den of Fouquier Tinville; restored to their cells, they remained in a state of suspense worse than death itself till the same hour on the following Hist. de la night, when the rolling of the chariot-wheels renewed the 386, 388. universal agony of the captives.1 Amis, xii. 331, 332. Tableau Prisons, ii. 29, 37, Th. vi. 368, 369. Conv. iii. the prison To such a degree did the torture of suspense prey upon 43. the minds of the prisoners, that they became not only Agony of reckless of life, but anxious for death. They realised the ers. Death terrible peculiarity which Dante describes as the last of the Prinaggravation of the Infernal Regions "Che è tanto greve A lor, che lamentar gli fa sì forte? Rispose; Dicrolti molto breve. Questi non hanno speranza di morte."+ * Immense sums of money were given by such of the captives as had succeeded in secreting any to these wretches to procure even a temporary respite from insertion in the fatal lists, nor did they despise the smallest bribes. Sometimes their gratuities were as high as 400 louis; sometimes as low as a bottle of brandy.-Tableau Historique de la Maison St Lazare, p. 53. "What doth aggrieve them thus, That they lament so loud? He straight replied That will I tell thee briefly: these of death No hope may entertain." cess of Monaco. CARY'S DANTE, Inferno, iii. 43. CHAP. XV. 1794. The inhabitants who had reason to apprehend detention became indifferent to all the precautions requisite to secure their safety; many who had escaped voluntarily surrendered themselves to their persecutors, or waited, on the high-road, the first band of the national guard to apprehend them. The young Princess of Monaco, in the flower of youth and beauty, after receiving her sentence, declared herself pregnant, and obtained a respite; the horrors of surviving those she loved, however, so preyed upon her mind, that the next day she retracted her declaration. "Citizens," said she, "I go to death with all the tranquillity which innocence inspires." Soon after, turning to the jailer who accompanied her, she gave him a packet, containing a lock of her beautiful hair, and said—“ I have only one favour to implore of you, that you will give this to my son promise this as my last and dying request." Then, turning to a young woman near her, recently con1 Tableau demned, she exclaimed-"Courage, my dear friend! ii. 39, 40. Courage! Crime alone can show weakness!" She died xii. 329,330. with sublime devotion, evincing in her last moments, like Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday, a serenity rarely witnessed in the other sex.1 des Prisons, Deux Amis, Lac. ii. 164, 166. Madame Lavergne had hoped that, by her intercession, she would move the hearts of the judges in favour of her husband, the commandant of Longwy. When she saw that all was unavailing, and that sentence of death was pronounced, a cry of Vive le Roi! was heard; all the spectators trembled at the fatal words. Vive le Roi!" exclaimed Madame in more energetic terms; and when those next her exclaimed that she had lost her reason, she repeated the same words in a calmer voice, so as to leave no room for doubt as to her deliberate intention. She obtained the recompense she desired in dying beside her husband. Soon after a sister followed the same method to avoid surviving her brother, and a young woman, to accompany the object of her affection to another world. Madame de Grammont, disdaining to employ words in her own defence, which she XV. 1794. well knew would be unavailing, protested only the inno- CHAP. cence of Mademoiselle du Chatelet, who sat at the bar beside her.* Servants frequently insisted upon accompanying their masters to prison, and perished with them on the scaffold. Many daughters went on their knees to the members of the Revolutionary Committee, to be allowed to join their parents in captivity, and, when brought to trial, pleaded guilty to the same charges. The efforts of the court and jury were unable to make them separate their cases; the tears of their parents even were unavailing in the generous contention, filial affection prevailed over parental love. A father and son were confined together in the Maison St Lazare; the latter was involved in one of the fabricated conspiracies of the prison: when his name was called out to stand his trial, his father came forward, and, by personating his son, was the means of saving his life, by dying in his stead. "Do you know," said the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal to Isabeau, "in whose presence you are standing ?"-"Yes," replied the undaunted young man ; "it is here that formerly virtue judged crime, and that now crime murders innocence." Nearly all the members of the old Parliament of Paris suffered on the scaffold. One of them, M. Legrand d'Alleray, was, with his wife, accused of having corresponded with his emigrant son. Even Fouquier Tinville was softened. "Here," said he, "is the letter brought to your charge but I know your writing; it is a forgery."-" Let me see the paper," said d'Alleray. "You are mistaken," said the intrepid old man ; 66 it “I am aware,” said she, “it would be useless to speak about myself; but what has this angel done? (pointing to Madame du Chatelet)—she who never took any part in public strife, who belonged to no party, was involved in no intrigues, but was devoted only to works of conscious benevolence. There are others as innocent; none so little liable to suspicion as she."-SENAC DE MEILHAN, 147. +"Oh spettacolo grande, ove a tenzone! Sono amore e magnanima virtute ! Ove la morte al vincitor si pone In premio, e'l mal del vinto è la salute." Gerusalemme Liberata, ii. 31. XV. CHAP. is both my writing and my signature."-" Doubtless," replied Fouquier, still desirous to save him, "you were not 1794. acquainted with the law which made it capital to correspond with emigrants?"-"You are mistaken again," said d'Alleray; "I knew of that law; but I knew also of another, prior and superior, which commands parents to sacrifice their lives for their children." Still Fouquier Tinville tried to furnish him with excuses; but the old man constantly eluded them; and at length said "I see your object, and thank you for it; but my wife and I will not purchase life by falsehood: better to die at once. We have grown old together, without having ever told a Deux Amis, falsehood; we will not begin when on the verge of the Tableau des grave. Do your duty; we shall do ours. We blame you not; the fault is that of the law." They were sent to the scaffold.1 1 Lac. ii. 164, 166. xii. 331,337. Prisons, ii. 31, 45. 45. The vengeance of the tyrants fell with peculiar severity Lavoisier, upon all whose talents or descent distinguished them from and others. the rest of mankind. The son of Buffon, the daughter of Roucher, Vernet, perished without regard to the illustrious names they bore. When the former was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, on the charge of being implicated in the conspiracy in the Luxembourg, he said—" I was confined in the St Lazare, and could not have conspired in the Luxembourg." "No matter," said Fouquier Tinville, "you have conspired somewhere;" and he was executed with the prisoners from the Luxembourg. On being placed on the scaffold, he said, "I am the son of Buffon,” and presented his arms to be bound. Florian, the eloquent novelist, pleaded in vain, in a touching petition from prison, that his life had been devoted to the service of mankind, that he had been threatened with the Bastille for some of his productions, and that the hand which had drawn the romance of William Tell, and depicted a paternal government under Numa, could not be suspected of a leaning to despotism. He was not executed, as the fall of Robespierre prevented it; but he was so XV. 1794. horror-struck with the scenes he had witnessed in prison, CHAP. "Ne vous étonnez pas, objets charmans et doux, André Chénier, a young man, whose eloquent writings pointed him out as the future historian of the Revolution, and Chamfort, one of its earliest and ablest supporters, were executed at the same time. The former was engaged, immediately before his execution, in composing some pathetic stanzas, addressed to Mademoiselle de Coigny, for whom he had conceived a romantic attachment in prison, among which is to be found the following : "Peut-être avant que l'heure en cercle promenée Ait posé sur l'émail brillant, Dans les soixante pas où sa route est bornée, Son pied sonore et vigilant, Le sommeil du tombeau pressera mes paupières' Florian, Lac. xi. 48, Hist. ii. 166, 428. Lam. At this unfinished stanza the poet was summoned 1 Vie de to the guillotine. His brother Joseph, who had the Euvres, i. power to save his life, refused to do so-even to the 181, 183. tears of their common parent, prostrate before him. Lite- 49, and Pr. rary jealousy steeled the young revolutionist against the 167. Th. vi. first feelings of nature. Roucher and André Chénier Hist. des were seated together in the chariot, and discoursed there, 134, 143. like Cato, on the immortality of the soul. Chénier, when Lit. Char. on the scaffold, struck his head against one of the beams of 236.Beux the guillotine, exclaiming, ""Tis a pity! there was some- Amis, xii. thing there."1 A few weeks longer would have swept off Gir.viii.121, D'Israeli, ch. 15, p. 332, 333. |