Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844
Daylight brought back my senses, and I was convinced that the pantomimic spirit of the people, however unaccountably it might disregard proprieties, had been busy with the scene. I should now certainly have abandoned the supernatural portion of the conjecture altogether; but on mentioning it to Cassini, he let me into the solution at once.
"Have you never observed," said he, "the passion of all people for walking on the edge of a precipice, climbing a church tower, looking down from a battlement, or doing any one thing which gives them the nearest possible chance of breaking their necks?—then you can comprehend the performance of last night. There we are, like fowls in a coop: every day sees some of us taken out; and the amusement of the remaining fowls is to imagine how the heads of the others were taken from their bodies." The prisoners were practising a trial.
I gave an involuntary look of surprise at this species of amusement, and remarked something on the violation of common feeling—to say nothing of the almost profaneness which it involved.
"As to the feeling," said Cassini, with that shrug which no shoulders but those of a Frenchman can ever give, "it is a matter of taste; and perhaps we have no right to dictate in such matters to persons who would think a week a long lease of life, and who, instead of seven days, may not have so many hours. As to the profanation, if your English scruples made you sensitive on such points, I can assure you that you might have seen some things much more calculated to excite your sensibilities. The display last night was simply the trial of a royalist; and as we are all more or less angry with republicanism at this moment, and with some small reason too, the royalist, though he was condemned, as every body now is, was suffered to have his apotheosis. But I have seen exhibitions in which the republican was the criminal, and the scene that followed was really startling even to my rather callous conceptions. Sometimes we even had one of the colossal ruffians who are now lording it over France. I have seen St Just, Couthon, Caier, Danton, nay Robespierre himself; arraigned before our midnight tribunal; for this amusement is the only one which we can enjoy without fear of interruption from our jailers. Thus we enjoy it with the greater gusto, and revenge ourselves for the tribulations of the day by trying our tormentors at night."
"I am satisfied with the reason, although I am not yet quite reconciled to the performance. Who were the actors?"
"You are now nearer the truth than you suspected. We have men of every trade here, and, among the rest, we have actors enough to stock the Comédie Française. If you remain long enough among us, you will see some of the best farces of the best time played uncommonly well by our fellow détenus. But in the interim—for our stage is permitted by the municipality to open in the St Lazare only four times a month—a piece of cruelty which we all regard as intolerable—our actors refresh their faculties with all kinds of displays. You acknowledge that the scene last night was well got up; and if you should see the trial of some of our 'Grands Democrats,' be assured that your admiration will not be attracted by showy vesture, blue lights, or the harmonies of the old asthmatic organ in yonder gallery; our pattern will be taken from the last scene of 'Il Don Giovanni.' You will have no pasteboard figure suspended from the roof, and wafted upward in starlight or moonlight. But if you wish to see the exhibition, I am concerned to tell you that you must wait, for to-night all our artistes are busy. In what, do you conceive?"
I professed my inability to fathom "the infinite resources of the native mind, where amusement was the question."
"Well then—not to keep you in suspense—we are to have a masquerade."
The fact was even so. France having grown tired of all things that had been, grew tired of weeks, and Decades were the law of the land. The year was divided into packs of ten days each, and she began the great game of time by shuffling and cutting her cards anew. The change was not marked by any peculiar good fortune; for it was laughed at, as every thing in France was except an order for deportation to the colonies, or a march to the scaffold. The populace, fully admitting the right of government to deal with kings and priests as it pleased, regarded the interference with their pleasures as a breach of compact; and the result was, that the populace had their Dimanche as well as their Decadi, and that the grand experiment for wiping out the Sunday, issued in giving them two holidays instead of one.
It was still early in the day when some bustle in the porch of the prison turned all eyes towards it, and a new detachment of prisoners was brought in. I shall say nothing of the scenes of wretchedness which followed; the wild terrors of women on finding themselves in this melancholy place, which looked, and was, scarcely more than a vestibule to the tomb; the deep distress of parents, with their children clinging round them, and the general despair—a despair which was but too well founded. Yet the tumult of their settling and distribution among the various quarters of the chapel had scarcely subsided when another scene was at hand. The commissary of the district came in, with a list of the prisoners who were summoned before the tribunal. Our prison population was like the waters of a bath, as one stream flowed in another flowed out; the level was constantly sustained. With an instinctive pang I heard my name pronounced among those unhappy objects of sanguinary rule. Cassini approached me with a smile, which he evidently put on to conceal his emotion.
"This is quick work, M. Marston," said he, taking my hand. "As the ruffian in the school fable says, 'Hodie tibi, cras nihi'—twelve hours will probably make all the difference between us."
I took off the little locket coutaining my last remembrance of Clotilde, and put it into his hands, requesting him, if he survived, to transmit it to his incomparable countrywoman, with an assurance that I remembered her in an hour when all else was forgotten.
"I shall perform the part of your legatee," said he, "till to-morrow; then I will find some other depositary. Here you must know that heirship is rapid, and that the will is executed before the ink is dry." He turned away to hide a tear. "I have not known you long, sir," said he; "but in this place we must be expeditious in every thing. You are too young to die. If you are sacrificed, I am convinced that you will die like a gentleman and a man of honour. And yet I have some feeling, some presentiment, nay almost a consciousness, that you will not be cut off, at least until you are as weary of the world as I am."
I endeavoured to put on a face of resignation, if not of cheerfulness, and said, "That though my country might revenge my death, my being engaged in its service would only make my condemnation inevitable. But I was prepared."
"At all events, my young friend," said he, "if you escape from this pandemonium of France, take this paper, and vindicate the memory of Cassini."
He gave me a memoir, which I could not help receiving with a smile, from the brevity of the period during which the trust was likely to hold. The gendarme now came up to demand my attendance. I shook hands with the marquis, who at that moment was certainly no philosopher, and followed the train.
We were about fifty in number; and after being placed in open artillery waggons, the procession moved rapidly through the suburb, until we reached one of those dilapidated and hideous-looking buildings which were then to be found startling the stranger's eye with the recollections of the St Bartholomew and the Fronde.
A crowd, assembled round the door of one of these melancholy shades, and the bayonets of a company of the national guard glittering above their heads, at length indicated the place of our destination. The crowd shouted, and called us "aristocrats, thirsting for the blood of the good citizens." The line of the guard opened, and we were rapidly passed through several halls, the very dwelling of decay, until we reached a large court, where the prisoners remained while the judges were occupied in deciding on the fate of the train which the morning had already provided. I say nothing of the insults which were intended, if not to add new bitterness to death, to indulge the wretched men and women who could find an existence in attending on the offices of the tribunal, with opportunities of triumphing over those born to better things. While we remained in the court exposed to the weather, which was now cold and gusty, shouts were heard at intervals, which, as the turnkeys informed us, arose from the spectators of the executions—death, in these fearful days, immediately following sentence. Yet, to the last the ludicrous often mingled with the melancholy. While I was taking my place in the file according to the order of our summons, and was next in rotation for trial, a smart and overdressed young man stepped out of his place in the rank, and drawing from his bosom a pamphlet in manuscript, presented it to me, with the special entreaty that, "in case I survived, I should take care of its propagation throughout Europe." My answer naturally was, "That my fate was fully as precarious as that of the rest, and that thus I had no hope of being able to give his pamphlet to mankind."
"Mais, monsieur," that phrase which means so many inexpressible things—"But, sir, you must observe, that by putting my pamphlet into your charge, it has a double chance. You may read it as a part of your defence; it is a treatise on the government of France, which settles all the disputed questions, reconciles republicanism with monarchy, and shows how a revolution may be made to purify all things without overthrowing any. Thus my sentiments will become public at once, the world will be enlightened, and, though you may perish, France will be saved."
Nothing could be more convincing; yet I continued stubborn. He persisted. I suggested the "possibility of my not being suffered to make any defence whatever, but of being swept away at once; in this case endangering the total loss of his conceptions to the world;" but I had to deal with a man of resources.
"No," said the author and philanthropist; "for that event I have provided. I have a second copy folded on my breast, which I shall read when I am called on for trial. Then those immortal truths shall not be left to accident; I shall have two chances for celebrity; the labour of my life shall be known; nor shall the name of Jean Jacques Pelletier go to the tomb without the renown due to a philosopher."
But further deprecation on my part was cut short by the appearance of two of the guard, by whom I was marched to the presence of the tribunal. The day had now waned, and two or three lamps showed my weary eye the judges, whose decision was to make the difference to me between life and death, within the next half hour. Their appearance was the reverse of one likely to reconcile the unfortunate to the severity of the law. They were seven or eight sitting on a raised platform, with a long table in their front, covered with papers, with what seemed to be the property taken from the condemned at the moment—watches, purses, and trinkets; and among those piles, very visibly the fragments of a dinner—plates and soups, with several bottles of cognac and wine. Justice was so indefatigable in France, that its ministers were forced to mingle all the functions of public and private life together; and to be intoxicated in the act of passing sentence of death was no uncommon event.
The judges of those sectional tribunals were generally ruffians of the lowest description, who, having made themselves notorious by violence and Jacobinism, had driven away the usual magistracy, and, under the pretext of administering justice, were actually driving a gainful trade in robbery of every kind. The old costume of the courts of law was of course abjured; and the new civic costume, which was obviously constructed on the principle of leaving the lands free for butchery, and preserving the garments free from any chance of being disfigured by the blood of the victim—for they were the perfection of savage squalidness—was displayed à la rigueur on the bench. A short coat without sleeves, the shirt sleeves tucked up as for instant execution, the neck open, no collar, fierce mustaches, a head of clotted hair, sometimes a red nightcap stuck on one side, and sometimes a red handkerchief tied round it as a temporary "bonnet de nuit"—for the judges frequently, in drunkenness or fatigue, threw themselves on the bench or the floor, and slept—exhibited the regenerated aspect of Themis in the capital of the polished world.
My name was now called. I shall not say with what a throb of heart I heard it. But at the moment when I was stepping forward, I felt my skirt pulled by one of the guard behind me. I looked, and recognized through all his beard, and the hair that in profusion covered his physiognomy, my police friend, who seemed to possess the faculty of being every where—a matter, however, rendered easier to him by his being in the employ of the government—and who simply whispered the words—"Be firm, and acknowledge nothing." Slight as the hint was, it had come in good time; for I had grown desperate from the sight of the perpetual casualties round me, and, like Cassini's idea of the man walking on the edge of the precipice, had felt some inclination to jump off, and take my chance. But now contempt and defiance took the place of despair; and instead of openly declaring my purposes and performances, my mind was made up to leave them to find out what they could.
On my being marched up to the foot of the platform between two frightful-looking ruffians, whose coats and trousers seemed to have been dyed in gore, to show that they were worthy of the murders of September, and who, to make "assurance doubly sure," wore on their sword-belts the word "September," painted in broad characters, I remained for a while unquestioned, until they turned over a pile of names which they had flung on the table before them. At last their perplexity was relieved by one of the clerks, who pronounced my name. I was then interrogated in nearly the same style as before the committee of my first captors. I gave them short answers.
"Who are you?" asked the principal distributor of rabble justice. The others stooped forward, pens in hand, to record my conviction.
My answer was—
"I am a man." (Murmurs on the platform.)
"Whence come you?"
"From your prison."
"You are not a Frenchman?"
"No, thank Heaven!" (Murmurs again.)
"Beware, sir, of insolence to the tribunal. We can send you instantly to punishment."
"I know it. Why then try me at all?"
"Because, prisoner, we desire to hear the truth first."
"First or last, can you bear to hear it?" (Angry looks, but more attention.)
"We have no time to waste—the business of the Republic must be done. Are you a citizen?"
"I am; a citizen of the world."
"You must not equivocate with justice. Where did you live before you were arrested?"
"On the globe." (A half-suppressed laugh among the crowd in the back ground.)
"What profession?"
"None."
"On what then do you live, have lived, or expect to live?"
"To-day on nothing, for your guards have given me nothing. Yesterday, I lived on what I could get. To-morrow, it depends on circumstances whether I shall want any thing." (A low murmur of applause among the bystanders, who now gathered closer to the front.)
"Prisoner," said the chief, swilling a glass of cognac to strengthen the solemnity of his jurisprudence, "the Republic must not be trifled with. You are arraigned of incivisme. Of what country are you a subject?"
"Of France, while I remain on her territory."
"Have you fought for France?"
"I have; for her laws, her liberty, her property, and her honour." (Bravo! from the crowd.)
"Yet you are not a Republican?"
"No; no more than you are."
This produced confusion on the bench. The hit was contemptuously accidental; but it was a home-thrust at the chief, who had former been a domestic in the Tuileries, and was still strongly suspected of being a spy of the Bourbons. The crowd who knew his story, who are always delighted with a blow at power, burst into a general roar. But a little spruce fellow on the bench, who had already exhibited a desire to take his share in the interrogatory, now thrust his head over the table, and said in his most searching tone—
"To come to the point—Prisoner, how do you live? What are your means? All honest men must have visible means. That is my question." (All eyes were now turned on me.)
I was now growing angry; and, pointing to the pile of purses and watches on the table—
"No man," said I, "needs ask what are your visible means, when they see that pile before you. Yet I doubt if that proves you to be an honest man. That is my answer."
The little inquisitor looked furious, and glanced towards the chief for protection; but his intrusion had provoked wrath in that quarter, and his glance was returned with a rigid smile.
"Prisoner," said the head of the tribunal, "though the question was put improperly, it was itself a proper one. How do you live?"
"By my abilities."
"That is a very doubtful support in those times."
"I do not recommend you, or any of those around you, to make the experiment," was my indignant answer.
The bystanders gave a general laugh, in which even the guard joined. To get the laugh against one, is the most unpardonable of all injuries in France, and this answer roused up the whole tribunal. They scarcely gave themselves the trouble of a moment's consultation. A few nods and whispers settled the whole affair; and the chief, standing up and drawing his sabre from its sheath—then the significant custom of those places of butchery, pronounced the fatal words, "Guilty of incivisme. Let the criminal be conducted à la Force," the well-known phrase for immediate execution.
The door was opened from which none ever came back. Two torches were seen glaring down the passage, and I was seized by the grim escort who were to lead me to the axe.
The affectation of cowardice is as childish as the affectation of courage; but I felt a sensation at that moment which took me by surprise. I had been perfectly assured of my sentence from the first glance at the judges. If ever there was a spot on earth which deserved Dante's motto of Erebus—
"Voi qui entrate, lasciate agui speranza"—
it was the revolutionary tribunal. Despair was written all over it in characters impossible to be mistaken. I had fixed my resolution to go through the whole scene, if not with heroism, at least with that decent firmness which becomes a man; yet the sound of the words which consigned me to the scaffold struck me with a general chill. Momentary as the period was, the question passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same which bore me so well through the hazards of the campaign? Why am I to feel the fluttering of heart now, more than when I was facing sabres and cannon-shot? Why am I thus frigid and feeble, when I so lately fought and marched, and defied alike fatigue and wounds? But I felt in this chamber of death an inconceivable exhaustion, which had never approached me in the havoc of the field. My feet refused to move, my lips to breathe; all objects swam round, and sick to death and fainting, I thrust out my hand to save me from falling, and thus gave the last triumph to my murderers.
At this decisive moment I found my hand caught by a powerful grasp, and a strong voice exclaiming, "Messieurs, I demand the delay of this sentence. The criminal before you is of higher importance to the state than the wretches whom justice daily compels you to sacrifice. His crime is of a deeper dye. I exhibit the mandate of the Government to arrest the act of the tribunal, and order him to be reserved until he reveals the whole of the frightful plots which endanger the Republic."
He then advanced to the platform; and, taking a paper from his bosom, displayed to the court and the crowd the order for my being remanded to prison, signed by the triumvirate, whose word was law in France. Some confusion followed on the bench, and some bustle among the spectators; but the document was undeniable, and my sentence was suspended. I am not sure that the people within much regretted the delay, however those who had been lingering outside might feel themselves ill-used by a pause in the executions, which had now become a popular amusement; for the crowd instantly pushed forward to witness another trial of sarcasm between me and my judges; but this the new authority sternly forbade.
"The prisoner," said he, in a dictatorial tone, "is now in my charge. He is a prisoner of state—an Englishman—an agent of the monster Pitt"—(he paused, and was answered with a general shudder;) "and, above all, has actually been in arms with the fiend Brunswick, (a general groan,) and with those worse than fiends, those parricides, those emigrant nobles, who have come to burn our harvests, slay our wives and children, and destroy the proudest monument of human wisdom, the grandest triumph of human success, and the most illustrious monument of the age of regeneration—the Republic of France." Loud acclamations followed this popular rhetoric; and the panegyrist, firmly grasping me by the arm, walked with me rapidly out of court. All made way for him, and, before another word could be uttered by the astounded bench, we were in one of the covered carriages reserved for prisoners of the higher rank, and on our way, at full gallop, through the intricate streets of Paris.
All this was done with such hurried action, that I had scarcely time to know what my own emotions were; but the relief from immediate death, or rather from those depressing and overwhelming sensations which perhaps make its worst bitterness, was something, and hope dawned in me once more. Still, it was wholly in vain that I attempted to make my man of mystery utter a word. Nothing could extort a syllable from him, and he was evidently unwilling that I should even see his face, imperfect as the chance was among the few lamps which Paris then exhibited to enlighten the dismal darkness of her thoroughfares. Yet the idea that my rescue was not without a purpose predominated; and I was beginning even to imagine that I already felt the fresh air of the fields, and that our journey would terminate outside the walls of Paris, when the carriage came to a full stop, and, by the light of a torch streaming on the wind in front, I saw the gate of the St Lazare. All was now over—resistance or escape was equally beyond me. The carriage was surrounded by the guard, who ordered me to descend; their officer received the rescript for my safe custody, and I had nothing before me but the dungeon. But at the moment when my foot was on the step of the vehicle, my companion stooped forward, and uttered in my ear, with a pressure of my hand, the word "Mordecai." I was hurried onward, and the carriage drove away.
My surprise was excessive. This talismanic word changes the current of my thoughts at once. It had so often and so powerfully operated in my favour, that I could scarcely doubt its effect once more; yet before me were the stern realities of confinement. What spell was equal to those stonewalls, what dexterity of man or friendship, or even the stronger love of woman, could make my dungeon free, or my chains vanish into "thin air?" Still there had been a interposition, and to that interposition, whether for future good or ill, it certainly was due that I was not already mounting the scaffold, or flung, headless trunk, into the miserable and nameless grave.
As I passed again through the cloisters, my ears were caught with the sound of music and dancing. The contrast was sufficiently strong to the scene from which I had just returned; yet this was the land of contrasts. To my look of surprise, the turnkey who attended me answered "Perhaps you have forgotten that this is Decadi, and on this night we always have our masquerade. If you have not got a dress, I shall supply you; my wife is a fripier in the Antoine; she supplies all the civic fêtes with costumes, and you may have any dress you like, from a grand signor with his turban, down to a colporteur with his pack, or a watchman with his nightcap."
My mind was still too unsettled to enjoy masquerading, notwithstanding the temptation of the turnkey's wardrobe; and I felt all that absence of accommodation to circumstances, that want of plasticity, that failure of grasping at every hair's-breadth of enjoyment, which is declared by foreigners to form the prodigious deficiency of John Bull. If I could have taken refuge, for that night at least, in the saddest cell of the old convent, or in the deepest dungeon of the new prison, I should have gone to either with indulgence. I longed to lay down my aching brains upon my pillow, and forget the fever of the time. But prisoners have no choice; and the turnkey, after repeating his recommendations that I should not commit an act of such profound offence as to appear in the assembly without a domino, if I should take nothing else from the store of the most popular marchande in Paris, the wife of his bosom, at last, with a shake of his head and a bending of his heavy brows at my want of taste, unlocked the gate, and thrust me into the midst of my old quarters, the chapel.
There a new scene indeed awaited me. The place which I had left filled with trembling clusters of people, whole families clinging to each other in terror, loud or mute, but all in the deepest dread of their next summons, I found in a state of the most extravagant festivity—the chapel lighted up from floor to root—bouquets planted wherever it was possible to fix an artificial flower—gaudy wreaths depending from the galleries—and all the genius of this country of extremes lavished on attempts at decoration. Rude as the materials were, they produced at first sight a remarkably striking effect. More striking still was the spectacle of the whole multitude in every grotesque dress of the world, dancing away as if life was but one festival.
As I stood aloof for a while, wholly dazzled by the glare, the movement, and the multitude, I was recognised by some of my "old" acquaintance—the acquaintance of twenty-four hours—but here time, like every thing else, had changed its meaning, and a new influx had recruited the hall. Cassini and some others came forward and welcomed me, like one who had returned from the tomb—the news of the day was given and exchanged—a bottle of champagne was prescribed as the true medicine for my lowness of pulse—and I gradually gave myself up to the spirit of the hour.
As I wandered through the crowd, a mask dressed as a sylph bent its head over my shoulder, and I heard the words, "Why are you not in a domino?" I made some careless answer. "Go and get one immediately," was the reply. "Take this card, fasten it on your robe, and meet me here again." The mask put a card marked with a large rose into my hand, and was gone waltzing away among the crowd. I still lingered, leaning against one of the pillars of the aisle. The mask again approached me. "Monsieur Anglais," was the whisper, "you do not know your friends. Go and furnish yourself with a domino. It is essential to your safety." "Who are my friends, and why do you give me this advice?" was my enquiry. The mask lightly tripped round me, laid its ungloved hand on mine, as if in the mere sport of the dance; and I saw that it was the hand of a female from its whiteness and delicacy. I was now more perplexed than ever. As the form floated round me with the lightness of a zephyr, it whispered the word "Mordecai," and flew off into an eddy of the moving multitude. I now obeyed the command; went to the little shrine where the turnkey's wife had opened her friperie, and equipped myself with the dress appointed; and, with the card fixed upon my bosom, returned to take my station beside the pillar. But no sylph came again; no form rivaled the zephyr before me. I listened for that soft, low voice; but listened in vain. Yet what was all this but the common sport of a masquerade?
However, an object soon drew the general attention so strongly, as to put an end to private curiosity for the time. This was a mask in the uniform of a national guard, but so outrageously fine that his entrée excited an universal burst of laughter. But when, after a few displays of what was apparently all but intoxication, he began a detail of his own exploits, it was evident that the whole was a daring caricature; and as nothing could be less popular among us than the heroes of the shops, the Colonels Calicot, and Mustaches au comptoir, all his burlesque told incomparably. The old officers among us, the Vendéans, and all the ladies—for the sex are aristocrats under every government and in every region of the globe—were especially delighted. "Alexandre Jules Cæsar," colonel of the "brave battalion of the Marais," was evidently worth a dozen field-marshals in his own opinion; and his contempt for Vendôme, Marlborough, and Frederick le Grand, was only less piquant than the perfect imitation and keen burlesque of Santerre, Henriot, and our municipal warriors. At length when his plaudits and popularity were at their height, he proposed a general toast to the "young heroism," of the capital, and prefaced it by a song, in great repute in the old French service.