Then they cast all the money they had with them amongst the crowding, storming people, who greedily seized it. This was done, not to excite the mob to revolt, but with the thought that, their death at hand, they had no farther need of wealth.
There was something strangely classic and Roman-like in their death. They left the hall singing loudly the celebrated hymn, the “Marseillaise;” and in reference to their death, they sang with amazing power the celebrated two lines,
“March on, march on! O children of the land,
The day, the hour of glory, is at hand!”
This terrible hymn they were still singing as they entered their prison. It was now late in the evening, and they were to suffer on the following morning.
The tribunal had decreed that the yet warm corpse of Valasé should be carried back to prison, conveyed in the same cart with his accomplices to the scaffold, and interred with their bodies. The only sentence, perhaps, which punished the dead.
Four men-at-arms carried the body upon a litter, and thus the procession reached the prison.
The twenty-two were to pass the night in the same room, the corpse in one corner. The twenty-one—even Boileau, who repented of his momentary cowardice—came, one by one, and kissed the dead man’s hand, then covered his face, saying, “To-morrow, brother!”
One Bailleul, a Girondist and a Conventionist, but who had escaped the proscription, yet had not left Paris, had promised that, after the trial, he would prepare and send to the prison, either a triumphant or a funereal supper, according to the sentence.