"There is neither first nor last among us," they retorted; "we are all guilty or we are all innocent. You must treat us all alike."
The soldiers advanced toward them with bayonets levelled, but they did not move. It was only when Pichegru and the others insisted upon it that they returned to the deck. The four were then left in the deepest darkness in the horrible cell, which was foul with exhalations from the hold. They had neither hammock nor coverings, and could not lie down, for the cell was too narrow, nor yet stand up, for it was too low.
The twelve others crowded between decks were not much better off; for the hatches were closed, and, like their comrades, they had no air and could not move about.
Toward four o'clock in the morning the captain gave the order to set sail; and amid the shouts of the crew, the creaking of the rigging, the roaring of the waves breaking against the corvette, like a sob from the sides of the vessel itself, came the last cry: "Farewell, France!"
And like an echo from the entrails of the hold the same cry was repeated, almost unintelligibly, on account of the depths whence it came: "Farewell, France."
The reader may perhaps wonder that I have dwelt so long upon this melancholy tale, which would become more melancholy still, were we to follow the ill-fated exiles to the end of their journey of forty-five days. But the reader would probably not have my courage, which I owe to the necessity not of rehabilitating them—I leave to history that task—but of directing the compassion of future generations toward the men who sacrificed themselves for France.
It has seemed to me that the old pagan saying, "Woe to the vanquished!" has always been brutal, and is nothing less than impious in these days of modernity; and by some instinct of my heart I always incline toward the vanquished and my sympathies are ever with them.
They who have read my books know that I have described with the same degree of impartiality and sympathy the demise of Joan of Arc at Rouen and the passing of Mary Stuart at Fotheringay, the appearance of Charles I. upon the scaffold at Whitehall and of Marie Antoinette on the Place de la Révolution.