"Happy brute! He can sleep in peace!" he exclaimed.
So this man's sleep was not disturbed by such horrible visions as haunted Robespierre! But then, as the watchman said, he had not killed the victims; his name had not been inscribed on these walls as a term and brand of infamy and hatred.
That writing on the wall seemed to be dancing before his eyes. "Robespierre, assassin; your turn will come!" So this was the cry which rose from every breast! If he was vanquished in the morrow's struggle, if he had to ascend the scaffold without having accomplished the act of social regeneration of which he had so long dreamt, he would leave behind him the execrated memory of a despot and bloodthirsty tyrant! His name would be coupled with all the monsters of history! Robespierre would be cited by posterity side by side with Nero, Caligula, Tiberius!
Stepping slowly towards the watchman's seat, he sat down sideways, his eyes fixed, like a somnambulist's, and his arm resting on the back of the chair, as he repeated in a low murmur—
"Your turn will come!"
Almost the same dread, ominous words had the night before forced him to start up suddenly, and impelled him to rush towards the window of his room.
"Arise, Robespierre, arise? Your hour has come!"
It was the shade of Camille Desmoulins that had uttered the grim summons! Camille, accompanied by his wife, the pale and sweet Lucile, sought to draw him to them, to drag him along with them on the blood-strewn way to which they had been doomed! But the phantoms had all vanished with the refreshing dawn. It was fever, of course! He was subject to it; it peopled his sleep with harrowing visions and fearful dreams. But these were nothing but excited hallucinations, creatures of his overwrought brain....
Robespierre had now closed his eyes, overcome with fatigue, and still continued the thread of his thoughts and fancies. His ideas were becoming confused. He was vaguely wondering whether such imaginings were due to fever after all? If this was not the case, it was perhaps his conscience that awakened from its torpor, and rose at night to confront him with his victims? Yes, his conscience that relentlessly gnawed at his heart-strings, and wrung from him a gasping confession of alarm! Had not Fouquier-Tinville seen the Seine one night from his terrace rolling waves of blood? This was also a mere delusion ... the outcome of remorse, perhaps? Remorse? Why? Remorse for a just deed, for a work of redemption? No! It sprung rather from a diseased imagination caused by an over-excited and over-active brain, which, weakened by excess, clothed the simplest objects with supernatural attributes.
Robespierre's eyes were now half-closed, and wandered dreamily to the women's courtyard, where grey arches stood out in clear and sharp relief under the soft moonlight. He was in deep reverie, wondering what could be the true cause of such strange illusions, and as he wondered, examples from past history came crowding to his mind.