Yes ... did not Brutus imagine that he saw the shade of Cæsar gliding into his tent, when it could have been nothing but the flicker of a lamp on the curtains moved by the wind, or a moonbeam playing, as that one yonder, on a pillar?
As he gazed his eyes dilated in horror. It was no moonbeam. The outlines of a woman's form, ethereal and transparent, stood motionless against the pillar. It moved! Another form, white and shadowy, glided towards the first, and a third emerged from the dim background and joined them. Robespierre followed every movement with horror-stricken gaze. He rose, crept nearer: was he awake, or was it indeed a dream? Had he again fallen a prey to delusions at the very moment when he was persuading himself of their unreality? He was not asleep! He was wide awake! He felt the hot blood coursing through his veins, he walked to and fro, and was completely self-possessed! He knew he was at the Conciergerie, and had come to fetch his son Olivier. A little while ago he had conversed with two men there, on that very spot, the turnkey and the night watchman. And yet his nervous imagination conjured up before his eyes those chimerical visions clothed with the semblance of reality! For, of course, he was not deceived, he knew well enough they were unreal delusions, and yet he felt nervous and ill at ease!
"What strange beings we are!" he thought. "Poor human nature! We pride ourselves on our strength of mind, and yet we are subject to such hallucinations!"
Again he was startled from his musings. Other forms suddenly appeared in the white moonlit courtyard, walking slowly up and down, in pairs, singly, or in groups. They came and went, stopped, conversed with or took leave of each other, all in a great hush, without seeming to notice the Incorruptible, who in his fear kept as much as possible aloof, never moving his eyes from them a moment.
Suddenly, he uttered a cry. He had bent forward to examine their features and had recognised ... Madame Roland! ... Madame Roland! ... and Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister; ... Good God! and there was Charlotte Corday, the girl who had killed Marat! The courtyard filled with new forms, blanched and wan, gliding about with supernatural grace in the pale moonlight. Robespierre stood rooted to the spot, seized with wild terror.
"Am I mad?" he asked himself.
Ghosts! Yes, they were ghosts! What! was he going to believe in ghosts, like old women and children? It was folly, crass folly, and he repeated aloud—"Madness! sheer madness!"
But what did it all mean! What were those wandering forms which reminded him of beings long dead? Were they subtle effluences of their bodies that could pass through the prison walls, invisible by day, but luminous at night, as phosphorescent spectres were said to flit among tombstones in churchyards by moonlight, to the dismay of the weak and credulous.
"Yes, the weak and credulous!" he repeated, in a voice which quavered none the less, "the weak and credulous, easily prone to fear and remorse..."
He went towards the gate of the men's ward livid with fright, in the hope that the watchman would come and put an end to these harrowing phantasms.