And in the meantime Robin did not die. The poison that was to kill him came years later from the hand of his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirklees. Women will take things so literally.
THOMAS PAINE
“Ah, monsieur!” said the tall, nervous prisoner with the ravaged face, “the rights of one man are very well the wrongs of another—that is a new discovery; but you did not make it. Even God—who, nevertheless, does not exist just at present—could not invent a gale that would favour all ships; and yet you have thought yourself cleverer than God.”
“I do not know you,” interrupted his hearer and fellow-captive peevishly. “Why do you presume to address yourself to me?”
“Why?” The other lifted a little broken plaque or medallion which hung by a spoiled tricolour ribbon from his neck. “Do you observe this, M. Paine? I am one Garat, ex-President of the Sectional Committee of the Bonnet-Rouge, and this is my badge of office—or what remains of it. It represented the table of the law, en précis, as revealed to Mr. Paine on Sinai. Wearing it, I symbolised the Rights of Man. Well, what I say is, ‘Damn the Rights of Man!’”
“O! certainly, if you wish,” responded Mr. Paine coolly.
“They are fragile, are they not?” said the ex-President, with feverish derision; “they are apt to be broken in any scuffle. And where is there not a scuffle where opinions differ—which they always do? The Rights of Man have not, I perceive, altered the nature of man, which is to have his way wherever he can get it. Observe: I desired to do justice according to this tablet, but the mob would not permit me. Instead they haled away their suspect, unheard; and I, because I would not commit him unheard, was pronounced a traitor to the principles I represented and was despatched to this Luxembourg, where, to my profound amazement, I find incarcerated before me the lawgiver himself! Now I think I begin to understand everything. Your Rights of Man could not even save yourself. What the devil did you want redeeming others with them? For me, I would welcome all my ancient wrongs to find myself once more a prosperous barber in the Marche Neuf.”
* * * * *
In Paris on the 28th July, 1794, at six o’clock in the evening, ended at a stroke the Terror, lopped off by the head. It had been virile and active up to that last moment, prepared with its daily fournée, all chosen and set out for the baking; only in the result the order had been somewhat changed. Messieurs the Triumvirs and their following had been called upon to take the place of their destined victims—that was the difference.
But the evening before the death-carts had jolted as usual on their monotonous way to the Place du Trône; and therein surely the insensate tragedy of the guillotine had found its crowning expression. For at that time the dissolution of the Terror had actually begun, and the smallest gift of fortune or of foresight might have saved the lives of a half-hundred innocents. There is no sorrier fate than to perish in the lash of a just expiring monster’s tail.