It appears from Robespierre's papers, that not only Tallien, but Legendre, Bourdon de l'Oise, Thuriot, and others, were incessantly watched by the spies of the Committee. The profession must have improved wonderfully under the auspices of the republic, for I doubt if Mons. le Noir's Mouchards [The spies of the old police, so called in derision.— Brissot, in this act of accusation, is described as having been an agent of the Police under the monarchy.—I cannot decide on the certainty of this, or whether his occupation was immediately that of a spy, but I have respectable authority for saying, that antecedent to the revolution, his character was very slightly estimated, and himself considered as "hanging loose on society.">[ were as able as Robespierre's.—The reader may judge from the following specimens:
"The 6th instant, the deputy Thuriot, on quitting the Convention, went to No. 35, Rue Jaques, section of the Pantheon, to the house of a pocket-book maker, where he staid talking with a female about ten minutes. He then went to No. 1220, Rue Fosse St. Bernard, section of the Sans-Culottes, and dined there at a quarter past two. At a quarter past seven he left the last place, and meeting a citizen on the Quay de l'Ecole, section of the Museum, near le Cafe Manoury, they went in there together, and drank a bottle of beer. From thence he proceeded to la Maison Memblee de la Providence, No. 16, Rue d'Orleans Honore, section de la Halle au Bled, whence, after staying about five-and-twenty minutes, he came out with a citoyenne, who had on a puce Levite, a great bordered shawl of Japan cotton, and on her head a white handkerchief, made to look like a cap. They went together to No. 163, Place Egalite, where after stopping an instant, they took a turn in the galleries, and then returned to sup.—They went in at half past nine, and were still there at eleven o'clock, when we came away, not being certain if they would come out again. "Bourdon de l'Oise, on entering the Assembly, shook hands with four or five Deputies. He was observed to gape while good news was announcing."
Tallien was already popular among the Jacobins of Paris; and his connexion with a beautiful woman, who might enable him to keep a domestic establishment, and to display any wealth he had acquired, without endangering his reputation, was a circumstance not to be overlooked; for Robespierre well knew the efficacy of female intrigue, and dinners,* in gaining partizans among the subordinate members of the Convention.
* Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a superior style of living in any particular member. His dress, his lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach. —This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of men the Convention is composed of;—men who, never having been accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six.
Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison.
An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to have acted on the presumption that it could not. He beset Tallien with spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her grounds for doing. A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant; and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the prisons. He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.—Thus situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must allow him the merit of being the first who dared to move for the arrest of Robespierre.—I need not add, that la belle was one of the first whose prison doors were opened; and I understand that, being divorced from Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to Tallien.
This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance—
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"A cut-purse of the empire and the rule; "____ a King of shreds and patches." |