We have had our guard withdrawn for some days; and I am just now returned from Peronne, where we had been in order to see the seals taken off the papers, &c. which I left there last year. I am much struck with the alteration observable in people's countenances. Every person I meet seems to have contracted a sort of revolutionary aspect: many walk with their heads down, and with half-shut eyes measure the whole length of a street, as though they were still intent on avoiding greetings from the suspicious; some look grave and sorrow-worn; some apprehensive, as if in hourly expectation of a mandat d'arret; and others absolutely ferocious, from a habit of affecting the barbarity of the times.
Their language is nearly as much changed as their appearance—the revolutionary jargon is universal, and the most distinguished aristocrats converse in the style of Barrere's reports. The common people are not less proficients in this fashionable dialect, than their superiors; and, as far as I can judge, are become so from similar motives. While I was waiting this morning at a shop-door, I listened to a beggar who was cheapening a slice of pumpkin, and on some disagreement about the price, the beggar told the old revendeuse [Market-woman.] that she was "gangrenee d'aristocratie." ["Eat up with aristocracy.">[ "Je vous en defie," ["I defy you.">[ retorted the pumpkin-merchant; but turning pale as she spoke, "Mon civisme est a toute epreuve, mais prenez donc ta citrouille," ["My civism is unquestionable; but here take your pumpkin.">[ take it then." "Ah, te voila bonne republicaine, ["Ah! Now I see you are a good republican.">[ says the beggar, carrying off her bargain; while the old woman muttered, "Oui, oui, l'on a beau etre republicaine tandis qu'on n'a pas de pain a manger." ["Yes, in troth, it's a fine thing to be a republican, and have no bread to eat.">[
I hear little of the positive merits of the convention, but the hope is general that they will soon suppress the Jacobin clubs; yet their attacks continue so cold and cautious, that their intentions are at least doubtful: they know the voice of the nation at large would be in favour of such a measure, and they might, if sincere, act more decisively, without risk to themselves.—The truth is, they would willingly proscribe the persons of the Jacobins, while they cling to their principles, and still hesitate whether they shall confide in a people whose resentment they have so much deserved, and have so much reason to dread. Conscious guilt appears to shackle all their proceedings, and though the punishment of some subordinate agents cannot, in the present state of things, be dispensed with, yet the Assembly unveil the register of their crimes very reluctantly, as if each member expected to see his own name inscribed on it. Thus, even delinquents, who would otherwise be sacrificed voluntarily to public justice, are in a manner protected by delays and chicane, because an investigation might implicate the Convention as the example and authoriser of their enormities.—Fouquier Tinville devoted a thousand innocent people to death in less time than it has already taken to bring him to a trial, where he will benefit by all those judicial forms which he has so often refused to others. This man, who is much the subject of conversation at present, was Public Accuser to the Revolutionary Tribunal—an office which, at best, in this instance, only served to give an air of regularity to assassination: but, by a sort of genius in turpitude, he contrived to render it odious beyond its original perversion, in giving to the most elaborate and revolting cruelties a turn of spontaneous pleasantry, or legal procedure.—The prisoners were insulted with sarcasms, intimidated by threats, and still oftener silenced by arbitrary declarations, that they were not entitled to speak; and those who were taken to the scaffold, after no other ceremony than calling over their names, had less reason to complain, than if they had previously been exposed to the barbarities of such trials.—Yet this wretch might, for a time at least, have escaped punishment, had he not, in defending himself, criminated the remains of the Committee, whom it was intended to screen. When he appeared at the bar of the Convention, every word he uttered seemed to fill its members with alarm, and he was ordered away before he could finish his declaration. It must be acknowledged, that, however he may be condemned by justice and humanity, nothing could legally attach to him: he was only the agent of the Convention, and the utmost horrors of the Tribunal were not merely sanctioned, but enjoined by specific decrees.
I have been told by a gentleman who was at school with Fouquier, and has had frequent occasions of observing him at different periods since, that he always appeared to him to be a man of mild manners, and by no means likely to become the instrument of these atrocities; but a strong addiction to gaming having involved him in embarrassments, he was induced to accept the office of Public Accuser to the Tribunal, and was progressively led on from administering to the iniquity of his employers, to find a gratification in it himself.
I have often thought, that the habit of watching with selfish avidity for those turns of fortune which enrich one individual by the misery of another, must imperceptibly tend to harden the heart. How can the gamester, accustomed both to suffer and inflict ruin with indifference, preserve that benevolent frame of mind, which, in the ordinary and less censurable pursuits of common life, is but too prone to become impaired, and to leave humanity more a duty than a feeling?
The conduct of Fouquier Tinville has led me to some reflections on a subject which I know the French consider as matter of triumph, and as a peculiar advantage which their national character enjoys over the English—I mean that smoothness of manner and guardedness of expression which they call "aimable," and which they have the faculty of attaining and preserving distinctly from a correspondent temper of the mind. It accompanies them through the most irritating vicissitudes, and enables them to deceive, even without deceit: for though this suavity is habitual, of course frequently undesigning, the stranger is nevertheless thrown off his guard by it, and tempted to place confidence, or expect services, which a less conciliating deportment would not have been suggested. A Frenchman may be an unkind husband, a severe parent, or an arrogant master, yet never contract his features, or asperate his voice, and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition ferocious—yet he shall still retain his equability of tone and complacent phraseology, and be "un homme bien aimable."
The revolution has tended much to develope this peculiarity of the French character, and has, by various examples in public life, confirmed the opinions I had formed from previous observation. Fouquier Tinville, as I have already noticed, was a man of gentle exterior.—Couthon, the execrable associate of Robespierre, was mildness itself—Robespierre's harangues are in a style of distinguished sensibility—and even Carrier, the destroyer of thirty thousand Nantais, is attested by his fellow-students to have been of an amiable disposition. I know a man of most insinuating address, who has been the means of conducting his own brother to the Guillotine; and another nearly as prepossessing, who, without losing his courteous demeanor, was, during the late revolutionary excesses, the intimate of an executioner.
*It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of manners and character exhibited during the French revolution—The philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the sentence of the King—The massacres of the prisons connived at by the gentle Petion—Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility" the talk of executions in detail—And St. Just, the deviser of a thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine, telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance, "Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."— Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the King—that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of exasperating the people against him—and that she was considerably instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was, that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.—"Oh even-handed justice!"
*It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of manners and character exhibited during the French revolution—The philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the sentence of the King—The massacres of the prisons connived at by the gentle Petion—Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility" the talk of executions in detail—And St. Just, the deviser of a thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine, telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance, "Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."— Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the King—that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of exasperating the people against him—and that she was considerably instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was, that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.—"Oh even-handed justice!"
*It would be too voluminous to enumerate all the contrasts of manners and character exhibited during the French revolution—The philosophic Condorcet, pursuing with malignancy his patron, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, and hesitating with atrocious mildness on the sentence of the King—The massacres of the prisons connived at by the gentle Petion—Collot d'Herbois dispatching, by one discharge of cannon, three hundred people together, "to spare his sensibility" the talk of executions in detail—And St. Just, the deviser of a thousand enormities, when he left the Committee, after his last interview, with the project of sending them all to the Guillotine, telling them, in a tone of tender reproach, like a lover of romance, "Vous avez fletri mon coeur, je vais l'ouvrir a la Convention."— Madame Roland, in spite of the tenderness of her sex, could coldly reason on the expediency of a civil war, which she acknowledged might become necessary to establish the republic. Let those who disapprove this censure of a female, whom it is a sort of mode to lament, recollect that Madame Roland was the victim of a celebrity she had acquired in assisting the efforts of faction to dethrone the King—that her literary bureau was dedicated to the purpose of exasperating the people against him—and that she was considerably instrumental to the events which occasioned his death. If her talents and accomplishments make her an object of regret, it was to the unnatural misapplication of those talents and accomplishments in the service of party, that she owed her fate. Her own opinion was, that thousands might justifiably be devoted to the establishment of a favourite system; or, to speak truly, to the aggrandisement of those who were its partizans. The same selfish principle actuated an opposite faction, and she became the sacrifice.—"Oh even-handed justice!"