Beneath the guillotine and in social convulsions for which history has no parallel, he looked through and past them, in that last great chapter, in the exalted spirit of noble prophecy, to that Golden Age which must surely come!
But ‘The Progress of the Human Mind’ is something more than a splendid hope, more than the greatest and most famous of its author’s works. It bears highest testimony to the character of him who in the supreme hour of his individual life could thus forget himself, and in the midst of personal ruin, foresee with exultant joy the salvation of the race.
It remains for ever among the masterpieces which men cannot afford to forget.
During his hiding Condorcet also wrote ‘The Letter of Junius to William Pitt’ in which he expresses his aversion to Pitt, and an essay, never printed, ‘On the Physical Degradation of the Royal Races.’ He also planned a universal philosophical language.
In December, 1793, he wrote ‘The Letter of a Polish Exile in Siberia to his Wife’—a poem in which another exile bade farewell to the woman he loved.
The death-shadows were creeping closer now.
In March, 1794, he finished ‘The Progress of the Human Mind.’ But before that he had decided to leave Madame Vernet; her danger was too great. Early in January he had begun writing his last wishes, the ‘Advice of a Proscribed Father to his Daughter.’ The little girl was the child of too deep a love not to be infinitely dear. To what was he leaving her? Throughout these cruel months, the last drop in his cup of bitterness had been the strong conviction that his wife would share his own fate, was doomed, like himself, to the guillotine. ‘If my daughter is destined to lose everything,’—even to himself he could not frame the dread thought in plainer words. But if even that thing must be, then he left Madame Vernet the guardian of his child, begging that she might have a liberal education which would help her to earn her own livelihood, and, in particular, that she might learn English, so that if need came she could seek the help of her mother’s English friends.
To the little girl herself he left words of calm and beautiful counsel, which are in themselves a possession. Some of that ‘light that never was on sea or land’ lies surely on those tender and gracious lines, something of the serene illumination that shines from a dying face.
In the early morning of April 5, 1794, the Marquis de Condorcet laid down his pen for the last time.
At ten o’clock on that day he slipped out of the house in the Rue Servandoni, unknown to Madame Vernet, and in spite of the passionate protests of Sarret, her husband, who followed him out into the street, praying him to return. Condorcet was in his usual disguise; many months’ confinement indoors, and the old weakness in his limbs, made walking a difficulty. He was at the door almost of the fatal prisons of the Carmes and the Luxembourg; but no persuasions could make him return. He had heard rumours of a domiciliary visit to be made immediately to Madame Vernet’s house and, were he found there, she must be ruined. Sarret implored in vain. The fugitive reached the Maine barrier in safety and turned in the direction of Fontenay-aux-Roses. At every step his pain and difficulty in walking increased. But at three o’clock in the afternoon he safely reached the country house of his old friends, the Suards.