On the altar was the inscription, “On this spot, where despotism chained thee, receive the homage of a free people.”
All Sunday night the sarcophagus remained there. At three o’clock on the sunny afternoon of Monday, July 11th, it was placed on a car designed by David, and drawn through Paris, escorted by an enormous company, organised, orderly, and representing every rank and condition. Here were the men who had demolished the Bastille, carrying its flag, and in their midst that terrible virago who had led them in the fray. Here were citizens with pikes, Swiss, Jacobins, actors, and bodies of soldiers. Some carried banners with devices from the dead man’s writings. Some, dressed in Greek costume, carried a gilt model of the famous statue by Houdon. Among the self-constituted guard were many who, not a month before, had brought back that other King to his capital—from Varennes—with howls, insults, and imprecations.
Singers and music preceded the car itself. Supported on four great wheels of bronze, it looked like a magnificent altar. On the summit was the sarcophagus, and on that a full-length figure of Voltaire reclining in an attitude of sleep and with a winged Immortality placing a crown of stars on his head. On the sarcophagus was written, in words of noble simplicity, “He avenged Calas, La Barre, Sirven, and Montbailli. Poet, philosopher, historian, he gave a great impetus to the human mind: he prepared us to become free.” The whole structure, forty feet high, was drawn by twelve white horses, two of which, it is said, had been furnished by Marie Antoinette. On the car were such inscriptions as—“He defended Calas.” “He inspired toleration.” “He claimed the rights of men.”
Behind it walked Belle-et-Bonne and her husband, with their little girl in her nurse’s arms. Then came deputations from the National Assembly and the Courts of Justice, and then another detachment of military.
The procession itself consisted of a hundred thousand persons. Six hundred thousand more witnessed it.
It first stopped at the Opera House. The operatic company came forward and sang that song in Voltaire’s “Samson” which became, with the “Marseillaise,” the song of the Revolution—
Wake, ye people! Break your chains!
[565]
After the Opera House, the Tuileries was passed. Every window was filled with spectators, save one. Behind that, closed and barred, sat the most unhappy of monarchs, Louis and Marie Antoinette, awaiting doom.
The next stop was in front of the Hôtel Villette. Upon a platform outside it were fifty young girls dressed in white, and before them the two daughters of Calas in deep mourning. They kissed the sarcophagus of “the man of Calas”; and Belle-et-Bonne lifted up her child as if “to consecrate her to reason, to philosophy, and to liberty.”
The next stop was at the old Comédie Française—the scene of Voltaire’s earliest dramatic triumphs, and where now was his bust with the inscription, “He wrote ‘Œdipe’ at seventeen.”