The implacable enemies of the former President of the National Assembly had procured for pay some auxiliaries among the turnkeys of the Conciergerie. M. Beugnot informs us that when the venerable magistrate was consigned to the gendarmes who were to conduct him to the Tribunal, "these wretches pushed him violently, sending him from one to the other like a drunken man, calling out: Hold there, Bailly! Catch, Bailly, there! and that they laughed and shouted at the grave demeanour the philosopher maintained amidst the insults of those cannibals."
To confirm my statement that these violences (in comparison with which, in truth, those of the Champ de Mars lose their virulence,) were fomented by pay, I have more than the formal declaration of our colleague's fellow prisoner. For in fact I find that no other prisoner or convict underwent such treatment; not even the man called the Admiral, when he was taken to the Conciergerie for having attempted to assassinate Collot-d'Herbois.
Besides, it is not only on indirect considerations that my decided opinion is founded relative to the intervention of rich and influential people in those scenes of indescribable barbarity on the Champ de Mars. Mérard St. Just, the intimate friend of Bailly, has alluded by his initials to a wretch who, the very day of our colleague's death, publicly boasted of having electrified the few acolytes who, together with him, insisted on the removal of the scaffold; the day after the execution, the meeting of the Jacobins reëchoed with the name of another individual of the Gros Caillou, who also claimed his share of influence in the crime.
I have progressively unrolled before you the series of events in our revolution, in which Bailly took an active part; I have scrupulously searched out the smallest circumstances of the deplorable affair on the Champ de Mars; I have followed our colleague in his proscription to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to the foot of the scaffold. We had seen him before, surrounded by esteem, by respect, and by glory, in the bosom of our principal academies. Yet the work is not complete; several essential traits are still wanting.
I will therefore claim a few more minutes of your kind attention. The moral life of Bailly is like those masterpieces of ancient sculpture, that deserve to be studied in every point of view, and in which new beauties are continually discovered, in proportion as the contemplation is prolonged.
PORTRAIT OF BAILLY.—HIS WIFE.
Nature did not endow Bailly generously with those exterior advantages that please us at first sight. He was tall and thin. His visage compressed, his eyes small and sunk, his nose regular, but of unusual length, and a very brown complexion, constituted an imposing whole, severe and almost glacial. Fortunately, it was easy to perceive through this rough bark, the inexhaustible benevolence of the good man; the kindness that always accompanies a serene mind, and even some rudiments of gayety.
Bailly early endeavoured to model his conduct on that of the Abbé de Lacaille, who directed his first steps in the career of astronomy. And therefore it will be found that in transcribing five or six lines of the very feeling eulogy that the pupil dedicated to the memory of his revered master, I shall have made known at the same time many of the characteristic traits of the panegyrist:
"He was cold and reserved towards those of whom he knew little; but gentle, simple, equable, and familiar in the intercourse of friendship. It is there that, throwing off the grave exterior which he wore in public, he gave himself up to a peaceful and amiable gayety."