Other attempts were not more successful, and on the day fixed for the execution a number of Carbonari, with arms concealed beneath their clothes, stationed themselves at different points, ready to attack the prisoner’s escort. Meanwhile the central committee, doubting the success of the enterprise so boldly conceived, could not decide to order an attack on the forces drawn up by the military authorities. Nothing could be done. The execution was allowed to take place in the midst of general indignation.
One of the members of the central committee, Dr. Ulysse Trélat, afterwards minister and representative of the people, has traced the[{221}] following portrait of Bories in his “Esquisse de la Charbonnerie”:—
“Bories was a young man of twenty-six, who, beneath an exterior full of softness and grace, concealed the noblest and firmest heart. He had nothing of the soldier but his frankness and his courage, without any of the faults generally produced by the idleness of barrack life. His morals were pure, his tastes simple, and his life retired. He gave up the greater part of his time to reading. Exempt from ambition, his most ardent wish was to die at the moment of the victory of the people; and one day he was quite annoyed at someone’s proposing to take him to General La Fayette. It seemed to him that this offer implied some doubt as to his sincerity, as well as an intention to stimulate his ardour by the authority of a great name.”
At Villefranche, Bories’s birthplace, there was a general understanding among the inhabitants to conceal his tragic end from his old parents. On their expressing astonishment at not receiving news from their son, they were informed that his regiment had gone to the colonies.
THE BICETRE, 1710. (After Gueroult.)
Another touching story, which has all the character of a legend, is told in connection with the unfortunate Bories. Until the year 1864 a broken-down old woman, supporting herself with a stick and carrying a bunch of faded flowers, was a familiar figure on the left bank of the Seine. For forty years she had been grieving for the loss of Bories, to whom in his youth she was engaged to be married. From the cart in which, with his three comrades, he was driven to the scaffold, he had sought to console the young girl in her despair by throwing her a bouquet, which she kept for ever afterwards. She was frequently seen at the tomb of the four sergeants in the cemetery of Montparnasse; and she was at last buried near the grave of her lover towards the end of 1864, when the legendary bouquet was placed with her in the coffin.
It has been said that Bicêtre has, during the present century, been the scene of several disturbances, In the last century it witnessed serious insurrections. In 1756 the prisoners rose against the soldiers of the guard, when two archers and fourteen insurgents were killed. In 1774 a spy found among the prisoners was crucified. In September, 1792, Bicêtre made a determined resistance to the bands of slaughterers who arrived to massacre the inmates. Officials, prisoners, lunatics, all defended themselves with wonderful courage. Each building was made the object of a separate siege. Once masters of the place the assassins spared no one. There was for three nights and three days a frightful carnage, which even the intervention of Péthion could not stop.