CHAPTER XXIII
BEFORE THE DREAD TRIBUNAL
That awful Tribunal sat daily. During the height of the Terror, no time was allowed to prisoners for the preparation of their cases––no interval elapsed between the prisoners’ arrest and their arraignment. Dispatch––dispatch––DISPATCH was the essence of the bloody business, the purpose being to strike terror upon all that opposed the little fanatical minority then in power.
Therefore the guard brought Henriette and Maurice directly from their arrest to their trial, and they gazed upon a sight for Gods and men––a travesty on the sacred name of justice. Such scenes would seem unbelievable to us but for the recent events of the Russian Revolution, which prove that in our age also a proletarian dictatorship can be senselessly wicked and cruel.
The trials––beside their Terror function of upholding a minority government––were great public shows for the howling rabble and leering sansculottes, the hoodlums of Paris whom even the masters dared not 150 offend. The riff-raff acted exactly as at any of their own celebrations and feastings.
Along the side benches and up on the “Mountain,” flirtation and sweethearting went on, of a rough-and-ready order. Some spectators coolly munched their dinners. Others, having brought along their bottles, indulged in drinking bouts. Everyone’s ideas of a good time cannot be the same. There was our eccentric acquaintance the Jolly Baker, for instance. The height of bliss for him, at one of these capital trials, was to lean far, far back with open mouth whilst a tilted bottle, held by a ministering Hebe, spilled ecstatic drops of damp and ruby “happiness” upon his “open-face” physiognomy.
Another misfit of the grotesque crowds was Picard, foolishly trying to discover what ’twas all about, gazing soulful-eyed into hoodlum “mugs” that gave him the merry “ha! ha!” or sickened him with the likeness of the First Murderer. But “crime,” in one instance at least, was followed by “punishment,” for as the murderous citizen suddenly thrust out his roaring raucous mouth, Picard inadvertently leaned back.
