There were many among the Dantonists who thought this the triumph of their policy. “The violent, the enragés are dead. It is we who did it.” But Danton was wiser than his followers. He knew that the Committee were waiting for such an opportunity, and that a blow to the right would follow that blow to the left. Both oppositions were doomed. Only one chance remained to him—they might not dare.
On the occasion of the arrest of the Hébertists he made a noble speech on the great lines of conciliation and unity, which had been his constant policy—a speech which was all for Paris, in spite of the faction.
But that week they determined on his arrest and that of his friends. Panis heard of it, and sent at once to warn him. He found him in the night of the last day of March 1794 sitting in his study with his young nephew, moody and silent. His wife was asleep in the next room. On the flat above him Camille and Lucille were watching late. The house was silent. Panis entered and told him what the Committee had resolved. “Well, what then?” said Danton. “You must resist.” “That means the shedding of blood, and I am sick of it. I would rather be guillotined than guillotine.” “Then,” said Panis, “you must fly, and at once.” But Danton shook his head still moodily. “One does not take one’s country with one on the soles of one’s boots.” But he muttered again to himself, “They will not dare—they will not dare.” Panis left him, and he sat down again to wait, for he knew in his heart that the terrible machine which he himself had made, and which he had fought so heroically, could dare what it chose. They left him silent in the dark room. From time to time he stirred the logs of the fire; the sudden flame threw a light on the ugly strength of his face: he bent over the warmth motionless, and with the memories of seven years in his heart.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEATH OF DANTON
In the night the armed police came round to the Passage du Commerce; one part of the patrol grounded their muskets and halted at the exits of the street, the other entered the house.
Desmoulins heard the butts falling together on the flagstones, and the little clink of metal which announces soldiery; he turned to his wife and said, “They have come to arrest me.” And she held to him till she fainted and was carried away. Danton, in his study alone, met the arrest without words. There is hardly a step in the tragedy that follows which is not marked by his comment, always just, sometimes violent; but the actual falling of the blow led to no word. Words were weapons with him, and he was not one to strike before he had put up his guard.
They were taken to the Luxembourg, very close by, a little up the hill. We have the story of how Danton came with his ample, firm presence into the hall of the prison, and met, almost the first of his fellow-prisoners, Thomas Paine. The author of “The Rights of Man” stepped up to him, doubtless to address him in bad French.[140] Danton forestalled him in the English of which he was a fair master.
“Mr. Paine,” he said, “you have had the happiness of pleading in your country a cause which I shall no longer plead in mine.” He remembered Paine’s sane and moderate view on the occasion of the king’s trial, and he envied one whose private freedom had remained untrammelled with the bonds of office; who had never been forced to a 2nd of June, nor had to keep to an intimate conversation his fears for the Girondins. Then he added that if they sent him to the scaffold he would go gaily. And he did. There was the Frenchman contrasted with his English friend.