‘Pray keep the change,’ they cried; ‘we pay the fare
For Couthon, and St. Just, and Robespierre.’”[163]
Danton spared only Camille, and as he did not stop appealing to the people, told him gently to cease. “Leave the rabble there,” he said, “leave them alone.” But for himself he kept on throwing angry jests at death. “May I sing?” he said to the executioner. Sanson thought he might, for all he knew. Then Danton said to him, “I have made some verses, and I will sing them.” He sang loudly a verse of the fall of Robespierre, and then laughed as though he had been at the old café with his friends.
There was a man (Arnault of the Academy) who lived afterwards to a great age, and who happened to be crossing the Rue St. Honoré as the carts went past. In a Paris that had all its business to do, many such men came and went, almost forgetting that politics existed even then. But this batch of prisoners haunted him. He had seen Danton standing singing with laughter, he hurried on to the Rue de la Monnaie, had his say with Michael, who was awaiting him, and then, full of the scene, ran back across the Tuilleries gardens, and pressing his face to the railings looked over the great Place de la Révolution. The convoy had arrived, the carts stood at the foot of the guillotine, and his memory of the scene is the basis of its history.
It was close on six, and the sun was nearly set behind the trees of the Étoile; it reddened the great plaster statue of Liberty which stood in the middle of the Place, where the obelisk is now, and to which Madame Roland delivered her last phrase. It sent a level beam upon the vast crowd that filled the square, and cast long shadows, sending behind the guillotine a dark lane over the people. The day had remained serene and beautiful to the last, the sky was stainless, and the west shone like a forge. Against it, one by one, appeared the figures of the condemned. Hérault de Séchelles, straight and generous in his bearing, first showed against the light, standing on the high scaffold conspicuous. He looked at the Garde Meuble, and from one of its high windows a woman’s hand found it possible to wave a farewell. Lacroix next, equally alone; Camille, grown easy and self-controlled, was the third. One by one they came up the few steps, stood clearly for a moment in the fierce light, black or framed in scarlet, and went down.
Danton was the last. He had stood unmoved at the foot of the steps as his friends died. Trying to embrace Hérault before he went up, roughly rebuking the executioner who tore them asunder, waiting his turn without passion, he heard the repeated fall of the knife in the silence of the crowd. His great figure, more majestic than in the days of his triumph, came against the sunset. The man who watched it from the Tuilleries gate grew half afraid, and tells us that he understood for a moment what kind of things Dante himself had seen. By an accident he had to wait some seconds longer than the rest; the executioner heard him muttering, “I shall never see her again ... no weakness,” but his only movement was to gaze over the crowd. They say that a face met his, and that a sacramental hand was raised in absolution.[164]
He stood thus conspicuous for a moment over the people whom he had so often swayed. In that attitude he remains for history. When death suddenly strikes a friend, the picture which we carry of him in our minds is that of vigorous life. His last laughter, his last tones of health, his rapid step, or his animated gesture reproduce his image for ever. So it is with Danton; there is no mask of Danton dead, nor can you complete his story with the sense of repose. We cannot see his face in the calm either of triumph or of sleep—the brows grown level, the lips satisfied, the eyelids closed. He will stand through whatever centuries the story of the Revolution may be told as he stood on the scaffold looking westward and transfigured by the red sun, still courageous, still powerful in his words, and still instinct with that peculiar energy, self-forming, self-governing, and whole. He has in his final moment the bearing of the tribune, the glance that had mastered the danger in Belgium, the force that had nailed Roland to his post in September, and that had commanded the first Committee. The Republic that he desired, and that will come, was proved in his carriage, and passed from him into the crowd.
When Sanson put a hand upon his shoulder the ghost of Mirabeau stood by his side and inspired him with the pride that had brightened the death-chamber of three years before. He said, “Show my head to the people; it is well worth the while.” Then they did what they had to do, and without any kind of fear, his great soul went down the turning in the road.
They showed his head to the people, and the sun set. There rose at once the confused noise of a thousand voices that rejoiced, or questioned, or despaired, and in the gathering darkness the Parisians returned through the narrow streets eastward to their homes.