Apart from its wearisome declamation the accusation was true; save that—through no fault of her own, poor woman!—she had not aided the foreign cause with gold, all the story was evident and publicly known. She sat as near this orator as is a nurse to a bedside. She heard him with her suffering and disdainful face quite fixed and unmoved, save at one point: the mention of her son.
Fouquier Tinville was sane: he saw the crass absurdity of Hébert’s horrors, he barely touched upon them very hurriedly (and as the rapid and confused words escaped him, her lips twitched with pain), but even as he did so he knew he had given the defence a hold.
GATEWAY OF THE LAW COURTS THROUGH
WHICH THE QUEEN WENT TO HER DEATH
(THE RIGHT HAND ONE OF THE THREE GATEWAYS IN THE RAILINGS)
It is held on principle in French Courts that an impartial presentation of the truth cannot be obtained unless witnesses are heard in a chance sequence, not divided into friends and foes as with us, but each (such is the theory) telling what he believes to be the truth. Even in these political trials of the Terror (which were rather Courts-Martial or condemnations than trials) the rule was observed, and when Fouquier sat down the file of witnesses began.
The parade was futile. For plain political facts known to the whole world no list of witnesses were needed, nor could their evidence be of the least avail. Moreover, that evidence was lacking. The witnesses defiled one after the other, each vaguer than the last, to prove (and failing to prove) things that were commonplaces to all Europe. Long past mid-day the empty procession continued through the drowsy hours past one o’clock and two: remembering trifles of her conduct true and false. To every assertion as the Judge repeated it (true or false) she answered quietly by a denial: that denial was now false, now true.
Even if the Revolutionary Tribunal could have subpœnaed Mallet or the Emperor or Fersen, it would have meant little to the result. Her guilt, if it was guilt so to scheme against the nation, was certain: what yet remained in doubt was the political necessity of such a trial at such a moment, the limit of hardihood in her judges and the possible effect in a democracy of public sympathy at some critical phase of the pleadings: and much more potent than any of these three, because it included them all, was the news that might come at any moment from the frontier and from the hunger of Maubeuge—no news came.
Last of these witnesses Hébert, all neat and powdered, presented his documents and put forward his abominations, his fixed idea of incest. The public disgust might here have turned the trial. There was a stir all round: her friends began to hope. As for the officials, they could not stop Hébert’s mouth, but Herman was careful to omit the customary repetition: he was hurrying on to the next witness when a juryman of less wit than his fellows and filled with the enormous aberrations of hate, pressed the charge.
The Queen would not reply. She half rose from her chair and cried in a high voice: “I appeal to every mother here,” and then sank back again.
The crowd in the galleries began to move and murmur, the women raised their voices against the angry orders of the ushers and of the Bench demanding silence. Away, dining beyond the Seine, Robespierre, hearing of it, broke a plate at table in his anger, and thought Hébert’s lunacy had saved her. A further witness, though he spoke of the flight to Varennes, could hardly be heard, and spoke quite unheeded; and when he had concluded, the Court abruptly rose in the midst of the commotion, hubbub and change.