His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him. No man, and especially a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilization, can, with impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner. In vain does he work himself up against the condemned and heap insults on them to augment his fury;[31101] I he is dimly conscious of committing a great crime, and his soul, like that of Macbeth, "is full of scorpions." Through a terrible tightening up, he hardens himself against the inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to "gorge himself on horrors,"[31102] by adding murder to murder. For murder, especially as he practices it, that is to say, with a naked sword on defense-less people, introduces into his animal and moral machine two extraordinary and disproportionate emotions which unsettle it, on the one hand, a sensation of omnipotence exercised uncontrolled, unimpeded, without danger, on human life, on throbbing flesh[31103] and, on the other hand, an interest in bloody and diversified death, accompanied with an ever new series of contortions and exclamations;[31104] formerly, in the Roman circus, one could not tear one's self away from it; the spectacle once seen, the spectator always returned to see it again. Just at this time each prison court is a circus, and what makes it worse is that the spectators are likewise actors.—Thus, for them, two fiery liquids mingle together in one draught. To moral intoxication is added physical intoxication, wine in profusion, bumpers at every pause, revelry over corpses; and we see rising out of this unnatural creature the demon of Dante, at once brutal and refined, not merely a destroyer, but, again, an executioner, instigator and calculator of suffering, and radiant and joyous over the evil it accomplishes.
They are merry; they dance around each new corpse, and sing the carmagnole;[31105] they arouse the people of the quarter "to amuse them," and that they may have their share of "the fine fête."[31106] Benches are arranged for "gentlemen" and others for "ladies": the latter, with greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to contemplate at their ease "the aristocrats" already slain; consequently, lights are required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse.—Meanwhile, the slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection. A butcher at the Abbaye[31107] complains that "the aristocrats die too quick, and that those only who strike first have the pleasure of it"; henceforth they are to be struck with the backs of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly running a gauntlet. If there happens to be well-known person, it is agreed to take more care in prolonging the torment. At La Force, the Federates who come for M. de Rulhières swear "with frightful imprecations that they will cut the head of anyone daring to end his sufferings with a thrust of his pike"; the first thing is to strip him naked, and then, for half an hour, with the flat of their sabers, they cut and slash him until he drips with blood and is "skinned to his entrails."—All the monstrous instincts who grovels chained up in the dregs of the human heart, not only cruelty with its bared fangs,[31108] but also the slimier desires, unite in fury against women whose noble or infamous repute makes them conspicuous; against Madame de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; against Madame Desrues, widow of the famous poisoner; against the flower-girl of the Palais-Royal, who, two years before, had mutilated her lover, a French guardsman, in a fit of jealousy. Ferocity here is associated with lewdness to add debasement to torture, while life is violated through outrages on modesty. In Madame de Lamballe, killed too quickly, the libidinous butchers could outrage only a corpse, but for the widow,[31109] and especially the flower-girl, they revive, like so many Neros, the fire-circle of the Iroquois.[31110]—From the Iroquois to the cannibal, the gulf is small, and some of them jump across it. At the Abbaye, an old soldier named Damiens, buries his saber in the side of the adjutant-general la Leu, thrusts his hand into the opening, tears out the heart "and puts it to his mouth as if to eat it"; "the blood," says an eye-witness, "trickled from his mouth and formed a sort of mustache for him."[31111] At La Force, Madame de Lamballe is carved up. What Charlot, the wig-maker, who carried her head did, I to it, should not be described. I merely state that another wretch, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her heart and "ate it."[31112]
They kill and they drink, and drink and kill again. Weariness comes and stupor begins. One of them, a wheelwright's apprentice, has dispatched sixteen for his share; another "has labored so hard at this merchandise as to leave the blade of his saber sticking in it"; "I was more tired," says a Federate, "with two hours pulling limbs to pieces, right and left, than any mason who for two days has been plastering a wall."[31113] The first excitement is gone, and now they strike automatically.[31114] Some of them fall asleep stretched out on benches. Others, huddled together, sleep off the fumes of their wine, removed on one side. The exhalation from the carnage is so strong that the president of the civil committee faints in his chair,[31115] the fumes of the tavern blending with those from the charnel-house. A heavy, dull state of torpor gradually overcomes their clouded brains, the last glimmerings of reason dying out one by one, like the smoky lights on the already cold breasts of the corpses lying around them. Through the stupor spreading over the faces of butchers and cannibals, we see appearing that of the idiot. It is the revolutionary idiot, in which all conceptions, save two, have vanished, two fixed, rudimentary, and mechanical ideas, one destruction and the other that of public safety. With no others in his empty head, these blend together through an irresistible attraction, and the effect proceeding from their contact may be imagined. "Is there anything else to do?" asks one of these butchers in the deserted court.—"If there is no more to do," reply a couple of women at the gate, "you will have to think of something,"[31116] and, naturally, this is done.
As the prisons are to be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all out, and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the aristocrats, and the "white-skinned gentlemen," there remain convicts and those confined through the ordinary channels of justice, robbers, assassins, and those sentenced to the galleys in the Conciergerie, in the Châtelet, and in the Tour St. Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds, old beggars, and boys confined in Bicêtre and the Salpétrière. They are good for nothing, cost something to feed,[31117] and, probably, cherish evil designs. At the Salpétrière, for example, the wife of Desrues, the poisoner, is, assuredly, like himself, "cunning, wicked, and capable of anything"; she must be furious at being in prison; if she could, she would set fire to Paris; she must have said so; she did say it[31118]—one more sweep of the broom.—This time, as the job is more foul, the broom is wielded by fouler hands; among those who seize the handle are the frequenters of jails. The butchers at the Abbaye prison, especially towards the close, had already committed thefts;[31119] here, at the Châtelet and the Conciergerie prisons, they carry away "everything which seems to them suitable," even to the clothes of the dead, prison sheets and coverlids, even the small savings of the jailers, and, besides this, they enlist their cronies. "Out of 36 prisoners set free, many were assassins and robbers, the killers attached them to their group. There were also 75 women, confined in part for larceny, who promised to faithfully serve their liberators." Later on, indeed, these are to become, at the Jacobin and Cordeliers clubs, the tricoteuses (knitters) who fill their tribunes.[31120]—At the Salpétrière prison, "all the pimps of Paris, former spies,... libertines, the rascals of France and all Europe, prepare beforehand for the operation," and rape alternates with massacre.[31121]—Thus far, at least, slaughter has been seasoned with robbery, and the grossness of eating and drinking; at Bicétre, however, it is crude butchery, the carnivorous instinct alone satisfying itself. Among other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class, from 17 to 19 years of age, placed there for correction by their parents, or by those to whom they are bound;[31122] one need only look at them to see that they are genuine Parisian scamps, the apprentices of vice and misery, the future recruits for the reigning band, and these the band falls on, beating them to death with clubs. At this age life is tenacious, and, no life being harder to take, it requires extra efforts to dispatch them. "In that corner," said a jailer, "they made a mountain of their bodies. The next day, when they were to be buried, the sight was enough to break one's heart. One of them looked as if he were sleeping like one of God's angels, but the rest were horribly mutilated."[31123]—Here, man has sunk below himself, down into the lowest strata of the animal kingdom, lower that the wolf; for wolves do not strangle their young.
VI. Jacobin Massacre.
Effect of the massacre on the public.—General dejection and
the dissolution of society.—The ascendancy of the Jacobins
assured in Paris.—The men of September upheld in the
Commune and elected to the Convention.
There are six days and five nights of uninterrupted butchery,[31124] 171 murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La Force, 223 at the Châtelet, 328 at the Consciergerie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at the Carmelites, 79 at Saint Firmin, 170 at Bicêtre, 35 at the Salpétrière; among the dead,[31125] 250 priests, 3 bishops or archbishops, general officers, magistrates, one former minister, one royal princess, belonging to the best names in France, and, on the other side, one Negro, several working class women, kids, convicts, and poor old men: What man now, little or big, does not feel himself threatened?—And all the more because the band has grown larger. Fournier, Lazowski, and Bécard, the chiefs of robbers and assassins, return from Orleans with fifteen hundred cut-throats.[31126] One the way they kill M. de Brissac, M. de Lessart, and 42 others accused of lése-nation, whom they wrested from their judges' hands, and then, by the way of surplus, "following the example of Paris," twenty-one prisoners taken from the Versailles prisons. At Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the Commune congratulates them, and the sections feast them and embrace them.[31127]—Can anybody doubt that they were ready to begin again? Can a step be taken in or out of Paris without being subject to their oppression or encountering their despotism? Should one leave the city, sentinels of their species are posted at the barriers and on the section committees in continuous session. Malouet, led before that of Roule,[31128] sees before him a pandemonium of fanatics, at least a hundred individuals in the same room, the suspected, those denouncing them, collaborators, attendants, a long, green table in the center, covered with swords and daggers, with the committee around it, "twenty patriots with their shirt sleeves rolled up, some holding pistols and others pens," signing warrants of arrest, "quarreling with and threatening each other, all talking at once, and shouting: Traitor!—Conspirator!—Off to prison with him!—Guillotine him!—and behind these, a crowd of spectators, pell-mell, yelling, and gesticulating" like wild beasts pressed against each other in the same cage, showing their teeth and trying to spring at each other. "One of the most excited, brandishing his saber in order to strike an antagonist, stopped on seeing me, and exclaimed, 'There's Malouet!'—The other, however, less occupied with me than with his enemy, took advantage of the opportunity, and with a blow of his club, knocked him down." Malouet had a close shave, in Paris escapes take place by such accidents.—If one remains in the city, one is beset with lugubrious fears by,
1. the hurrying step of squads of men in each street, leading the suspected to prison or before the committee;
2. around each prison the crowds that have come "to see the disasters";