FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. But now you regret it?
CAMILLE [not answering]. Oh, my colleagues! I say to you as Brutus said to Cicero: "We fear death too much, and exile, and poverty. Nimium timemus mortem et exilium et paupertatem." Is life so dear that we should prolong it without honor? There is not one of us who has not reached the very summit of the mountain of life. We have before us the descent, which is full of precipices, unavoidable even by the most obscure. The descent has no pleasant landscapes to offer, no resting places which were not a thousand times more delectable to that same Solomon who declared, in all his glory and in the midst of his seven hundred wives: "I find that the dead are happier than the living, and that the happiest of men is he who was never born." [He sits down.]
DANTON. Fool! That speech of yours will cost us our heads! [He hisses DESMOULINS. Some one comes to tell DANTON that it is his turn. He rises and faces the Court.]
JUDGE [to DANTON]. Prisoner, your name, age, occupation, and place of residence?
DANTON [in a voice of thunder]. My place of residence? Soon the great void. My name? In the Pantheon. [The People are tense. They talk and appear to approve him; then suddenly they become silent, as the Judge speaks.]
JUDGE. You know the law. Answer categorically.
DANTON. My name is Georges-Jacques Danton. I am thirty-three years old, and a native of Arcis-sur-Aube. I am a solicitor. I live in Paris at present, in the Hue des Cordeliers.
JUDGE. Danton, the National Convention accuses you of having conspired with Mirabeau and Dumouriez, of having known their plans for putting an end to our liberty, and of having secretly aided and abetted them, [DANTON roars with laughter. The Court, the People, and even the prisoners stare at him, and then all begin to laugh. The whole room vibrates with Homeric laughter. DANTON strikes the railing in front of him with his fist.]
DANTON [still laughing]. Liberty conspiring against Liberty! Danton conspiring against Danton!—Scoundrels! Look me in the eye! Liberty resides here! [He puts his hands to his head.] It is in this petrified mask of mine, it is in these eyes which flame with volcanic fire; in this voice, the roar of which rocks the palaces of tyrants to their foundations. Take my head, nail it to the shield of the Republic, and it will, like Medusa, make the enemies of Liberty fall dead from fright.
JUDGE. I am not asking for your panegyric, but for your defense.