The stranger in France

by Sir John Carr

National guards are stationed in every apartment of the Museum, and present rather an unaccording appearance, amidst the peaceful solemnity of the surrounding objects. This exhibition is not yet completed, but, in its present condition, is very interesting. Some hints, not altogether useless, may be collected from it. In England, our churches are charnel houses. The pews of the congregation are raised upon foundations of putrefaction. For six days and nights the temple of devotion is filled with the pestilent vapours of the dead, and on the seventh they are absorbed by the living. Surely it is high time to subdue prejudices, which endanger health without promoting piety. The scotch never bury in their churches, and their burial places are upon the confines of their towns. The eye of adoration is filled with a pensive pleasure, in observing itself surrounded with the endeavours of taste and ingenuity, to lift the remembrance of the great and good beyond the grave, in that very spot where the frailty of our nature is so often inculcated.

Such a display, in such a place, is rational, suitable, and admonitory. The silent tomb becomes auxiliary to the eloquence of the pulpit. But the custom which converts the place of worship into a catacomb, can afford but a mistaken consolation to posthumous pride, and must, in some degree, contaminate the atmosphere which is contained within its walls. One evening as I was passing through the Boulevard Italien, in company with a gentleman from Toulon, we met a tall, dark, hollow eyed, ferocious looking man, of whom he related the following story.

Immediately after the evacuation of Toulon by the english, all the principal toulonese citizens were ordered to repair to the market place; where they were surrounded by a great military force.

This man who, for his offences, had been committed to prison, was liberated by the french agents, in consequence of his undertaking to select those of the inhabitants who had in any manner favoured the capitulation of the town, or who had shown any hospitality to the english, whilst they were in possession of it. The miscreant passed before the citizens, who were drawn out in lines, amounting to near three thousand. Amongst whom he pointed out about one thousand four hundred persons to the fury of the government; without any other evidence, or further examination, they were all immediately adjudged to be shot. For this purpose a suitable number of soldiers were drawn out. The unhappy victims were marched up to their destruction, upon the quay, in sets of three hundred, and butchered.

The carnage was dreadful. In the last of these unfortunate groups, were two gentlemen of great respectability, who received no wound from the fire, but, to preserve themselves, dropped with the rest, and exhibited all the appearances of having participated in the general fate.

This execution took place in the evening: immediately after its close, the soldiers, fatigued, and sick with cold-blooded slaughter, marched back to their quarters, without examining whether every person upon whom they had fired, had fallen a victim to the murderous bullet. Soon after the soldiers had retired, the women of Toulon, allured by plunder, proceeded to the fatal spot. Mounted upon the bodies of the fallen, they stripped the dead, and dying. The night was stormy. The moon, emerging from dark clouds, occasionally, shed its pale lustre upon this horrible scene. When the plunderers had abandoned their prey, during an interval of deep darkness, in the dead of the night, when all was silent, unconscious of each other's intentions, the two citizens who had escaped the general carnage, disencumbered themselves from the dead, under whom they were buried; chilled and naked, in an agony of mind not to be described, they, at the same moment, attempted to escape. In their agitation, they rushed against each other. Expressions of terror and surprise, dropped from each of them. "Oh! God! it is my father!" said one, "my son, my son, my son," exclaimed the other, clasping him in his arms. They were father and son, who had thus miraculously escaped, and met in this extraordinary manner.

The person from whom I received this account, informed me, that he knew these gentlemen very well, and that they had been resettled in Toulon about two years.

The wretch who had thus directed the ruthless vengeance of a revolutionary banditti, against the breasts of his fellow citizens, was, at this time, in Paris, soliciting, from the present government, from a total misconception of its nature, those remunerations which had been promised, but never realized by his barbarous employers.

I need scarcely add, that although he had been in the capital several months, he had not been able to gain access to the minister's secretary.

The time of terror was over—the murderer's occupation was gone—the guillotine, with unsatiated hunger, after having gorged the food which was thrown to it, had devoured its feeder.