“The President, this cross-questioning being over, took off his hat and said: ‘I see nothing to suspect in this man; I am for granting him his liberty. Is that your vote?’ To which all the judges answered: ‘Oui, oui; it is just!’”
And there arose vivats within doors and without; “escort of three,” amid shoutings and embracings: thus Jourgniac escaped from jury-trial and the jaws of death.[537] Maton and Sicard did, either by trial, and no bill found, lank President Chepy finding “absolutely nothing;” or else by evasion, and new favour of Moton the brave watchmaker, likewise escape; and were embraced, and wept over; weeping in return, as they well might.
Thus they three, in wondrous trilogy, or triple soliloquy; uttering simultaneously, through the dread night-watches, their Night-thoughts,—grown audible to us! They Three are become audible: but the other “Thousand and Eighty-nine, of whom Two Hundred and Two were Priests,” who also had Night-thoughts, remain inaudible; choked for ever in black Death. Heard only of President Chepy and the Man in Grey!—
Chapter 3.1.VI.
The Circular.
But the Constituted Authorities, all this while? The Legislative Assembly; the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is. Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbé Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss.
As for the poor Legislative, the sceptre had departed from it. The Legislative did send Deputation to the Prisons, to the Street-Courts; and poor M. Dusaulx did harangue there; but produced no conviction whatsoever: nay, at last, as he continued haranguing, the Street-Court interposed, not without threats; and he had to cease, and withdraw. This is the same poor worthy old M. Dusaulx who told, or indeed almost sang (though with cracked voice), the Taking of the Bastille,—to our satisfaction long since. He was wont to announce himself, on such and on all occasions, as the Translator of Juvenal. ‘Good Citizens, you see before you a man who loves his country, who is the Translator of Juvenal,’ said he once.—‘Juvenal?’ interrupts Sansculottism: ‘who the devil is Juvenal? One of your sacrés Aristocrates? To the Lanterne!’ From an orator of this kind, conviction was not to be expected. The Legislative had much ado to save one of its own Members, or Ex-Members, Deputy Journeau, who chanced to be lying in arrest for mere Parliamentary delinquencies, in these Prisons. As for poor old Dusaulx and Company, they returned to the Salle de Manége, saying, ‘It was dark; and they could not see well what was going on.’[538]
Roland writes indignant messages, in the name of Order, Humanity, and the Law; but there is no Force at his disposal. Santerre’s National Force seems lazy to rise; though he made requisitions, he says,—which always dispersed again. Nay did not we, with Advocate Maton’s eyes, see ‘men in uniform,’ too, with their ‘sleeves bloody to the shoulder?’ Pétion goes in tricolor scarf; speaks ‘the austere language of the law:’ the killers give up, while he is there; when his back is turned, recommence. Manuel too in scarf we, with Maton’s eyes, transiently saw haranguing, in the Court called of Nurses, Cour des Nourrices. On the other hand, cruel Billaud, likewise in scarf, “with that small puce coat and black wig we are used to on him,”[539] audibly delivers, “standing among corpses,” at the Abbaye, a short but ever-memorable harangue, reported in various phraseology, but always to this purpose: ‘Brave Citizens, you are extirpating the Enemies of Liberty; you are at your duty. A grateful Commune, and Country, would wish to recompense you adequately; but cannot, for you know its want of funds. Whoever shall have worked (travaillé) in a Prison shall receive a draft of one louis, payable by our cashier. Continue your work.’[540]—The Constituted Authorities are of yesterday; all pulling different ways: there is properly not Constituted Authority, but every man is his own King; and all are kinglets, belligerent, allied, or armed-neutral, without king over them.
“O everlasting infamy,” exclaims Montgaillard, “that Paris stood looking on in stupor for four days, and did not interfere!” Very desirable indeed that Paris had interfered; yet not unnatural that it stood even so, looking on in stupor. Paris is in death-panic, the enemy and gibbets at its door: whosoever in Paris has the heart to front death finds it more pressing to do it fighting the Prussians, than fighting the killers of Aristocrats. Indignant abhorrence, as in Roland, may be here; gloomy sanction, premeditation or not, as in Marat and Committee of Salvation, may be there; dull disapproval, dull approval, and acquiescence in Necessity and Destiny, is the general temper. The Sons of Darkness, “two hundred or so,” risen from their lurking-places, have scope to do their work. Urged on by fever-frenzy of Patriotism, and the madness of Terror;—urged on by lucre, and the gold louis of wages? Nay, not lucre: for the gold watches, rings, money of the Massacred, are punctually brought to the Townhall, by Killers sans-indispensables, who higgle afterwards for their twenty shillings of wages; and Sergent sticking an uncommonly fine agate on his finger (“fully meaning to account for it”), becomes Agate-Sergent. But the temper, as we say, is dull acquiescence. Not till the Patriotic or Frenetic part of the work is finished for want of material; and Sons of Darkness, bent clearly on lucre alone, begin wrenching watches and purses, brooches from ladies’ necks “to equip volunteers,” in daylight, on the streets,—does the temper from dull grow vehement; does the Constable raise his truncheon, and striking heartily (like a cattle-driver in earnest) beat the “course of things” back into its old regulated drove-roads. The Garde-Meuble itself was surreptitiously plundered, on the 17th of the Month, to Roland’s new horror; who anew bestirs himself, and is, as Sieyes says, “the veto of scoundrels,” Roland veto des coquins.[541]—
This is the September Massacre, otherwise called “Severe Justice of the People.” These are the Septemberers (Septembriseurs); a name of some note and lucency,—but lucency of the Nether-fire sort; very different from that of our Bastille Heroes, who shone, disputable by no Friend of Freedom, as in heavenly light-radiance: to such phasis of the business have we advanced since then! The numbers massacred are, in Historical fantasy, “between two and three thousand;” or indeed they are “upwards of six thousand,” for Peltier (in vision) saw them massacring the very patients of the Bicêtre Madhouse “with grape-shot;” nay finally they are “twelve thousand” and odd hundreds,—not more than that.[542] In Arithmetical ciphers, and Lists drawn up by accurate Advocate Maton, the number, including two hundred and two priests, three “persons unknown,” and “one thief killed at the Bernardins,” is, as above hinted, a Thousand and Eighty-nine,—no less than that.
A thousand and eighty-nine lie dead, “two hundred and sixty heaped carcasses on the Pont au Change” itself;—among which, Robespierre pleading afterwards will “nearly weep” to reflect that there was said to be one slain innocent.[543] One; not two, O thou seagreen Incorruptible? If so, Themis Sansculotte must be lucky; for she was brief!—In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: “To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons “who presided over these dangerous operations,” so much,—in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling. To carters employed to “the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,” at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry. Then so many francs and odd sous “for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!”[544] Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:—seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of Men!—Mercier saw it, as he walked down “the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:” but not a Hand; it was a Foot,—which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven? Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,—surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil! “I saw that Foot,” says Mercier; “I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septemberers.”[545]