‘Delay: yes or no?’ men do vote it finally, all Saturday, all day and night. Men’s nerves are worn out, men’s hearts are desperate; now it shall end. Vergniaud, spite of the baying, ventures to say Yes, Delay; though he had voted Death. Philippe Egalité says, in his soul and conscience, No. The next Member mounting: ‘Since Philippe says No, I for my part say Yes, Moi je dis Oui.’ The balance still trembles. Till finally, at three o’clock on Sunday morning, we have: No Delay, by a majority of Seventy; Death within four-and-twenty hours!
Garat Minister of Justice has to go to the Temple, with this stern message: he ejaculates repeatedly, ‘Quelle commission affreuse, What a frightful function!’[600] Louis begs for a Confessor; for yet three days of life, to prepare himself to die. The Confessor is granted; the three days and all respite are refused.
There is no deliverance, then? Thick stone walls answer, None—Has King Louis no friends? Men of action, of courage grown desperate, in this his extreme need? King Louis’s friends are feeble and far. Not even a voice in the coffeehouses rises for him. At Méot the Restaurateur’s no Captain Dampmartin now dines; or sees death-doing whiskerandoes on furlough exhibit daggers of improved structure! Méot’s gallant Royalists on furlough are far across the Marches; they are wandering distracted over the world: or their bones lie whitening Argonne Wood. Only some weak Priests “leave Pamphlets on all the bournestones,” this night, calling for a rescue; calling for the pious women to rise; or are taken distributing Pamphlets, and sent to prison.[601]
Nay there is one death-doer, of the ancient Méot sort, who, with effort, has done even less and worse: slain a Deputy, and set all the Patriotism of Paris on edge! It was five on Saturday evening when Lepelletier St. Fargeau, having given his vote, No Delay, ran over to Février’s in the Palais Royal to snatch a morsel of dinner. He had dined, and was paying. A thickset man “with black hair and blue beard,” in a loose kind of frock, stept up to him; it was, as Février and the bystanders bethought them, one Pâris of the old King’s-Guard. ‘Are you Lepelletier?’ asks he.—‘Yes.’—‘You voted in the King’s Business?’—‘I voted Death.’—‘Scélérat, take that!’ cries Pâris, flashing out a sabre from under his frock, and plunging it deep in Lepelletier’s side. Février clutches him; but he breaks off; is gone.
The voter Lepelletier lies dead; he has expired in great pain, at one in the morning;—two hours before that Vote of No Delay was fully summed up! Guardsman Pâris is flying over France; cannot be taken; will be found some months after, self-shot in a remote inn.[602]—Robespierre sees reason to think that Prince d’Artois himself is privately in Town; that the Convention will be butchered in the lump. Patriotism sounds mere wail and vengeance: Santerre doubles and trebles all his patrols. Pity is lost in rage and fear; the Convention has refused the three days of life and all respite.
Chapter 3.2.VIII.
Place de la Révolution.
To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning itself together, these thousand years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful this Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures;—like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily “return always home,” wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man’s tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him.
A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the King dying, but the Man! Kingship is a coat; the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do more? Lally went on his hurdle, his mouth filled with a gag. Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied!
A Confessor has come; Abbé Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts, environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left here! Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Cléry, through these glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see the cruellest of scenes:
“At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: ‘No,’ said the King, ‘let us go into the dining-room, it is there only that I can see you.’ They entered there; I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down, the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained standing between his Father’s legs. They all leaned towards him, and often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when the King spoke, the sobbings of the Princesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the King began again to speak.”[603]—And so our meetings and our partings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see thee any more!—NEVER! O Reader, knowest thou that hard word?