But having "as much aversion from as contempt for a merely useless economy" (autant d'aversion que de mépris pour une économie inutile), Madame Roland goes on to say that what she saved by the retrenchments of her own cuisine she spent in procuring extra rations for the pauper prisoners of the Abbaye; and adds: "If I stay here six months I mean to go out plump and hearty [je veux en sortir grasse et fraîche] wanting nothing more than soup and bread, and with the satisfaction of having earned certain bénédictions incognito."
Transferred to Sainte-Pélagie, this heroic woman of the people saw herself confounded with women of the town (the descendants of the widow Miramion's Magdalens), thieves, forgers, and assassins. She made the best of the situation, cultivated flowers in a box in the window of her cell, and wrote incessantly. When told that her name had been included in the process against the Girondins, she said: "I am not afraid to go to the scaffold in such good company; I am ashamed only to live among scoundrels." Her friends had contrived a plan for her escape, but could not induce her to profit by it: "Spare me!" she cried. "I love my husband, I love my daughter; you know it; but I will not save myself by flight." When the axe fell on the heads of the twenty-two Girondins, October 31, 1793 (10th Brumaire of the Republican calendar), Madame Roland was removed to the Conciergerie. Knowing well the fate that awaited her, she lost neither her courage nor her beautiful tranquillity; and used to go down to the men's wicket of the prison, exhorting them to be brave and worthy of the cause. In the tumbril, on her way to the guillotine, she was robed in white, her superb black hair floating behind her; and at the place of execution, bending her head to the statue of Liberty, she murmured: "O Liberty! what crimes are done in thy name!"—O Liberté! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
It was not Madame Dubarry's to show this sublime fortitude in death; but after all one dies as one must. Sainte-Pélagie will tell us that poor Dame Dubarry was the feeblest and most faint-hearted of its recluses of the Revolution. She wept, and called on heaven to save her, and shuffled and cut her cards, and consulted the lines in her hand; and when her name was called at the wicket on the fatal morning, she swooned on the flags of the prison, and was carried scarcely animate to the tumbril.
The story of governor Bouchotte, who had charge of Sainte-Pélagie at this terrible epoch, is a noble one. The September massacres had begun, and the red-bonnets in detachments were sharing the butchery at the prisons. The Abbaye, the Carmes, the Force, and the Conciergerie had given them prompt entrance; the turnkeys saluting the self-styled judges, say MM. Alhoy and Lurine, as the grave-digger salutes the hangman. Not so governor Bouchotte of Sainte-Pélagie. The mob swarmed at the doors, but to their clattering on the panels no answer was vouchsafed. Pikes, hammers, and axes resounded on the solid portals, but silence the most complete reigned behind them.
"Can citizen Bouchotte have been beforehand with us?—Le citoyen Bouchotte, nous aurait-il devancés?" cried one. "Not an aristocrat voice to be heard! Bouchotte has perhaps finished them off himself."
The neighbouring houses were ransacked for tools proper to effect an entrance, and the doors were burst open. The mob poured in; and there, bound hand and foot on the flags in the courtyard of the prison, they found the governor and his wife.
"Citizens," cried Bouchotte, "you arrive too late! My prisoners are gone. They got warning of your coming, and after binding my wife and myself as you see us, they made their escape."
Bouchotte was taken at his word, he and his wife were released from their cords, and the red-bonnets went off to wreak a double vengeance at Bicêtre. At the risk of his own and of his wife's life, the admirable Bouchotte had tricked the cut-throats. He had uncaged his birds and given them their liberty through a private postern, and had then ordered his warders to tie up his wife and himself. Honour to the brave memory of Bouchotte! The history of the French Revolution has few brighter passages than this.
Nougaret gives us a curious picture of the interior of Sainte-Pélagie under the bloody rule of Robespierre.[[18]] The prison itself he describes as "damp and unwholesome" (humide et malsaine). There were about three hundred and fifty prisoners, detained they knew not why, for they were not allowed to read the charges entered on the registers.