Meals could no longer be sent in from the confectioner's, and a common table was established. At noon precisely, the bell was struck for dinner, and the nine hundred prisoners were ranged in the corridors, each with his couvert under his arm, a wooden fork, knife, and spoon. They descended by batches to the dining-room, marching two and two, and this singular procession was half an hour on its journey. Arriving at the dining-room, three hundred took their places at the table, three hundred waited with their backs to the wall, and three hundred cooled their heels in the passage.
At this time, all money and paper notes, having been taken from them, the suspects were receiving an allowance of about two shillings a day, though it is not quite clear what they were to spend it on.
At the distribution one morning, Guiard said significantly: "There won't be quite so many to receive it to-morrow!" That same night, a long row of tumbrils stopped under the walls of the Luxembourg, and one hundred and sixty-nine prisoners were dragged from bed to fill them.
It was the first seizure on the grand scale, and in a few minutes the whole prison was in confusion and panic terror. The warders were heard going from door to door, and calling the names of the victims; one from one chamber, two, three, or four from another. Here were sobbings and loud wails, and clinging embraces; husbands and fathers trying to animate the weeping women whom they were leaving; priests called for in the dark to bless together for the last time two who were to be separated. No one dared descend to the great gallery, but elsewhere there were frightened rushings to and fro; meetings and partings in darkened doorways and half-illumined corridors; friend seeking friend, and women and girls imploring with streaming eyes for leave to say good-bye again to the lost ones who were already seated in the tumbrils. Happy were the friends and whole families who were despatched together. In one moving instance, weeping was turned into joy. A family of father, mother, and two daughters were divided; the younger daughter was left behind, almost distracted; her name was not upon the list. Presently came another warder with another list. The girl started from the empty bed on which she had thrown herself, snatched the list from the gaoler, and read her own name there. Carrying the sheet, and with a face beaming as if a free pardon had been handed to her, she ran down the corridor, crying: "Mamma, I have found my name! See, it is here! Now we shall die together!" So by minutes, of which each minute was an æon, that night of horror was exhausted, and at daybreak the long file of tumbrils dragged scaffold-wards.
Not less wretched was the situation of the hundreds who remained. Racking fears were their portion day and night; death was in their hearts. Every evening a new list came in. The "ferocious" Guiard had a very suitable assistant in a turnkey called Verney, whose duty is was to read out the roll of the proscribed, and who did it with a terrible art, dallying with the syllables of a name, and pausing to watch the strained faces around him. Sometimes instead of reading the list, he would pass it round, when the struggle to reach it prolonged the agony. An eyewitness of the scene has left a description:
"In the evening, those prisoners who were allowed to do so assembled in one of the large rooms and played, or made a pretence at playing, vingt-et-un, chess, and other games. While these were in progress, the terrible Verney, head turnkey, appeared, bringing what was called the lottery list. This little paper contained the names of those who were to go the same night to the Conciergerie, and the next morning to the guillotine. The fatal list went round amid the most pitiful silence. Those who found their names on it rose pale and trembling from the table, embraced and bade farewell to their friends, and left us. Verney would then produce the evening paper, where we read the list of the day's dead,—the dead who had been at the table with us the night before! I was playing chess one evening with General Appremont, General Flers looking on. I had just put him in check when the summons came for him, and Verney carried him off. Flers took the vacant seat, with a pretence of finishing the game, when he too was called. This officer had proved his courage in battle a score of times, but I have never seen terror so horribly painted on any human countenance. His whole visage seemed undone, and when he struggled to his feet, he could scarcely support himself. He gave me his hand, speechless, and staggered from the room."[[22]]
[22]. Les Prisons de l'Europe.
In the Luxembourg as in the other prisons at this epoch there were miserable creatures, also under lock and key, who made a kind of trade of denouncing their fellows. The Luxembourg had seven of these spies, who assisted in preparing the lists, "embellishing" them, as they said, with details which they had scraped together or invented in the prison. These wretches enjoyed and boasted of the terror which they inspired; and the chief of them, Boyaval (a tailor by trade, who had served in and deserted from the Austrian army), used to say that anyone who looked askance at him in the Luxembourg might count on spending the next night in the Conciergerie! Scarcely a suspect whom Boyaval denounced escaped the guillotine, and one night he scandalised the prison by offering love to a young widow of a day, whose husband he had sacrificed. The husband was an artist, who had painted portraits in the Luxembourg of nobles who had reason to suppose that they would leave their families no other legacy. He was accused of assembling the nobles in his room, and plotting with them against the Republic. As lightly as this, during the Terror, were lives devoted to Samson, in every prison in Paris. The "plots" were not credible, and it is impossible at this date to suppose that they were ever credited; but Paris was still obedient to the word of the Danton whom it had guillotined, that "one must strike terror into the aristocrats"; and these "prison plots" served to fill the tumbrils to the last.
An epidemic of sickness came to crown the sufferings of the dwindling population of the Luxembourg. They were reduced almost to the last extremity of despair. They had no news from without, except the nightly list of the proscribed, and the nightly journal, with its monotonous tale of executions. Between morning and evening, there was no other event, except the swift good-bye at night to the friends or relatives whose names were mumbled out by Verney. A silence almost unbroken had settled on the prison; parties of ghosts assembled at dinner, and whispered together in the common-room until bedtime. Their misery culminated in the epidemic of sickness. The rations had been cut down to one meal a day, and Guiard was the caterer. The wasted prisoners sent back their rotten meat to the kitchen, and lived on bread and thin soup. Half the prison fell ill; poisoned or underfed. Doctor's aid could be had only on a warrant from the police, and applications remained a week or a fortnight at the bureau. Samson had a rival in diseased or exhausted nature; and Guiard's requiem for the dead was an unvarying formula: "Peste! there's another lost to the guillotine!"
This agony of a season was dissolved in an hour. The "walking corpses" (les cadavres ambulans) of the Luxembourg were recalled to life by the revolution of the 9th of Thermidor. It came with the din of the tocsin, and the beat to arms which, until that day had gathered the rabble to follow the tumbrils to the guillotine. The tocsin continued, and the rattle of the drums increased, and the trampling of feet towards the Luxembourg grew louder. The remnant of the suspects gathered in the gallery: the last massacre was to come. No! The doors were burst open; a shout went up. Robespierre had fallen. The Reign of Terror was finished.