In the midst of these enterprises he suddenly conceived what one of his biographers calls "the amiable intention" of writing a poem on the story of 'Susannah and the Elders,' but only completed a prose sketch with two or three short passages in verse. He also began one or two tragedies which were to be after Æschylus, a comedy called 'The Charlatans,' poems on the literary life, and many other subjects; and at the same time he was keeping up his relations with many of his distinguished contemporaries;—the Polish poet Niemcewicz; Mrs. Cosway, the charming young wife of the well-known English painter, and an artist herself; the Italian poet Alfieri; and the Countess of Albany.
In 1787 his father, who had returned to Paris, was anxious that André should begin his diplomatic career; and he was appointed attaché to M. de la Luzerne, just sent as ambassador to England. The poet went to London in December,—a most unpropitious season,—and naturally nothing pleased him there; he found the climate detestable, the manners of the English rude and cold, their literature of a barbaric richness, and in fact he approved of nothing in England but its Constitution, which he thought not only good but worthy of imitation.
He had been in London about sixteen months when the first rumors of the French Revolution reached him and turned all his thoughts towards the great political questions of the moment. The project of a rule of liberty and justice for France appealed to the noblest side of his nature; and while passionately opposed to all excess and violence, he was eager to assist any movement that promised to help the people.
With his friends the brothers Trudaine, he joined the Society of '89, when it was a centre for varying shades of opinion, reconciled by a common love of liberty and hatred of anarchy. He returned to Paris definitely in the summer of 1790, and wrote independent and impassioned articles in the Journal of the Society of 1789, warning the people against their real enemies, the fomenters of anarchy, while he expressed much the same ideas in one of the most celebrated of his poems, the ode to David's picture called 'Le Jeu de Paume,' representing the deputies taking their famous oath in the Hall of the Jeu de Paume at Versailles. Lacretelle, in his reminiscences published half a century later, spoke of André Chénier as a fellow-member of the club called Friends of the Constitution, as a man of great talent and great force of character:—"The most decided and the most eloquently expressed opinions always came from him. His strongly marked features, his athletic though not lofty stature, his dark complexion, his glowing eyes, enforced and illuminated his words. Demosthenes as well as Pindar had been the object of his study."
But moderate opinions and a horror of the excesses of the Revolution were very unsafe things to hold. Although André took refuge in 1793 in a quiet little house at Versailles, he could not stay there altogether, but made frequent visits to Paris; and an unfortunate chance caused his arrest at the house of M. Pastoret at Passy, where he was accused of having gone to warn his friend of his own danger. Chénier was first taken to the prison of the Luxembourg, which was too full to receive him, and then to St. Lazare, where he was registered on the 8th of March, 1794.
Apart from the suspicion which caused his arrest, he could hardly have escaped much longer; his fellow editor of the Journal de Paris had already been in St. Lazare for several months, and his friends the Trudaines joined him there before long. M. de Chénier exerted all his influence to procure his son's liberation, but was put off with promises and polite evasions; and not long after, his second son, Sauveur, was imprisoned in the Conciergerie.
By this time there were nearly eight thousand persons in the prisons of Paris; about eight hundred in St. Lazare, where Chénier found many of his friends, and among the ladies there the beautiful and charming young Duchess of Fleury. It was she who inspired the poet with the idea of his poem called 'The Young Captive,' perhaps the most beautiful, as it is the most touching, of all his poems.
Shortly before Chénier was arrested he had formed a close friendship with Madame Pourrat of Luciennes and her two daughters, the Countess Hocquart and Madame Laurent Lecoulteux. To the latter, under the name of Fanny, he addressed many charming verses; one ode in particular, that seems to have been intended to accompany the gift of a necklace, is almost worthy of Ronsard, although like many of Chénier's poems it was never finished.
His last poems were written in a very fine hand on some narrow strips of paper that had escaped the vigilance of his jailers, and were smuggled out of prison with the linen that went to the wash.
On the flimsy pretext of a conspiracy among the prisoners, André Chénier, then only thirty-one, was condemned with twenty-five others as "an enemy of the people, and for having shared in all the crimes perpetrated by the tyrant, his wife, and his family; of writing against liberty and in favor of tyranny; of corresponding with enemies of the republic abroad and at home; and finally of conspiring, in the prison of St. Lazare, to murder the members of the committees of general safety, etc., and to re-establish royalty in France."