The fact was even so. France having grown tired of all things that had been, grew tired of weeks, and Decades were the law of the land. The year was divided into packs of ten days each, and she began the great game of time by shuffling and cutting her cards anew. The change was not marked by any peculiar good fortune; for it was laughed at, as every thing in France was except an order for deportation to the colonies, or a march to the scaffold. The populace, fully admitting the right of government to deal with kings and priests as it pleased, regarded the interference with their pleasures as a breach of compact; and the result was, that the populace had their Dimanche as well as their Decadi, and that the grand experiment for wiping out the Sunday, issued in giving them two holidays instead of one.
It was still early in the day when some bustle in the porch of the prison turned all eyes towards it, and a new detachment of prisoners was brought in. I shall say nothing of the scenes of wretchedness which followed; the wild terrors of women on finding themselves in this melancholy place, which looked, and was, scarcely more than a vestibule to the tomb; the deep distress of parents, with their children clinging round them, and the general despair—a despair which was but too well founded. Yet the tumult of their settling and distribution among the various quarters of the chapel had scarcely subsided when another scene was at hand. The commissary of the district came in, with a list of the prisoners who were summoned before the tribunal. Our prison population was like the waters of a bath, as one stream flowed in another flowed out; the level was constantly sustained. With an instinctive pang I heard my name pronounced among those unhappy objects of sanguinary rule. Cassini approached me with a smile, which he evidently put on to conceal his emotion.
"This is quick work, M. Marston," said he, taking my hand. "As the ruffian in the school fable says, 'Hodie tibi, cras nihi'—twelve hours will probably make all the difference between us."
I took off the little locket coutaining my last remembrance of Clotilde, and put it into his hands, requesting him, if he survived, to transmit it to his incomparable countrywoman, with an assurance that I remembered her in an hour when all else was forgotten.
"I shall perform the part of your legatee," said he, "till to-morrow; then I will find some other depositary. Here you must know that heirship is rapid, and that the will is executed before the ink is dry." He turned away to hide a tear. "I have not known you long, sir," said he; "but in this place we must be expeditious in every thing. You are too young to die. If you are sacrificed, I am convinced that you will die like a gentleman and a man of honour. And yet I have some feeling, some presentiment, nay almost a consciousness, that you will not be cut off, at least until you are as weary of the world as I am."
I endeavoured to put on a face of resignation, if not of cheerfulness, and said, "That though my country might revenge my death, my being engaged in its service would only make my condemnation inevitable. But I was prepared."
"At all events, my young friend," said he, "if you escape from this pandemonium of France, take this paper, and vindicate the memory of Cassini."
He gave me a memoir, which I could not help receiving with a smile, from the brevity of the period during which the trust was likely to hold. The gendarme now came up to demand my attendance. I shook hands with the marquis, who at that moment was certainly no philosopher, and followed the train.
We were about fifty in number; and after being placed in open artillery waggons, the procession moved rapidly through the suburb, until we reached one of those dilapidated and hideous-looking buildings which were then to be found startling the stranger's eye with the recollections of the St Bartholomew and the Fronde.
A crowd, assembled round the door of one of these melancholy shades, and the bayonets of a company of the national guard glittering above their heads, at length indicated the place of our destination. The crowd shouted, and called us "aristocrats, thirsting for the blood of the good citizens." The line of the guard opened, and we were rapidly passed through several halls, the very dwelling of decay, until we reached a large court, where the prisoners remained while the judges were occupied in deciding on the fate of the train which the morning had already provided. I say nothing of the insults which were intended, if not to add new bitterness to death, to indulge the wretched men and women who could find an existence in attending on the offices of the tribunal, with opportunities of triumphing over those born to better things. While we remained in the court exposed to the weather, which was now cold and gusty, shouts were heard at intervals, which, as the turnkeys informed us, arose from the spectators of the executions—death, in these fearful days, immediately following sentence. Yet, to the last the ludicrous often mingled with the melancholy. While I was taking my place in the file according to the order of our summons, and was next in rotation for trial, a smart and overdressed young man stepped out of his place in the rank, and drawing from his bosom a pamphlet in manuscript, presented it to me, with the special entreaty that, "in case I survived, I should take care of its propagation throughout Europe." My answer naturally was, "That my fate was fully as precarious as that of the rest, and that thus I had no hope of being able to give his pamphlet to mankind."