I now hastened back with the rapid step becoming the bearer of good tidings, and revived the group of despair. The key was applied to the lock, but it refused to move, and we had another pang of disappointment. Lafontaine uttered a groan, and Julie poured another gush of tears upon her companion's shoulder. I made the experiment again; the rust of the lock was now found to have been our only hinderance; and with a strong turn the bolt flew back, and the door was open.
We had all been so much exhausted by agitation, and the dreary traverse of the catacomb, that the first gush of fresh air conveyed a sensation almost of new life. The passage had probably been formed in the period when every large building in Paris was a species of fortress; and we had still a portcullis to pass. When we first pushed against it, we felt another momentary pang; but age had made it an unfaithful guardian, and a few stout attacks on its decayed bars gave us free way. We were now under the open sky; but, to our consternation, a new and still more formidable difficulty presented itself. The moat was still to be passed. To attempt the drawbridge was hopeless; for we could hear the sentinel pacing up and down its creaking planks. The moment was critical; for a streak of grey light in the far east showed that the day was at hand. After resolving all imaginable plans, and abandoning them all as fruitless; determining, at all events, never to return, and yet without the slightest prospect of escape, except in the bottom of that sullen pool which lay at our feet—the thought occurred to me, that in my return through the vault I had stumbled over the planks which covered a vault lately dug for a prisoner. Communicating my idea to Lafontaine, we returned to the spot, loaded ourselves with the planks, and fortunately found them of the length that would reach across the narrowest part of the fosse. Our little bridge was made without delay, and Lafontaine led the way, followed by the count and Julie, I waiting to see them safe across, before I added my weight to the frail structure. But I was not yet fated to escape. The sentinel, whose vigilance I had startled by my lantern in the cell, had given the alarm; and, as I was setting my foot on the plank, a discharge of fire-arms came from the battlement above. I felt that I was struck, and a stunning sensation seized me. I made an attempt to spring forward, but suddenly found myself unable to move. The patrol from the drawbridge now surrounded me, and in this helpless state, bleeding, and as I thought dying, I was hurried back into the St Lazare.
After a fortnight's suffering in the hospital of the prison, which alone probably saved me from the guillotine, then almost the natural death of all the suspected, I was enabled to get on my feet again. I found the prison as full as ever, but nearly all its inmates had been changed except the Vendéans, whom the crooked policy of the time kept alive, partly to avoid raising the whole province in revolt, partly as hostages for their countrymen.
On my recovery, I had expected to be put down once more in the list for trial; but it reached even the prison, that the government were in a state of alarm for themselves, which prevented them from indulging their friends in the streets with the national amusement. The chance of mounting the scaffold themselves had put the guillotine out of fashion; and two or three minor attempts at the seizure of the Jacobin sceptre by the partisans of the Girondists and Cordeliers, had been put down with such difficulty, that even the Jacobin Club had begun to protest against bloodshed, through the prospect of a speedy retaliation. Thus we were suffered to linger on. But, "disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught," and the suspense was heart-sickening. At length, however, a bustle outside the walls, the firing of alarm guns, and the hurrying of the national guard through the streets, told us that some new measure of atrocity was at hand, and we too soon learned the cause.
The army under Dumourier had been attacked by the Austrians under Clairfait, and had been defeated with heavy loss; despatches had been received from their favourite general, in all the rage of failure, declaring that the sole cause of the disaster was information conveyed from the capital to the Austrian headquarters, and demanding a strict enquiry into the intrigues which had thus tarnished the colours of the Republic. No intelligence could have been more formidable to a government, which lived from day to day on the breath of popularity; and, to turn the wrath of the rabble from themselves, an order was given to examine the prisons, and send the delinquents to immediate execution. It may be easily believed that the briefest enquiry was enough for vengeance, and the prisoners of St Lazare were the first to furnish the spectacle. A train of carts rattled over the pavement of our cloisters, and we were ordered to mount them without delay. The guard was so strong as to preclude all hope of resistance; and with all the pomp of a military pageant, drums beating, trumpets sounding, and bands playing Ça Ira and the Marseillaise, we left our dreary dwelling, which habit had now almost turned into a home, and moved through the principal streets of the capital, for the express purposes of popular display, in the centre of a large body of horse and foot, and an incalculable multitude of spectators, until in the distance we saw the instrument of death.
Footnote 1: [(return)]
A scene of peculiar infamy near Paris.