We had frequent halts, and I had full leisure to gaze around; for, rapidly as the guillotine performed its terrible task, our procession had been extended by some additional victims from every prison which we passed; and we passed so many that I began to think the city one vast dungeon. What strange curiosity is it that could collect such myriads to look upon us? Every street was crowded with a living mass; every casement was filled; every roof presented a line of eyes straining for a glance below. Instead of the crowd of a populous city, I could have believed that I saw the population of a kingdom poured in and compressed into the narrow streets through which we wound our slow way. From time to time a shout arose, as some conspicuous member of the Convention made his appearance in the vehicle of death: then execrations, scoffs, and insults, of every bitterness, were poured upon the unfortunate being; who seldom attempted to retaliate, or make any other return but a gesture of despair, or a supplication to be suffered to die in peace. Yet all was not cruelty nor insensibility. I saw instances, where friends, bold enough to brave the vengeance of the government, rushed forward to take a last grasp of the hand that must so soon be cold; and my heart was wrung by partings between still dearer objects and the condemned;—wives rushing forward through the multitude; children held up to their father's arms; beautiful and graceful young women, forcing their wild way through the line of troops, to take a last look, and exchange a last word, with those whom they would have rejoicingly followed to the tomb.
Our progress lasted half the day, and the sun was already near its setting, when the waggon in which I sat turned into the Place de Grève. But I must, I dare, describe no more. I shall not say what I saw in that general receptacle of the day of horror—the range of low biers which lay surrounding the scaffold, now the last resting-place of men who had but a few hours before flourished in the full possession of every faculty of our being; and, still more, with all those faculties in the full ardour of public life—with brilliant ambition to stimulate, with prospects of boundless power to reward, and with that most exhilarating and tempting spell of human existence, popular acclamation, resounding in their ears. I had known some of them, I had seen then all; and now I saw those highly gifted, vigorously practised, and fiery-souled men, shaken down in an instant like a shock of corn; swept to death as if they were but so many weeds; extinguished in a moment, and in another moment flung aside, a heap of clay, to make room for other dead. And this was Republicanism—this the reign of knowledge, the triumph of freedom, the glory of political regeneration! Even in that most trying moment, when I saw the waggon, in which I remained the last survivor but one, give up my unfortunate companion to the executioner, my parting words to him, as I shook his cold hand, were—"Better the forest and the savage than republicanism! Doubly cursed be murder, when it takes the name of freedom!"
I then resolved to see and hear no more; gave a brief and still a fond recollection to England; and, committing my spirit to a still higher care, I bowed my forehead on my hands, like one laying down his head for the final blow!
But while I was still thus absorbed I heard a sudden shout, the trampling of cavalry, and the sound of trumpets. I again raised my eyes. A strong body of French troopers, covered with the dust of the high-road, and evidently exhausted by a long journey, were passing along the quai which bordered the scene of execution. In the midst of these squadrons were seen Austrian standards surmounted by the tricolor, and evidently carried as trophies. The rumour now ran quickly through the spectators, that Flanders had been entered, that the enemy had been routed, and that a column of Austrian prisoners was passing through the streets, of which those squadrons formed the escort.
What could now detain the multitude? The public curiosity would probably have defied grape-shot; with one burst they poured from the square. When the populace went, why should the National Guard stay behind?—were they not as much entitled to satisfy their curiosity? Three-fourths of the guard instantly piled their muskets, leaving them in care of their less zealous or more lazy fellow warriors, and ran after the multitude. The executioners were like other men; equally touched by their "country's glory," and fond of a spectacle. They dropped by twos and threes quietly from the sides of the scaffold, and made their way to the quai. In the mean time I was left disregarded; but I was still fettered, or I should have jumped from the waggon, and taken my chance for escape. All had evidently come to a full stop, and even that horrible machine, above my head, had ceased to clank and crush; for what is a spectacle in France without an audience? The chief headsman, with two or three of his assistants, true to their post, alone remained—waiting for the return of the people; yet even they cast many a lingering glance towards the pageant, whose plumes, flags, and kettledrums, passing across the entrance of the square, made their patriotism more difficult from minute to minute. At length the trumpets died away, and, to my renewed despondency, I saw the crowd again thicken towards me and the few remaining vehicles, which that day, now sinking into twilight, was to empty of their victims.
But I was again respited. While I awaited the summons to mount the fatal steps, a party of dragoons rode into the square, seized every waggon without a moment's delay, and ordered the whole to be driven out for the reception of a column of wounded, both French and Austrians; who, having been brought to the city gates, now waited the means of transport to the great military hospital at Vincennes.
In this country of expedients, the first suggestion is always the best. The colonel of dragoons in charge of the column, had applied to the government for the means of carriage; they referred him to the municipality, who referred him to the staff of the National Guard; who referred him to the subprefect; who referred him to his subordinate functionaries; who knew nothing on the subject; until the colonel, indignant at the impertinences of office, accidentally heard that the requisite conveyances were to be seen in front of the Hotel de Ville. Regarding it as the natural right of the soldier to be first served in all cases, he sent off a squadron at full speed to make his seizure. Nothing could be more complete. The affair was settled at once. The remonstrances of the civil officers against our being thus withdrawn from their grasp, were answered by bursts of laughter at their impudence, and blows with the flat of the sabre for their presumption; for, next to the open reprobation of the army for the civic cruelties, was their scorn of the civic functionaries. The National Guard made some feeble display of resistance, but soon showed that they had no wish to try their bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of the garrison of Paris.
I had seen Vincennes before, and under trying circumstances; its frowning physiognomy had not been altered, nor, as a prison, was it more congenial to my feelings than before. Yet, on hearing the hollow tread of our horses' feet over its drawbridge, and seeing myself actually within its massive walls, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction which I had never expected to enjoy within bolts and bars. In this world contrast is every thing. I had been so fevered with alternate peril and escape, so sick of doubt, and so perplexed with the thousand miseries of flight; that, to find myself secure from casualty for the next twenty-four hours, and relieved from the trouble of thinking for myself, or thinking of any thing, was a relief which amounted almost to a pleasure. I never laid myself down to sleep with greater thankfulness, than when, stretched on the wooden guard-bed of the barrack-room, where the whole crowd of prisoners were packed together, I listened to the beat of the night-drum and the changing of the guard. They told me that, for once at least, I might sleep without a police-officer, to bid me, like Master Barnardine, "arise and be hanged."
Time in a garrison is the most lingering of all conceivable things, except time in a prison. I had it, loaded with the double weight. There was no resource to be found in the fractured and bandaged portion of human nature round me. The Austrians were brave boors, who spoke nothing but Styrian or Carinthian, or some border dialect, which nothing but barbarism had ever heard of, and which nothing but Austrian organs could have ever pronounced. The French recruits were from provinces which had their own "beloved patois," and which, to the Parisian, held nearly the same rank of civilized respect as the Kingdom of Ashantee. Besides, it was to be remembered, that all round me was a scene of suffering—the dismal epilogue of a field of battle; or rather the dropping of the curtain on the royal stage, when the glitter and the noise were gone by, and the actors reduced from their pomps and vanities, and sent home to the shivering necessities of poor human existence.
Life to me was now as stagnant as the ditch round the fortress; all feeling was as languid as the heavy air of our casemates. The mind lost all curiosity relative to the external world; and, beyond the casual knowledge which dropped, with all official mystery, from the lips of our worthy governor, and which told us that the war still continued, and that the armies of the Republic were "invincible beyond all power of human resistance;" we could not have been much more separated from sympathy, even with the capital itself, if we had been transported to one of the belts of Jupiter.