Valaze was the only member of the condemned party who displayed a momentary weakness; he stabbed himself on hearing his sentence pronounced. But the blow was not mortal—he died on the scaffold, and died bravely with the rest.
On the night of the 30th, the Girondists held their famous banquet in the prison; celebrated, with the ferocious stoicism of the time, their last social meeting before, the morning on which they were to die. Other men, besides the twenty-one, were present at this supper of the condemned. They were prisoners who held Girondin opinions, but whose names were not illustrious enough for history to preserve. Though sentenced to confinement, they were not sentenced to death. Some of their number, who had protested most boldly against the condemnation of the deputies, were ordered to witness the execution on the morrow, as a timely example to terrify them into submission. More than this, Robespierre and his colleagues did not as yet venture to attempt: the Reign of Terror was a cautious reign at starting.
The supper-table of the prison was spread: the guests, twenty-one of their number stamped already with the seal of death, were congregated at the last Girondin banquet: toast followed toast; the Marseillaise was sung; the desperate triumph of the feast was rising fast to its climax, when a new and ominous subject of conversation was started at the lower end of the table, and spread electrically, almost in a moment, to the top.
This subject—by whom originated no one knew—was simply a question as to the hour in the morning at which the execution was to take place. Every one of the prisoners appeared to be in ignorance on this point; and the gaolers either could not, or would not enlighten them. Until the cart for the condemned rolled into the prison-yard, not one of the Girondins could tell whether he was to be called out to the guillotine soon after sunrise, or not till near noon.
This uncertainty was made a topic for discussion, or for jesting on all sides. It was eagerly seized on as a pretext for raising to the highest pitch the ghastly animation and hilarity of the evening. In some quarters, the recognized hour of former executions was quoted, as a precedent sure to be followed by the executioners of the morrow; in others, it was asserted that Robespierre and his party would purposely depart from established customs in this, as in previous instances. Dozens of wild schemes were suggested for guessing the hour, by fortune-telling rules on the cards; bets were offered and accepted among the prisoners who were not condemned to death, and witnessed in stoical mockery by the prisoners who were. Jests were exchanged about early rising and hurried toilets: in short, every man contributed an assertion, a contradiction, or a witticism to keep up the new topic of conversation, with one solitary exception. That exception was the Girondin Duprat, one of the deputies who was sentenced to die by the guillotine.
He was a younger man than the majority of his brethren, and was personally remarkable by his pale, handsome, melancholy face, and his reserved yet gentle manners. Throughout the evening he had spoken but rarely; there was something of the silence and serenity of a martyr in his demeanor. That he feared death as little as any of his companions was plainly visible in his bright steady eye; in his unchanging complexion; in his firm, calm voice, when he occasionally addressed those who happened to be near him. But he was evidently out of place at the banquet; his temperament was reflective, his disposition serious; feasts were at no time a sphere in which he was calculated to shine.
His taciturnity, while the hour of the execution was under discussion, had separated him from most of those with whom he sat, at the lower end of the table. They edged up toward the top, where the conversation was most general and most animated. One of his friends, however, still kept his place by Duprat’s side, and thus questioned him anxiously, but in low tones, on the cause of his immovable silence—
“Are you the only man of the company, Duprat, who has neither a guess nor a joke to make about the time of the execution?”
“I never joke, Marigny,” was the answer given, with a slight smile which had something of the sarcastic in it; “and as for guessing at the time of the execution, I never guess at things which I know.”
“Know! You know the hour of the execution? Then why not communicate your knowledge to your friends around you?”