Trial of the ministers.
The trial of the ministers[333] and the flurry in Paris made no great impression on me: after the trial of Louis XVI. and the revolutionary insurrections, all is small in the matter of trials and insurrections. The ministers, when coming from Vincennes to the Luxembourg and returning to Vincennes while sentence was being passed, went through the Rue d'Enfer: I could hear the wheels of their carriage from the back of my retreat. How many events have passed before my door!
The defenders of those men did not rise to the level of their task. None took a high enough view of the matter: the advocate predominated too greatly in the speeches. If my friend the Prince de Polignac had chosen me for his second, with what an eye should I have looked upon those perjurers setting themselves up for judges of a perjurer!
"What!" I should have said to them. "It is you who dare to be my client's judges; it is you who, all sullied with your oaths, dare to impute it as a crime to him that he ruined his master when he thought he was serving him: you, the instigators; you who urged him to issue the Ordinances! Change places with him whom you claim the right to judge: he who was accused becomes the accuser. If we have deserved to be struck, it is not by you; if we are guilty, it is not towards you, but towards the people: they are waiting for us in the yard of your palace, and we shall take our heads to them."
*
After the trial of the ministers, came the scandal of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois[334]. The Royalists, full of excellent qualities, but sometimes stupid and often aggravating, never calculating the range of their measures, always thinking that they would restore the Legitimacy by affecting a colour in their cravats or a flower in their button-holes, occasioned deplorable scenes. It was evident that the Revolutionary Party would profit by the service held in commemoration of the Duc de Berry to make a noise. Now, the Legitimists were not strong enough to oppose this, and the Government was not settled enough to maintain order; and so the church was pillaged. A Voltairean and progressive apothecary[335] triumphed fearlessly over a steeple of the year 1300 and a cross already overthrown by other Barbarians at the end of the ninth century.
Consequently upon the exploits of these enlightened pharmaceutics come the devastation of the Archbishop's Palace, the profanation of the sacred things, and the processions copied from those of Lyons. The executioner and the victims were lacking; but there were plenty of buffoons, masks and diverse carnival delights. The burlesque sacrilegious procession marched on one side of the Seine, while the National Guard, pretending to hasten in aid, defiled on the other. The river separated order and anarchy. It is stated that a man of talent was there as an onlooker and that he said, on seeing the chasubles and books floating on the Seine:
"What a pity they did not throw the Archbishop in!"
A profound utterance, for indeed a drowned archbishop must be a pleasant sight; that makes liberty and enlightenment take so great a step forward! We old witnesses of old deeds are obliged to tell you that you see here but pale and wretched copies. You still possess the revolutionary instinct, but you no longer have its energy; you can be criminal only in imagination; you would like to do evil, but your heart lacks courage and your arm strength; you would like to see fresh massacres, but you would no longer set to work to commit them. If you want the Revolution of July to be great and to remain great, do not let M. Cadet de Gassicourt be its real hero and "Mayeux" its ideal personage[336].
My new pamphlet.