[465] This aged lunatic, who fancied herself to be with child of a new Messiah, died in 1815.
[467] Gerle was imprisoned in the Conciergerie, but liberated through the interference of Robespierre. He was employed, during the reign of Napoleon, in the office of the home department.
[468] Chaumette was born at Nevers in 1763. For some time he was employed as a transcriber by the journalist Prudhomme, who describes him as a very ignorant man. In 1792, he was appointed attorney of the Commune of Paris, upon which occasion he changed his patronymic of Pierre-Gaspard for that of Anaxagoras—"a saint," he said, "who had been hanged for his republicanism." He it was who prepared the charges and arranged the evidence against Marie Antoinette. On being committed to the prison of the Luxembourg, "he appeared," says the author of the Tableau des Prisons de Paris, "oppressed with shame, like a fox taken in a net: he hung his head, his eye was mournful and cast down, his countenance sad, his voice soft and supplicating. He was no longer the terrible attorney of the Commune." He was guillotined, 13th April, 1794, with the apostate bishop, Gobel, and the actor Grammont.
[469] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 363.
[470] "Such was the public avidity to witness the execution of Hébert and his companions, that considerable sums were realized by the sale of seats. Hébert wept from weakness, and made no attempt to conceal his terrors. He sunk down at every step; while the populace, who had so recently endeavoured to deliver him from the fangs of the Convention, loaded him with execrations, mimicking the cry of the newsmen who hawked his journal about the streets."—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 142.
[471] Of the pamphlet, entitled "Le Vieux Cordelier," one hundred thousand copies, Lacretelle says, were sold in a few days. It was reprinted, in 1825, in the Collection des Mémoires sur la Révolution.
[472] Mignet, tom. ii., p. 308; Thiers, tom. vi., p. 189.
[473] "Sneak into exile!" said he, "can a man carry his country at the sole of his shoe?"—Thiers, tom. vi., p. 148.
[474] Riouffe, a fellow captive, states, that when Danton entered his prison, he exclaimed, "At last I perceive, that in revolutions the supreme power rests with the most abandoned."—Mémoires, p. 67.