cause, as he said, at the end of life refused to adopt it because of the dan- She was executed November 8, 1793, just twenty-three days after that queen whose death she had ardently desired. She went to the scaffold in a cart with one Lamarche, an old man, who showed a great dread of death. Heedless of the insults of the mob, Madame Roland tried to lend her courage to her companion, and sought to soothe and cheer him. She herself was wholly undismayed. Sanson usually beheaded ladies first, but the heroine begged him to begin with her timid companion in misfortune, and she waited and looked on while poor Lamarche was executed. Her firmness and composure did not desert her in that terrible moment; and she died as bravely as did Marie Antoinette. Madame Roland suffered a long imprisonment before death released her from her sorrows. On the 31st of May, 1793, she was incarcerated in L'Abbaye; in which prison her cell was Another memorable woman stands afterwards occupied, for a brief time, upon the scaffold, not this time in by Charlotte Corday. Released from white, but in the red smock of the L'Abbaye, she was immediately recap-murderess. It is Charlotte Corday, tured and immured in Ste-Pélagie; in born D'Armans; and she has killed which she completed those rapidly writIf ever murder were justifiten but most valuable “Mémoires," to able, it was this assassination. The which we owe so much, and in which sternest moralist cannot refrain from naïve vanity co-exists with brilliant admiring this high-souled, undaunted talent. She entered Ste-Pélagie on the girl; for the murder that she committed 24th of June. She was removed to the is elevated far above an ordinary crime. Conciergerie on October 31. While She was impelled neither by lust of she was in Ste-Pélagie, her devoted gain, nor by jealousy, nor by ordinary friend, Henriette Cannot, devised a hate; and she only slew a monster in plan of escape, but Madame Roland order to save unhappy France from Marat. the death-carts. There the military wholesale slaughter. Shortly before | case which now leads upwards to the his end, Marat had screeched a demand Courts of Justice, is the grated door for twenty-five hundred victims at through which prisoners emerged from Lyons, for three thousand at Marseilles, the dreadful prison in order to mount for twenty-eight thousand at Paris, and for even three hundred thousand in Brittany and in Calvados. No wonder that Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Robespierre went to see this extraordinary and most resolute young woman, whose motive had drugged her conscience, and who neither denied her act nor sought to escape its consequences. She was beheaded at 7.30 in the July summer evening. Calm-eyed and composed she went to death, but she turned pale for a moment when first she caught sight of the guillotine. "I killed one man to save a hundred thousand, a villain to save innocents; a savage wild beast to give repose to my country." Never has murder found so noble an excuse; and she was only twenty-five. After the execution, the manhood of the Jacobin tyrants caused the headsman and his valets "de rechercher sur les restes encore chauds de Charlotte les traces de vice, dont les calomniateurs voulaient la flêtrir. On ne constata que la pureté de son corps dans cette profanation de la beauté et de la mort." Charlotte Corday, like Madame Ro-tumbrils drew near their destination, land, was a Pagan. The victims in the Conciergerie had, generally speaking, but little Christianity or religion to console their last sad hours. The common temper of mind during the Revolution was Pagan or sceptical; and some victims may well have doubted whether Heaven still continued to look at the crimes and cruelties of the masters of life and death in unhappy France. There was philosophy; there was the light-hearted carelessness of the aristocrats; there were sublime courage and the dreary sentiment of desperation "puisqu'il était aussi commun alors d'être décapité que de s'enrhumer;" but, with some exceptions, there was little Christianity. Brutus and Cato seemed to have replaced the Christ. Round the corner of the palace, in the cour du Mai, beside the great stair lasted about an hour. The carts crossed the Pont au Change, and passed along the Quai into the Rue St. Honoré, at the end of which they turned to the left, by the Rue Royale, to the Place de la Révolution, on which generally stood the scaffold and the guillotine. As the the doomed men and women saw that sinister frame standing out ominously against the passive sky, and they were helped up the steps of the guillotine by Sanson and his busy assistants. M. Audot, who in his youth lived through the Revolution, tells us that, while popular fetes were very largely attended, the chief events of the Revolution, and these necessarily include trials and executions, attracted the Jacobins and the populace, but were neglected by the people in the proper sense of the word. M. Audot's father, as a member of the garde nationale, was a witness of the execution of Louis XVI., and records that the people did not seem to be moved. The crowd was so small that women and children found plenty of comfortable room to see the show. "En général, les grands événements de la Révolution attiraient peu de monde." M. Audot was on the badly kept, and are unreliable. For greatly the number of persons de- When Madame Elisabeth, termed by the Revolution "la nommée Elisabeth Marie Capet, sœur de Louis Capet, dernier tyran," was brought to trial, so called, the jury, when they heard the name, without waiting for further information, cried out, "C'en est assez. La mort, la mort!" and she was, of course, condemned to death. Fourand-twenty companions in misfortune were sentenced at the same time, and went to the guillotine, May 25, 1794. She was executed last, and had to look on while the four-and-twenty passed under the heavy, sharp blade. Her fichu fell off and lay at the feet of the headsman. She cried, in a voice of supplication, "Au nom de la pudeur, couvrez-moi le sein!" and these were her last words. She died with resigned courage, and her quiet bravery contrasts strongly with the gross coward- Tyrannie de Robespierre." An imice of Madame du Barry. Madame pressionable, excitable man, Riouffe Elisabeth was in no way dangerous to was carried away by pity and by indigthe Republic or to the Revolution, and nation, and wrote down his recollecwas, indeed, a most innocent victim. tions and his thoughts without greatly She was gentle, tender, pious, modest, caring for accuracy of detail; though benevolent; and her death is one of the substance of his narrative is terthe greatest crimes of the Jacobins. ribly true. He entered the ConcierBarthélemy Maurice gives the num-gerie two days before the condemnation ber of persons sent from the Concier- of the Girondins, and has left a record gerie to the guillotine as 2,742. Of these 2,742, 344 were women, 41 were infants, 102 were over seventy years of age, while one man, D. T. G. Dervilly, épicier, rue Mouffetard, was ninety-three years of age. Taine suggests that the numbers given are understated, and it is more than probable that such records, at least during the Terror, were VOL. VI. 298 LIVING AGE. of the impression made upon him by these doomed men. The blood of the Girondins had hardly dried when Madame Roland arrived in the prison; and Riouffe recounts, with genuine admiration, how bravely she received her sentence of condemnation, and with what calm heroism she went to death. Riouffe says, that if he were to men- others, Riouffe actually saw. Women tion individually all the doomed whose who hesitated to commit suicide cried, courage equalled their virtues, he Vive le Roi! in order that they might should have to fill volumes. Of the escape, even by death, from their agoRevolutionary Tribunal, he says: "Je nies. Riouffe was charged with many puis attester qu'il n'a jamais été qu'un, messages to widows, and to orphans Tribunal de sang, ne suivant d'autre left desolate. Thus Madame Lavioloi que son caprice, ou la férocité des lette was condemned by a drunken jury tyrans auxquels il n'a jamais cessé as it issued from the buvette. Through d'être vendu." It was a tribunal the bars of a window she called to which "ne fut jamais composé que Riouffe, "Regardez-moi, je suis trand'assassins." He records for us, quille assurez vos camarades que je among his experiences of the Con- meurs digne d'eux.” "Vous exciergerie, that the indictments, more pliquer," adds Riouffe, "comment j'ai pu vivre, c'est m'excuser d'avoir vécu. Mes oreilles ont entendu les cris des victimes, mes yeux ont vu ces sanglantes iniquités; j'ai été quatorze mois sous l'échafaud, et je ne suis pas mort de douleur !" Jacques-Claude Beugnot, born July 25, 1762, entered the Conciergerie under somewhat unfavorable auspices. He was mistaken for a very unpopular properly listes de proscription, were printed forms, which were used for any prisoner, or for many prisoners. Turnkeys and jailers, men who could hardly read or write, often filled up the indictments at their own pleasure. A young man of twenty-five, unmarried, was beheaded for having a son among the émigrés. An indictment was handed to a lady on which was written tête à guillotiner sans remission. If one man character; and when his cab stopped received an indictment intended for another person, the huissier simply substituted one name for another. Joignons celle-là à son mari; and the name of a wife was added to the indictment of a husband. The ci-devant Duchesse de Biron received a form of indictment drawn out for her man of business. The jury never leant to acquittal. There were sixty jurymen permanently appointed and regularly paid, and they had only to find guilty all that appeared before them. The names of the sixty are on record, and No. 45 was Duplay, the landlord of Robespierre. The myrmidons of the Tribunal seemed to be animated by a blind hatred of the weaker sex. Malesherbes, more than eighty years of age, was executed with his whole family, with his sister, his daughter, his sonin-law, and the daughter and son-inlaw of his daughter. Fourteen young girls of Verdun went at the same time to the scaffold. Twenty poor peasant women of Poitou were sent to death together. When they started, an infant was snatched from the breast of one young mother. These things, and at the cour du Mai, he was received with cries of joy, mingled with execrations, and was saluted with a shower of ordure which, coming from all sides, covered all his face. He was really glad to be within the shelter even of the prison. At the gate a tumbril was waiting to carry some victims to the guillotine; and in the greffe Beugnot saw the prisoners waiting for Sanson, in their shirt-sleeves, with cut hair and open necks. They had slept in the arrière greffe. This was a characteristic introduction to the gloomy, fatal prison. He was merely suspected of being an aristocrat; but he was furnished with a strong letter of recommendation to the clerk of the Conciergerie from Grandpré, the friend of Madame Roland and a man of influence, because he was first clerk in Danton's ministry. The consequence of this letter was that Beugnot was not écroué, that is, his name was not entered on the register, and was therefore not seen by Fouquier-Tinville, who was in the habit of searching les régistres d'écrou, in the hope of finding la piste du gibier oublié. One half of the greffe contained the ings. registry office; while the other part, | theless, "les propos délicats, les alluseparated by wooden barriers, was des- sions fines, les reparties saillantes," tined for the last hours of the con- passed through the deaf and blind raildemned. Beugnot had been arrested par mesure de sûreté générale. He was a stronger man than poor Riouffe; had more character; could see more clearly and think more deeply. His style is better than that of the impulsive comedian. Beugnot, when he rose to honors and to high office under Napoleon, must often have looked, with strange thoughts in his mind, at the towers of the Conciergerie. He had a deeply laden memory; and was a man who could feel profoundly and remember well. What awful and pathetic sights he had seen! One fancies that his whole after-life must have been saddened. Speaking of the horrors and of the misery which he had witnessed in the Conciergerie, Beugnot says, "En présence de tant et de si profondes misères, j'ai rougi d'être né homme. Le désespoir avait traversé mon âme ; j'avais les yeux secs et le sang brûlant." The terrors of the prison life were such that the guillotine almost lost its terror; and the management of the Conciergerie was la scélératesse en action et le crime tout-puissant. Claude-François Beaulieu, rédacteur, was arrested by Marino as a suspect, and was immured in the Conciergerie the 29th of October, 1793. He ultimately escaped after 9 Thermidor. He passed four or five months in the Conciergerie, and was in the Luxembourg during the worst of the massacres. Whilst he was in the Conciergerie he saw the prison refilled three or four times. Few escaped death. M. Beaulieu introduces us to Barassin, who was among the turnkeys that which Ravage was among the dogs. "Je n'ai jamais vu de figure plus farouche que celle de Barassin; je n'ai entendu de son de voix plus affreux." He was a highway robber, if not murderer, and, as he frankly admitted, deserved to have been broken on the wheel. He was in the Conciergerie under a sentence of fourteen years' imprisonment; but the concierge saw how singularly adapted Barassin was to all "liberal" employment, and he appointed him to the lowest and most loathsome work of the prison, and gave him charge of the latrines. "If we were both at liberty," said Barassin to Beaulieu, "and if I met you near a wood, I should certainly rob, and, if necessary, murder you; but here I dare not rob you, and would even protect you from thieves. If I were to rob you, the guichetier would know who did it, and I should be put in irons and locked up in a dungeon." He discharged certain duties in the cell of Marie Antoinette, and told Beaulieu, "La Capet! va, elle était bien penaude; elle raccommodait ses chausses, pour ne pas marcher sur la chrétienté." She was, he said, always under supervision by gendarmes : "elle n'en était separée que par un paravent tout percé et à travers lequel ils pouvaient se voir à leur aise l'un et l'autre." She was treated, said Barassin, comme les autres; ça ne peut surprendre que les aristocrates." But he too speaks of the gaiety of the meetings of men and women, only separated by iron railings, in the courtyard. He notices the besoin de plaire on the part of French women; an impulse which could not wholly be repressed even by the constant presence of the shadow of the red guillotine. He heard the ripple of laughter and the whisper of tender sighs; and he asserts that no promenade in Paris could surpass the yard for a collection of elegantly dressed ladies. He adds rightly, as we think, that French women were the only women who, under such dire circumstances, could preserve "le feu sacré du bon ton et du goût." Towards evening, when jailers were tired, "on a béni plus d'une fois l'imprévoyance de l'artiste qui a dessiné la grille." Many of the prisoners capable of such "abandon avaient leur Beaulieu tells us of the "innomarrêt de mort dans la poche." Never-brables victimes que j'ai vu condamner 66 |
