Part 26

"No, I am dying," returned Valazé. And he expired, his hand on the poignard with which he had pierced his heart.

At this spectacle silence instantly prevailed, and the example of Valazé made the young Girondists blush for their momentary weakness.

It was eleven o'clock at night. After a moment's pause, occasioned by the unexpectedness of the sentence and the emotion of the prisoners, the sitting was closed amidst cries of "Vive la République!"

The Girondists, as they quitted their places, cried simultaneously. "We die innocent! Vive la République!"

They were all confined for this their last night on earth in the large dungeon, the waiting room of death.

The deputy Bailleul, their colleague at the Assembly, proscribed like them, but who had escaped the proscription, and was concealed in Paris, had promised to send them from without on the day of their trial a last repast, triumphant or funeral, according to the sentence. Bailleul, though invisible, kept his promise through the agency of a friend. The funeral supper was set out in the large dungeon; the daintiest meats, the choicest wines, the rarest flowers, and numerous flambeaux decked the oaken table--prodigality of dying men who have no need to save aught for the following day.

The repast was prolonged until dawn. Vergniaud, seated at the centre of the table, presided, with the same calm dignity he had presided at the Convention on the night of August 10. The others formed groups, with the exception of Brissot, who sat at the end of the table, eating but little, and not uttering a word. For a long time nothing in their features or conversation indicated that this repast was the prelude to death. They ate and drank with appetite, but sobriety; but when the table was cleared, and nothing left except the fruit, wine, and flowers, the conversation became alternately animated, noisy and grave, as the conversation of careless men, whose thoughts and tongues are freed by wine.

Towards the morning the conversation became more solemn. Brissot spoke prophetically of the misfortunes of the republic, deprived of her most virtuous and eloquent citizens. "How much blood will it require to wash out our own?" cried he. They were silent, and appeared terrified at the phantom of the future evoked by Brissot.

"My friends," replied Vergniaud, "we have killed the tree by pruning it. It was too aged. Robespierre cuts it. Will he be more fortunate than ourselves? No, the soul is too weak to nourish the roots of civic liberty; this people is too childish to wield its laws without hurting itself. We were deceived as to the age in which we were born, and in which we die for the freedom of the world."

A long silence followed this speech of Vergniaud's, and the conversation turned from earth to heaven.

"What shall we be doing to-morrow at this time?" said Ducos, who always mingled mirth with the most serious subjects. Each replied according to his nature.

Vergniaud reconciled in a few words all the different opinions. "Let us believe what we will," said he, "but let us die certain of our life and the price of our death. Let us each sacrifice what we possess, the one his doubt, the other his faith, all of us our blood, for liberty. When man offers himself a victim to Heaven, what more can he give?"

When all was ready, and the last lock of hair had fallen on the stones of the dungeon, the executioners and gens d'armes made the condemned march in a column to the court of the palace, where five carts, surrounded by an immense crowd, awaited them. The moment they emerged from the Conciergerie, the Girondists burst into the "Marseillaise," laying stress on these verses, which contained a double meaning:

Contre nous de la tyrannie L'étendard sanglant est levé.

From this moment they ceased to think of themselves, in order to think of the example of the death of republicans they wished to leave the people. Their voices sank at the end of each verse, only to rise more sonorous at the first line of the next verse. On their arrival at the scaffold they all embraced, in token of community in liberty, life, and death, and then resumed their funeral chant.

All died without weakness. The hymn became feebler at each fall of the axe; one voice still continued it, that of Vergniaud. Like his companions, he did not die, but passed in enthusiasm, and his life, begun by immortal orations, ended in a hymn to the eternity of the revolution.

* * * * *

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

The Modern Régime

The early life of Hippolyte Adolphe Taine is notable for its successes and its disappointments. Born at Vouziers, in Ardennes, on April 21, 1838, he passed with great distinction through the Collège de Bourbon and the École Normale. Until he was twenty-five he filled minor positions at Toulon, Nevers, and Poitiers; and then, hopeless of further promotion, he abandoned educational work, returned to Paris, and devoted himself to letters. During 1863-64 he produced his "History of English Literature," a work which, on account of Taine's uncompromising determinist views, raised a clerical storm in France. About 1871 Taine conceived the idea of his great life work, "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine," in which he proposed to trace the causes and effects of the revolution of 1789. The first of the series, "The Ancient Régime," appeared in 1875; the second, "The Revolution," in 1878-81-85; and the third, "The Modern Régime," in 1890-94. As a study of events arising out of the greatest drama of modern times the supremacy of the last-named is unquestioned. It stands apart as a trenchant analysis of modern France, Taine's conclusions being that the Revolution, instead of establishing liberty, destroyed it. Taine died on March 5, 1893.

I.--The Architect of Modern France

In trying to explain to ourselves the meaning of an edifice, we must take into account whatever has opposed or favoured its construction, the kind and quality of its available materials, the time, the opportunity, and the demand for it; but, still more important, we must consider the genius and taste of the architect, especially whether he is the proprietor, whether he built it to live in himself, and, once installed in it, whether he took pains to adapt it to his own way of living, to his own necessities, to his own use.

Such is the social edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and principal occupant from 1799 to 1814. It is he who has made modern France. Never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study the character of the man.

Contemplate in Guérin's picture the spare body, those narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements, that neck swathed in its high, twisted cravat, those temples covered by long, smooth, straight hair, exposing only the mask, the hard features intensified through strong contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones, the massive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed together as if attentive; the large, clear eyes, deeply sunk under the broad arched eyebrows, the fixed oblique look, as penetrating as a rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to the brow as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will. Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries who saw or heard the curt accent, or the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating, imperious, absolute tone of voice, and we comprehend how, the moment they accosted him, they felt the dominating hand which seizes them, presses them down, holds them firmly, and never relaxes its grasp.

Now, in every human society a government is necessary, or, in other words, an organisation of the power of the community. No other machine is so useful. But a machine is useful only as it is adapted to its purpose; otherwise it does not work well, or it works adversely to that purpose. Hence, in its construction, the prime necessity of calculating what work it has to do, also the quantity of the materials one has at one's disposal.

During the French Revolution, legislators had never taken this into consideration; they had constituted things as theorists, and likewise as optimists, without closely studying them, or else regarding them as they wished to have them. In the national assemblies, as well as with the public, the task was deemed easy and ordinary, whereas it was extraordinary and immense, for the matter in hand consisted in effecting a social revolution and in carrying on a European war.

What is the service which the public power renders to the public? The principal one is the protection of the community against the foreigner, and of private individuals against each other. Evidently, to do this, it must in all cases be provided with indispensable means, namely, diplomats, an army, a fleet, arsenals, civil and criminal courts, prisons, a police, taxation and tax-collectors, a hierarchy of agents and local supervisors, who, each in his place and attending to his special duty, will co-operate in securing the desired effect. Evidently, again, to apply all these instruments, the public power must have, according to the case, this or that form of constitution, this or that degree of impulse and energy; according to the nature and gravity of external or internal danger, it is proper that it should be concentrated or divided, emancipated from control or under control, authoritative or liberal. No indignation need be cherished beforehand against its mechanism, whatever this may be. Properly speaking, it is a vast engine in the human community, like any given industrial machine in a factory, or any set of organs belonging to the living body.

Unfortunately, in France, at the end of the eighteenth century, a bent was taken in the organisation of this machine, and a wrong bent. For three centuries and more the public power had unceasingly violated and discredited spontaneous bodies. At one time it had mutilated them and decapitated them. For example, it had suppressed provincial governments (états) over three-quarters of the territory in all the electoral districts; nothing remained of the old province but its name and an administrative circumscription. At another time, without mutilating the corporate body, it had enervated and deformed it, or dislocated and disjointed it.