Volume Iii Page 183) That Chaumette Had an Aviary, to Which He Devoted

his harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded, REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw of his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious, exclaimed, “MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?”)

“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre, tenderly. “Good Couthon,--poor Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!--how we are misrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues! Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the enemies of our country,--THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest heart!” (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be found expressed in his various discourses.)

“How I love to hear him!” ejaculated Couthon.

“Hem!” said Payan, with some impatience. “But now to business!”

“Ah, to business!” said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his bloodshot eyes.

“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the Republic demands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy by institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we deliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack the handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions they may raise to-morrow.”

“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of Payan; “I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor; on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the young pupils de l’Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient number of ‘the suspect’ to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The 10th shall be the great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits, have you prepared a list?”

“It is here,” returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.

Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. “Collot d’Herbois!--good! Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, ‘Let us strike: the dead alone never return.’ [‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.’--Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of the Mountain. He has called me ‘Mahomet!’ Scelerat! blasphemer!”

“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthon, with his silvery accent, as he caressed his spaniel.

“But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,--I hate that man; that is,” said Robespierre, correcting himself with the hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,--“that is, Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a thousand Dantons where Tallien sits!”

“Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,” said Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not unaccompanied by talents of no common order. “Were it not better to draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him better when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!”

“No,” said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien, with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; “that one head IS MY NECESSITY!”

“I have a SMALL list here,” said Couthon, sweetly,--“a VERY small list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little terror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no ill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!”

The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of sensibility submitted to him. “Ah, these are well chosen; men not of mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY have no parents in Paris. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their complaints demoralise the guillotine!”

“Couthon is right,” said Payan; “MY list contains those whom it will be safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be signed at once?”

“It IS signed,” said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the inkstand. “Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no excitement; but Collot d’Herbois, Bourdon De l’Oise, Tallien,” the last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, “THEY are the heads of parties. This is life or death to us as well as them.”

“Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,” said Payan, in a half whisper. “There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all have been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the other, the law. Your voice yet commands the people--”

“The poor and virtuous people,” murmured Robespierre.

“And even,” continued Payan, “if our design at the Fete fail us, we must not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot, the general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest; the Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges who never acquit. We must be bold!”

“And we ARE bold,” exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a serpent in the act to strike. “In seeing the multitude of vices that the revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be sullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these perverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of humanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! I thank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! These men,”--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--“these!--not WE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers of France!”

“True, we must reign alone!” muttered Payan; “in other words, the state needs unity of will;” working, with his strong practical mind, the corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.

“I will go to the Convention,” continued Robespierre. “I have absented myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will blast the traitors with a look!”

He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive to threaten tortured the death-giver.

“Thou art smeared,” ran the lines, “with the best blood of France. Read thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read! This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,--I am with thee every day. At each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile, though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to dream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy doom. Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!” (See “Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 155. (No. lx.))

“Your lists are not full enough!” said the tyrant, with a hollow voice, as the paper dropped from his trembling hand. “Give them to me!--give them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right--right! ‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!’”