Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844

At length, after a variety of insulting queries, even this scene was over. The guard marched out, the roll of their drum passed away among the cloisters; we went shivering to our beds—threw ourselves down dressed as we were, and tried to forget France and our jailers.

But a French night in those times was like no other, and I had yet to witness a scene such as I believe could not have existed in any other country of the globe.

After some period of feverish sleep I was awakened by a strange murmur, which, mixing with my dreams, had given me the comfortless idea of hearing the roar of the multitude at some of the horrid displays of the guillotine; and as I half opened my unwilling eyes, still heavy with sleep, I saw a long procession of figures, in flowing mantles and draperies, moving down the huge hall. A semicircle of beds filled the extremity of the chapel, which had been vacated by a draft of unfortunate beings, carried off during the day to that dreadful tribunal, whose sole employment seemed to be the supply of the axe, and from which no one was ever expected to return. While my eyes, with a strange and almost superstitious anxiety—such is the influence of time and place—followed this extraordinary train, I saw it take possession of the range of beds; each new possessor sitting wrapt in his pale vesture, and perfectly motionless. I can scarcely describe the singular sensations with which I continued to gaze on the spectacle. My eyes sometimes closed, and I almost conceived that the whole was a dream; but the forms were too distinct for this conjecture, and the question with me now became, "are they flesh and blood?" I had not sunk so far into reverie as to imagine that they were the actual spectres of the unhappy tenants of those beds on the night before, all of whom were now, doubtless, in the grave; but the silence, the distance, the dimness perplexed me, and I left the question to be settled by the event. At a gesture from the central figure they all stood up—and a man loaded with fetters was brought forward in front of their line. I now found that a trial was going on: the group were the judges, the man was the presumed criminal; there was an accuser, there was an advocate—in short, all the general process of a trial was passing before my view. Curiosity would naturally have made me spring from my bed and approach this extraordinary spectacle; but I am not ashamed now to acknowledge, that I felt a nervelessness and inability to speak or move, which for the time wholly awed me. All that I could discover was, that the accused was charged with incivisme, and that, defying the court and disdaining the charge, he was pronounced guilty—the whole circle, standing up as the sentence was pronounced, and with a solemn waving of their arms and murmur of their voices, assenting to the act of the judge. The victim was then seized on, swept away into the darkness, and after a brief pause I heard a shriek and a crash; the sentence had been fulfilled—all was over. The court now covered their heads with their mantles, as if in sorrow for this formidable necessity.

But how shall I speak of the closing scene? However it surprised and absorbed me in that moment of nervous excitement, I can allude to it now only as characteristic of a time when every mind in France was half lunatic. I saw a figure enveloped in star-coloured light emerge from the darkness, slowly ascend, in a vesture floating round it like the robes which Raphael or Guido gives to the beings of another sphere, and, accompanied by a burst of harmony as it rose, ascend to the roof, where it suddenly disappeared. All was instantly the silence and the darkness of the grave.

Daylight brought back my senses, and I was convinced that the pantomimic spirit of the people, however unaccountably it might disregard proprieties, had been busy with the scene. I should now certainly have abandoned the supernatural portion of the conjecture altogether; but on mentioning it to Cassini, he let me into the solution at once.

"Have you never observed," said he, "the passion of all people for walking on the edge of a precipice, climbing a church tower, looking down from a battlement, or doing any one thing which gives them the nearest possible chance of breaking their necks?—then you can comprehend the performance of last night. There we are, like fowls in a coop: every day sees some of us taken out; and the amusement of the remaining fowls is to imagine how the heads of the others were taken from their bodies." The prisoners were practising a trial.

I gave an involuntary look of surprise at this species of amusement, and remarked something on the violation of common feeling—to say nothing of the almost profaneness which it involved.

"As to the feeling," said Cassini, with that shrug which no shoulders but those of a Frenchman can ever give, "it is a matter of taste; and perhaps we have no right to dictate in such matters to persons who would think a week a long lease of life, and who, instead of seven days, may not have so many hours. As to the profanation, if your English scruples made you sensitive on such points, I can assure you that you might have seen some things much more calculated to excite your sensibilities. The display last night was simply the trial of a royalist; and as we are all more or less angry with republicanism at this moment, and with some small reason too, the royalist, though he was condemned, as every body now is, was suffered to have his apotheosis. But I have seen exhibitions in which the republican was the criminal, and the scene that followed was really startling even to my rather callous conceptions. Sometimes we even had one of the colossal ruffians who are now lording it over France. I have seen St Just, Couthon, Caier, Danton, nay Robespierre himself; arraigned before our midnight tribunal; for this amusement is the only one which we can enjoy without fear of interruption from our jailers. Thus we enjoy it with the greater gusto, and revenge ourselves for the tribulations of the day by trying our tormentors at night."

"I am satisfied with the reason, although I am not yet quite reconciled to the performance. Who were the actors?"

"You are now nearer the truth than you suspected. We have men of every trade here, and, among the rest, we have actors enough to stock the Comédie Française. If you remain long enough among us, you will see some of the best farces of the best time played uncommonly well by our fellow détenus. But in the interim—for our stage is permitted by the municipality to open in the St Lazare only four times a month—a piece of cruelty which we all regard as intolerable—our actors refresh their faculties with all kinds of displays. You acknowledge that the scene last night was well got up; and if you should see the trial of some of our 'Grands Democrats,' be assured that your admiration will not be attracted by showy vesture, blue lights, or the harmonies of the old asthmatic organ in yonder gallery; our pattern will be taken from the last scene of 'Il Don Giovanni.' You will have no pasteboard figure suspended from the roof, and wafted upward in starlight or moonlight. But if you wish to see the exhibition, I am concerned to tell you that you must wait, for to-night all our artistes are busy. In what, do you conceive?"

I professed my inability to fathom "the infinite resources of the native mind, where amusement was the question."

"Well then—not to keep you in suspense—we are to have a masquerade."

The fact was even so. France having grown tired of all things that had been, grew tired of weeks, and Decades were the law of the land. The year was divided into packs of ten days each, and she began the great game of time by shuffling and cutting her cards anew. The change was not marked by any peculiar good fortune; for it was laughed at, as every thing in France was except an order for deportation to the colonies, or a march to the scaffold. The populace, fully admitting the right of government to deal with kings and priests as it pleased, regarded the interference with their pleasures as a breach of compact; and the result was, that the populace had their Dimanche as well as their Decadi, and that the grand experiment for wiping out the Sunday, issued in giving them two holidays instead of one.

It was still early in the day when some bustle in the porch of the prison turned all eyes towards it, and a new detachment of prisoners was brought in. I shall say nothing of the scenes of wretchedness which followed; the wild terrors of women on finding themselves in this melancholy place, which looked, and was, scarcely more than a vestibule to the tomb; the deep distress of parents, with their children clinging round them, and the general despair—a despair which was but too well founded. Yet the tumult of their settling and distribution among the various quarters of the chapel had scarcely subsided when another scene was at hand. The commissary of the district came in, with a list of the prisoners who were summoned before the tribunal. Our prison population was like the waters of a bath, as one stream flowed in another flowed out; the level was constantly sustained. With an instinctive pang I heard my name pronounced among those unhappy objects of sanguinary rule. Cassini approached me with a smile, which he evidently put on to conceal his emotion.

"This is quick work, M. Marston," said he, taking my hand. "As the ruffian in the school fable says, 'Hodie tibi, cras nihi'—twelve hours will probably make all the difference between us."

I took off the little locket coutaining my last remembrance of Clotilde, and put it into his hands, requesting him, if he survived, to transmit it to his incomparable countrywoman, with an assurance that I remembered her in an hour when all else was forgotten.

"I shall perform the part of your legatee," said he, "till to-morrow; then I will find some other depositary. Here you must know that heirship is rapid, and that the will is executed before the ink is dry." He turned away to hide a tear. "I have not known you long, sir," said he; "but in this place we must be expeditious in every thing. You are too young to die. If you are sacrificed, I am convinced that you will die like a gentleman and a man of honour. And yet I have some feeling, some presentiment, nay almost a consciousness, that you will not be cut off, at least until you are as weary of the world as I am."

I endeavoured to put on a face of resignation, if not of cheerfulness, and said, "That though my country might revenge my death, my being engaged in its service would only make my condemnation inevitable. But I was prepared."

"At all events, my young friend," said he, "if you escape from this pandemonium of France, take this paper, and vindicate the memory of Cassini."

He gave me a memoir, which I could not help receiving with a smile, from the brevity of the period during which the trust was likely to hold. The gendarme now came up to demand my attendance. I shook hands with the marquis, who at that moment was certainly no philosopher, and followed the train.

We were about fifty in number; and after being placed in open artillery waggons, the procession moved rapidly through the suburb, until we reached one of those dilapidated and hideous-looking buildings which were then to be found startling the stranger's eye with the recollections of the St Bartholomew and the Fronde.

A crowd, assembled round the door of one of these melancholy shades, and the bayonets of a company of the national guard glittering above their heads, at length indicated the place of our destination. The crowd shouted, and called us "aristocrats, thirsting for the blood of the good citizens." The line of the guard opened, and we were rapidly passed through several halls, the very dwelling of decay, until we reached a large court, where the prisoners remained while the judges were occupied in deciding on the fate of the train which the morning had already provided. I say nothing of the insults which were intended, if not to add new bitterness to death, to indulge the wretched men and women who could find an existence in attending on the offices of the tribunal, with opportunities of triumphing over those born to better things. While we remained in the court exposed to the weather, which was now cold and gusty, shouts were heard at intervals, which, as the turnkeys informed us, arose from the spectators of the executions—death, in these fearful days, immediately following sentence. Yet, to the last the ludicrous often mingled with the melancholy. While I was taking my place in the file according to the order of our summons, and was next in rotation for trial, a smart and overdressed young man stepped out of his place in the rank, and drawing from his bosom a pamphlet in manuscript, presented it to me, with the special entreaty that, "in case I survived, I should take care of its propagation throughout Europe." My answer naturally was, "That my fate was fully as precarious as that of the rest, and that thus I had no hope of being able to give his pamphlet to mankind."

"Mais, monsieur," that phrase which means so many inexpressible things—"But, sir, you must observe, that by putting my pamphlet into your charge, it has a double chance. You may read it as a part of your defence; it is a treatise on the government of France, which settles all the disputed questions, reconciles republicanism with monarchy, and shows how a revolution may be made to purify all things without overthrowing any. Thus my sentiments will become public at once, the world will be enlightened, and, though you may perish, France will be saved."

Nothing could be more convincing; yet I continued stubborn. He persisted. I suggested the "possibility of my not being suffered to make any defence whatever, but of being swept away at once; in this case endangering the total loss of his conceptions to the world;" but I had to deal with a man of resources.

"No," said the author and philanthropist; "for that event I have provided. I have a second copy folded on my breast, which I shall read when I am called on for trial. Then those immortal truths shall not be left to accident; I shall have two chances for celebrity; the labour of my life shall be known; nor shall the name of Jean Jacques Pelletier go to the tomb without the renown due to a philosopher."

But further deprecation on my part was cut short by the appearance of two of the guard, by whom I was marched to the presence of the tribunal. The day had now waned, and two or three lamps showed my weary eye the judges, whose decision was to make the difference to me between life and death, within the next half hour. Their appearance was the reverse of one likely to reconcile the unfortunate to the severity of the law. They were seven or eight sitting on a raised platform, with a long table in their front, covered with papers, with what seemed to be the property taken from the condemned at the moment—watches, purses, and trinkets; and among those piles, very visibly the fragments of a dinner—plates and soups, with several bottles of cognac and wine. Justice was so indefatigable in France, that its ministers were forced to mingle all the functions of public and private life together; and to be intoxicated in the act of passing sentence of death was no uncommon event.

The judges of those sectional tribunals were generally ruffians of the lowest description, who, having made themselves notorious by violence and Jacobinism, had driven away the usual magistracy, and, under the pretext of administering justice, were actually driving a gainful trade in robbery of every kind. The old costume of the courts of law was of course abjured; and the new civic costume, which was obviously constructed on the principle of leaving the lands free for butchery, and preserving the garments free from any chance of being disfigured by the blood of the victim—for they were the perfection of savage squalidness—was displayed à la rigueur on the bench. A short coat without sleeves, the shirt sleeves tucked up as for instant execution, the neck open, no collar, fierce mustaches, a head of clotted hair, sometimes a red nightcap stuck on one side, and sometimes a red handkerchief tied round it as a temporary "bonnet de nuit"—for the judges frequently, in drunkenness or fatigue, threw themselves on the bench or the floor, and slept—exhibited the regenerated aspect of Themis in the capital of the polished world.

My name was now called. I shall not say with what a throb of heart I heard it. But at the moment when I was stepping forward, I felt my skirt pulled by one of the guard behind me. I looked, and recognized through all his beard, and the hair that in profusion covered his physiognomy, my police friend, who seemed to possess the faculty of being every where—a matter, however, rendered easier to him by his being in the employ of the government—and who simply whispered the words—"Be firm, and acknowledge nothing." Slight as the hint was, it had come in good time; for I had grown desperate from the sight of the perpetual casualties round me, and, like Cassini's idea of the man walking on the edge of the precipice, had felt some inclination to jump off, and take my chance. But now contempt and defiance took the place of despair; and instead of openly declaring my purposes and performances, my mind was made up to leave them to find out what they could.

On my being marched up to the foot of the platform between two frightful-looking ruffians, whose coats and trousers seemed to have been dyed in gore, to show that they were worthy of the murders of September, and who, to make "assurance doubly sure," wore on their sword-belts the word "September," painted in broad characters, I remained for a while unquestioned, until they turned over a pile of names which they had flung on the table before them. At last their perplexity was relieved by one of the clerks, who pronounced my name. I was then interrogated in nearly the same style as before the committee of my first captors. I gave them short answers.

"Who are you?" asked the principal distributor of rabble justice. The others stooped forward, pens in hand, to record my conviction.

My answer was—

"I am a man." (Murmurs on the platform.)

"Whence come you?"

"From your prison."

"You are not a Frenchman?"

"No, thank Heaven!" (Murmurs again.)

"Beware, sir, of insolence to the tribunal. We can send you instantly to punishment."

"I know it. Why then try me at all?"

"Because, prisoner, we desire to hear the truth first."

"First or last, can you bear to hear it?" (Angry looks, but more attention.)

"We have no time to waste—the business of the Republic must be done. Are you a citizen?"

"I am; a citizen of the world."

"You must not equivocate with justice. Where did you live before you were arrested?"

"On the globe." (A half-suppressed laugh among the crowd in the back ground.)

"What profession?"

"None."

"On what then do you live, have lived, or expect to live?"

"To-day on nothing, for your guards have given me nothing. Yesterday, I lived on what I could get. To-morrow, it depends on circumstances whether I shall want any thing." (A low murmur of applause among the bystanders, who now gathered closer to the front.)

"Prisoner," said the chief, swilling a glass of cognac to strengthen the solemnity of his jurisprudence, "the Republic must not be trifled with. You are arraigned of incivisme. Of what country are you a subject?"

"Of France, while I remain on her territory."

"Have you fought for France?"

"I have; for her laws, her liberty, her property, and her honour." (Bravo! from the crowd.)

"Yet you are not a Republican?"

"No; no more than you are."

This produced confusion on the bench. The hit was contemptuously accidental; but it was a home-thrust at the chief, who had former been a domestic in the Tuileries, and was still strongly suspected of being a spy of the Bourbons. The crowd who knew his story, who are always delighted with a blow at power, burst into a general roar. But a little spruce fellow on the bench, who had already exhibited a desire to take his share in the interrogatory, now thrust his head over the table, and said in his most searching tone—

"To come to the point—Prisoner, how do you live? What are your means? All honest men must have visible means. That is my question." (All eyes were now turned on me.)

I was now growing angry; and, pointing to the pile of purses and watches on the table—

"No man," said I, "needs ask what are your visible means, when they see that pile before you. Yet I doubt if that proves you to be an honest man. That is my answer."

The little inquisitor looked furious, and glanced towards the chief for protection; but his intrusion had provoked wrath in that quarter, and his glance was returned with a rigid smile.

"Prisoner," said the head of the tribunal, "though the question was put improperly, it was itself a proper one. How do you live?"

"By my abilities."

"That is a very doubtful support in those times."

"I do not recommend you, or any of those around you, to make the experiment," was my indignant answer.

The bystanders gave a general laugh, in which even the guard joined. To get the laugh against one, is the most unpardonable of all injuries in France, and this answer roused up the whole tribunal. They scarcely gave themselves the trouble of a moment's consultation. A few nods and whispers settled the whole affair; and the chief, standing up and drawing his sabre from its sheath—then the significant custom of those places of butchery, pronounced the fatal words, "Guilty of incivisme. Let the criminal be conducted à la Force," the well-known phrase for immediate execution.

The door was opened from which none ever came back. Two torches were seen glaring down the passage, and I was seized by the grim escort who were to lead me to the axe.

The affectation of cowardice is as childish as the affectation of courage; but I felt a sensation at that moment which took me by surprise. I had been perfectly assured of my sentence from the first glance at the judges. If ever there was a spot on earth which deserved Dante's motto of Erebus—

"Voi qui entrate, lasciate agui speranza"—

it was the revolutionary tribunal. Despair was written all over it in characters impossible to be mistaken. I had fixed my resolution to go through the whole scene, if not with heroism, at least with that decent firmness which becomes a man; yet the sound of the words which consigned me to the scaffold struck me with a general chill. Momentary as the period was, the question passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same which bore me so well through the hazards of the campaign? Why am I to feel the fluttering of heart now, more than when I was facing sabres and cannon-shot? Why am I thus frigid and feeble, when I so lately fought and marched, and defied alike fatigue and wounds? But I felt in this chamber of death an inconceivable exhaustion, which had never approached me in the havoc of the field. My feet refused to move, my lips to breathe; all objects swam round, and sick to death and fainting, I thrust out my hand to save me from falling, and thus gave the last triumph to my murderers.

At this decisive moment I found my hand caught by a powerful grasp, and a strong voice exclaiming, "Messieurs, I demand the delay of this sentence. The criminal before you is of higher importance to the state than the wretches whom justice daily compels you to sacrifice. His crime is of a deeper dye. I exhibit the mandate of the Government to arrest the act of the tribunal, and order him to be reserved until he reveals the whole of the frightful plots which endanger the Republic."

He then advanced to the platform; and, taking a paper from his bosom, displayed to the court and the crowd the order for my being remanded to prison, signed by the triumvirate, whose word was law in France. Some confusion followed on the bench, and some bustle among the spectators; but the document was undeniable, and my sentence was suspended. I am not sure that the people within much regretted the delay, however those who had been lingering outside might feel themselves ill-used by a pause in the executions, which had now become a popular amusement; for the crowd instantly pushed forward to witness another trial of sarcasm between me and my judges; but this the new authority sternly forbade.