XXXVI
One must of necessity turn once more to the Moniteur of the 22nd Messidor year II of the Republic One and Indivisible. There in the Choix des Rapports XXV 516–17, despite its sobriety of language and paucity of detail, there is ample proof that throughout the proceedings it was the action of one unknown that precipitated the final catastrophe. “Un géant,” we are told, “fût le premier à lancer l’accusation fausse contre le Président du Tribunal, et un tumulte irrépressible s’ensuivit.”
“False,” you observe. But on that 16th day of June 1794, Chauvelin of the National Convention, member of committees and confidant of Robespierre, did, we know, stand in danger of being dragged out into the open and hung on the nearest lamp post. The crowd was in no mood even to wait for the paraphernalia of the guillotine. They wanted to see the arch-traitor, the perjurer, who had sworn false oaths and lied in order to save himself and his brood, hang then and there. The giant spoken of in the Choix des Rapports had, it seems, hardly waited till the words were out of Fleurette’s mouth, before he pushed his way to the forefront of the crowd, with vigorous play of his powerful elbows. Down he was now, in the body of the court. In the struggle, his ragged shirt had been half torn off his shoulders, and his broad chest and sinewy arms could be seen, nude and immense, and coated with grime. Out of one of the pockets of his tattered breeches he had produced another uncooked carrot, and into this he bit lustily, then with a wide sweep of the arm he launched one by one against the President of the Tribunal the damning invectives which the Moniteur has characterized as false. “Traitor!” he cried. “Liar and perjurer! Citizens all, have you in all your lives ever witnessed such infamy?”
The Choix des Rapports describes the tumult as irrepressible. Indeed at that moment it would have been easier to dam a raging torrent with one pair of hands, than to suppress the riotous confusion that ensued. Fleurette of a truth stood there forgotten, so did Adèle and Godet. All eyes were fixed on the President, every menacing gesture tended in his direction, all the strident cries, the insults, the varied and foul epithets were hurled against him. There were but few sober tempers in that crowded room at the moment. A dozen perhaps: no more. Older men, one or two women who watched rather than yelled. And what they saw interested and puzzled them, so much that, when the time came, when everybody else was shouting themselves hoarse to the verge of mania, they still kept cool and silent.
Like everybody else these few were gazing on the President. They saw him standing there on the bench like a figure carved in stone, and, like a stone, his face was of a grey, ashen colour. His eyes looked dim and colourless as if a hand had drawn a film over them; his lips were parted, his nostrils distended. The breath seemed to come with difficulty out of his lungs. A figure, in truth of terror and despair. But calm and still. Motionless as a stone. The giant munching his carrot had waved his huge arms about and yelled himself hoarse until he had lashed all the spectators into a state of frenzy. Finally he strode across the room, and came to a halt close to the judges’ bench facing the President.
The three judges had been watching him all along: Pochart and Danou with undisguised glee, and President Chauvelin with that stony stare out of his colourless eyes. But even as the giant approached, Chauvelin, though apparently motionless, seemed inwardly to sink within himself, to crouch as a hunted beast in face of the menacing enemy. And suddenly like that of an automaton, up went his arm. With finger outstretched he pointed at the giant and one word escaped his trembling, rigid lips.
“You!”
Those who were watching him could not understand the word, for it was spoken in an alien tongue. Nor could they understand what happened afterwards. But what actually did happen was that the grimy giant threw back his head and gave a quaint and altogether pleasant laugh.
“Why yes!” he said in the same alien tongue, which no one present understood. “At your service, my dear M. Chambertin.”
And Chauvelin murmured almost under his breath:
“You have your revenge at last, Sir Percy.”
“Hitting back as you see, my friend.”
It all passed unperceived in the midst of the irrepressible tumult, save by those few who sober-tempered chose to watch rather than to yell. It is doubtful whether even Pochart and Danou, who sat close by, saw anything of this brief, this mysterious scene.
The very next moment the grimy giant, this time with a hoarse and not at all pleasant laugh, had hurled his half-munched carrot straight into the President’s face. Then facing the crowd once more he threw up his great arms high above his head.
“Why should we wait, citizens,” he shouted louder than the rest of the yelling crowd. “A la lanterne, I say, the traitor and his brood. The guillotine is ready outside the Place. The executioner is to hand. Why wait?”
Nothing could have pleased the crowd better. They were all like tigers scenting blood, demanding it, licking their jaws in anticipation.
“Who is for a front place for the spectacle?” a man shouted from the rear of the crowd.
“A moi! the front place,” a woman cried in response.
“A moi! A moi!” came from every side.
Then the general scramble began. A stampede down the gradients. The clatter of wooden sabots against the floor. The screams of women and children pushed and squeezed by the crowd. The grounding of arms, the click of bayonets, the words of command from the officer in charge of the guard, who were there to maintain order and who were quite powerless. They did of a truth try to stem the mob, to prevent the mad rush, the trampling, the stampede. But there were in reality too few of them for the task. All available fighting men being required for the army abroad, these were for the most part too inexperienced and too incompetent; raw recruits, half-trained for a wholly inadequate corps of gendarmerie. The officers did what they could, but the men themselves were soon caught in the vortex. Having no idea of discipline or duty, they soon became just a part of the mob, allowed themselves to be carried along by the crowd. They were just as excited, just as eager to see the President of a revolutionary tribunal sent summarily to the guillotine, as anyone else. Their lust for the spectacle was as keen as that of any ragamuffin in the place. They were but half-trained ragamuffins themselves, and as every man these days was at least as good as his officer and owed him neither obedience nor respect, it was small wonder that in emergencies like these, the soldiers got out of hand, whilst the officers, shrugging their shoulders, viewed the scene with indifference.
In the meanwhile the grimy giant had effectually fought his way along the floor of the house as far as the bar of the accused, where Fleurette, wide-eyed, deathly pale, half-crazy now with terror, had just fallen forward unconscious across the railing, drooping like a lily that is battered by the storm.
“And à moi the traitors,” the giant shouted, and it was marvellous how his booming voice rang above the uproar and the confusion.
He dragged Fleurette’s inanimate body from the bar and flung it over his shoulder, as if it were a bundle of goods. Then with two huge strides he was right in front of the judges’ bench, and there turned back to face the crowd again.
“Take your places for the spectacle, citizens,” he cried. “I’ll bring the actors along.”
He looked almost unreal as he stood there, dominating the crowd, grimy, unkempt, immense, with blackened face and huge bare chest, and the inanimate body of the girl across his massive shoulders. He seemed a being from another world, a Titan, a monster, a fiend-like fury, the embodiment of all the hates and the furies that animated the rest of the crowd. They glanced at him and trembled; some of them who had not wholly forgotten their age and innocence surreptitiously crossed themselves.
“Take your places for the spectacle, citizens,” he went on lustily. “One actor I have ready for you. Who will bring the other?”
Three men in the forefront of the crowd were at that moment standing quite close to the judges’ bench, where the President lay back in his chair, dead to everything about him, alive only through the intensity of his agony. In response to the Titan’s suggestion, which was greeted with loud applause by the crowd, the three men scrambled over the desk, seized the inert person of the President between them. One of them flung a sack over his head. Thus adorned they hoisted him upon their shoulders while the crowd stamped and shouted with glee.
“Un tumulte irrépressible s’ensuivit,” says the Choix des Rapports in the Moniteur of the 22nd Messidor. Tumult is but a poor word to express the actions of that multitude. Men and women and children had become blind, insentient with lust, mad with hatred and excitement.
“Take your places for the spectacle,” the Titan shouted, “and I’ll bring along the actors for you.”
And so they rushed out in a compact, struggling mass, hurrying, scurrying, fighting and pushing and struggling. Out in the open, in the Place de la République, into the sunshine and under the blue vault of heaven they rushed. The guillotine was set up there ready for its afternoon work, but, as the grimy giant had said, “Why wait?” Why indeed! No one was in a mood for waiting. The blackest traitor this town had ever seen had tried to save himself and his brood by slandering worthy citizens of the République. By the by, where were they? Adèle of unknown parentage and the swaggering Lieutenant Godet? Ah bah! they were forgotten. Lost in the crowd. Who cared? Time enough to cheer them when the traitors and slanderers were punished. Who cared indeed? For the moment the most important thing in the world was to secure a place of vantage for witnessing the wonderful spectacle. The President of a revolutionary tribunal, a representative of the people in the National Convention, was not often to be seen in Orange mounting the steps of the guillotine. That spectacle was reserved for the Parisians—lucky people!—who saw the heads of ci-devant kings and queens, of generals and dukes and duchesses and of countless other aristos roll into the basket. Therefore everyone scrambled for a good seat. The houses all round the Place were invaded by the mob; windows and balconies were soon filled with eager faces; boys and men swarmed on the roofs, clung to the rain-pipes, the gargoyles on the Hôtel de Ville, the lampposts and lamp-brackets. Many were injured in the struggle. But that made no matter so long as one got a good seat. Fortunately the weather was glorious. The sun shone gaily on this scene which suggested a coming pageant.
In the centre of the place, facing the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, the guillotine reared its gaunt arms, painted a vivid red. The officers of the gendarmerie had succeeded by dint of threats, in restoring some semblance of order in the tenue of their men. They now stood at attention round the guillotine on the platform of which the executioner was busy with his grim task.
The crowd around was very still. Something oppressive, unconnected with the heat of midday sun, seemed to hang in the air. People were still pouring out of the Hôtel de Ville, though not in such compact numbers. Gradually these numbers too were thinned. Those that came out last appeared more sober, less excited than the mob that had spread itself all over the Place shrieking and gesticulating in the manner habitual to these natives of the South.
Some of the last to come out were a group of men well known in Orange, one was the butcher from the Rue Longue, another the innkeeper of Les Trois Abeilles, a third kept the haberdashery shop over the bridge. Citizen Pochart and Danou were with them. They were all talking eagerly together as they came down the steps. A group of women were standing close by.
“Are they bringing the traitors?” they asked.
“Yes, Citizen Tartine,” the butcher replied, “that fine patriot Rémi, one of the scavengers at the Caristie house is close behind us, with some of his mates. They’ve got the traitors between them. We are to give the sign by firing this pistol when the executioner is ready.”
He showed the women the pistol which he said Rémi himself had given him.
“The executioner is ready now,” the women said, three of them speaking at once.
Citizens Pochart and Danou and the others then walked across the Place to the foot of the guillotine, one of them spoke a few words with the executioner. The crowd of spectators watched with feverish excitement. And presently Citizen Tartine, the butcher, raised his arm and fired a pistol in the air. A number of women shrieked. The excitement was so tense that the loud report sent the others into hysterics. Soon, however, the rumour went round that the pistol-shot was the signal that everything was ready for the spectacle and for the entrance of the chief actors in the play. After which every noise subsided. The multitude held its breath; a thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on the wide-open portals of the Hôtel de Ville waiting for the grandiose appearance of Rémi the scavenger and his mates bearing the traitors upon their shoulders.
Up, on the platform of the guillotine, the executioner was giving a last look to the pulleys. The soldiers stood at attention.
The huge crowd waited.