CHAPTER CX.

BOUGHT BY BLOOD.

Like a wild beast, France had tasted blood and clamored loudly for more. Her keepers, Robespierre, Danton, Marat and the rest, black-hearted and red-handed as they were, found even their brutal ingenuity taxed by the monsters whose growing appetite for murder they were compelled to feed.

A new excitement was prepared for them. The mockery of a trial, at which the galleries presided; a tumultuous mob, hounding on its friends and intimidating those who wished to be just—the trial of a good king by the most depraved of his subjects.

This infamous parody of justice—twenty-four hours for a last farewell of his family, for prayer, and a sacrament—grudgingly permitted, and the whole world was horrified by an execution at which humanity recoils with shudders of condemnation.

But even this terrible crime failed to appease the thirst for murder which raged among the masses. Their leaders, urged on by the ignorance of fanaticism, began to wage war on themselves. Every member of the Assembly suspected of moderation or mercy was swept into prison, and the people applauded. They were ready for anything but a return to honest labor and thrifty habits. They revelled in the farce of being every man his own monarch.

France had become ready for perfect anarchy; and plunged like a wild beast, maddened with the blood of its own kind, into the Reign of Terror, of which Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, were the high priests.

But the hand of a young girl sent Marat to his black account, and the supremacy of chaos was left with Robespierre and Danton. At the summit of his awful power, Robespierre was seized with a coward’s fear. By what ultra crime could he appease the besotted cravings of his followers, and keep them from turning on himself. Danton had lost all his cruel invention. Denunciations and commonplace massacres had ceased to excite enthusiasm; the horrors of the guillotine, which thrilled the community at first, had degenerated into a popular amusement, at which the women held high carnival, and gossiped, joked, brought their knitting and worked, that no time might be lost while the axe was sharpening.

If there was a moment’s silence, when some ghastly head fell into the basket, it was instantly atoned for by imprecations, or coarse laughter. The executioner had no longer power to keep their attention. He did not give keen variety enough; to them murder had lost its awful fascination. The nobility had perished, or fled, and plebeian executions had become grossly common. Robespierre, whose genius was sombre and cruel, sought to appease them with another royal head; this might sharpen the palled appetite of the crowd. The sight of a beautiful woman on the scaffold—a queen, and the daughter of an empress, awoke something of the old blood-thirsty enthusiasm. Robespierre saw the effect, and offered another noble princess to the populace, the angelic Elizabeth. These two martyred women went to the scaffold in a cart, with cords girding their white wrists, each with her beautiful hair shorn close by the hangman’s scissors.

In this awful spectacle Robespierre had exhausted all inventions of cruelty, but the people demanded something more atrocious still; nothing could satisfy their insatiable thirst. Their clamor found Robespierre helpless. He had talked wildly of liberty till there was nothing more to be said. His ingenuity had exhausted itself in giving new horrors to death: and all he could offer was a repetition of the old crimes, which had ceased even to interest the crowd. Always frugal and austere in his habits, this man was the slave of no small vices, and looked with scorn upon those who yielded to them. In his weird patriotism he was sincere, but the people began to look upon his austerity as a rebuke. Weary of murder they turned to blasphemy, and there the genius of Robespierre and Danton gave way.

Now sweeping across the lurid path of Robespierre comes the Herbertists, so fearfully depraved, that the Jacobins shrunk away from them, appalled by the mingled blasphemy and jest with which they excited the people to sacrilegious excesses.

These men laid their ensanguined hands upon the very altar of God, upheaving it from their midst, and gave a zest to crime by adding sacrilege to murder. Under their sway the cross fell from the summits of the churches, crucifixes and chalices were melted into coin. Relics, hitherto held sacred, were trampled under foot in contempt, burnt, destroyed, and despised. Church bells no longer called the people to worship, but fed the musketry of the soldiers, and the cannon turned against the enemies of France. Holy crosses were taken down from the cemeteries, and statues of sleep, in the form of voluptuous women, rested in their place. Elegance, and even decency, were banished. Guillotines became an object of fashion and of jest; children played with them as toys, women wore them in their ears and on their bosoms. Atheism, coarseness, and immorality, were liberty and equality.

This reign of reason was even more revolting than the reign of terror. It turned religion and death itself into a burlesque.

At this time Louison Brisot, who had fled from Paris while her arch enemy Robespierre remained supreme, came back with renewed audacity and joined the Herbertists. She was young, fiercely beautiful, and in her soul embodied all the enormities of the Revolution. Now the great ambition of her life was accomplished, Theroigne de Mericourt was put aside, and she was chosen as the goddess of Liberty.

The church of Notre Dame had been diverted of its sacred character, and was now known as the Temple of Reason, in which the people held a grand carnival, presided over by Louison Brisot, the most wicked of all the shameless women of Paris.

On its high altar she was enthroned, clad in the scant robes of ancient Greece, with a red cap on her head and a tri-colored bright scarf around her waist, she sat on the holy altar of Christ and received the blasphemous homage of thrice ten thousand idolators.

After this, the chair on which she sat was lifted by four men and carried to the Assembly, surrounded by a band of white-robed dancing girls, crowned with flowers. Here, seated by the president, this evil woman received the homage of a goddess. Bishops, vicars, and cures, laid crosses and rings at her feet, and, with the red cap on their heads, joined in a hymn chanted to the honor of the new divinity.

During this ceremony a few stood aloof, filled with abhorrence and contempt. Among these were Robespierre, and the youthful St. Just, men whose very faults lifted them infinitely above any participation in a scene so degrading. They could be cruel; but with one, at least, it was under the honest conviction, that by cruelty alone the country could be saved. To these men, relentless in their patriotism, but pure in their lives, sacrilege and blasphemy had no charm.