CHAPTER CXI.
THE GODDESS OF REASON.
Robespierre and his friends had looked on the worship of reason with unflinching contempt, but in these blasphemies lay a power that crushed out the influence they had wielded. True, it had driven such women as Madame Gosner, whose ideas of liberty were unselfish and austere, back into privacy, but only concentrated greater influence on the few.
When the hour of conflict came, and it was not of slow progress, the worshippers of reason triumphed.
Louison Brisot, the embodiment of a sacrilegious idea, found herself more powerful than Robespierre. Herbert was her slave. She had but to lift her hand to set the guillotine at work—a glance of her eye was enough to select the victim. Among the first was Madame Du Berry, whose cries of distress reached the exultant goddess as the tumbrel bore that wretched woman to the place of execution. The poor creature had concealed herself; but one day Zamara was seen whispering to the Goddess of Reason in the gallery of the Assembly. The next day came those cries of distress from the street, where a woman was going to execution, among the laughter and jeers of the people.
In vain Robespierre and his party stemmed the tide of atheism, which the nation received with avidity. In vain he had brought the queen to the scaffold; the gloom of his destiny was complete—not even a royal execution could interest the people now. In vain he got up a counter-festival, dedicated to the Supreme Being. The grounds of the Tuileries were crowded to hear his oration, the symphony and the ode; but none of these things were new to the people of France, and they turned with greater zest to the orgies, the songs, and dancing bacchantes, which gave eclat and novelty to the Festival of Reason.
At last came a fearful struggle where the two parties fought like gladiators, hand to hand, each for its life. Robespierre fell. That night he was put under arrest, the next day the man so feared, so hated, lay wounded and helpless in the power of his enemies, almost dead, and yet condemned to die.
With him were twenty-two others identified with his cruel policy, and who had partaken of his power, all arraigned before the tribunal, and certain of their doom.
Among these was a man scarcely yet beyond his first youth whom even his enemies looked upon almost with compassion; for the strange, sad beauty of his face, the calm dignity of his manner, impressed even those murderous men with a wish to save him. They knew that intense love of country, a sublime thirst for liberty as it can never exist on earth, had possessed this man, till he deemed no act too cruel, or sacrifice too great for the freedom of his fellow men. But they knew also that the death St. Just had been so ready to indict he was prepared to endure. Those features, perfect as the inspirations of Grecian sculpture, scarcely changed from their grave, almost feminine expression, when sentence of death was passed upon him. His large, gray eyes gazed calmly out from the shadow of their long lashes, and around the perfect mouth came an expression of firm endurance; but with all this, it seemed impossible to believe that a man of such gentle presence would die with more courage than Danton or Robespierre.
When asked if he had anything to say, a faint smile quivered around the young man’s mouth, and he answered,
“Nothing! Why should I protest against an inevitable fate, or check the swift vengeance of my enemies. You are about to give me that for which I have striven so long in vain—Liberty!”
With these words St. Just retired among those already condemned, and waited for his doom. But all at once his firmness was sorely shaken; for a fair, young maiden entered the tribunal, pale as death, and searching the faces around her with looks of wild, pathetic entreaty. The condemned prisoners stood in a group in one corner of the room. She saw St. Just among them, and made her way toward him; but the young man put out both hands to warn her away, and turned his face aside, that no one might see the anguish that convulsed it.
Marguerite was struck dumb by this mute denial.
“What is this? Who is the woman who dares to intrude on our deliberations,” cried the president, rising fiercely from his seat.
Marguerite opened her white lips to speak. But a voice she had never disobeyed reached her in a firm, low undertone,
“Keep silence! I am condemned!”
She was silent, and stood there in the midst of the tribunal, white and cold as a statue.
All at once there was a commotion in the gallery, where a female, in a light, Grecian dress, with the blood-red cap of liberty on her head, started up, and leaning over, that all the tribunal might see her, called out,
“Behold the friend of St. Just, the servant of Widow Capet. I charge her with it. She is a Royalist, an enemy to the nation!”
The speaker was Louison Brisot, the Goddess of Reason, who now exhibited herself every day at the tribunal.
“If you ask proof, it is here. Patriot Zamara has already given one base aristocrat to this tribunal. It was he who pointed out the hiding-place of Du Berry. Now, his evidence will confound another. Let her go among the condemned. You have no woman in the batch to-day, which is an insult to the sex. Let her die with the rest.”
Marguerite’s wild, white face was uplifted to the woman, while she hurled these cruel words at the tribunal. All at once she comprehended that St. Just was condemned to die, that her terrible enemy was demanding that she should go with him to the scaffold. A bright illumination swept over her face, the power of speech came back to her lips. She took a step or two forward, drawing nearer the tribunal.
“It is true,” she said. “I did serve the Queen. I loved her. She trusted me, and I was faithful. It needs no witnesses—I confess it.”
“She confesses! She confesses! Put her with the condemned!”
Marguerite walked firmly across the room, and placed herself by the side of St. Just, who turned his eyes upon her in mournful reproach, but did not speak. Perhaps there was some gleam of comfort in the idea that she would go with him into eternity.
Condemnation and death followed each other closely in those days. Less than twenty-four hours after the Jacobins were sent from the revolutionary tribunal, they were crowded into carts, surrounded by a triple guard, and dragged through multitudes that lined the streets from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Revolution. In this crowded tumbrel Robespierre was the most conspicuous and the most hated. Shouts and curses were hurled upon him by men, women, and even little children. Under this storm of detestation for one man the others passed on almost unnoticed.
In that crowded cart was a gentle girl, seated next to St. Just. She leaned upon him for the support which his shackled hands had no power to give, and, with her soft eyes lifted to his, encouraged him with faint, wan smiles, inexpressibly pathetic.
“We shall be together, my beloved. It is only a minute, and you will claim me,” she whispered, as the roar of the multitude passed over them unheeded.
He strained at the cords that bound him with a wild desire to clasp her to his heart, and fight for her young life.
“Be patient,” she said, grieved by the smothered fire in his eyes. “Is it for me you rebel? Ah! if you only knew how much worse life would be without you, this little minute of pain would be nothing.”
“Oh, my God! I was prepared for everything but this, my poor lamb! That I should, myself, bring you to the slaughter!”
“But for that I should have been a coward. Ah! the cart stops! Let me go first. I can bear anything but the—the widowhood of a moment.”
“Yes, my beloved, you shall go first. I will follow you, and find an angel waiting.”
“Hark! What is that?” she whispered, shuddering.
“Do not look up; lean closer to me.”
His words were drowned by a fierce howl of mingled delight and execration, that went thundering from the Place de la Revolution down the streets of Paris. The head of Robespierre had fallen.
A fair young creature, robed in white, came next upon the scaffold, and disappeared amid the dead silence of the multitude. Those who looked upon St. Just, after she was lifted from the cart, saw that his head drooped low upon his breast, and that a shiver of terrible anguish shook his frame: then a sublime courage took possession of him, he mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bent his head unresistingly, that the executioner might cut away the dark waves of hair that fell down his neck, and laid himself under that awful machine of death calmly, as if a bed of roses awaited him, rather than the hideous saw-dust still wet with Marguerite’s blood.
When the head of St. Just was exhibited, in all the marble beauty of its perfect features, no shout of triumph arose from the mob, for he was among the rare number of men, who, calling themselves patriots, still retained the respect of his countrymen.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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28 You this Austrian, how You saw this Austrian, how haughtily she turned away haughtily she turned away
unchanged protegée protegée
570 the populace in cheek. Chosen the populace in check. Chosen president of the Assembly president of the Assembly
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.