XXII
A mountain has suddenly sprung up in the garden of the Tuileries. Undera cloudless sky, Maximilien heads the procession of his colleagues in ablue coat and yellow breeches, carrying in his hand a bouquet ofwheatears, cornflowers and poppies. He ascends the mountain andproclaims the God of Jean-Jacques to the Republic, which hears andweeps. Oh purity! oh sweetness! oh faith! oh antique simplicity! ohtears of pity! oh fertilizing dew! oh clemency! oh human fraternity!
In vain Atheism still lifts its hideous face; Maximilien grasps a torch;flames devour the monster and Wisdom appears, with one hand pointing tothe sky, in the other holding a crown of stars.
On the platform raised against the facade of the Tuileries, Evariste,standing amid a throng of deeply-stirred spectators, sheds tears of joyand renders thanks to God. An era of universal felicity opens before hiseyes.
He sighs:
"At last we shall be happy, pure, innocent, if the scoundrels sufferit."
Alas! the scoundrels have not suffered it. There must be moreexecutions; more torrents of tainted blood must be shed. Three daysafter the festival celebrating the new alliance and the reconciliationof heaven and earth, the Convention promulgates the Law of Prairialwhich suppresses, with a sort of ferocious good-nature, all thetraditional forms of Law, whatever has been devised since the time ofthe Roman jurisconsults for the safeguarding of innocence undersuspicion. No more sifting of evidence, no more questioning of theaccused, no more witnesses, no more counsel for the defence; love of thefatherland supplies everything that is needful. The prisoner, who bearslocked up in his bosom his guilt or innocence, passes without a wordallowed before the patriot jury, and it is in this brief moment theymust unravel his case, often complicated and obscure. How is justicepossible? How distinguish in an instant between the honest man and thevillain, the patriot and the enemy of the fatherland...?
Disconcerted for the moment, Gamelin quickly learned his new duties andaccommodated himself to his new functions. He recognized that thiscurtailment of formalities was genuinely characteristic of the newjustice, at once salutary and terrifying, the administrators of whichwere no longer ermined pedants leisurely weighing the _pros_ and_contras_ in their Gothic balances, but good sansculottes judging byinspiration and seeing the whole truth in a flash. When guarantees andprecautions would have undone everything, the impulses of an uprightheart saved the situation. We must follow the promptings of Nature, thegood mother who never deceives; the heart must teach us to do judgment,and Gamelin made invocation to the manes of Jean-Jacques:
"Man of virtue, inspire me with the love of men, the ardent desire toregenerate humankind!"
His colleagues, for the most part, felt with him. They were, first andforemost, simple people; and when the forms of law were simplified,they felt more comfortable. Justice thus abbreviated satisfied them; thepace was quickened, and no obstacles were left to fret them. Theylimited themselves to an inquiry into the opinions of the accused, notconceiving it possible that anyone could think differently fromthemselves except in pure perversity. Believing themselves the exclusivepossessors of truth, wisdom, the quintessence of good, they attributedto their opponents nothing but error and evil. They felt themselvesall-powerful; they envisaged God.
They saw God, these jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The SupremeBeing, acknowledged by Maximilien, flooded them with His flames oflight. They loved, they believed.
The chair of the accused had been replaced by a vast platform able toaccommodate fifty persons; the court only dealt with batches now. ThePublic Prosecutor would often confound under the same charge orimplicate as accomplices individuals who met each other for the firsttime before the Tribunal. The latter, taking advantage of the terriblefacilities accorded by the law of Prairial, sat in judgment on thosesupposed prison plots which, coming after the proscriptions of theDantonists and the Commune, were made to seem their outcome by theinsinuations of cunning adversaries. In fact, to let the worldappreciate the two essential characteristics of a conspiracy fomented byforeign gold against the Republic,--to wit inopportune moderation on theone hand and self-interested excess of zeal on the other, they hadunited in the same condemnation two very different women, the widow ofCamille Desmoulins, poor lovable Lucille, and the widow of the HebertistMomoro, goddess of a day and jolly companion all her life. Both, tomake the analogy complete, had been shut up in the same prison, wherethey had mingled their tears on the same bench; both, to round off theresemblance, had climbed the scaffold. Too ingenious the symbol,--amasterpiece of equilibrium, conceived doubtless by a lawyer's brain, andthe honour of which was given to Maximilien. This representative of thepeople was accredited with every eventuality, happy or unhappy, thatcame about in the Republic, every change that was effected in the laws,in manners and morals, the very course of the seasons, the harvests, theincidence of epidemics. Unjust of course, but not unmerited theinjustice, for indeed the man, the little, spruce, cat-faced dandy, wasall powerful with the people....
That day the Tribunal was clearing off a batch of prisoners involved inthe great plot, thirty or more conspirators from the Luxembourg,submissive enough in gaol, but Royalists or Federalists of the mostpronounced type. The prosecution relied almost entirely on the evidenceof a single informer. The jurors did not know one word of thematter,--not so much as the conspirators' names. Gamelin, casting hiseye over the prisoners' bench, recognized Fortune Chassagne among theaccused. Julie's lover, pale-faced and emaciated by long confinement andhis features showing coarser in the glare of light that flooded thehall, still retained traces of his old grace and proud bearing. His eyesmet Gamelin's and filled with scorn.
Gamelin, possessed by a calm fury, rose, asked leave to speak, and,fixing his eyes on the bust of Roman Brutus, which looked down on theTribunal:
"_Citoyen_ President," he said, "although there may exist between one ofthe accused and myself ties which, if they were made public, would beties of married kinship, I hereby declare I do not decline to act. Thetwo Bruti did not decline their duty, when for the salvation of thestate and the cause of freedom, the one had to condemn a son, the otherto strike down an adoptive father."
He resumed his seat.
"A fine scoundrel that," muttered Chassagne between his teeth.
The public remained cold, whether because it was tired of high-flowncharacters, or thinking that Gamelin had triumphed too easily over hisfeelings of family affection.
"_Citoyen_ Gamelin," said the President, "by the terms of the law, everyrefusal must be formulated in writing within the twenty-four hourspreceding the opening of the trial. In any case, you have no reason torefuse; a patriot jury is superior to human passions."
Each prisoner was questioned for three or four minutes, the examinationresulting in a verdict of death in every instance. The jurors votedwithout a word said, by a nod of the head or by exclamation. WhenGamelin's turn came to pronounce his opinion:
"All the accused," he declared, "are convicted, and the law isexplicit."
As he was descending the stairway of the Palais de Justice, a young mandressed in a bottle-green box-coat, and who looked seventeen or eighteenyears of age, stopped him abruptly as he went by. The lad wore a roundhat, tilted on the back of his head, the brim framing his fine pale facein a dark aureole. Facing the juror, in a terrible voice vibrating withpassion and despair:
"Villain, monster, murderer!" he screamed. "Strike me, coward! I am awoman! Have me arrested, have me guillotined, Cain! I am yoursister,"--and Julie spat in his face.
The throng of _tricoteuses_ and _sansculottes_ was relaxing by this timein its Revolutionary vigilance; its civic zeal had largely cooled;Gamelin and his assailant found themselves the centre of nothing worsethan uproar and confusion. Julie fought a way through the press anddisappeared in the dark.