SENTENCE OF DEATH. 137 stituent; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment: nevertheless he now says, Death; a word which may cost him dear. Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September and the scenes of September. In this Convention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour; he says now, Banishment; and in mute wrath quits the place for ever-much hustled in the corridors. Philippe Egalité votes, in his soul and conscience, Death; at the sound of which and of whom even Patriotism shakes its head; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom. Robespierre's vote cannot be doubtful; his speech is long. Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend ; hardly pausing, passing merely, this figure says "La Mort sans phrase. Death without phrases ;" and fares onward and downward. Most spectral, pandemonial ! And yet if the Reader fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful, or even grave character, he is far mistaken: the Ushers in the Mountain quarter,' says Mercier, 'had become as Box-keepers at the Opera;' opening and shutting of galleries for privileged persons, for 'D'Orleans Egalité's mistresses,' or other highdizened women of condition, rustling with laces and tricolor. Gallant Deputies pass, and repass thitherward, treating them with ices, refreshments, and small-talk; the high-dizened heads beck responsive; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes and Noes, as at a game of Rouge-et-Noir. Further aloft reigns Mère Duchesse, with her unrouged Amazons; she cannot be prevented making long Hahas, when the vote is not La Mort. In these Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy 'as in open tavern, en pleine tabagie.' Betting goes on in all coffeehouses of the neighbourhood. But within doors, fatigue, impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages; lighted up only from time to time by turns of the game. Members have fallen asleep; Ushers come and awaken them to vote: other Members calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine. Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamp-light; utter, from this Tribune, only one word: Death. "Tout est optique,' says Mercier, 'the world is all an optical shadow.' Deep in the Thursday night, when the Voting is done, and Secretaries are summing it up, sick Duchâtel, more spectral than another, comes borne on a chair, wrapt in blankets, in nightgown and nightcap,' to vote for Mercy one vote it is thought may turn the scale. Ah, no! In profoundest silence, President Vergniaud, with a voice full of sorrow, has to say: "I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of Death." Death by a small majority of Fiftythree. Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six, who said Death, but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One. French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 121. PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION. King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Cléry, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Cléry dressed his hair: while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At halfpast six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbé Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear. At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will and messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. Stamping on the ground with his right-foot, Louis answers: Partons, Let us go."-How the rolling of those drums comes in through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION. the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow ! 139 He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover all shall perish miserably save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angoulême, will live,-not happily. : At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women, " Grace, Grace!" Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even `pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls this morning in these streets but one only. Eighty-thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this deathmarch falls sharp on the ear, in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth. As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orleans Egalité there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, hoquetons, speed to the Townhall, every three minutes near by is the Convention sitting,-vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens: What temper is he in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black Mahlstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straightly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend. The drums are beating: "Taisez-vous, Silence!" he cries in a terrible voice, d'une voix terrible.' He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off his coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbé Edgeworth has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the scaffold, his face very red,' and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "Tambours." The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your duty!" The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis six of them desperate, him single desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbé Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days. French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 130. France : DECLARATION OF WAR. At home this Killing of a King has divided all friends; and abroad it has united all enemies. Fraternity of Peoples, Revolutionary Propagandism, Atheism, Regicide; total destruc tion of social order in this world! All Kings, and lovers of Kings, and haters of Anarchy, rank in coalition; as in a war for life. England signifies to Citizen Chauvelin, the Ambassador or rather Ambassador's-Cloak, that he must quit the country in eight days. Ambassador's-Cloak and Ambassador, Chauvelin and Talleyrand, depart accordingly. Talleyrand, implicated THE GIRONDIN FORMULA. 141 in that Iron Press of the Tuileries, thinks it safest to make for America. England has cast out the Embassy: England declares war,— being shocked principally, it would seem, at the condition of the River Scheldt. Spain declares war; being shocked principally at some other thing; which doubtless the Manifesto indicates. Nay we find it was not England that declared war first, or Spain first; but that France herself declared war first on both of them;-a point of immense Parliamentary and Journalistic interest in those days, but which has become of no interest whatever in these. They all declare war. The sword is drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as Danton said, in one of his all-too gigantic figures: "The coalised Kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head of a King." French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 134. THE GIRONDIN FORMULA. As for the Girondin Formula, of a respectable Republic for the Middle Classes, all manner of Aristocracies being now sufficiently demolished, there seems little reason to expect that the business will stop there. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these are the words; enunciative and prophetic. Republic for the respectable washed Middle Classes, how can that be the fulfilment thereof? Hunger and nakedness, and nightmare oppression lying heavy on Twenty-five million hearts; this, not the wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical Advocates, rich Shopkeepers, rural Noblesse, was the prime mover in the French Revolution; as the like will be in all such Revolutions, in all countries. Feudal Fleur-de-lys had become an insupportably bad marching-banner, and needed to be torn and trampled: but Moneybag of Mammon (for that, in these times, is what the respectable Republic for the Middle Classes will signify) is a still worse, while it lasts. Properly, indeed, it is the worst and basest of all banners, and symbols |