CHAPTER XXIII
Justice.
The day had been an unusually busy one.
Five and thirty prisoners, arraigned before the bar of the Committee ofPublic Safety, had been tried in the last eight hours--an average ofrather more than four to the hour; twelve minutes and a half in which tosend a human creature, full of life and health, to solve the greatenigma which lies hidden beyond the waters of the Styx.
And Citizen-Deputy Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, hadsurpassed himself. He seemed indefatigable.
Each of these five and thirty prisoners had been arraigned for treasonagainst the Republic, for conspiracy with her enemies, and all had tohave irrefutable proofs of their guilt brought before the Committee ofPublic Safety. Sometimes a few letters, written to friends abroad, andseized at the frontier; a word of condemnation of the measures of theextremists; and expression of horror at the massacres on the Place de laRevolution, where the guillotine creaked incessantly--these wereirrefutable proofs; or else perhaps a couple of pistols, or an oldfamily sword seized in the house of a peaceful citizen, would be broughtagainst a prisoner, as an irrefutable proof of his warlike dispositionsagainst the Republic.
Oh! it was not difficult!
Out of five and thirty indictments, Foucquier-Tinville had obtainedthirty convictions.
No wonder his friends declared that he had surpassed himself. It hadindeed been a glorious day, and the glow of satisfaction as much as theheat, caused the Public Prosecutors to mop his high, bony cranium beforehe had adjourned for the much-needed respite for refreshment.
The day's work was not yet done.
The "politicals" had been disposed of, and there had been such anaccumulation of them recently that it was difficult to keep pace withthe arrests.
And in the meanwhile the criminal record of the great city had notdiminished. Because men butchered one another in the name of Equality,there were none the fewer among the Fraternity of thieves and pettypilferers, of ordinary cut-throats and public wantons.
And these too had to be dealt with by law. The guillotine was impartial,and fell with equal velocity on the neck of the proud duke and thegutter-born _fille de joie,_ on a descendant of the Bourbons and thewastrel born in a brothel.
The ministerial decrees favoured the proletariat. A crime against theRepublic was indefensible, but one against the individual was dealtwith, with all the paraphernalia of an elaborate administration ofjustice. There were citizen judges and citizen advocates, and therabble, who crowded in to listen to the trials, acted as honorary jury.
It was all thoroughly well done. The citizen criminals were given everychance.
The afternoon of this hot August day, one of the last of gloriousFructidor, had begun to wane, and the shades of evening to slowly creepinto the long, bare room where this travesty of justice was beingadministered.
The Citizen-President sat at the extreme end of the room, on a roughwooden bench, with a desk in front of him littered with papers.
Just above him, on the bare, whitewashed wall, the words: "_LaRepublique: une et indivisible,_" and below them the device: "_Liberte,Egalite, Fraternite!_"
To the right and left of the Citizen-President, four clerks were busymaking entries in that ponderous ledger, that amazing record of thefoulest crimes the world has ever known, the "_Bulletin du TribunalRevolutionnaire._"
At present no one is speaking, and the grating of the clerks' quill pensagainst the paper is the only sound which disturbs the silence of thehall.
In front of the President, on a bench lower than his, sits CitizenFoucquier-Tinville, rested and refreshed, ready to take up hisoccupation, for as many hours as his country demands it of him.
On every desk a tallow candle, smoking and spluttering, throws a weirdlight, and more weird shadows, on the faces of clerks and President, onblank walls and ominous devices.
In the centre of the room a platform surrounded by an iron railing isready for the accused. Just in front of it, from the tall, rafteredceiling above, there hangs a small brass lamp, with a green _abat-jour._
Each side of the long, whitewashed walls there are three rows ofbenches, beautiful old carved oak pews, snatched from Notre Dame andfrom the Churches of St Eustache and St Germain l'Auxerrois. Instead ofthe pious worshippers of mediaeval times, they now accommodate thelookers-on of the grim spectacle of unfortunates, in their brief haltbefore the scaffold.
The front row of these benches is reserved for those citizen-deputieswho desire to be present at the debates of the Tribunal Revolutionnaire.It is their privilege, almost their duty, as representatives of thepeople, to see that the sittings are properly conducted.
These benches are already well filled. At one end, on the left, CitizenMerlin, Minister of Justice, sits; next to him Citizen-Minister Lebrun;also Citizen Robespierre, still in the height of his ascendancy, andwatching the proceedings with those pale, watery eyes of his and thatcurious, disdainful smile, which have earned for him the nickname of"the sea-green incorruptible."
Other well-known faces are there also, dimly outlined in thefast-gathering gloom. But everyone notes Citizen-Deputy Deroulede, theidol of the people, as he sits on the extreme end of a bench on theright, with arms tightly folded across his chest, the light from thehanging lamp falling straight on his dark head and proud, straightbrows, with the large, restless, eager eyes.
Anon the Citizen-President rings a hand-bell, and there is a discordantnoise of hoarse laughter and loud curses, some pushing, jolting, andswearing, as the general public is admitted into the hall.
Heaven save us! What a rabble! Has humanity really such a scum?
Women with a single ragged kirtle and shift, through the interstices ofwhich the naked, grime-covered flesh shows shamelessly: with bare legs,and feet thrust into heavy sabots, hair dishevelled, and evil,spirit-sodden faces: women without a semblance of womanhood, withshrivelled, barren breasts, and dry, parched lips, that have never knownhow to kiss. Women without emotion save that of hate, without desire,save for the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and lust for revengeagainst their sisters less wretched, less unsexed than themselves. Theycrowd in, jostling one another, swarming into the front rows of thebenches, where they can get a better view of the miserable victims aboutto be pilloried before them.
And the men without a semblance of manhood. Bent under the heavy care oftheir own degradation, dead to pity, to love, to chivalry; dead to allsave an inordinate longing for the sight of blood.
And God help them all! for there were the children too. Children--savethe mark!--with pallid, precocious little faces, pinched with theravages of starvation, gazing with dim, filmy eyes on this world ofrapacity and hideousness. Children who have seen death!
Oh, the horror of it! Not beautiful, peaceful death, a slumber or adream, a loved parent or fond sister or brother lying all in whiteamidst a wealth of flowers, but death in its most awesome aspect,violent, lurid, horrible.
And now they stare around them with eager, greedy eyes, awaiting theamusement of the spectacle; gazing at the President, with his tallPhrygian cap; at the clerks wielding their indefatigable quill pens,writing, writing, writing; at the flickering lights, throwing clouds ofsooty smoke, up to the dark ceiling above.
Then suddenly the eyes of one little mite--a poor, tiny midget not yetin her teens--alight on Paul Deroulede's face, on the opposite side ofthe rooms.
"_Tiens!_ Papa Deroulede!" she says, pointing an attenuated littlefinger across at him, and turning eagerly to those around her, her eyesdilating in wishful recollection of a happy afternoon spent in PapaDeroulede's house, with fine white bread to eat in plenty, and greatjars of foaming milk.
He rouses himself from his apathy, and his great earnest eyes lose theirlook of agonised misery, as he responds to the greeting of the littleone.
For one moment--oh! a mere fraction of a second--the squalid faces, themiserable, starved expressions of the crowd, soften at sight of him.There is a faint murmur among the women, which perhaps Go
d's recordingangel registered as a blessing. Who knows?
Foucquier-Tinville suppresses a sneer, and the Citizen-Presidentimpatiently rings his hand-bell again.
"Bring forth the accused!" he commands in stentorian tones.
There is a movement of satisfaction among the crowd, and the angel ofGod is forced to hide his face again.