La haine, dans ces lieux, n’a qu’un glaive assassin.
Elle marche dans l’ombre.
La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 1.
(Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin. She moves in the shade.)
While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in hostility to the universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actual conspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered than himself with innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of “leaders”). The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his last account, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enraged at the execution of their filthy chief, and the proclamation of a Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had been, started as from a dream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled the stage of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of careless frankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd. The glaive of the guillotine had turned against THEMSELVES. They had yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the venerable age, or the gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by their streets in the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and murmured to each other, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and journeymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the “Holy Mother Guillotine,” with as little ceremony as if they had been the Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the Lavoisiers. “At this time,” said Couthon, justly, “Les ombres de Danton, d’Hebert, de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!” (The shades of Danton, Hebert, and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the fate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified and enraged to find that, by the death of his patron, his career was closed; and that, in the zenith of the Revolution for which he had laboured, he was lurking in caves and cellars, more poor, more obscure, more despicable than he had been at the commencement,— not daring to exercise even his art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists of the condemned,— he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of Robespierre and his government. He held secret meetings with Collot d’Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the creeping and furtive craft that characterised his abilities, he contrived, undetected, to disseminate tracts and invectives against the Dictator, and to prepare, amidst “the poor and virtuous people,” the train for the grand explosion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounder politicians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the incorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the movement against him,— that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his hopes rather in the dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the multitude. But Nicot, though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate of the martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties might rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur in beheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus. His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of that inflammable population this was no improbable hope.
Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongst those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalled by its excesses,— was, as might be expected, the Englishman, Clarence Glyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that had lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, had fascinated Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the Revolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed dead or dormant in most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of genius and of error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and repentant of his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpent malice of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon espoused his views with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins perished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the cause of humanity, from that time sought only the occasion of flight from the devouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his own; for them he trembled, and for them he schemed and plotted the means of escape. Though Glyndon hated the principles, the party (None were more opposed to the Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curious and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob “the people” one day, and the “canaille” the next, according as it suits them. “I know,” says Camille, “that they (the Hebertists) have all the canaille with them.”—(Ils ont toute la canaille pour eux.)), and the vices of Nicot, he yet extended to the painter’s penury the means of subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in return, designed to exalt Glyndon to that very immortality of a Brutus from which he modestly recoiled himself. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the wild and unsettled fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate and indignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government of Maximilien.
At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated in a small room in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore; the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullen brow, to his companion, a woman of singular beauty, but with a bold and reckless expression, and her face as she spoke was animated by the passions of a half-savage and vehement nature.
“Englishman,” said the woman, “beware!— you know that, whether in flight or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side,— you know THAT! Speak!”
“Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?”
“Doubt it you cannot,— betray it you may. You tell me that in flight you must have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female. It shall not be!”
“Shall not!”
“It shall not!” repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms across her breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door was heard, and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands, appeared unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that ensued.
“I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon,” said Nicot, as in his sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on his head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week’s growth upon his chin,—“I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evil is every sun that sheds its beams on France.”
“It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap the whirlwind.”
“And yet,” said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as if musingly to himself, “it is strange to think that the butcher is as mortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; that between the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage,— that, in short, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!”
Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and made no answer.
“And,” proceeded Nicot, “I have sometimes looked round for the man born for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led me hither!”
“Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien Robespierre?” said Glyndon, with a sneer.
“No,” returned Nicot, coldly,—“no; for I am a ‘suspect:’ I could not mix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of his person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!”— and his voice became earnest and expressive,—“hear me! There seems danger in this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d’Herbois and Bilaud–Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the populace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as their deliverer, the —”
“Hold, man! How darest thou couple my name with the act of an assassin? Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war between Humanity and the Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty never yet acknowledged a defender in a felon.”
There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon’s voice, mien, and manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once he saw that he had misjudged the man.
“No,” said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,—“no! your friend has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to mangle each other. He is right; but —”
“Flight!” exclaimed Nicot; “is it possible? Flight; how?— when?— by what means? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to Heaven it were in our power!”
“Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?”
“Desire! Oh!” cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped Glyndon’s knees,—“oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture; every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours are numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name in his inexorabl............