CHAPTER 7.VI.
In poppa quella
Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
"Ger. Lib." cant. xv. 3.
(By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial
with her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day
revealed to Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion
into hate. He himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and
in reflections on his own strange destiny, was no nice observer.
But her manner, milder and more subdued than usual, produced a
softening effect upon his meditations towards the evening; and he
then began to converse with her on the certain hope of escape,
and on the future that would await them in less unhallowed lands.
"And thy fair friend," said Fillide, with an averted eye and a
false smile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned
her, Nicot tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested.
Is it so?"
"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively. "Well! does
the change content thee?"
"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached
him, parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and
pressed her lips convulsively on his brow.
"This were too fair a head for the doomsman," said she, with a
slight laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in
preparations for their departure.
The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian;
she was absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary
that he should once more visit C-- before his final Departure,
not only to arrange for Nicot's participation in the flight, but
lest any suspicion should have arisen to thwart or endanger the
plan he had adopted. C--, though not one of the immediate
coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile to him, had
possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as it rose to
power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially
amongst every class in France. He had contrived to enrich
himself--none knew how--in the course of his rapid career. He
became, indeed, ultimately one of the wealthiest proprietors of
Paris, and at that time kept a splendid and hospitable mansion.
He was one of those whom, from various reasons, Robespierre
deigned to favour; and he had often saved the proscribed and
suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised names, and
advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took this
trouble only for the rich. "The incorruptible Maximilien," who
did not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw
through all his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked
beneath his charity. But it was noticeable that Robespierre
frequently seemed to wink at--nay, partially to encourage--such
vice in men whom he meant hereafter to destroy, as would tend to
lower them in the public estimation, and to contrast with his own
austere and unassailable integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless,
he often grimly smiled in his sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and
the griping covetousness of the worthy Citizen C--.
To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was
true, as he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he
had resisted the spectre, its terrors had lost their influence.
The time had come at last, when, seeing crime and vice in all
their hideousness, and in so vast a theatre, he had found that in
vice and crime there are deadlier horrors than in the eyes of a
phantom-fear. His native nobleness began to return to him. As
he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind projects of future
repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a just return
for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings of
his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with
one little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from
marriage with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that
world of wrong to know that right is right, and that Heaven did
not make the one sex to be the victim of the other. The young
visions of the Beautiful and the Good rose once more before him;
and along the dark ocean of his mind lay the smile of reawakening
virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps, had the
condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the
future, and already in his own mind laying out to the best
advantage the gold of the friend he was about to betray, took his
way to the house honoured by the residence of Robespierre. He
had no intention to comply with the relenting prayer of Fillide,
that the life of Glyndon should be spared. He thought with
Barrere, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas." In all men
who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there
must be a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary
herd. Usually this energy is concentrated on the objects of
their professional ambition, and leaves them, therefore,
apathetic to the other pursuits of men. But where those objects
are denied, where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the
energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being, and if
not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience
and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the
social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder.
Hence, in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted
states,--the peculiar care with which channels are opened for
every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their
cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for
themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured canvas,--
nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle. No state is ever
more in danger than when the talent that should be consecrated to
peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal
advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And
here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the
most degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very
dust deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain
exceptions in the company especially favoured by the Court) were
more relentless and revengeful among the scourges of the
Revolution. In the savage Collot d'Herbois, mauvais comedien,
were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance of a class.
Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed
to the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the
political disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him
from the more tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his
person had embittered his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had
deadened his conscience. For one great excellence of religion--
above all, the Religion of the Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE
first into a virtue, and next into a hope. Take away the
doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of the smile of
a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and
what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--
and what a people? Without patience, art never can be high;
without patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild
throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar
from Penury, and a nation to struggle into Freedom. And woe,
thus unfortified, guideless, and unenduring,--woe to both!
Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however
abandoned, there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and
the true delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad
hearts and dull minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has
some particles of gold, and even the best that come stamped from
the mint of Nature have some adulteration of the dross. But
there are exceptions, though few, to the general rule,--
exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and when good
or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish end.
So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled
up his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only
made him curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a
fairer form or happier fortunes. But, monster though he was,
when his murderous fingers griped the throat of his benefactor,
Time, and that ferment of all evil passions--the Reign of Blood--
had made in the deep hell of his heart a deeper still. Unable to
exercise his calling (for even had he dared to make his name
prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no man--
no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so
great an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a
stake in the well being of society, as the poet and the artist),
his whole intellect, ever restless and unguided, was left to
ponder over the images of guilt most congenial to it. He had no
future but in this life; and how in this life had the men of
power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven? All
that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone
in the pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than
Jean Nicot would despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly
multitudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb
by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side,
pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as
Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a
reversal of his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered
in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no,
THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his
old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had
scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was
as intolerable to him as the memory of insult. But why, now,
should he fly from France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's
gold; he doubted not that he could so master Fillide by her wrath
and jealousy that he could command her acquiescence in all he
proposed. The papers he had purloined--Desmoulins'
correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the fate of the
latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror.
Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before
him. This correspondence, dated shortly before Camille
Desmoulins' death, was written with that careless and daring
imprudence which characterised the spoiled child of Danton. It
spoke openly of designs against Robespierre; it named
confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext to
crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien
the Incorruptible?
Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of
Citizen Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired
confusion, some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-
guard of Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent
with the power that reflects power, mingled with women, young and
fair, and gayly dressed, who had come, upon the rumour that
Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire tenderly of his
health; for Robespierre, strange though it seem, was the idol of
the sex!
Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up
the stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre's apartments
were not spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for
levees so numerous and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and
far from friendly or flattering were the expressions that regaled
his ears.
"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his
obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. "But how could
one expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!"
"Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural
was proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided
that whoever used it should be prosecuted as suspect et
adulateur! At the door of the public administrations and popular
societies was written up, "Ici on s'honore du Citoyen, et on se
tutoye"!!! ("Here they respect the title of Citizen, and they
'thee' and 'thou' one another.") Take away Murder from the
French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy
pardon, but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide
enough for them."
"Ho! Citizen Nicot," cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
bludgeon, "and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that
Hebert's crimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and
thank the Etre Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to
be forgiven."
"A pretty face to look out of the National Window" (The
Guillotine.), said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
"Citizens," said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining
himself so that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, "I
have the honour to inform you that I seek the Representant upon
business of the utmost importance to the public and himself;
and," he added slowly and malignantly, glaring round, "I call all
good citizens to be my witnesses when I shall complain to
Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by some amongst you."
There was in the man's look and his tone of voice so much of deep
and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life
occurred to them, several voices were lifted to assure the
squalid and ragged painter that nothing was farther from their
thoughts than to offer affront to a citizen whose very appearance
proved him to be an exemplary sans-culotte. Nicot received these
apologies in sullen silence, and, folding his arms, leaned
against the wall, waiting in grim patience for his admission.
The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and
three; and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless
whistle of the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next
to Nicot, an old woman and a young virgin were muttering in
earnest whispers, and the atheist painter chuckled inly to
overhear their discourse.
"I assure thee, my dear," said the crone, with a mysterious shake
of head, "that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now
persecute, is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the
elect, of whom Dom Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are
destined to be the two grand prophets, will enjoy eternal life
here, and exterminate all their enemies. There is no doubt of
it,--not the least!"
"How delightful!" said the girl; "ce cher Robespierre!--he does
not look very long-lived either!"
"The greater the miracle," said the old woman. "I am just
eighty-one, and I don't feel a day older since Catherine Theot
promised me I should be one of the elect!"
Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked
loud and eagerly.
"Yes," cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a
butcher, with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; "I am
come to warn Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer
him the Palais National. 'On ne peut etre ami du peuple et
habiter un palais.'" ("No one can be a friend of the people, and
dwell in a palace."--"Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,"
etc., volume ii. page 132.)
"No, indeed," answered a cordonnier; "I like him best in his
little lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US."
Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in
the vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered
faster and louder than the rest.
"But my plan is--"
"Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is--"
"Nonsense!" cried a third. "When Robespierre understands MY new
method of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--"
"Bah! who fears foreign enemies?" interrupted a fourth; "the
enemies to be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off
fifty heads at a time!"
"But MY new Constitution!" exclaimed a fifth.
"MY new Religion, citizen!" murmured, complacently, a sixth.
"Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!" roared forth one of the Jacobin
guard.
And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned
up to the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs
clinking at his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen
and purple with intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a
vulture's. There was a still pause, as all, with pale cheeks,
made way for the relentless Henriot. (Or H_a_nriot. It is
singular how undetermined are not only the characters of the
French Revolution, but even the spelling of their names. With
the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of the
time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre,--
with another Robe_r_spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron
minion of the tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new
movement of respect and agitation and fear swayed the increasing
crowd, as there glided in, with the noiselessness of a shadow, a
smiling, sober citizen, plainly but neatly clad, with a downcast
humble eye. A milder, meeker face no pastoral poet could assign
to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd shrink and hold their
breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that slight form amongst
the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and pressed back on
each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and the
huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question.
On he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we
follow him.
