Part 2 — XV THE FALL OF THE TERROR

On the 9th of Thermidor Dossonville, who had long foreseen the inevitable conflict of Robespierre and the Convention, resolved on another rapid shift, and, appearing in the Rue Maugout, denounced Robespierre and the Jacobins in such unmeasured terms that he not only sent his listeners galloping off to denounce him, but to his amazement on turning about, found himself deserted even by Sans-Chagrin and Le Corbeau.

According to his custom, he visited the Conciergerie to inspect the prisoners. Already in the streets was the awakening of the great conflict. In the crowds the Jacobins alone raised their voices in furious boasting; but silence predominated, and the silence told of anger and condemnation.

In the first division he found no familiar face among the twenty-odd prisoners until, on the point of turning away, he discovered the abject form of Cramoisin. The downfall of the Terrorists appeared to him as a favorable presage.

He passed to the second division; there the crowd was thicker and more turbulent. Over the uneven field of bobbing heads he saw the judges on the bench, the listless jury, joking among themselves, and the abhorrent figure of Fouquier; while to the right, packed together on the benches, were the score of prisoners who waited, without hope, the mockery of a trial.

Dossonville, taking his place in the stream of those who constantly pressed to the front seeking the face of relative or friend, yielded good-humoredly the right of way to those who sought in sorrow. After some delay he reached the front rank. There a cry was torn from him:

"Oh, mon Dieu!"

At the first glance he had seen Nicole. Drawn by some subtle intelligence, she raised her eyes and saw him.

"What a fatality!" he cried to himself. "She herself has done this!"

A sudden anger filled him, of revolt and resentment against the stubborn sacrifice of this frail girl who had defeated him at the very last. His glance of reproach she met with one of content, which said: "You see, it is as I said."

She smiled seriously, a little sadly, as one who, though not regretting the decision, had not foreseen the cost.

A hand swept him back as others pressed fervently forward. He heard a mother's voice cry at his side:

"They have taken my child, my son."

His glance following dumbly the outstretched hands, he beheld at the side of Nicole the figure of a boy, who searched the crowd with frightened face. The buzz of voices rose about, the mother's mingling with the crowd.

"But it's a mistake. He's sixteen."

"Then don't worry, they can't touch him!"

"Aye, he's safe!"

"They arrested him for his brother, who's twenty-six."

"Calm yourself, la petite mère, any one can see he's a boy."

"They'll release him?"

"Of course—he's under age."

"Aye, any one can see that."

Dossonville but half heard them. He was crushed by the cruel turn of fate that had claimed her at the last, when the morrow would mean life and security. His eyes, yet refusing to believe, had never left Nicole's face. She was pale; but the pallor was of serenity, and gave to her person a certain distinction that seemed to raise her above her class. From time to time a certain pensiveness, whether of melancholy or of regret, gathered in her eyes. She was looking with womanly revolt below her, where, on a litter, exposed to all eyes, lay the unconscious form of a woman. The audience, rebelling against such cruelty, began to murmur:

"Remove her!"

"Take her out!"

"Send her to the hospital!"

The cry was taken up, passing from a murmur in the front ranks to volume and distinctness as it rolled back. The protest became so insistent that several of the jury began to cast anxious glances at the audience, and a judge motioned to Fouquier. There was an expectant lull; but Fouquier cried, with a sneer:

"She'll revive. Call the roll!"

The storm that had subsided in anticipation burst forth anew.

"No! No!"

"Remove her!"

"Justice!"

"Outrage!"

Near Dossonville a blacksmith, with leather apron, was shouting:

"To the hospital!"

A red-haired man in a baker's cap, with clenched fists, added:

"Tyrant!"

Fresh arrivals, bringing tidings of uprisings throughout the city, gave new courage to the protests. Fouquier, impressed at last by the outbursts, rose sullenly and commanded:

"Bear the woman to the witness-room, but the instant she revives bring her back."

The roll-call was begun—the simple attestation of individuality that had replaced the pleas of advocates and the taking of testimony. Encouraged by its first success, the audience began to murmur:

"They say the Quartier St. Antoine is in revolt against Robespierre."

"The Convention will surely declare him under arrest."

"If he falls, the executions will stop."

"I say the trial ought to stop until we see."

"Yes, postpone the trial."

"What! There are traitors, then, in the room!" cried Fouquier, who, the better to see, had mounted a step. Before his threatening glance the movement of clemency died away. Again was heard the monotonous voice of the clerk intoning the roll and the listless responses of the accused. In the stand one of the jury impatiently pulled out a watch, another stifled a yawn.

All at once there was a craning of heads. An interruption had come; the voice of the young boy was protesting:

"Citoyen, the accusation is for my brother. I am not twenty-six. I have done nothing against the Republic. Citoyen, I am sixteen. I have my papers to prove it."

A greffier nodded his head in confirmation, and extended a handful of papers toward the judge, saying:

"Citoyen, he speaks the truth."

Murmurs ran through the crowd:

"It's a mistake!"

"He's a child!"

"Release him!"

On the judges' bench the figure of Dumas arose.

"And if you are only sixteen," he cried brutally, "in the matter of crime you are fully eighty." Then, with a furious gesture, he added: "Pass on, and make haste!"

The murmur of revolt from the audience was overwhelmed in a sudden roar of astonishment. Dumas had been arrested! The counter-revolution had come! Those who had not seen the arrest cried:

"But what has happened?"

"Tell us! Tell us!"

Others answered:

"Dumas!"

"Arrested!"

"The counter-revolution has come!"

A voice cried:

"The quartiers are in arms!"

"True?"

"The tocsin is ringing!"

"They'll make an end of Robespierre?"

"Impossible!"

"It's true! Haven't they arrested Dumas?"

"Suspend the trial!"

"Mercy! Clemency!"

All eyes turned to Fouquier, who answered contemptuously and stubbornly:

"Justice must take its course!"

At Dossonville's side the blacksmith, with the sudden frenzy of prophecy, cried:

"Fouquier, beware! The guillotine is waiting for you!"

While with brawny shoulders he wriggled free of the willing crowd, Dossonville looked for the hundredth time at Nicole. She had not abandoned her calm; only a slight frown told of the havoc the sudden opening and closing of the gates of hope played in her soul.

Another judge replaced Dumas. The roll-call was hurried on. Twice Fouquier sent a physician to report the condition of the woman in the witness-room. A flutter of the eyelids would have meant death. She remained in a stupor, and was at last sent to the hospital. The roll-call ended. The jury, after the farce of declaring that they had heard sufficient evidence, retired to deliberate upon the guilt of the twenty-six. They returned shortly. It was late, and many suffered from the postponement of the luncheon-hour. One man acquitted—Aviot Turot, laborer.

A shudder passed through the body of Dossonville, and a groan escaped his lips. The fatal, inevitable word "Guilty" overwhelmed him. Nicole heard it with a smile—sad, yet satisfied.

Another stir, and a buzz of comments rose as the executioner entered and began to converse with Fouquier. Those in front, who could hear, called back:

"Sanson is remonstrating."

"Sanson wants the execution deferred."

"He says the city is rising."

A last time Fouquier refused to budge, and, crossing his arms, reiterated bluntly, to be heard by all:

"No, no! I say no! Justice must take its course."

The condemned, who had paused as they had risen trembling with hope, filed out, while the crowd in the court-room surged forth to meet the tumbrels.

Dossonville, using his privilege of agent de sûreté, entered the prison, seeking Nicole in the crowd of prisoners massed in the outer hall; threading through anxious groups, who whispered:

"You saw Dumas arrested?"

"They say there is a revolt against Robespierre."

"The people seemed to sympathize with us."

Others, scorning to hang their hopes on desperate chances, waited stoically or reverently the summons to the tumbrels. A young aristocrat was whistling defiantly:

In another group, guarding their enmity to the end, two brothers of the people retorted with the "Marseillaise."

Two women near Dossonville were chatting gaily:

"I am so pale those cursed revolutionists will think that I am afraid."

"You must not give them that satisfaction."

"I do seem pale, then?"

"Yes."

"Ah, then I must rouge!"

Dossonville examined the figure of the graceful woman, who was gaily daubing her cheeks, and recognized the famous Duchess of M——. At this moment, in the obscurity of the arches, he discovered at last the blue dress and golden hair of Nicole.

"Oh, it is you," she cried joyfully. "I had hoped you could see me."

"Nicole," he said bitterly, "this is your doing."

Her manner changed; she grew serious.

"My friend," she said, "I have but done what I wished. I am happy." She held up her finger with Barabant's ring on it. "You see, I am his wife, and I have saved him."

The outward movement toward the tumbrels had begun. From the doorway the guards repeated:

"Hurry up, there; hurry up, you cursed aristocrats!"

Dossonville kissed her with more feeling than he had believed possible, and said, through the tears that clouded his eyes, "I would have saved you."

"Do not grieve," she said, touched by his sorrow. She took her scarf and put it into his hand, saying: "Give it to him. Tell him that I am happy—that it is best so. Adieu!"

Then, as though fearing to lose her self-control, she pressed his hand and hurried away.

Dossonville, passing out by a side entrance, hastened to meet the slow procession across the river. The city was in uproar; over the roofs the bells were crying the civil strife, while every street seemed to give forth the thunder of drums. Masses of volunteers, without formation or leader, swept the boulevards, while the air was charged with the conflict of shouts:

"Vive la Commune!"

"À bas les Jacobins!"

"Vive Robespierre!"

"Robespierre à la Guillotine!"

The chariots crossed from the gates of the Conciergerie, acclaimed by the hoots and jeers of the daily hordes of mad women who gathered to shriek their foul abuse and frantic revilings. But as the tumbrels passed the river the insults ceased, replaced by murmurs of sympathy.

In the third chariot Dossonville found Nicole. The duchess, with her brilliant cheeks, was on the same bench, and between the two women the boy, his hand in Nicole's.

From the direction of the Convention came wild rumors of Robespierre's defeat. The crowd, increasing, began to cry:

"Enough blood!"

"No more blood!"

"Pity on the condemned!"

Dossonville, hardly daring to hope, noticed that Sanson examined the crowd anxiously—a not unfriendly glance. The demonstration continued, growing bolder, a hundred voices insisting:

"Enough blood!"

"No more victims!"

"Stop the massacre!"

Among the prisoners several, unable to resist the sudden leap of hope to their eyes, stretched out their hands, crying:

"We are innocent!"

In the first chariot Cramoisin, in a frenzy, was shouting:

"Citoyens, do not mistake me. I am a republican. Vive la République! Save me, at least!"

Nicole was speaking to the boy; for the new vision of life had made him tremble. Amid the leaping floods of humanity she remained calm, a certain maternal sweetness and repose enveloping her as she sought to fortify the resolution of her companion. To Dossonville, through the rising storm of sound and swaying of bodies, a lull of peace seemed to surround her and to remove her from the frenzy.

Again the revolt rose in him that she should die thus. Perceiving all at once that the crowd had pressed about the carts until their progress was impeded, he flung himself into the swirl, exhorting and encouraging. The cries redoubled, becoming more threatening:

"Save them!"

"Enough butchery!"

"On, comrades! Save them!"

"Aye, deliver them!"

"Stop the chariots!"

"Unhitch the horses! Unhitch the horses!"

At this last, the cry of Dossonville, the multitude, with a shriek of triumph, surged up against the tumbrels. A hundred hands checked the horses, reaching out for the buckles of the harness, while a dozen voices cried:

"Courage! We'll release you!"

Already the prisoners exclaimed joyfully, already Dossonville stretched out his arms to Nicole, when a cry of fear and despair burst from the rescuers, voiced in the dreaded name:

"Henriot! Henriot!"

Up the street, at the head of his dragoons, sabres flashing in the air, break-a-neck came the wild figure of the Jacobin.

The surge of the fleeing crowd held Dossonville a moment against the tumbrel, where he heard through the confusion a cry of despair from the boy, "I could have borne anything but hope!" Then, as Dossonville was swept away, he saw the child's head fall upon the shoulder of Nicole. The next moment he was buffeted and hurled aside; then a horse struck him and flung him to the ground, where a dozen feet trampled him. Stunned, covered with dirt, and bleeding, he stumbled to his feet. The tumbrels, surrounded by cavalry, were disappearing in the distance, moving swiftly. He ran after them, shaking his helpless fist, and as he turned the corner, a groan burst from him. Over the heads of the people the twin shafts of the guillotine sprang into view.

Numb and half unconscious, seeing only, in the third cart, the distant blot of blue, he limped on, following as best he could into the square. He fought his way to the front, beside the cordon of naked swords that girdled the scaffold, repeating to himself a hundred times:

"I must not stay! I will not stay!"

But still the pitiful hope of a deliverance held him there, to snatch at every message of the air that floated over the distracted city. One after another the condemned mounted the steps and passed across the stage like phantoms, hurried on by the remorseless Jacobin, while those about him cried:

"Oh, for two hours—for one!"

"Cursed Henriot, we could have saved them!"

"Why does the Convention delay?"

"Ah, the monster! He is afraid to lose a single one!"

She came at last, a patch of blue, a white face against the stretch of heads. She saw him not at all, nor any one. The maternal instinct of the woman that had raised her above her companions on the journey was gone, and with it all consciousness of the world and the sorrows and the responsibilities which had so transformed her. Only once did she notice her surroundings, when the bourreau, with impatient hand, bared her throat. Then for a moment her hands went instinctively to cover herself from the multitude. Almost immediately her face became grave and reverent. The assistants advanced to take her to the guillotine. Then with a rapid motion she made the sign of the cross, raising her eyes to the deep sky, as though already she saw beyond the grave,—the timid question of a child who hesitates in wonder before the incomprehensible.

With a sob, Dossonville turned, shrinking from the sight of the mutilating knife, and waited with averted face.

There was a vast moment, then a shock of steel, and a woman who had seen his tears whispered:

"It is over!"

Then, fleeing from the inexorable machine, he plunged, weeping, through the crowd, stumbling aimlessly on into the frantic city, where, too late, every street was echoing to the fear-releasing shrieks of rejoicing:

"Robespierre is fallen!"

"The Terror is ended!"