He had free access to the office of Fouquier Tin-ville, the public accuser, where lay the box of papers on which were inscribed the names of every prisoner in Paris. These papers were used to furnish the executions of the day, which often reached to the number of sixty or eighty, and the spectacle of which constituted the chief amusement of the people of Paris. The selection of the victims was generally made with little choice, the names that were uppermost being first taken. Jerome was acquainted with the fatal box: during six months he did not once fail to enter the office every evening, and, unobserved, to
FOR SAVING MADAME DE CUSTINE.37
place the paper on which was inscribed the name of my mother at the bottom of the box, or, at least, to assure himself that it remained there. "When fresh papers were put in, they were, by a species of distributive justice, placed undermost, so that each name should come in its turn. It was the business of Jerome constantly to search out my mother's, and restore it to the bottom place.
I am now only repeating what I have myself often heard Jerome relate. He has told me that, at night, when every one had retired, he has often returned to the office, under the fear that some one might at the last moment have disturbed the order of the papers — that order on which the life of my mother entirely depended. In fact on one occasion her name appeared at the top of the pile ; Jerome shuddered, and again placed it under the others.
Neither I nor the friends who listened to this fearful recital dared to ask Jerome the names of the victims whose death he had hastened in my mother's favour. The latter knew nothing, until after her deliverance from prison, of the stratagem that had saved her life.
When the day of the 9th Thermidor arrived, the prisons were found to be almost emptied; there remained only three sheets in the box of Foucµùer Tim`ille, and it was not likely that many would be added; the bloody spectacles of the Place de la Revolution began to weary the public; and the project of Robespierre and his confidential counsellors was to make an end of the families of the old regime, by commanding a general massacre in the interior of the prisons.
38 END OF THE REIGN OF TEEKOE.
My mother, who contemplated death on the scaffold with such high resolution, has often told me that she felt her courage sink at the idea of being murdered in this manner.
During the last weeks of the Reign of Terror, the old keepers of the Carmelite prison had been replaced by the more ferocious men who were destined to aid in effecting the secret executions. They did not conceal from their victims the plan formed against them ; the rules of the prison were made more severe; visitors were no longer admitted; every distant sound the prisoners caught seemed to them the signal of carnage; every night appeared to them the last.
This agony of suspense was relieved the very day that Robespierre fell.
Some who have dealt in over-refined subtleties, in reviewing the history of the Reign of Terror, pretend that Robespierre only fell because he was better than his opponents.
It is true that his accomplices did not become his enemies, until they trembled for their own lives ; but in saving themselves they saved France, which would have become a den of wild beasts had Robespierre's plans been carried out. The revolution of the 9th Thermidor was, it is also true, the revolt of a banditti; but surely the fact of their captain having fallen a victim to their conspiracy, does not render him any the worthier character. If misfortune served to justify crime, what would become of the principle of conscience ? Equity would perish under the influence of a false generosity—a most dangerous sentiment, for it seduces noble minds, and causes them
CHARACTER OF ROBESriEKRE.39
to forget that a good man should prefer justice and truth to every other consideration.
It has been said that Robespierre was not naturally cruel. `\Yhat of that ? He was one in whom envy had become omnipotent. Envy, nursed and fed by the well-merited humiliations that this man had endured, under the state of society which preceded the revolution, had suggested to him the idea of a revenge so atrocious, that the meanness of his soul and the hardness of his heart scarcely suffice to persuade us that he was capable of realising it. To write in blood, to calculate by heads, such were the processes of political arithmetic to which France submitted under the government of Robespierre. She does yet worse in the present day — she listens to those who would justify him.
To accept as an excuse for murder, that which renders it the more odious, the sang froid and the ulterior plans of the murderer, is to contribute to one of the most crying evils of our age, the perversion of human judgment. The men of the present day, in the decisions dictated by their false sensibility, proceed with an impartiality that annihilates the principles of good and evil; to arrange matters upon earth to their own liking, they have abolished, at one blow, heaven and hell.
Such are the sophisms to which the pretended amelioration of our manners leads—an amelioration which is nothing more than a supreme moral indifference, a deeply-rooted religious incredulity, and an ever-increasing avidity for sensual gratifications ; but patience,—the world has ere now recovered from a yet more hopeless state.
40STATE OF THE PRISONS.
Two days after the 9th Thermidor, the greater number of the prisons of Paris were empty. Madame de Beaidiarnais, through her connection with Tallien, came out in triumph; Mesdames d'Aiguillon and de Lameth were also speedily liberated. My mother was almost the only one left in the Carmelite prison. She beheld her noble companions in misfortune give place to the terrorists, who, after the political revolution that had been effected, daily changed places with their victims. All the friends and relatives of my mother were dispersed; no one thought of her. Jerome, proscribed, in turn, as a friend of Bobespierre, was obliged to conceal himself and could not aid her. For two months she remained thus abandoned, under a desolation of feeling, that, she has often told me, was more difficult to endure than the previous more immediate sense of peril.
The struggle of parties continued; the government was still in danger of falling again into the hands of the Jacobins. But for the couraíre of Boissy-d'Anglas, the murder of Feraud had beeome the signal for a second Iìeign of Terror, more terrible than the first. My mother knew all this ; my illness also, though she did not know its extent, added to her griefs.
At length Nanette, having saved my life by her careful nursing, set seriously about rescuing that of her mistress. She went to the house of one Dyle, a manufacturer of china, in order to consult with about fifty workmen of our province, who were then employed by this rich individual, and who had formerly worked at a porcelain manufactory founded by my grandfather at Niderviller, at the foot of the Vosges,
PETITION OF NANETTE.41
and subsequently confiscated with his other property.
It was to these men, among whom was Malriat her father, that Nanette applied, urging them to interest themselves in the fate of their former mistress.
They eagerly signed a petition, framed by Nanette, who both spoke and wrote the German-French of Lorraine. This document she herself earned to Legendre, formerly a butcher, and then president of the bureau to which petitions in favour of prisoners were addressed. The paper of Nanette was received and thrown aside, among a multitude of similar petitions.
One evening, three young persons, connected with Legendre, entered the bureau, rather heated with wine, and amused themselves with chasing each other over the tables, and with other similar freaks. In the midst of this sport, some of the surrounding papers were disturbed; one fell, and was picked up by a member of the party. " What have you there ? " asked the others.