Imbert de Saint-Amand

“ Listen to Billaud-Varennes at the Jacobins: "They embrace each other at the Assembly," he exclaims; "it is the kiss of Judas, it is the kiss of Charles IX., extending his hand to Coligny. They were embracing like this while the King was preparing for flight on October 6. They were embracing like this before the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars. They embrace, but are the court conspiracies coming to an end? Have our enemies ceased their advance against our frontiers? Is Lafayette the less a traitor?" And thereupon the cry broke out: "Pétion or death!" ”

“ Madame Campan summoned the valet-de-chambre, who went into the corridor; presently the noise of two men fighting reached the ears of Marie Antoinette. "What a position!" cried the unfortunate Queen. "Insults by day and assassins by night!" The valet cried: "Madame, it is a scoundrel whom I know; I am holding him."—"Let him go," said the Queen. "Open the door for him; he came to assassinate me; he will be carried in triumph by the Jacobins to-morrow."
People were constantly saying that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine was getting ready to march against the palace. ”

“ Everywhere people are laughing, drinking, killing. The royal wine runs in streams. Torrents of wine, torrents of blood. The apartments, the staircase, the vestibule, are crimson pools. Disfigured corpses, pictures thrust through with pikes, musicians' stands thrown on the altar, the organ dismounted, broken,—that is how the chapel looks. But to rob and murder is not enough: they will kindle a conflagration. It devours the stables of the mounted guards, all the buildings in the courts, the house of the governor of the palace: eighteen hundred yards of barracks, huts, and houses. ”

“ Yes, people complain, grow angry, suffer, but they are not bored. How many incidents, episodes, emotions, there are in this strange tragi-comedy! Everywhere there is something to be seen; in the Assembly, the clubs, the public places, the promenades, streets, cafés, and theatres. Brawls and discussions are heard on every side. If by chance a salon is still open, disputes go on there as they would at a club. What quarrels take place in the cafés! Men stand on chairs and tables to spout. And what dissensions in the theatres! The actors meddle with politics as well as the spectators. ”

“ While Louis XVI. assisted unmoved, not merely like Charles V. at his own obsequies, but at those of royalty, the blood of Maria Theresa was boiling in the veins of Marie Antoinette. The scenes she had witnessed sometimes extorted sobs and cries of anguish from her. Her pride revolted at seeing the royal mantle, crown, and sceptre dragged through the mire. She wanted to struggle to the last, to hope against all hope, to cling to the last chances of safety like a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship. Who could say? She might find defenders where she least expected them. ”

“ Why have you quitted these honest people? What have you come to do in the midst of these ferocious Jacobins, who flatter you to-day and will assassinate you to-morrow? Do you fancy that Marie Antoinette is the only woman who will be insulted, calumniated, and betrayed? Why do you seat at your hospitable table this livid-faced Robespierre, who to-day, perhaps, will address you a madrigal, and to-morrow send you to the scaffold? ”

“ The wave of anarchy constantly rose higher, but the optimists, sheltering themselves, like Pétion, in a beatific calm, obstinately closed their eyes and would not see it. Abroad and at home there was such a series of shocks and agitations, of struggles and emotions, perils and troubles; things hurried on so fast, and the scenes of the drama were so varied and so violent, that what happened to-day was forgotten by the morrow. The noise of the fête of the Swiss of Chateauvieux had hardly ceased when the shouts of the multitude were heard saluting Louis XVI., who had just declared war on Austria. ”

“ Led by her, Roland no longer dared entertain a generous thought. He returned shamefaced to the Ministry of the Interior if he had felt a humane sentiment while at the Tuileries. It is sad to find tenderness and pity in the heart of a man, Dumouriez, and in the heart of a woman, Madame Roland, nothing but malevolence and hatred. Dumouriez wanted to put out the fire; Madame Roland, to stir it up. Dumouriez sincerely desired the King's safety; Madame Roland swore that he should perish. If a germ of pity woke to life in the hearts of the ministers, Madame Roland hastened to stifle it. ”

“ Why is it so slow in bringing down the sword of the law upon the heads of the guilty? ... Do the enemies of the country imagine that the men of July 14 are sleeping? If they appear to be so, their awakening will be terrible.... There is no time to dissimulate; the hour is come, blood will flow, and the tree of Liberty we are about to plant will flourish in peace." The applause from the galleries redoubles. Huguenin excites himself to fury: "The image of the country," he shouts, "is the sole divinity which it shall be permitted to adore. ”

“ The Tuileries, menaced by the neighboring lanes of the Carrousel and the Palais Royal, resembles a besieged fortress. The Revolution daily augments its trenches and parallels around the sanctuary of the monarchy. Its barracks are the faubourgs; its soldiers, red-bonneted pikemen. Louis XVI. in his palace is like a general-in-chief in a stronghold, who should have voluntarily dampened his powder, spiked his cannon, and torn his flags. He no longer inspires his troops with confidence. ”

“ Rather than obey their tyrants, than descend from the bar and go out of the Assembly like a timid flock about to be branded by the butcher, why did they not do justice to themselves by falling on the monsters to annihilate them rather than be sentenced by them?" It is not her friends alone whom her anger will lash, but the sovereign people, the people once so flattered, whom she will pursue with her anathemas. ”

“ The charming puritan does not commit great faults, but she has astonishing licenses of thought and speech. For her, Louvet's Faublas is "one of those charming romances known to persons of taste, in which the graces of imagination ally themselves to the tone of philosophy." Is not this woman, who begins her life like a saint and ends it as a pupil of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the symbol of that troubled eighteenth century which opened in fidelity to religious faith and closed in the depths of the abyss of incredulity? ”

“ He had enkindled in the soul of his sovereign, Gustavus III., the same chivalrous sentiment which animated his own, and was impatiently awaiting the time when he could hasten to the aid of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette under the Swedish flag. His dearest ambition was to draw his sword in the Queen's defence. From the Varennes journey up to the day of Marie Antoinette's execution, he had but one thought: to rescue the woman for whom he would willingly have shed the last drop of his blood. This fixed idea has left its trace on every line of his journal. ”

“ Cléry heard Danjou expostulating the crowd in words like these: "Antoinette's head does not belong to you; the departments have their rights in it also. France has confided these great criminals to the care of Paris; and it is your business to assist us in guarding them until national justice shall avenge the people." Then, addressing himself to these cannibals as if they were heroes whose courage and exploits he praised, he added, in speaking of the profaned corpse of the Princess de Lamballe: "The remains you have there are the property of all. Do they not belong to all Paris? ”

“ There are places which, by the very souvenirs they evoke, seem fatal and accursed. Such was the dungeon that was to serve as a prison for Louis XVI. and his family. The great tower for which Marie Antoinette had felt a nameless instinctive repugnance in the happiest days of her reign, arose at the extremity of Paris like a gigantic phantom, and recalled in a sinister fashion the tragedies of the Middle Ages and the sombre legends of the Templars. ”

“ Nothing but an ideal of humility could have appeased the interior revolts of this soul of fire. To such a woman, what is lacking is heaven. Earth, no matter what happens, can give her nothing but deceptions. The only moment of her life when she felt herself really happy was that when she enjoyed the supreme good, peace of heart. Of all parts of her Memoirs, the most pure and touching are those she devotes to her recollections of the convent. ”

“ And yet, Marie Antoinette is majestic still. Even in this horrible scene, in presence of these drunken women and ragged suburbans, she does not lose that gift of pleasing which is her special dower. At a distance they curse her; but when they come near they are subjugated by her spell. Her most ferocious enemies are touched in their own despite. A young girl had just called her "Autrichienné." "You call me an Austrian woman," replied she, "but I am the wife of the King of France, I am the mother of the Dauphin; I am a Frenchwoman by my sentiments as wife and mother. ”

“ Suspicion, hatred, rancor, wrath, were unchained in a fury that bordered on delirium. Right and left emulated each other in outrages and invectives. Lafayette's appearance and the fear of a foreign invasion had disturbed all minds. The National Assembly, sitting both day and night, was like an arena of gladiators fighting without truce or pity. It was this moment which the good Abbé Lamourette chose for delivering his most touching sermon from the tribune.
During the session of July 7, Brissot was about to ascend the tribune and propose new measures of public safety. ”

“ In vain has Lamartine, the founder of the Second Republic, exclaimed in a burst of noble wrath: "Has human speech an execration, an anathema, which is equal to the horror these crimes of cannibals inspire in me, as in all civilized men?" In vain have the most celebrated historians of democracy, Edgar Quinet and Michelet, expressed in eloquent terms their indignation against these crimes. In vain has M. Louis Blanc said: "Every murder is a suicide. In the victim the body alone is killed; but what is killed in the murderer is the soul." ”

“ Nothing but finesse was opposed to the impetuous attacks of the Jacobins. All was dissimulation; conversations, writings, measures; authority acted only by crooked ways. With a thousand means of safety, people were lost because they pushed prudence to excess, and extreme prudence always degenerates into despicable means. I was in every great crisis of the Revolution, and I have always seen the same faults produce the same misfortunes. It is the same thing in revolution as in war; no matter how prudent a general may be, he must take some risk. ”

“ His mind and his person have so many charms! Poor Roland! You think that your better half is solely occupied with your ministry. Alas! this learned woman has other thoughts in her head. Your position as a minister has not augmented your prestige in the region of sentiment. Though you lord it in the Hotel Calonne, yet, in spite of the throng of petitioners and flatterers who surround you, you will never be a Lovelace, and your romantic spouse will not allow herself to be affected by your appearance, like that of a Quaker in Sunday clothes. ”

“ He was going to make a coup d'état, not in deeds, but in words, forgetting that the Revolution neither esteems nor fears anything but force. As M. de Larmartime has said: "One gets from factions only what one snatches." Instead of striking, Lafayette was going to speak and write. The Jacobins might have feared his sword; they despised his words and pen. But though it was not very wise, the noble audacity with which the hero of America came spontaneously to throw himself into the heat of the struggle and utter his protest in the name of right and honor, was none the less an act of courage. ”

“ At every epoch of history there are certain women who become as it were living symbols, and sum up in their own persons the passions, prejudices, and illusions of their time. They reflect at once its vices and its virtues, its qualities and its defects. Such was Madame Roland. All the distinctive characteristics of the close of the eighteenth century are resumed in her: ardent enthusiasm, generous ideals, aspiration towards progress, passion for liberty, heroic courage in view of persecution, captivity, and death ”

“ Supposing that, instead of being merely an insignificant commoner, Madame Roland had been born in the ranks of aristocracy, had enjoyed the right of sitting down in the presence of Their Majesties at Versailles, and had shone at the familiar entertainments of the Trianon, she would doubtless have shared the sentiments and ideas of the women of the old régime, and, like the Princess de Lamballe or the Duchess de Polignac, have shed tears of compassion over the Queen's misfortunes. Fate, in placing her in a subordinate position, made her an enemy and a rebel. ”

“ An inveterate fatality will pursue him as it had done the unfortunate sovereign of whom he had been the chevalier. He will perish in a riot at Stockholm, June 20, 1810, at the time of the obsequies of the Prince Royal. Struck down by fists and walking-sticks, his hair pulled out, his clothes torn to rags, he will be dragged about half-naked, rolled underfoot, assassinated by a maddened populace. ”

“ The hour was coming when the Girondins and their heroine would repent of the means they had employed to overset the throne. This was when the same means were employed against them, when they recognized their own weapons in the wounds they received. Then, when they had no more interest in keeping silence, they sought to escape a complicity that gained them nothing. Instead of the luminous heights which in their golden dreams they had aspired to gain, they fell, crushed and overwhelmed, into a dismal gulf, full of tears and blood. How bitter then were their recriminations against men and things! ”

“ Read the Memoirs of Louvet, Buzot, Barbaroux, Pétion, and Madame Roland, and you will see to what extremes of bitterness the language of deceived ambition can go. They are paroxysms of rage, howls of anger, shrieks of despair. Consider the difference between philosophy and religion! The philosophers curse, and the Christian pardons. Yes, as Edgar Quinet has said, "Louis XVI. alone speaks of forgiveness on that scaffold to which the others were to bring thoughts of vengeance and despair. ”

“ Madame Roland admired the author of Faublas, now become the editor-in-chief of the Sentinelle; but among her intimates there was a man whom she admired much more. This was Buzot. With what complacency she draws in her Memoirs the portrait of this man "of an elevated character, a haughty spirit, and a vehement courage, sensitive, ardent, melancholy; an impassioned lover of nature, nourishing his imagination with all the charms she has to offer, and his soul with the principles of the most touching philosophy; he seems formed to enjoy and to procure domestic happiness ”

“ The commoner who had been so jealous of the Queen, can no longer complain. If the lives of the two women have been different, they will at least have the same death; and the doer of the noble deeds of the régime of equality, the headsman, will make no distinction between the two victims, between the veritable sovereign, the Queen of France and Navarre, and the sovereign of a day, whom Père Duchesne, as insolent to one as to the other, will no longer speak of except under the sobriquet of Queen Coco. ”

“ Gorged with wine mingled with gunpowder, intoxicated with the fumes and reek of carnage, the assassins experienced a devouring, inextinguishable thirst for blood which nothing could quench. More blood, and yet more blood! And where can it now be found? The prisons are empty. There are no more nobles, no more priests, to put to death. Very well! for lack of anything better, they will go to an asylum for the poor, the sick, and the insane ”