Camille Desmoulins

“ When Camille Desmoulins, long distinguished among the republicans by zeal and ability, dared to raise his eloquent voice against the Reign of Terror, and to point out the close analogy between the government which then oppressed France and the government of the worst of the Cæsars, Barère rose to complain of the weak compassion which tried to revive the hopes of the aristocracy. "Whoever," he said, "is nobly born is a man to be suspected. Every priest, every frequenter of the old court, every lawyer, every banker, is a man to be suspected. ”

“ Other troops, then? Rumour declares, and is verified, that Necker, people's minister, is dismissed. "To arms!" cries Camille Desmoulins, and innumerable voices yell responsive. Chaos comes. The Electoral Club, however, declares itself a provisional municipality, sends out parties to keep order in the streets that night, enroll a militia, with arms collected where one may. Better to name it National Guard! And while the crisis is going on, Mirabeau is away, sad at heart for the dying, crabbed old father whom he loved. ”

“ Against the King! [The Crowd shouts: "Against the King!"] Look at me, spies! You are hidden here, I know. It is I, Camille Desmoulins, who incite Paris to revolt! I fear nothing: no matter what happens, they will never catch me alive. [He displays a pistol which he has taken from his pocket.] The only catastrophe I fear is to see France enslaved! But we shan't see that! It will be free with us, or die with us. Yes, like Virginius we will stab her with our own hands, rather than allow her to be violated by tyrants. ”

“ Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech: Manuel, Tallien and Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mercier, Louvet of Faublas; Clootz Speaker of Mankind; Collot d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags; Fabre d'Églantine, speculative Pamphleteer; Legendre, the solid Butcher; nay Marat, though rural France can hardly believe it, or even believe that there is a Marat, except in print. Of Minister Danton, who will lay down his Ministry for a Membership, we need not speak. Paris is fervent; nor is the Country wanting to itself. ”

“ Barabant's face flushed with such a sudden delight that the other laughingly drew his arm into his and exclaimed:
"Come, I see how it is. Camille Desmoulins is only twenty-nine. It is the age for the youngsters. Only—" He stopped suddenly. "There are many degrees of Republicans nowadays. [Pg 28] Does your eloquence run in the line of our valiant radical Marat, or Danton and Desmoulins, or are we of the school of Condorcet and Roland?"
"I am Girondin," Barabant answered. ”

“ One day Deforgues came to join him, he who had conspired with Morris. Instead of receiving for his crime diplomatic security in America he found himself beside his victim. Perhaps if Deforgues and Paine had known each other's language a confession might have passed There were horrors on horrors. Paine's old friend, Hérault de Séchelles, was imprisoned for having humanely concealed in his house a poor officer who was hunted by the police; he parted from Paine for the scaffold. So also he parted from the brilliant Camille Desmoulins, and the fine dreamer, Anacharsis Clootz. ”

“ He was destined by his family for the church, but entered business, and became a partner in a firm at Lyons for which he travelled in the Levant, in Italy, Spain and Portugal. He was in Paris in 1789, and entered into relations with Marat, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre. On his return to Lyons, Chalier was the first to be named member of the municipal bureau. He organized the national guard, applied the civil constitution of the clergy, and regulated the finances of the city so as to tax the rich heavily and spare the poor. ”

“ He declared to us that last night, between the hours of six and seven, as he WAS in the room of Arthur Dillon, having taken the aforesaid Dillon to one side, told him that it was necessary to resist oppression, that the good men detained in the Luxembourg and other prisons ought to join forces; that Desmoulins' wife had placed a thousand écus at his disposal, in order to arouse the people in the neighborhood of the Revolutionary Tribunal—"
CAMILLE [furiously] . The scoundrels! They are not satisfied with murdering me! They are trying to murder my wife! ”

“ Hérault. My friends, I do not approve of your plans, but if you have made up your minds, you must, of course, have every chance in your favor. If we intend to start warfare, Desmoulins' pen—forgive me, Camille!—is not enough. The people do not read. The success of the Vieux Cordelier misleads you; it does not reach the people; it has quite another public. You know very well, Camille: you complained that one number was sold at twenty sous. Aristocrats like us buy it. The people know only what the club orators tell them, and they are not on your side. ”

“ Desèze, Pleader, for Louis, iii. 95, 104.
Deshuttes, massacred, October Fifth, i. 280.
Desilles, Captain, in Nanci, ii. 95.
Deslons, Captain, at Varennes, ii. 183; would liberate the King, 184.
Desmoulins, Camille, notice of, i. 136; in arms at Café de Foy, 175; Editor, his title, 236; on Insurrection of Women, 252; in Cordeliers Club, ii. 33; and Brissot, 246; in National Convention, iii. 49; on Sansculottism, 143; on plots, 155; suspect, 250; for a committee of mercy, 252; ridicules law of the suspect, 252; his Journal, 253; his wife, 256 ”

“ Desmoulins none the less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his pension. Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called his "seraglio." It was anything but a happy family. He summed up their relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. "Williams," he says, "hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them." ”

“ They went to New York and settled down quietly in a flat, taking care to keep their presence a secret from Norman de Vere; but his mother was duly informed, and by collusion with her, Camille had many opportunities of seeing her beloved, herself unseen, and every furtive glance at the pale, stern, yet darkly handsome face only deepened Camille’s passion for her husband. She would have given all her wealth now—all the world, if it had been hers to bestow—for the love she had prized so lightly when it was all her own. ”

“ When the ferryman had deposited Camille safely on terra firma, the coachman, who had been rescued by a peasant, helped him to search for the body of Madame des Arcis. It was found on the following morning, near the bank.
The discovery of the body of Madame des Arcis.
VI.
Camille's grief at her mother's loss was terrible to witness. She ran hither and thither, uttering wild, inarticulate cries, tearing her hair, and beating the walls. An unnatural calm succeeded these violent emotions; reason itself seemed well-nigh gone. ”

“ If to herself actually, then in case of his early death, for Camille had got a notion of that, and had got it from Attalie, who had got it from the Englishman,—what then? Would she get his money, or any of it? No, not if Camille knew men—especially white men. For a quadroon woman to be true to herself and to her God was not the kind of thing that white men—if he knew them—rewarded. ”

“ IV. Camille was petite, with a white skin, and long black hair, and graceful movements. She was swift to understand her mother's wishes, prompt to obey them. So much grace and beauty, joined to so much misfortune, were most disturbing to the Chevalier. He would frequently embrace the girl in an excited manner, exclaiming aloud: "I am not yet a wicked man!" ”

“ Pétion, Mercier, and Robespierre. Then, the wedding party ascended the Rue de Condé to go and breakfast at Camille's home, No. 1 Rue du Théâtre François (to-day, No. 38 Rue de l'Odéon) , on the third floor. There, on the 20th of March 1794, the day of his mother's death, he was arrested, bound like a malefactor, and thence was taken to the Luxembourg hard by. On the 5th of April, Camille was executed amid the shouts of the people who had so flattered him. Lucile followed him to the scaffold a week later! They had sworn to love each other in life and death.... The idyll finished in blood. ”

“ Desmond studied the man who was giving him this unsolicited information, and he concluded that the nice-looking man was sharp number two; he was up to this sort of business and perceived the whole game.
"Yes, he appears like a good, honest fellow," said Desmond.
"Honest? why, you could trust him with all you had in the world."
"Yes, he looks that."
"He is one of the kindest-hearted fellows in the world. I tell you if you get into trouble he is the man to aid you. He is the best pistol shot and rifle shot in the land. Why, that fellow has fought off a whole tribe of Indians. ”

“ She had a keen sense of humor and entertained Desmond vastly by her anecdotes of her stage career, some not a little risqué, but narrated with the greatest bonhomie.
But, strongly attracted as he was to the girl, Desmond did not let himself lose sight of his ultimate object. He let her run on as gaily as she might but steadily, relentlessly he swung the conversation round to her last engagement at the Palaceum. He wanted to see if she would make any reference to the murder at Seven Kings. If he could only bring in old Mackwayte’s name, he knew that the dancer must allude to the tragedy. ”

“ She was an English woman. Camille suggested I should have her; the old woman demurred, but Camille settled (and I really used to do almost what she advised) , that I should have her and look at the grey cu*t at the same time. So it came about; but when half up to spunking time, Camille said, "Take it out of me and put it into her." When a p*ick stands and novelty is in the way it rushes at it. ”

“ The girl was the daughter of a small grape-grower, a friend of Canine's; they thought Camille was in London as a dressmaker, making a lot of money, because she sent money home to her father. Camille offered to take her, saying she would be sure to get on, if not in one way, then in another; that good-looking girls always did well in London. The girl was mad to come, and persuaded her parents to let her do so; believing that Camille got her living honestly; she was to be her servant until she could be put in the way of doing well. ”

“ It may be John Desmond himself! If it is an old man of noble appearance, trust him, but put yourself in the hands of no woman, and say nothing of me!"
He obeyed, leaped the fence, and disappeared instantly in the shrubbery just as the hue and cry emerged from the alley and swept up the street towards me.
I was in the shadow of the buildings, and I ran forward with great energy, plunging violently into the arms of somebody who went down under the shock of the collision. But he held tightly to me and shouted,—
"I have him! I have him! It's my capture!" ”

“ Her head, with a touch of exhaustion about it, is thrown back against his chest; through her parted lips her breath is coming with a panting haste, born of excitement and her fruitless flight. He bends over her, lower, and lower still. She feels herself altogether in his power.
"As you are strong, be merciful," she whispers, faintly. A warm flood of crimson has dyed her cheeks; her smile has faded; she struggles slightly, and then all in one moment Desmond becomes aware that tears have sprung into her eyes. ”

“ Their realism has rescued her from the sentimentality surrounding an impossible Camille quite as their fellow-craftsmen in realism have replaced the weeping Amelias of the Victorian period by reasonable women transcribed from actual life. ”

“ If she went gay it was no fault of hers, young women would have it done to them, it was natural. That was the game she meant to play.
I saw that I had paid her only for bringing a girl, and must take my chance of getting into her; all she would do was to keep the coast clear. I don't know what I really did expect Camille to do, but think I imagined that she would have got the girl in bed with her some night, let me get into bed with them, and helped to make her f***, if she would not. ”

“ Even now I can scarcely bring myself to believe that Desmond, as debonair, as bright and as sparkling as ever, had only just emerged from such nerve-racking experiences as the affair of the purple cabriolet and the case of the Constantinople courier. Now that I come to think of it, I remarked that his nervous air which had attracted the attention of old Erasmus Wilkes had completely vanished. I can well believe Francis when he says that the one thing his brother cannot stand is inaction and that danger is his best tonic. ”

“ Desmond stiffly descended to the ground. It was so dark that he could distinguish nothing, but he felt the grit of gravel under his feet and he heard the melancholy gurgle of running water. He took a step forward and groped his way into a little porch smelling horribly of mustiness and damp. As he did so, he heard a whirr behind him and the car began to glide off. Desmond shouted after the chauffeur. ”

“ I felt the full force of every word he advanced in favor of cultivating the society of the amiable—the beautiful. My feelings, naturally ardent, were wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, and I fervently hoped my unfortunate temperament would not forever exclude me from the charms he so eloquently eulogised. Mr. Desmond, unlike the generality of my acquaintances, did not ridicule me. ”