Danton

“ Let the harvests and men grow once more and become a new Patrie. Let us love one another and cultivate our fields.
CAMILLE. May some god give us the chance, Danton! We are counting on you.
DANTON. What is it, my children?
PHILIPPEAUX. We need your help to fight.
DANTON. How can I help you? Must I always do everything? You are all alike. Here is Westermann; he is a man; he has fought; he has saved the Patrie two or three times; and before he sits down to supper, he cuts a man's throat as an appetizer. I must aid him, too! Do you want me to ride a horse and carry a saber, besides? ”

“ Danton trouva quelque différence dans la comparaison de ce nouveau régime avec les tendresses de sa mère et de son aïeul: non moins sévère que la demoiselle Lambercier de J.-J. Rousseau, la maîtresse d’école croyait ne pouvoir se passer de verges pour diriger les enfants, et Danton [350] lui avait paru avoir les premiers droits à ses corrections. Tous ses contemporains se souvenaient de l’avoir vu faire trop souvent l’école buissonnière et employer les heures de classe à barboter dans l’Aube. Il préférait la liberté de vivre à l’ennui de répéter les caractères de l’alphabet. ”

“ XIV.—TURQUOISE AND PEARL "I SHALL count on you," said Mrs. Danton; "you must dine with us every night while That will be three nights beginning with to-morrow. You will take her in to dinner, of course."
"I can't possibly——" I began.
"You must," said Mrs. Danton, smiling in the delightful way in which Mrs. Danton does smile. "You really must. You know what our party is. We fish, every one of us, men and women. We think and talk of nothing else, whereas you are a clever man, the only clever man in the neighbourhood." ”

“ But Camille, so great with the pen, had nothing of the majesty or the strength of Danton. His defence was a weak, disconnected excuse, and, like all men who are insufficient to themselves, he was inconsistent.
Hérault made on that same day a far finer reply. Noble by birth, holding by his traditions and memories to that society which he himself had helped to destroy, and of which Talleyrand has said, “Those who have not known it have not lived;” ”

“ ROBESPIERRE. Let us not honor Danton by trying him alone: it would attract too much attention.
BILLAUD-VARENNE. Let us overwhelm him in a general accusation.
VADIER. Whom shall we put with him, to fill out the menu?
SAINT-JUST. Every one who has tried to corrupt the cause of Liberty by means of money, evil example, or brains.
VADIER. Let us be clear. You're too vague.
ROBESPIERRE. Danton loved gold. Let him be buried with gold. Let us implicate him in the bank affair. Put him in with the embezzlers. He will find himself in company with his friend, his secretary, his Fabre d'Eglantine. ”

“ Are we not alone against the world; a little band of brothers? Broad Danton is loved by all the Mountain; but they think him too easy-tempered, deficient in suspicion: he has stood between Dumouriez and much censure, anxious not to exasperate our only General: in the shrill tumult Danton's strong voice reverberates, for union and pacification. Meetings there are; dinings with the Girondins: it is so pressingly essential that there be union. But the Girondins are haughty and respectable: this Titan Danton is not a man of Formulas, and there rests on him a shadow of September. ”

“ Danton. I have been communing with mother earth, in order to draw new strength from it, like Anteus.
Philippeaux. Rather you are looking for a pretext to retire from the fray.
Danton. I cannot lie: you speak the truth.
Camille. What's the trouble?
Danton. I am sick of humanity. I vomit men.
Hérault. You are not so sick of women, it seems?
Danton. The women at least are frank enough to be merely themselves and nothing more. They are what we all are: animals. They seek pleasure directly, and never lie to themselves and cover up their instincts with the cloak of reason. ”

“ Danton belonged to the bourgeoisie in rank, to the less visionary in the bent of his mind. A young and successful lawyer of thirty, the Revolution found him unknown to politics and not desiring election. It was the accident of oratory that gave him his first position. He discovered himself to be a leader, and there grouped round him a knot of the most ardent, some of them the most brilliant, younger reformers. The electoral district to which he happened to belong became through him the most democratic, and, in some ways, the most violent of Paris. ”

“ Curés were there gathering up their soutanes and joining the multitude, notably the man who had once been Danton’s parish priest, the vicar of St. Germains, with his flock at his heels, like the good Curé of Bazeilles in later times, or the humorous Bishop of Beauvais six centuries before. Lawyers, students, shopkeepers, merchants, the big brewer of the quarter, the pedants, the clerks in the offices, soldiers and their officers, the young nobles even—there was nothing in Paris that did not catch the fever. ”

“ Captain Danton and his housekeeper spent the bleak March afternoon very comfortably together. The fire burned brightly, the parlour was like waxwork in its perfect order; Grace, with her sewing, sat by her favourite window. Captain Danton, with the Montreal True Witness, sat opposite, reading her the news. Grace was not very profoundly interested in the political questions then disturbing Canada, or in the doings and sayings of the Canadian Legislature ”

“ She opened the wardrobe, and Danton saw the gleam of polished armour. She donned a helmet, slipped her left arm through a shield, and, taking a lance in her right hand, stood with her back against the wall, under the legend of “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality—or Death.”
Danton could only look; he was speechless.
“Listen, Danton, listen; do you hear the cry? ‘Vive le Drapeau Rouge!’ It is the workmen who are passing. You see I have arranged the tricolour on the balcony, so that only the red shows.” ”

“ Lorsqu’un écolier se distinguait au collège, on songeait à la carrière que lui ouvriraient ses talents. Il faut en faire un prêtre ou un procureur. Le curé de Barberey, près Troyes, désignait déjà Danton pour qu’il lui succédât dans son presbytère; mais le moment de séjour que Danton avait fait au séminaire ne lui avait pas inspiré la vocation ecclésiastique. Il avait besoin de liberté, il lui fallait les franches allures, l’indépendance. ”

“ In the twisting tides at night her one anchor to the old time was the monarchy. Thus when Louis fled the feeling was of a prop broken. France only cried out for one thing—“Bring the King back.” Tie up the beam—a makeshift—anything rather than a new foundation.
Here is the attitude of Danton in this crisis. France is not republican; his friends in Paris are. He inclines to France. It was Danton more than any other one man who finally prepared the Republic, yet the Republic was never with him an idea. ”

“ What claim has he on my future wife that she should take these nightly walks with him unknown to me?"
"The strongest claim that man can have," was the answer; "he is my son—he is Kate's only brother!"
"My God! Captain Danton, what are you saying?"
"The truth," Captain Danton answered, in a broken voice. "Heaven help me—Heaven pity him! The wretched man whose story you have heard—who dwells a captive under this roof—is my only son, Henry Danton."
He covered his face with his hands. Reginald Stanford sat confounded. ”

“ Danton. The Revolution cannot exist with both of us. I could never have defended myself without killing him. I prefer the Revolution to myself. [Westermann goes out.]
Philippeaux. Come, Danton, it is some consolation to die as one has lived.
Danton. I committed every crime for the sake of Liberty. I shouldered every task that the hypocrites shunned. I have sacrificed everything for the Revolution. I now see it was all in vain. The minx has played me false; and now she sacrifices me, as she will sacrifice Robespierre tomorrow. She will take up with the first adventurer who presents himself. ”

“ DANTON. Danton swims in debauchery. Danton dallies with the women. Danton's rest is like Hercules'! [DESMOULINS runs to DANTON and shakes hands with him, laughing. WESTERMANN stands aside, preoccupied.]
CAMILLE. Hercules still keeps his club, so long as there are monsters to be killed.
DANTON. Don't speak of killing. It's too horrible. France reeks with blood; the smell of dead flesh befouls the air. I just crossed the Seine; the sun was setting, and the river was red. It seemed to flow in waves of blood. If our rivers are so foul, where shall we wash our hands? There are enough dead! ”

“ Danton, unlike the Girondins, accepted the fury of popular passion as an inevitable incident in the work of deliverance. Unlike Billaud Varenne or Hébert, or any other of the Terrorist party, he had no wish to use this frightful two-edged weapon more freely than was necessary. Danton, in short, had the instinct of the statesman. His object was to reconcile France with herself; to restore a society that, while emancipated and renewed in every part, should yet be stable ”

“ Au 6 août 1792 Danton était a Arcis; on était à la veille d’un grand événement qu’il prévoyait sans doute. Au milieu des mille pensées qui doivent alors l’agiter, au milieu de l’inquiétude que doivent lui causer les périls auxquels il va s’exposer, quelle idée prédomine, quelle crainte vient l’atteindre? Il pense à sa mère, il craint de n’avoir pas suffisamment assuré son mort et sa tranquillité; en voici la preuve dans cet acte passé le 6 août 1792 par-devant Me Finot, notaire à Arcis. ”

“ Ce fut ainsi que Danton, le Montagnard, accueillit la personne qui vint annoncer la mort des Girondins, auxquels tant d’autres, en sa place, n’eussent pas manqué de garder rancune....
“La France aujourd’hui si belle, si florissante, te placera alors au rang qui t’appartient parmi ses enfants généreux, magnanimes, dont les efforts intrépides, inouïs, sont parvenus à lui ouvrir, au milieu de difficultés et de dangers innombrables, un chemin à la liberté, à la gloire, au bonheur. ”

“ Panis entered and told him what the Committee had resolved. “Well, what then?” said Danton. “You must resist.” “That means the shedding of blood, and I am sick of it. I would rather be guillotined than guillotine.” “Then,” said Panis, “you must fly, and at once.” But Danton shook his head still moodily. “One does not take one’s country with one on the soles of one’s boots.” But he muttered again to himself, “They will not dare—they will not dare.” ”

“ He works this as absolutely the unique policy. He seems to have forgotten all questions of diplomacy, nearly to have despaired of settling the quarrel between Paris and the Girondins. In fine, Danton, when first in power, had been a man so representative of France as to have many different objects, and to attempt their co-ordination. We see him the brief fortnight of Louis’s execution violent, angry, unreasoning; we see him again in less than a month transformed into a man with a single object, pursued and succeeded in with the tenacity common to minds much narrower than his own. ”

“ But, on the other hand, Danton was a man to whom not only a useless massacre but a useless anything was detestable. Death in itself, the infliction of death on others, even the death to which he himself was led, never seemed to him a matter of vast moment. ”

“ Le maître, satisfait et surpris du mérite de l’œuvre, en fait lecture à ses élèves. Il dit qu’il aurait donné la première place à l’auteur s’il n’avait fait l’école buissonnière. Les camarades de Danton s’unissent avec enthousiasme à l’appréciation du maître; ils admirent comment l’enfant prodigue, leur ayant fait un récit aussi piquant, aussi jovial de son voyage, avait pu en même temps mettre dans son style autant de réserve et de noblesse. C’est ainsi que Danton fait admettre ses excuses, et sa grâce est devenue une espèce de triomphe. ”

“ Danton, who has left no memoirs, no letters even—of whose life we know so little outside the field of politics—can only be interpreted, like any other man, by the mind. We must seek the origin, though we have but a phrase or two to guide us. What was that meditation at Arcis out of which proceeded the forlorn hope of the “Vieux Cordelier” and of the “Committee of Indulgence”? ”

“ It is a point of special moment in the appreciation of his politics that Danton was alone in this position. He was the only man who acted as one of the innumerable peasantry of France would have acted, could fate have endowed such a peasant with genius and with knowledge. The others to the left and right were soldiers, poets, or pedants every one. Heroic pedants and poets who were never afraid, but not one of them could forget his theories or his vision and take hold of the ropes. Such diplomacy as there is is Danton’s ”

“ There is yet one further point to be mentioned before we can make a complete picture of Danton’s position before these elections of 1789. There can be no doubt that the Masonic lodges had proved a powerful instrument in the preparation of opinion, and though our information on their formation in Paris is scanty, we can safely affirm that Danton belonged to the lodge of the “Nine Sisters,” which included such members as Sieyès or Bailly on the one hand and Collot D’Herbois on the other. [45] It would be foolish to over-estimate the influence of these societies. ”

“ Pour bien se pénétrer de son sujet, dit Danton d’un ton décidé, il faut se servir de ses yeux. Je suis curieux de voir comment se fait un roi.
“Son projet n’est confié qu’à quelques fidèles camarades qui lui prêtent de l’argent pour sa route. Il part sans prévenir son maître; il traverse son pays d’Arcis sans voir ses parents, dans la crainte de les trouver opposés à son pèlerinage. ”