Pierre Vergniaud

“ Here there was no room for listlessness, and quite as little for happiness. The guarantees of order were failing, and the friends of order were to be buried under the same ruins with the remains of regular legislative authority. Vergniaud retired from the scenes where the foulest of the dogs of war were howling for their prey, and when Gregoire found him out in his hiding-place, the republican orator, though robbery and massacre were triumphant in the city, was discovered reading Tacitus. Why? From affectation? Surely not; Gregoire's visit was unexpected. From cool philosophy? ”

“ Fonfrède flung his arms round Ducos, that young martyr of friendship, who had scorned Marat's mercy, sobbing, "I have brought you to this!" Ducos answered quietly, "Be comforted, friend; do we not die together?" Vergniaud was for taking poison; but there was not enough for all, so he flung it from him, in contempt; he would not be divided from them in his death.
As they left the room where Valazé's corpse lay stretched on the table, one by one the condemned went up to him and kissed him on the forehead, saying, "Till to-morrow!" ”

“ Whilst Gensonné and Guadet aroused the Assembly by this preconcerted scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days amongst the masses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the troops.
"Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, "war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife. Your armies are assembling: mighty movements agitate the empire. ”

“ The responsibility of the decrees against the emigrants and non-juring priests rests mainly with the Girondins. Their next decisive step was to preach war; not a prudent, self-defensive war, but war on a grander scale than the world had yet known, a crusade for Liberty throughout Europe. And Vergniaud, that storm-bird of the Revolution, who continually rose above the rage of temporal contests to some serene ether of thought, lifted up all hearts in the Assembly as he cried in that richly cadenced voice of his: "A thought rises within me. ”

“ Deeply as he was impressed by this remarkable incident, Barbaroux did not think it necessary to disclose the particulars to Vergniaud and his other political companions; but he made a confidant of Madame Roland.
"It is plain," said he, concludingly to that lady, "that the whole was a purposed plan of deception or illusion. It is the story of Aline put in action for my especial benefit, but surely without end, without sufficing grounds. Wherefore employ such chicanery with a man like me? ”

“ Seventy-three of their colleagues, who had protested against their arrest, were also imprisoned, but the committee did not venture to inflict death upon them.
During the debates, these illustrious prisoners displayed uniform and serene courage. Vergniaud raised his eloquent voice for a moment, but in vain. Valazé stabbed himself with a poignard on hearing the sentence, and Lasource said to the judges: "I die at a time when the people have lost their senses; you will die when they recover them." ”

“ Madame Roland was one evening urging Vergniaud to take that heroic and desperate stand. "The only hope for France," said she "is in the sacredness of law. This atrocious carnage causes thousands of bosoms to thrill with horror, and all the wise and the good in France and in the world will rise to sustain those who expose their own hearts as a barrier to arrest such enormities."
"Of what avail," was the reply, in tones of sadness, "can such exertions be? The assassins are supported by all the power of the street. Such a conflict must necessarily terminate in a street fight. ”

“ The priest addressed a hasty homily to the pair on the perils of life, on the duties they must, some day, inculcate upon their children,—throwing in, at this point, an indirect reproach to Ginevra on the absence of her parents; then, after uniting them before God, as the mayor had united them before the law, he left the now married couple.
"God bless them!" said Vergniaud, the sergeant, to the mason, when they reached the church porch. "No two creatures were ever more fitted for one another. The parents of the girl are foolish. I don't know a braver soldier than Colonel Luigi. ”

“ The only resource of the Gironde, in its present situation, was the abdication of the king; Vergniaud, it is true, as yet only expressed himself ambiguously, but all the popular party attributed to Louis XVI. projects which Vergniaud had only expressed in the form of suppositions. In a few days, Brissot expressed himself more openly. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops, not because those troops want courage, or that our frontiers are badly fortified, and our resources scanty. ”

“ Her mind had been formed by her studies on a pagan type. To C. J. M. Barbaroux and the Girondins of Caen she wrote from her prison, anticipating happiness “with Brutus in the Elysian Fields” after her death, and with this letter she sent a simple loving farewell to her father, revealing a tender side to her character that otherwise we would hardly have looked for in such a woman. Lamartine called her 138 l’ange de l’assassinat, and Vergniaud said, “Elle nous perd, mais elle nous apprend à mourir.” ”

“ When the committee-men of the commune read their decrees to the Assembly, Vergniaud cried out: 'I thank Paris for its courage and energy; now one may say the country is saved!' He called Longwy, which had surrendered to the Prussians, a city of cowards. Hearing the refrain of the Marseillaise he said 'There is enough singing of Liberty—we must defend it. It is no longer Kings of bronze that must be torn down—it is the despots of Europe! ”

“ He read and reasoned, though in the great city round him the terror of the Revolution was at its height; though the rattle of the drum had scarcely ceased with nightfall, and the last tumbril was even now being wheeled back into its shed.
For men grow strangely callous. The danger which impends daily and every day ceases to be feared. Achille Mirande had seen the chiefs of his party fall round him. He had seen Pétion and Barbaroux, Louvet and Vergniaud die—the Girondins who had dreamed with him of a republic of property, free and yet law-abiding. ”

“ The true initiates beheld with dismay the launching of society towards the abyss, and they foresaw all the terrors of anarchy. That revolution which was destined at a later period to manifest before the dying genius of Vergniaud under the sombre figure of Saturn devouring his children had already shewn itself fully armed in the prophetic dreams of Cazotte. ”

“ Now Vergniaud is heard saying, "Are we not ourselves the best demonstration of immortality?—we who now are here?—we, calm, serene, impassive, beside the corpse of our friend, in face of our own corpses, quietly discussing, like philosophers, the night or the flash of light that will follow our last breath?" ”

“ When genius, loyalty, and justice were represented by Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Vergniaud, if you had said 'Louis must die,' in the name of those three I should still have shuddered, but I should doubt. In whose name do you pronounce now? Hissed actors, paltry editors, hot-heads like Marat, who have to be bled to cool them when they shriek for thousands of heads. Leave these failures who think they are wonders because they can undo in a stroke the work which it has taken nature a few score years, for they are villains, master, and you ought not to associate with such burlesques of men. ”

“ Wearied by this harangue, in order to conceal my rising disgust, I sat down on the grass and began to play with the goat. Mercanson turned on me his dull and lifeless eye:
"The celebrated Vergniaud," said he, "was afflicted with the habit of sitting on the ground and playing with animals."
"It is a habit that is innocent enough," I replied. "If there were none worse the world would get along very well, without so much meddling on the part of others." ”

“ Brissot cried, “now that we, the honest men amongst those who govern, are about to die, what will become of the republic? How much blood will it require to wash away the memory of ours?”
“Friends,” cried Vergniaud, “we have killed the tree by over-pruning it. It was aged—Robespierre cuts it down. ”

“ This was a great disappointment to his mother, Lady Henrietta, who had set her heart upon welcoming a daughter-in-law and a houseful of merry, romping grandchildren before the sun of her life had gone down forever. It was also a secret source of disappointment to certain younger feminine hearts as well, who in the days of his youth, and even in the ripeness of later years, had regarded Paul Verdayne with eyes that found him good to look upon. But the young politician had never been a woman's man. ”

“ They want to hide the sun with a net.”
The Provvidenza had been towed to shore, all smashed, just as she had been found beyond the Cape of the Mills, with her nose among the rocks and her keel in the air. In one moment the whole village was at the shore, men and women together, and Padron ’Ntoni, mixed up with the crowd, looked on like the rest. Some gave kicks to the poor Provvidenza to hear how she was cracked, as if she no longer belonged to anybody, and the poor old man felt those kicks in his own stomach. ”

“ But there are others who are neither old nor young who, perhaps, will understand and find some interest in the study of a strange woman who made the illumination of a brief space.
Paul Verdayne was young and fresh and foolish when his episode began. He believed in himself—he believed in his mother, and in a number of other worthy things. Life was full of certainties for him. He was certain he liked hunting better than anything else in the world—for instance. He was certain he knew his own mind, and therefore perfectly certain his passion for Isabella Waring would last for ever! ”

“ The Narbonne Ministry lasted three months. A speech of Vergniaud blasted it. On the news that the Empress of Russia had made a treaty with Turkey, and Austria and Prussia had signed an alliance, offensive and defensive, he sprung into the rostrum and cried:
"I see the palace from here where this counter-revolution is scheming those plots which aim to deliver us to Austria. The day has come when you must put an end to so much audacity, and confound the plotters. ”

“ A subtle something about the man's whole appearance, indeed, brought Verdayne to the conclusion that he was a Russian.
And then that rare gift of intuition which had always been Paul's great aid in times of trouble told him that this dignified and daintily-walking stranger was in some manner connected with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch's presence at the Hôtel de la République.
So certain of this was he that at once he took the precaution of drawing further back into the café, where he could sit in the shadows and watch the passage of the [96] stranger without arousing any interest himself. ”

“ The clear expressive diction of Catullus' lyrics, full of old-fashioned turns, the sound social ideals of Vergil's Georgics, the buoyant idealism of the Aeneid and of Livy's annals speak the true language of these people. It is not surprising then that in Vergil's youth it is a group of fellow-provincials—returning sons of Rome's former emigrants—that take the lead in the new literary movements. They are vigorous, clever young men, excellently educated, free from the city's binding traditionalism, well provided also, many of them, with worldly goods acquired in the new rich country. ”

“ In essence the poetry of the Aeneid is never Homeric, despite the incorporation of many Homeric lines. It is rather a sapling of Vergil's Hellenistic garden, slowly acclimated to the Italian soil, fed richly by years of philosophic study, braced, pruned, and reared into a tree of noble strength and classic dignity. The form and majesty of the tree bespeak infinite care in cultivation, but the fruit has not lost the delicate tang and savour of its seed. The poet of the Ciris, the Copa, the Dirae, and the Bucolics is never far to seek in the Aeneid. ”

“ Those early commentators who variously place the confiscation of Vergil's farm after the battle of Mutina (43 B.C.) , after Philippi (42) and after Actium (31) , who conceive of Mark Antony as a partizan of Brutus, and Alfenus Varus as the governor of a province that did not exist, may state some real facts: they certainly hazard many futile guesses. The safest way is to trust these records only when they harmonize with the data provided by reliable historians, and to interpret the Eclogues primarily as imaginative pastoral poetry, and not, except when they demand it, as a personal record. ”

“ On they came, a thin black stream fed constantly from the palm tree forest. Soon the head of the column disappeared in the stratum of mist which obscured the greater part of the swamp, but the stream of natives from the palm trees did not cease.
Wrenshaw untied his rifle from the tent pole and put it and the horse pistol on his camp table. Then he pushed the table into the patrol tent and, placing his chair in the entrance, sat down. In this position he had only to stretch out his hand to reach his weapons if the necessity arose ”

“ S. VERDIANA, V. R.
(A.D. 1242.) [Roman and Benedictine Martyrology, those of Menardus, Ferrarius, &c. Authority:—An old contemporary life, falsely attributed to Atto, B. of Pistoria.]
Verdiana was the child of poor, though well-born parents; and her knowledge of the sufferings of the poor from her own experience in early years made her ever full of pity for those in need. At twelve years old she was noted for her beautiful and modest countenance, and humble deportment. A wealthy relation, a count, took her into his house, and made her wait upon his wife. ”