Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of Law.  At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of Paris seen so crowded.  From the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revolution, for thither again go the Tumbrils this time, it is one dense stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness.  The Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws, some Twenty-three or so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the Cordwainer, roll on.  All eyes are on Robespierre’s Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead Brother, and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered; their ‘seventeen hours’ of agony about to end.  The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to shew the people which is he.  A woman springs on the Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand; waving the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims:  “The death of thee gladdens my very heart, m’enivre de joie;” Robespierre opened his eyes; “Scelerat, go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!”—­At the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till his turn came.  Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the bloody axe.  Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw:  the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry;—­hideous to hear and see.  Samson, thou canst not be too quick!

Samson’s work done, there burst forth shout on shout of applause.  Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, and down to this Generation.  Deservedly, and also undeservedly.  O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other Advocates?  Stricter man, according to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and such like, lived not in that age.  A man fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons!  His poor landlord, the Cabinetmaker in the Rue Saint-Honore, loved him; his Brother died for him.  May God be merciful to him, and to us.

This is end of the Reign of Terror; new glorious Revolution named of Thermidor; of Thermidor 9th, year 2; which being interpreted into old slave-style means 27th of July, 1794.  Terror is ended; and death in the Place de la Revolution, were the ‘Tail of Robespierre’ once executed; which service Fouquier in large Batches is swiftly managing.

BOOK 3.VII.

VENDEMIAIRE

Chapter 3.7.I.

Decadent.