You begin to see, Gentlemen, the advantage that a firm and able lawyer might have drawn from the authentic facts that I have just been relating.  But Bailly knew the pretended jury before whom he had to appear.  This jury was not a collection of drunken cobblers, whatever some passionate writers may have asserted; it was worse than that, Gentlemen, notwithstanding the deservedly celebrated names that were occasionally interspersed among them:  it was—­let us cut the subject short—­an odious, commission.

The very circumscribed list from which chance in 1793 and 1794 drew the juries of the Revolutionary Tribunals, did not embrace, as the sacred word jury seems to imply, all one class of citizens.  The authorities formed it, after a prefatory and very minute inquiry, of their adherents only.  The unfortunate defendants were thus judged not by impartial persons free from any preconceived system, but by political enemies, which is as much as to say, by that which is the most cruel and remorseless in the world.

Bailly would not be defended.  After his appearance as a witness in the trial of Marie Antoinette, the ex-Mayor only wrote and had printed for circulation, a paper entitled Bailly to his fellow-citizens.  It closes with these affecting words: 

“I have only gained by the Revolution that which my fellow-citizens have gained:  liberty and equality.  I have lost by it some useful situations, and my fortune is nearly destroyed.  I could be happy with what remains of it to me and a clear conscience; but to be happy in the repose of my retreat, I require, my dear fellow-citizens, your esteem:  I know well that, sooner or later, you will do me justice; but I require it while I live, and while I am yet amongst you.”

Our colleague was unanimously condemned.  We should despair of the future, unless such a unanimity struck all friends of justice and humanity with stupor, if it did not increase the number of decided adversaries to all political tribunals.

When the President of the Tribunal interrogated the accused, already declared guilty, as to whether he had any reclamations to make relative to the execution of the sentence, Bailly answered: 

“I have always carried out the law; I shall know how to submit myself to it, since you are its organ.”

The illustrious convict was led back to his cell.

Bailly had said in his eloge on M. de Tressan:  “French gaiety produces the same effect as stoicism.”  These words occurred to my memory at the time when I was gathering from various sources the proof that on reentering the Conciergerie after his condemnation, Bailly showed himself at once both gay and stoical.

He desired his nephew, M. Batbeda, to play a game at piquet with him as usual.  He thought of all the circumstances connected with the frightful morrow with such coolness, that he even said with a smile to M. Batbeda during the game:  “Let us rest awhile, my friend, and take a pinch of snuff; to-morrow I shall be deprived of this pleasure, for I shall have my hands tied behind my back.”