The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📗

And now the hour for temporising is past. Robespierre then is to be dictator of France. He will be dictator of France, in spite of any opposition led by those forty whose names are on his list! He will be dictator of France! He has not said it; but his friends have shouted it from the housetops, and have murmured under their breath that those who oppose Robespierre’s dictatorship are traitors to the land. Death then must be their fate.

When then, ye gods? What then?

And so the day broke⁠—smiling, mark you! It was a beautiful warm July morning. It broke on what is perhaps the most stupendous cataclysm⁠—save one⁠—the world has ever known.

Behold the picture! A medley. A confusion. A whirl of everything that is passionate and cruel, defiant and desperate. Heavens, how desperate! Men who have thrown lives away as if lives were in truth grains of sand; men who have juggled with death dealt it and tossed it about like cards upon a gaming table. They are desperate now, because their own lives are at stake; and they find now that life can be very dear.

So, having greeted their leader, the forty draw together, watching the moment when humility will be most opportune.

Robespierre mounts the tribune. The hour has struck. His speech is one long, impassioned, involved tirade, full at first on vague accusations against the enemies of the Republic and the people, and is full of protestations of his own patriotism and selflessness. Then he warms to his own oratory; his words are prophetic of death, his voice becomes harsh⁠—like a screech owl’s, so we’re told. His accusations are no longer vague. He begins to strike.

Corruption! Backsliding! Treachery! Moderatism!⁠—oh, moderatism above all! Moderatism is treachery to the glorious revolution. Every victim spared form the guillotine is a traitor let loose against the people! A traitor, he who robs the guillotine of her prey! Robespierre stands alone incorruptible, true, faithful unto death!

And for all that treachery, what remedy is there? Why, death of course! Death! The guillotine! New power to the sovereign guillotine! Death to all the traitors!

And seven hundred faces became paler still with dread, and the sweat of terror rises on seven hundred brows. There were only forty names on that list⁠ ⁠… but there might be others somewhere else!

And still the voice of Robespierre thunders on. His words fall of seven hundred pairs of ears like on a sounding-board; his friends, his sycophants, echo them; they applaud, rise in wild enthusiasm. ’Tis the applause that is thundering now!

One of the tyrant’s most abject slaves has put forward the motion that the great speech just delivered shall forthwith be printed, and distributed to every township, every village, throughout France, as a monument to the lofty patriotism of her greatest citizen.

The motion at one moment looks as if it would be carried with acclamations; after which, Robespierre’s triumph would have risen to the height of deification. Then suddenly the note of dissension; the hush; the silence. The great Assembly is like a sounding-board that has ceased to respond. Something had turned the acclamations to mutterings, and then to silence. The sounding-board has given forth a dissonance. Citizen Tallien has demanded “delay in printing that speech,” and asked pertinently:

“What has become of the Liberty of Opinion in this Convention?”

His face is the colour of ashes, and his eyes, ringed with purple, gleam with an unnatural fire. The coward has become bold; the sheep has donned the lion’s skin.

There is a flutter in the Convention, a moment’s hesitation. But the question is put to the vote, and the speech is not to be printed. A small matter, in truth⁠—printing or not printing⁠ ⁠… Does the Destiny of France hang on so small a peg?

It is a small matter; and yet how full of portent! Like the breath of mutiny blowing across a ship. But nothing more occurs just then. Robespierre, lofty in his scorn, puts the notes of his speech into his pocket. He does not condescend to argue. He, the master of France, will not deign to bandy words with his slaves. And he stalks out of the Hall surrounded by his friends.

There has been a breath of mutiny; but his is still the iron heel, powerful enough to crush a raging revolt. His withdrawal⁠—proud, silent, menacing⁠—is in keeping with his character and with the pose which he has assumed of late. But he is still the Chosen of the People; and the multitude is there, thronging the streets of Paris⁠—there, to avenge the insult put upon their idol by a pack of slinking wolves.

And now the picture becomes still more poignant. It is painted in colours more vivid, more glowing than and again the Hall of the Convention is crowded to the roof, with Tallien and his friends, in a close phalanx, early at their post!

Tallien is there, pale, resolute, the fire of his hatred kept up by anxiety for his beloved. The night before, at the corner of a dark street, a surreptitious hand slipped a scrap of paper into the pocket of his coat. It was a message written by Theresia in prison, and written with her own blood. How it ever came into his pocket Tallien never know; but the few impassioned, agonised words, seared his very soul and whipped up his courage:

“The Commissary of Police has just left me,” Theresia wrote. “He came to tell me that tomorrow I must appear before the tribunal. This means the guillotine. And I, who thought that you were a man⁠ ⁠… !”

Not only is his own head in peril, not only that of his friends; but the life of the woman whom he worships hangs now upon the thread of his own audacity and of his courage.

St. Just on this occasion is the first to mount the tribune; and Robespierre, the very incarnation of lustful and deadly Vengeance, stands silently by. He has spent the afternoon and evening with his friends