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

at the Jacobins’ Club, where deafening applause greeted his every word, and wild fury raged against his enemies.

It is then to be a fight to the finish! To your tents, O Israel!

To the guillotine all those who have dared to say one word against the Chosen of the People! St. Just shall thunder Vengeance from the tribune at the Convention, whilst Henriot, the drunken and dissolute Commandant of the Municipal Guard, shall, by the might of sword and fire, proclaim the sovereignty of Robespierre through the streets of Paris. That is the picture as it has been painted in the minds of the tyrant and of his sycophants: a picture of death paramount, and of Robespierre rising like a new Phoenix from out the fire of calumny and revolt, greater, more unassailable than before.

And lo! One sweep of the brush, and the picture is changed.

Ten minutes⁠ ⁠… less⁠ ⁠… and the whole course of the world’s history is altered. No sooner had St. Just mounted the tribune than Tallien jumped to his feet. His voice, usually meek and cultured, rises in a harsh crescendo, until it drowns that of the younger orator.

“Citizens,” he exclaims, “I ask for truth! Let us tear aside the curtain behind which lurk concealed the real conspirators and the traitors!”

“Yes, yes! Truth! Let us have the truth!” One hundred voices⁠—not forty⁠—have raised the echo.

The mutiny is on the verge of becoming open revolt, is that already, perhaps. It is like a spark fallen⁠—who knows where?⁠—into a powder magazine. Robespierre feels it, sees the spark. He knows that one movement, one word, one plunge into that magazine, foredoomed though it be to destruction, one stamp with a sure foot, may yet quench the spark, may yet smother the mutiny. He rushes to the tribune, tries to mount. But Tallien has forestalled him, elbows him out of the way, and turns to the seven hundred with a cry that rings far beyond the Hall, out into the streets.

“Citizens!” he thunders in his turn. “I begged of you just now to tear aside the curtains behind which lurk the traitors. Well, the curtain is already rent. And if you dare not strike at the tyrant now, then ’tis I who will dare!” And from beneath his coat he draws a dagger and raises it above his head. “And I will plunge this into his heart,” he cries, “if you have not the courage to smite!”

His words, that gleaming bit of steal, fan the spark into a flame. Within a few seconds, seven hundred voices are shouting, “Down with the tyrant!” Arms are waving, hands gesticulate wildly, excitedly. Only a very few shout: “Behold the dagger of Brutus!” All the others retort with “Tyranny!” and “Conspiracy!” and with cries of “Vive la Liberté!”

At this hour all is confusion and deafening uproar. In vain Robespierre tries to speak. He demands to speak. He hurls insults, anathema, upon the President, who relentless refuses him speech and jingles his bell against him.

“President of Assassins,” the falling tyrant cries, “I demand speech of thee!”

But the bell goes jingling on, and Robespierre, choked with rage and terror, “turns blue” we are told, and his hand goes up to his throat.

“The blood of Danton chokes thee!” cries one man. And these words seem like the last blow dealt to the fallen foe. The next moment the voice of an obscure Deputy is raised, in order to speak the words that have been hovering on every lip:

“I demand a decree of accusation against Robespierre!”

“Accusation!” comes from seven hundred throats. “The decree of accusation!”

The President jingles his bell, puts the question, and the motion is passed unanimously.

Maximilien Robespierre⁠—erstwhile master of France⁠—is decreed accused.

XXXIV The Whirlwind I

It was then noon. Five minutes later, the Chosen of the People, the fallen idol, is hustled out of the Hall into one of the Committee rooms close by, and with his friends⁠—St. Just, Couthon, Lebas, his brother Augustin, and the others⁠—all decreed accused and the order of arrest launched against them. As for the rest, ’tis the work of the Public Prosecutor⁠—and of the guillotine.

At five o’clock the Convention adjourns. The deputies have earned food and rest. They rush to their homes, there to relate what has happened; Tallien to the Conciergerie, to get a sight of Theresia. This is denied him. He is not dictator yet; and Robespierre, though apparently vanquished, still dominates⁠—and lives.

But from every church steeple the tocsin bursts; and a prolonged roll of drums ushers in the momentous evening.

In the city all is hopeless confusion. Men are running in every direction, shouting, brandishing pistols and swords. Henriot, Commandant of the Municipal Guard, rides through the streets at the head of his gendarmes like one possessed, bent on delivering Robespierre. Women and children fly screaming in every direction; the churches, so long deserted, are packed with people who, terror-stricken, are trying to remember long-forgotton prayers.

Proclamations are read at street corners; there are rumours of a general massacre of all the prisoners. At one moment⁠—the usual hour⁠—the familiar tumbril with its load of victims for the guillotine rattles along the cobblestones of the Rue St. Antoine. The populace, vaguely conscious of something stupendous in the air⁠—even though the decree of accusation against Robespierre has not yet transpired⁠—loudly demand the release of the victims. They surround the tumbrils, crying, “Let them be free!”

But Henriot at the head of his gendarmes comes riding down the street, and while the populace shouts, “It shall not be! Let them be free!” he threatens with pistols and sabre, and retorts, bellowing: “It shall be! To the guillotine!” And the tumbrils, which for a moment had halted, lumber on, on their way.

II

Up in the attic of the lonely house in the Rue de la Planchette, Marguerite Blakeney heard but a mere faint echo of the confusion and of the uproar.

During the previous long, sultry afternoon, it had seemed to her as if her jailers had been unwontedly