“Ay! Ay!” said some of the men approvingly, whilst others laughed hoarsely at the weird jest.
“I propose, therefore,” continued Lenoir after a slight pause, “that it shall be Citizen-Deputy Déroulède himself who shall furnish to the people of France proofs of his own treason against the Republic.”
“But how? But how?” rapid, loud and excited queries greeted this extraordinary suggestion from the provincial giant.
“By the simplest means imaginable,” retorted Lenoir with imperturbable calm. “Isn’t there a good proverb which our grandmothers used to quote, that if you only give a man a sufficient length of rope, he is sure to hang himself? We’ll give our aristocratic Citizen-Deputy plenty of rope, I’ll warrant, if only our present Minister of Justice,” he added, indicating Merlin, “will help us in the little comedy which I propose that we should play.”
“Yes! Yes! Go on!” said Merlin excitedly.
“The woman who denounced Déroulède—that is our trump card,” continued Lenoir, now waxing enthusiastic with his own scheme and his own eloquence. “She denounced him. Ergo, he had been her lover, whom she wished to be rid of—why? Not, as Citizen Merlin supposed, because he had discarded her. No, no; she had another lover—she has admitted that. She wished to be rid of Déroulède to make way for the other, because he was too persistent—ergo, because he loved her.”
“Well, and what does that prove?” queried Tinville with dry sarcasm.
“It proves that Déroulède, being in love with the woman, would do much to save her from the guillotine.”
“Of course.”
“Pardi! let him try, say I,” rejoined Lenoir placidly. “Give him the rope with which to hang himself.”
“What does he mean?” asked one or two of the men, whose dull brains had not quite as yet grasped the full meaning of this monstrous scheme.
“You don’t understand what I mean, citizens; you think I am mad, or drunk, or a traitor like Déroulède? Eh bien! give me your attention five minutes longer, and you shall see. Let me suppose that we have reached the moment when the woman—what is her name? Oh! ah! yes! Juliette Marny—stands in the Hall of Justice on her trial before the Committee of Public Safety. Citizen Foucquier-Tinville, one of our greatest patriots, reads the indictment against her: the papers surreptitiously burnt, the torn, mysterious letter-case found in her room. If these are presumed, in the indictment, to be treasonable correspondence with the enemies of the Republic, condemnation follows at once, then the guillotine. There is no defence, no respite. The Minister of Justice, according to Article IX of the Law framed by himself, allows no advocate to those directly accused of treason. But,” continued the giant, with slow and calm impressiveness, “in the case of ordinary, civil indictments, offences against public morality or matters pertaining to the penal code, the Minister of Justice allows the accused to be publicly defended. Place Juliette Marny in the dock on a treasonable charge, she will be hustled out of the court in a few minutes, amongst a batch of other traitors, dragged back to her own prison, and executed in the early dawn, before Déroulède has had time to frame a plan for her safety or defence. If, then, he tries to move heaven and earth to rescue the woman he loves, the mob of Paris may—who knows?—take his part warmly. They are mad where Déroulède is concerned; and we all know that two devoted lovers have ere now found favour with the people of France—a curious remnant of sentimentalism, I suppose—and the popular Citizen-Deputy knows better than anyone else on earth, how to play upon the sentimental feelings of the populace. Now, in the case of a penal offence, mark where the difference would be! The woman Juliette Marny, arraigned for wantonness, for an offence against public morals; the burnt correspondence, admitted to be the letters of a lover—her hatred for Déroulède suggesting the false denunciation. Then the Minister of Justice allows an advocate to defend her. She has none in court; but think you Déroulède would not step forward, and bring all the fervour of his eloquence to bear in favour of his mistress? Can you hear his impassioned speech on her behalf?—I can—the rope, I tell you, citizens, with which he’ll hang himself. Will he admit in open court that the burnt correspondence was another lover’s letters? No!—a thousand times no!—and, in the face of his emphatic denial of the existence of another lover for Juliette, it will be for our clever Public Prosecutor to bring him down to an admission that the correspondence was his, that it was treasonable, that she burnt them to save him.”
He paused, exhausted at last, mopping his forehead, then drinking large gulps of brandy to ease his parched throat.
A veritable chorus of enthusiasm greeted the end of his long peroration. The Machiavelian scheme, almost devilish in its cunning, in its subtle knowledge of human nature and of the heartstrings of a noble organisation like Déroulède’s, commended itself to these patriots, who were thirsting for the downfall of a superior enemy.
Even Tinville lost his attitude of dry sarcasm; his thin cheeks were glowing with the lust of the fight.
Already for the past few months, the trials before the Committee of Public Safety had been dull, monotonous, uninteresting. Charlotte Corday had been a happy diversion, but otherwise it had been the case of various deputies, who had held views that had become too moderate, or of the generals who had failed to subdue the towns or provinces of
