Impossible to refute those charges, since the law has decreed that it is a crime to be merely suspected of treason against the State. Foucquier-Tinville, the great Public Prosecutor in Paris, no longer troubles, it seems, to prepare fresh indictments against every accused in turn. He has a printed formula of accusation, with just the name left in blank, presently to be filled in as convenience arises. Therefore in other greater and lesser cities of France, patriots desirous of showing their zeal, can do no better than emulate the example set by so great a man. Local sections of the Committee of Public Safety prepare the indictments—set formulae with the names left in blank. These they pass on to the Public Prosecutor who mumbles as he reads them before the Tribunal with the President sitting up on the dais, and the accused—names left in blank—brought up to the bar, not allowed to say a word in their own justification, nor to question the witnesses brought up to testify against them.
Abandon all hope then, ye whose names are upon that Roll-call! tomorrow the Tribunal, the next day the guillotine! And once again now, day after day, the captain of the guard comes to the house, late of Architect Caristie, and reads; and at all the windows that overlook the courtyard heads appear, men, women and little children—clutching the bars and listening. Listening for their own name or that of one who is dear. Sighing with relief if neither has been called, or with resignation if tomorrow is destined to bring this miserable existence to an end.
And day after day Chauvelin presides over this tribunal of infamy. Self-appointed, he sits upon the dais and sees before him pass a daily file of doomed and dying. Sometimes ten, sometimes as many as twenty in a day, and still the prisons are full—fresh arrests make up for those whom the guillotine has claimed. Acquittals are rare, for moderation now has become a crime. Danton—aye! even Danton, the lion, has perished, he who ordered the September massacres, he who thundered forth from the tribune, “Liberty! Fraternity! Equality! or Death!” he has perished because he became guilty of this crime of moderation. The glorious revolution has no use for two such of its products as Danton and Robespierre—for the reality of the one and the canting hypocrisy of the other: so Danton it was who perished. “It is right,” he had dared to say once, “to repress the Royalists: but we should not confound the innocent with the guilty!”
“And who told thee,” Robespierre retorted, sea-green with hatred, “that one single innocent has perished by our hand?”
And because Danton had dared to raise his voice in the cause of the innocent, Danton had perished.
What chance then has Chauvelin to defend his Fleurette? His power is great. He can make or unmake your Pocharts and your Danous, your President Legrange or Public Prosecutor Isnard, but he cannot accord special privileges in prison for his own daughter. He cannot see her in private, comfort her, warn her if need be, tell her not to be afraid for Bibi chéri is there, on the watch, ready to protect her with his body, to stand by her in the last hour. He cannot. Pochart and Danou are on the watch. “We must not confound the innocent with the guilty:” Danton had dared to say. And for this he had perished: and though he perished, could not save one single innocent.
And all evening, after the sittings of the Tribunal are over, and ten—or mayhap fifteen or twenty—condemned to the guillotine, Chauvelin like a pale, thin ghost haunts the purlieus of Architect Caristie’s house. On pretext of his office he enters the courtyard with the captain of the guard and looks up at the windows to see if she is there. Once he saw her: just her little face peeping behind the opulent shoulders of one Claire de Châtelard, the best noted strumpet in Orange. The woman had one arm round Fleurette’s waist and when the captain of the guard read out the name of Claire known as Châtelard upon his list, Fleurette threw her arms round her, and laid her head upon the trollop’s breast.
Chauvelin turned away from the spectacle with a groan, and all night he lay awake thinking of his sweet flower laying her head upon the breast of a Claire de Châtelard.
Yet Claire de Châtelard bore herself bravely before him the next day, and when, on the day after that, he watched her from the window of the Hôtel de Ville mounting the steps of the guillotine, saw her standing there, superb and defiant with a coarse jest upon her sensual lips, he gloated over the thought that his Fleurette would no longer pillow her innocent head upon that breast. He tried to picture her, grieving for this friend, the propinquity, the squalor of that house of detention, from which there was but one egress, that egress the gate of Death. Claire de Châtelard today—Fleurette when? Every day the indictments are sent up to him for examination, the printed forms of accusation with the names left in blank, to be filled in as convenience demands: and every day a list of ten, perhaps fifteen names are sent along with these printed forms, and it is his business to direct the Public Prosecutor, a man of his own choosing, which of these names are to be inserted in the blank spaces, on the forms of accusation. Up to now he has been able to keep Fleurette’s name out, but it has been sent up to him on two consecutive days. The fight then was getting at close quarters. Pochart and Danou were pressing him, showing their teeth like snarling
