The very next moment the grimy giant, this time with a hoarse and not at all pleasant laugh, had hurled his half-munched carrot straight into the President’s face. Then facing the crowd once more he threw up his great arms high above his head.
“Why should we wait, citizens,” he shouted louder than the rest of the yelling crowd. “A la lanterne, I say, the traitor and his brood. The guillotine is ready outside the Place. The executioner is to hand. Why wait?”
Nothing could have pleased the crowd better. They were all like tigers scenting blood, demanding it, licking their jaws in anticipation.
“Who is for a front place for the spectacle?” a man shouted from the rear of the crowd.
“A moi! the front place,” a woman cried in response.
“A moi! A moi!” came from every side.
Then the general scramble began. A stampede down the gradients. The clatter of wooden sabots against the floor. The screams of women and children pushed and squeezed by the crowd. The grounding of arms, the click of bayonets, the words of command from the officer in charge of the guard, who were there to maintain order and who were quite powerless. They did of a truth try to stem the mob, to prevent the mad rush, the trampling, the stampede. But there were in reality too few of them for the task. All available fighting men being required for the army abroad, these were for the most part too inexperienced and too incompetent; raw recruits, half-trained for a wholly inadequate corps of gendarmerie. The officers did what they could, but the men themselves were soon caught in the vortex. Having no idea of discipline or duty, they soon became just a part of the mob, allowed themselves to be carried along by the crowd. They were just as excited, just as eager to see the President of a revolutionary tribunal sent summarily to the guillotine, as anyone else. Their lust for the spectacle was as keen as that of any ragamuffin in the place. They were but half-trained ragamuffins themselves, and as every man these days was at least as good as his officer and owed him neither obedience nor respect, it was small wonder that in emergencies like these, the soldiers got out of hand, whilst the officers, shrugging their shoulders, viewed the scene with indifference.
In the meanwhile the grimy giant had effectually fought his way along the floor of the house as far as the bar of the accused, where Fleurette, wide-eyed, deathly pale, half-crazy now with terror, had just fallen forward unconscious across the railing, drooping like a lily that is battered by the storm.
“And à moi the traitors,” the giant shouted, and it was marvellous how his booming voice rang above the uproar and the confusion.
He dragged Fleurette’s inanimate body from the bar and flung it over his shoulder, as if it were a bundle of goods. Then with two huge strides he was right in front of the judges’ bench, and there turned back to face the crowd again.
“Take your places for the spectacle, citizens,” he cried. “I’ll bring the actors along.”
He looked almost unreal as he stood there, dominating the crowd, grimy, unkempt, immense, with blackened face and huge bare chest, and the inanimate body of the girl across his massive shoulders. He seemed a being from another world, a Titan, a monster, a fiend-like fury, the embodiment of all the hates and the furies that animated the rest of the crowd. They glanced at him and trembled; some of them who had not wholly forgotten their age and innocence surreptitiously crossed themselves.
“Take your places for the spectacle, citizens,” he went on lustily. “One actor I have ready for you. Who will bring the other?”
Three men in the forefront of the crowd were at that moment standing quite close to the judges’ bench, where the President lay back in his chair, dead to everything about him, alive only through the intensity of his agony. In response to the Titan’s suggestion, which was greeted with loud applause by the crowd, the three men scrambled over the desk, seized the inert person of the President between them. One of them flung a sack over his head. Thus adorned they hoisted him upon their shoulders while the crowd stamped and shouted with glee.
“Un tumulte irrépressible s’ensuivit,” says the Choix des Rapports in the Moniteur of the 22nd Messidor. Tumult is but a poor word to express the actions of that multitude. Men and women and children had become blind, insentient with lust, mad with hatred and excitement.
“Take your places for the spectacle,” the Titan shouted, “and I’ll bring along the actors for you.”
And so they rushed out in a compact, struggling mass, hurrying, scurrying, fighting and pushing and struggling. Out in the open, in the Place de la République, into the sunshine and under the blue vault of heaven they rushed. The guillotine was set up there ready for its afternoon work, but, as the grimy giant had said, “Why wait?” Why indeed! No one was in a mood for waiting. The blackest traitor this town had ever seen had tried to save himself and his brood by slandering worthy citizens of the République. By the by, where were they? Adèle of unknown parentage and the swaggering Lieutenant Godet? Ah bah! they were forgotten. Lost in the crowd. Who cared? Time enough to cheer them when the traitors and slanderers were punished. Who cared indeed? For the moment the most important thing in the world was to secure a place of vantage for witnessing the wonderful spectacle. The President of a revolutionary tribunal, a representative of the people in the National Convention, was not often to be seen in Orange mounting the steps of the guillotine. That spectacle was
