In the centre of the place, facing the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, the guillotine reared its gaunt arms, painted a vivid red. The officers of the gendarmerie had succeeded by dint of threats, in restoring some semblance of order in the tenue of their men. They now stood at attention round the guillotine on the platform of which the executioner was busy with his grim task.
The crowd around was very still. Something oppressive, unconnected with the heat of midday sun, seemed to hang in the air. People were still pouring out of the Hôtel de Ville, though not in such compact numbers. Gradually these numbers too were thinned. Those that came out last appeared more sober, less excited than the mob that had spread itself all over the Place shrieking and gesticulating in the manner habitual to these natives of the South.
Some of the last to come out were a group of men well known in Orange, one was the butcher from the Rue Longue, another the innkeeper of Les Trois Abeilles, a third kept the haberdashery shop over the bridge. Citizen Pochart and Danou were with them. They were all talking eagerly together as they came down the steps. A group of women were standing close by.
“Are they bringing the traitors?” they asked.
“Yes, Citizen Tartine,” the butcher replied, “that fine patriot Rémi, one of the scavengers at the Caristie house is close behind us, with some of his mates. They’ve got the traitors between them. We are to give the sign by firing this pistol when the executioner is ready.”
He showed the women the pistol which he said Rémi himself had given him.
“The executioner is ready now,” the women said, three of them speaking at once.
Citizens Pochart and Danou and the others then walked across the Place to the foot of the guillotine, one of them spoke a few words with the executioner. The crowd of spectators watched with feverish excitement. And presently Citizen Tartine, the butcher, raised his arm and fired a pistol in the air. A number of women shrieked. The excitement was so tense that the loud report sent the others into hysterics. Soon, however, the rumour went round that the pistol-shot was the signal that everything was ready for the spectacle and for the entrance of the chief actors in the play. After which every noise subsided. The multitude held its breath; a thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on the wide-open portals of the Hôtel de Ville waiting for the grandiose appearance of Rémi the scavenger and his mates bearing the traitors upon their shoulders.
Up, on the platform of the guillotine, the executioner was giving a last look to the pulleys. The soldiers stood at attention.
The huge crowd waited.
XXXVII
The Moniteur does not say much about what happened afterwards. “La foule attendit avec assez de patience,” is all it says, “mais personne ne vint.”
The portals of the Hôtel de Ville which should have been a frame for the entrance of the principal actors in the last act of the drama, showed nothing but the yawning black emptiness beyond. The crowd waited, says the Moniteur, with sufficient patience. They did wait quite happily for ten minutes, agitatedly for twenty. But nobody came. Citizens Pochart and Danou, also citizen Tartine, the butcher, and three or four others, were seen to make their way back across the Place, to run quickly up the steps of the Hôtel de Ville and subsequently disappear inside its portals. Still the crowd waited, very much as a crowd will wait in a theatre when the entr’acte is too long; some of them hilariously, others with impatient yawns, others again with tapping of feet and presently with murmurs of, “La Lan-terne! La Lan-terne!”
The next thing that happened was the reverberating clang of the portals of the Hôtel de Ville being suddenly closed. Then only did the crowd realize that they were being cheated of the spectacle. Murmurs were loud, and there were some hisses and boos and cat’s calls. But on the whole they took the event with extraordinary calm. There was no rioting as indeed might have been expected. A few hotheads tried to create a disturbance by loudly demanding that the executioner be given something to do. Madame la Guillotine should not be cheated of her dinner.
“She’s hungry, give her something to eat,” was the catchword these hotheads used in order to excite the rest of the crowd. Somehow it did not work. There certainly were a few bouts of fisticuffs, one or two broken heads, the soldiers round the guillotine and those on guard at the street corners did use their bayonets with some effect, but on the whole the crowd was strangely subdued, more inclined to whisper than to shout.
For quite a little while after the portals of the Hôtel de Ville had been closed, they still waited, thinking that perhaps something more was being devised for their entertainment. But as time went on and nothing happened, they thought they might as well get home. It was dinner time. The children were hungry, and though there was little enough in the larders these days, one had to get home and give them what there was.
