Chapter IX: Act I (5)

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guardrooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted "Peruke-maker with two fiery torches" is for burning "the saltpetres of the Arsenal," had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized, escaping, in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Launay's sight; she lies, swooned, on a _paillasse_; but again a Patriot--it is brave Aubin Bonnemere, the old soldier--dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled hither, go up in white smoke, almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart, and Reole the "gigantic haberdasher" another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!

Blood flows; the ailment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas! how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hotel-de-Ville; Abbe Fauchet (who was of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway, and stand, rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them; they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-holes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose _catapults_. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired by a "mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentine spouted up through forcing-pumps." O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture _ready_? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Francaises have come; real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of thousands.

How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court, there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began, and is now pointing toward Five, and still the firing slakes not.--Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.

Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy; Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are come to join you," said the Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks, "Alight then, and give up your arms!" The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific 'Avis au Peuple'! Great, truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth; and yet this same day come four years!--But let the curtains of the Future hang.

What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:--Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should in nowise be surrendered save to the King's Messenger; one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honor: but think, ye brawling _canaille_, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward? In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen, and all the tagrag and bobtail of the world, to work their will.

And, yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men? Hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage in one of his noblest Operas was the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser, Bread! Bread! Great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of their _instincts_, which are truer than their _thoughts_; it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing somewhere _beyond_ Time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring, and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish.

For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared; call it the World-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the _chamade_, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge; a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank swinging over the abyss of that stone Ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots, he hovers perilous; such a Dove toward such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher; one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring, he walks, with out-spread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole; the shifty Usher snatches it and returns. Terms of surrender, Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted? _"Foi d'officier_, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie--for men do not agree on it--"they are!" Sinks the drawbridge,--Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes in the living deluge; the Bastille is fallen! _Victoire! La Bastille est prise_!

* * * * *

Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's _foi d'officier_ should have been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised in white canvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise, their arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstasy that the death peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their necks"; but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way, "wheeled round with arms leveled," it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.

And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing uncontrollable, firing from windows--on itself; in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back, with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Town-hall to be judged! Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back De Launay from the Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.

De Launay, "discovered in gray frock with poppy-colored riband," is for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the Hotel-de-Ville; Hulin, Maillard, and others escorting him, Elie marching foremost, "with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point." Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, fell down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall never enter the Hotel-de-Ville; only his "bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand"; that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets, ghastly, aloft on a pike.

Rigorous De Launay has died; crying out, "O friends, kill me fast!" Merciful De Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him, in this fearful hour, and will die for him, it avails not. Brothers, your wrath is cruel! Your Place de Greve is become a Throat of the Tiger, full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron; with difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Francaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles, stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat, "to be judged at the Palais Royal"; alas, to be shot dead by an unknown hand at the turning of the first street!

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-Officers;--and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville! Babel Tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral Committee; points itself, in horrid radii, against this and the other accused breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and they, scarcely crediting it, have _conquered_; prodigy of prodigies; delirious,--as it could not but be. Denunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror; all outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of madness!

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

From 'The French Revolution'

In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments germinate a set of rebellious _paper_-leaves, named Proclamations, Resolutions, Journals, or Diurnals, "of the Union for Resistance to Oppression." In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados, sees its paper-leaf of Bulletin de Caen suddenly bud, suddenly establish itself as Newspaper there; under the Editorship of Girondin National Representatives!

Photogravure from a painting by C. L. Muller.

Original in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armans, a French young woman of
noble birth, filled with horror at the excesses of the Reign
of Terror, gained admission to the private apartments of Marat
and stabbed him to death July 13, 1793. She was convicted by
the Revolutionary tribunal and died by the guillotine July 17,
1793.]

For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate humor. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, "arrested in their own houses," will await with stoical resignation what the issue may be. Some, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to concealment; which, as the Paris Barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet difficult. But others there are who will rush, with Buzot, to Calvados; or far over France, to Lyons, Toulon, Nantes and elsewhither, and then rendezvous at Caen: to awaken as with war-trumpet the respectable Departments; and strike down an anarchic Mountain Faction; at least not yield without a stroke at it. Of this latter temper we count some score or more, of the Arrested, and of the Not-yet-arrested: a Buzot, a Barbaroux, Louvet, Guadet, Petion, who have escaped from Arrestment in their own homes; a Salles, a Pythagorean Valady, a Duchatel, the Duchatel that came in blanket and night-cap to vote for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger and likelihood of Arrestment. These, to the number at one time of Twenty-seven, do accordingly lodge here, in the "Intendance," or Departmental Mansion, of the town of Caen in Calvados; welcomed by Persons in Authority; welcomed and defrayed, having no money of their own. And the Bulletin de Caen comes forth, with the most animating paragraphs: How the Bordeaux Department, the Lyons Department, this Department after the other is declaring itself; sixty, or say sixty-nine, or seventy-two respectable Departments either declaring, or ready to declare. Nay, Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris by itself, if need be. So has Marseilles Town said that she will march. But on the other hand, that Montelimart Town has said, No thoroughfare; and means even to "bury herself" under her own stone and mortar first,--of this be no mention in Bulletin de Caen.

Such animating paragraphs we read in this new Newspaper; and fervors and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the Mountain, from the pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends, Pascal's "Provincials." What is more to the purpose, these Girondins have got a General in chief, one Wimpfen, formerly under Dumouriez; also a secondary questionable General Puisaye, and others; and are doing their best to raise a force for war. National Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye National Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados Townships, from the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near: forward to Paris, and extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a perorating and consulting: Staff and Army; Council; Club of Carabots, Anti-jacobin friends of Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat. With all which, and the editing of Bulletins, a National Representative has his hands full.

At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less animated in the "Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us." And in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn with an internal La Vendee, _this_ is the conclusion we have arrived at: To put down Anarchy by Civil War! _Durum et durum_, the Proverb says, _non faciunt murum_. La Vendee burns; Santerre can do nothing there; he may return home and brew beer. Cimmerian bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege of Mentz is become famed;--lovers of the Picturesque (as Goethe will testify), washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither on Sundays, to see the artillery work and counter-work; "you only duck a little while the shot whizzes past." Conde is capitulating to the Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp of Famars was stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General Custine was blamed,--and indeed is now come to Paris to give "explanations."

Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must even make head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they are, publish Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity: they ray-forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other. Commissioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical Romme, and Prieur named of the Cote d'Or, venturing thither, with their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may Romme lie, under lock and key, "for fifty days"; and meditate his New Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria, La Vendee, and Civil War! Never was Republic One and Indivisible at a lower ebb.

Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady with an aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman figure: in her twenty-fifth year; of beautiful still countenance: her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy Duperret,--him who once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently she will to Paris on some errand? "She was a Republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is in this fair female Figure: "By energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-demonic splendor; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries!--Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five million within, History will look fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night.

With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in which she mingles not: all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.

On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent friend of Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of Friday:--yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.

About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach: "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat!--The Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business together.--Charlotte, returning to her Inn, dispatches a short Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired day-laborers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is circling and simmering, manifold according to its vague wont; this one fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight,--toward a purpose.

It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month; eve of the Bastille day,--when "M. Marat," four years ago, in the crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount, and give up their arms, then"; and became notable among Patriot men. Four years: what a road he has traveled:--and sits now, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath; sore afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever,--of what other malady this History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man: with precisely eleven-pence-half-penny of ready-money, in paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool for writing on, the while; and a squalid--Washer-woman, one may call her: that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and Perfect Felicity: yet surely on the way toward that?--Hark, a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognizing from within, cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.

Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you.--Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?--Charlotte names some Deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager People's-friend, clutching his tablets to write: Barbaroux, Petion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath: Petion, and Louvet, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "_A moi, chere amie_ (Help, dear)!" no more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washer-woman running in--there is no Friend of the People, or Friend of the Washer-woman, left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below!

And so Marat, People's-friend, is ended; the lone Stylites has got hurled down suddenly from his pillar--_whitherward_ He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail; re-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention, "Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sans-culotte,"--whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old Moniteur Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchatel to ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean-Paul Marat's musket be given to him." For Marat too had a brother and natural affections; and was wrapped once in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men!--A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.

As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished; the recompense of it is near and sure. The _chere amie_, and the neighbors of the house, flying at her, she "overturns some movables," intrenches herself till the gendarmes arrive; then quietly surrenders; goes quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, in wonder, in rage or admiration, round her. Duperret is put in arrest, on account of her; his Papers sealed,--which may lead to consequences. Fauchet, in like manner; though Fauchet had not so much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the dejection of Fauchet.

On Wednesday morning the thronged Palais de Justice and Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm: she dates it "fourth day of the Preparation of Peace." A strange murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her; you could not say of what character. Tinville has his indictments and tape-papers: the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold her the sheath-knife; "All these details are needless," interrupted Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat." By whose instigation?--"By no one's." "What tempted you, then?" "His crimes. I killed one man," added she, raising her voice extremely (_extremement_), as they went on with their questions, "I killed one man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage wild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the Revolution; I never wanted energy." There is therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving: the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, any ghostly or other aid from him.

On this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tip-toe, the fatal Cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying toward death,--alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be touched? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it were beautiful to die with her; the head of this young man seems turned. At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck, a blush of maidenly shame overspreads her fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes; the Police imprisoned him for it."

In this manner have the Beautifulest and the Squalidest come in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. "Day of the Preparation of Peace"? Alas, how were peace possible or preparable, while for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in their convent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love-paradises and the light of Life, but of Codrus's-sacrifices and Death well-earned? That twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper, this _is_ the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be the embodiment! The death of Marat, whetting old animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,--in the Mother's bosom that bore you both!

This is the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most complete: angelic-demonic: like a Star!

THE SCAPEGOAT

From the 'French Revolution'

To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form of Society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand years; and has become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful, this Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather King-hood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures,--like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man; injustice breeds injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily return "always _home_," wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too experiences that man's tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with him.

A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole combined world do _more_? Lally went on his hurdle; his mouth filled with a gag. Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity, with all aids and appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it of the thing pitied!

* * * * *

A Confessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts, environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left _here_! Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Clery through these glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see the cruelest of scenes:--

"At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: 'No', said the King, 'let us go into the dining-room; it is there only that I can see you.' They entered there; I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The King sat down, the Queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in front; the young Prince remained standing between his Father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters; during which we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when the King spoke, the sobbing of the Princesses redoubled, continued for some minutes; and that then the King began again to speak." And so our meetings and our partings do now end! The sorrows we gave each other; the poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovings and our sufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never, never through all ages of Time, see thee any more!--NEVER! O Reader, knowest thou that hard word?

For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow." He promises:--Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved ones; cry to God for yourselves and me!--It was a hard scene, but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The Queen, in passing through the ante-room, glanced at the Cerberus Municipals; and with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, "_Vous etes tous des scelerats_".

King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair: while this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard to bear.

At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will, and messages and effects; which they at first brutally refuse to take charge of; he gives them a roll of gold pieces, 125 louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes, who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. "Stamping on the ground with his right foot, Louis answers: '_Partons_' (Let us go)."--How the rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she, as Duchesse d'Angouleme, will live,--not happily.

At the Temple gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women: "_Grace! Grace!_" Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All windows are down, none seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage rolls, this morning, in these streets, but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men; cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone: one carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying: clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear in the great silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and forget the Earth.

As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in the rear; D'Orleans Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers, _hoquetons_, speed to the Town-hall, every three minutes: near by is the Convention sitting,--vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the black Maelstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. "Take care of M. Edgeworth," he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them: then they two descend.

The drums are beating: "_Taisez-vous_ (Silence)!" he cries "in a terrible voice (_d'une voix terrible_)." He mounts the scaffold, not without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the Savior, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the Scaffold, "his face very red," and says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France--" A General on horseback, Santerre or another, prances out, with uplifted hand: "_Tambours_!" The drums drown the voice. "Executioners, do your duty!" The Executioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years four months and twenty-eight days.

Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of _Vive la Republique_ rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It is done, It is done." There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings. And so, in some half-hour it is done; and the multitude has all departed. Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries, the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was.

A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences. On the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all ready, correct in black-on-white to the utmost farthing: these he wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote obscurity, to the country and his books. They will never be audited, those accounts: he will never get retired thither.

It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier St.-Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft, half-bare; the winding-sheet disclosing the death-wound; sabre and bloody clothes parade themselves; a "lugubrious music" wailing harsh naeniae. Oak-crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of every color, all mourning brother-like.

Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it was the last act these men ever did with concert! All parties and figures of Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and its Convention, now stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to dagger; the King's Life, round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down. Dumouriez, conquering Holland, growls ominous discontent, at the head of Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orleans Egalite shall be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis, curses his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of Regicides, of "Arras Vipers" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly to another world than _theirs_. This is Te-Deum Fauchet, of the Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was the death-hail rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that Bastille day: but it was soft to such wreckage of high Hope as this; one's New Golden Era going down in leaden dross, and sulphurous black of the Everlasting Darkness!

BLISS CARMAN

(1861-)

BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Bliss Carman was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on April 15th, 1861. On both sides of the house he belongs to that United Empire Loyalist stock which at the time of the American Revolution sacrificed wealth and ease to a principle, and angrily withdrew from the young republic to carve out new commonwealths in the wilds of Canada. His father was William Carman, Clerk of the Pleas, a man of influence and distinction in his Province. His mother was one of the Blisses of Fredericton, the Loyalist branch of that Connecticut family to which Emerson's mother belonged. Mr. Carman was educated at the Collegiate School and the University of New Brunswick, both at Fredericton. He distinguished himself in classics and mathematics, took his B. A. in 1881, his M. A. in 1884, and afterwards took partial courses at Edinburgh and Harvard. He has been connected editorially with several American periodicals, the Independent and the Chap-Book among them, but now devotes himself exclusively to literature. He divides his time between Boston and Washington, returning to the Maritime Provinces for the hot months of each year. Mr. Carman issued his first volume of poems in 1893, when he had already won reputation as a contributor to the magazines. The volume was called 'Low Tide on Grand Pre: a Book of Lyrics.' It was published in New York and London, and ran quickly into a second edition. Equally successful was the volume called 'Songs from Vagabondia,' published in 1894. About half the poems in this volume are by Mr. Richard Hovey, whose name appears on the title-page with that of Mr. Carman. In 1895 appeared 'Behind the Arras: a Book of the Unseen.' Much of Mr. Carman's known work remains still uncollected.

In that outburst of intellectual energy which has of late won for Canada a measure of recognition in the world of letters, Mr. Carman's work has played a large part. The characteristics of the Canadian school may perhaps be defined as a certain semi-Sufristic worship of nature, combined with freshness of vision and keenness to interpret the significance of the external world. These characteristics find intense expression in Mr. Carman's poems. And they find expression in an utterance so new and so distinctive that its influence is already active in the verse of his contemporaries.

There are two terms which apply pre-eminently to Mr. Carman. These are Lyrist and Symbolist. His note is always the lyric note. The "lyric cry" thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is the rhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then in his work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion. Every phrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is a poem which not only haunts the ear with its harmonies but at the same time makes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result is less successful it seems sometimes as if the thought were too much diluted with words,--as if, in fact, verbal music and verbal coloring were allowed to take the place of the legitimate thought-process. Even in such cases, the verse, however nebulous in meaning, is rarely without some subtlety of technique, some charm of diction, to justify its existence. But there are poems of Mr. Carman's, wherein what seems at first to be the obscurity of an over-attenuated thought is really an attempt to express thought in terms of pure music or pure color. In a curious and beautiful poem called 'Beyond the Gamut' he elaborates a theory of the oneness and interchangeability of form, sound, and color.

In the matter of conception and interpretation Mr. Carman is a symbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense, and must be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring schools. The true symbolist--and all the supreme artists of the world have been in this sense symbolists--recognizes that there are truths too vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific phrase. They elude set words; as a faint star, at the coming on of evening, eludes the eye which seeks for it directly, while unveiling itself to a side glance. Mr. Carman conveys to us, by the suggestion of thrilling color or inimitable phrase, perceptions and emotions which a more strictly defined method could never capture.

In subject-matter Mr. Carman is simple and elemental. He looks at his themes curiously, often whimsically; but the themes are those of universal and eternal import,--life, love, and death, the broad aspects of the outer world, the "deep heart of man," and the spirit that informs them all. His song is sometimes in a minor key, plangent and piercing; sometimes in a large and virile major,--as for instance when he sings the 'War-song of Gamelba.' To his gifts of imagination, insight, and lyric passion he adds a fine humor, the outflowing of a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified in 'Resignation' and 'A More Ancient Mariner.' His chief defects, besides the occasional obscurity already referred to, are a tendency to looseness of structure in his longer poems, and once in a while, as in parts of 'The Silent Lodger,' a Browningesque lapse into hardness and baldness when the effect aimed at is colloquial simplicity.

[Signature: Charles G. D. Roberts]

HACK AND HEW

Hack and Hew were the sons of God
In the earlier earth than now;
One at his right hand, one at his left,
To obey as he taught them how.

And Hack was blind and Hew was dumb,
But both had the wild, wild heart;
And God's calm will was their burning will,
And the gist of their toil was art.

They made the moon and the belted stars,
They set the sun to ride;
They loosed the girdle and veil of the sea,
The wind and the purple tide.

Both flower and beast beneath their hands
To beauty and speed outgrew,--
The furious fumbling hand of Hack,
And the glorying hand of Hew.

Then, fire and clay, they fashioned a man,
And painted him rosy brown;
And God himself blew hard in his eyes:
"Let them burn till they smolder down!"

And "There!" said Hack, and "There!" thought Hew,
"We'll rest, for our toil is done."
But "Nay," the Master Workman said,
"For your toil is just begun.

"And ye who served me of old as God
Shall serve me anew as man,
Till I compass the dream that is in my heart
And perfect the vaster plan."

And still the craftsman over his craft,
In the vague white light of dawn,
With God's calm will for his burning will
While the mounting day comes on,

Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,
Toils with those shadowy two,--
The faltering restless hand of Hack,
And the tireless hand of Hew.

From 'Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson,
Wolffe and Company

AT THE GRANITE GATE

There paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind.
With mystery before,
And reticence behind,

A portal waits me too
In the glad house of spring;
One day I shall pass through
And leave you wondering.

It lies beyond the marge
Of evening or of prime,
Silent and dim and large,
The gateway of all time.

There troop by night and day
My brothers of the field;
And I shall know the way
Their wood-songs have revealed.

The dusk will hold some trace
Of all my radiant crew
Who vanished to that place,
Ephemeral as dew.

Into the twilight dun,
Blue moth and dragon-fly
Adventuring alone,--
Shall be more brave than I?

There innocents shall bloom,
And the white cherry tree,
With birch and willow plume
To strew the road for me.

The wilding orioles then
Shall make the golden air
Heavy with joy again,
And the dark heart shall dare

Resume the old desire,--
The exigence of spring
To be the orange fire
That tips the world's gray wing.

And the lone wood-bird--Hark!
The whippoorwill, night-long,
Threshing the summer dark
With his dim flail of song!--

Shall be the lyric lift,
When all my senses creep,
To bear me through the rift
In the blue range of sleep.

And so I pass beyond
The solace of your hand.
But ah, so brave and fond!
Within that morrow-land,

Where deed and daring fail,
But joy forevermore
Shall tremble and prevail
Against the narrow door,

Where sorrow knocks too late,
And grief is overdue,
Beyond the granite gate
There will be thoughts of you.

From 'Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson,
Wolffe and Company

A SEA CHILD

The lover of child Marjory
Had one white hour of life brim full;
Now the old nurse, the rocking sea,
Hath him to lull.

The daughter of child Marjory
Hath in her veins, to beat and run,
The glad indomitable sea,
The strong white sun.

Copyrighted by Bliss Carman.

LEWIS CARROLL

(CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON)

(1832-)

That the author of the best nonsense-writing in the language should be a professional mathematician and logician, is not a paradox but a sequence. A gymnast cannot divert us by pretending to lose his balance unless perfectly able to keep his balance. Actors who counterfeit insanity must be acutely sane. Only a competent classical scholar can write good macaronics; only a good poet can write clever doggerel. The only ones who can use slang effectively are those who do not need to use it at all. Nor is the tone and temper of mind evinced by these dry and severe studies out of keeping with the airiest play of fancy or the maddest fun. The one is indeed a frequent relief from the other, and no intellectual bent is related in the least to any special temperament. Extravagant drollery can be mated to an aptitude for geometry or a passion for analysis as well as to a love of pictures or of horses.

But the parentage of 'Alice in Wonderland' and its fellows is closer to their creator's intellectual being even than this. A very slight glance at their matter and mechanism shows that they are the work of one trained to use words with the finest precision, to teach others to use them so, to criticize keenly any inconsistency or slovenliness in their use, and to mock mercilessly any vagueness or incoherence in thought or diction. The fantastic framework and inconsequent scenes of these wonder-stories mask from the popular view the qualities which give them their superlative rank and enduring charm.

The mere machinery, ingenious and amusing as it is, would not entertain beyond a single reading; it can be and has often been imitated, along with the incarnated nursery rhymes and old saws. Yet these grotesque chimeras, under Lewis Carroll's touch, are as living to us as any characters in Dickens or the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' and even more so to the elders than the children. Who does not know and delight in the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the elegant White Rabbit and the conceited and monosyllabic Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat and the Mock-Turtle, the March Hare and the Hatter and the Dormouse; or the chess White King and the Queens and the White Knight, the Walrus and the Carpenter, of Looking-Glass Land?

The very genesis of many of these is the logical analysis of a popular comparison into sober fact, as "grinning like a Cheshire cat," "mad as a hatter" or "March hare," "sleeping like a dormouse," etc.; and a large part of their wit and fun consists in plays on ambiguous terms in current use, like the classic "jam every other day," "French, music, and washing," "The name of the song is called--" or in parodies on familiar verses (or on the spirit of ballads rather than the wording, as in 'Jabberwocky'), or in heaps of versified _non-sequiturs_, like the exquisite "poem" read at the trial of the Knave of Hearts. The analyst and the logician is as patent in 'Alice' as in the class lectures the author gave or the technical works he has issued; only turning his criticism and his _reductiones ad absurdum_ into bases for witty fooling instead of serious lessons or didactic works. Hence, while his wonder-books are nominally for children, and please the children through their cheaper and commoner qualities, their real audience is the most cultivated and keen-minded part of the mature world; to whom indeed he speaks almost exclusively in such passages as the Rabelaisian satire of the jury trial in 'Alice in Wonderland,' or the mob in 'Sylvie and Bruno' yelling "Less bread! More taxes!" before the Lord Chancellor's house, or the infinitely touching pathos of the Outlandish Watch.

'Alice in Wonderland' appeared in 1865; it received universal admiration at once, and was translated into many languages. By the rarest of good fortune, it was illustrated by an artist (John Tenniel) who entered into its spirit so thoroughly that the characters in popular memory are as much identified with his pictures as with Lewis Carroll's text, and no other representation of them would be endured. 'Through the Looking-Glass' followed in 1871; its prose matter was almost equal to that of its predecessor,--the chapter of the White Knight is fully equal to the best of the other,--and its verse is superior. Part of the first book was based on the game of cards; the whole setting of the second is based on chess moves, and Alice's progress to queenship along the board. He has published several books of humorous prose and verse since; some of the verse equal to the best of his two best books, but the prose generally spoiled by conscious didacticism, as in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' which however contains some of his happiest nonsense verse. 'The Hunting of the Snark' is a nonsense tale in verse, but oddly the best things in it are his prose tags. 'Rhyme and Reason' is a collection of verse, some of it of high merit in its kind: 'The Three Voices' is spun out and ill-ended, but has some passages which deserve to be classic.