Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1762 page)

So saying, he presented to the priest a small box, extremely light in weight, which the aged ecclesiastic took, as it were, involuntarily ; for he felt awed by the solemn tones in which the man spoke as he offered it. Briefly expressing his thanks for the mysterious present, the priest
 
conducted his guest into the outer room, where the two nuns remained in attendance.

“The house you now inhabit, “ said the stranger, addressing the nuns as well as the priest, “ belongs to a landlord who outwardly affects extreme republicanism, but who is at heart devoted to the royal cause. He was formerly a huntsman in the service of one of the Bourbons, the Prince de Conti, to whom he is indebted for all that he possesses. So long as you remain in this house you are safer than in any other place in France. Remain here, therefore. Persons worthy of trust will supply all your necessities, and you will be able to await in safety the prospect of better times. In a year from this day, on the 2lst of Janu- ary, should you still remain the occupants of this miserable abode, I will return to repeat with you the celebration of to-night’s expiatory mass. “ He paused abruptly, and bowed without adding another word ;
 
then delayed a moment more, to cast a parting look on the objects of poverty which surrounded him, and left the room.

To the two simple-minded nuns, the whole affair had all the interest of a romance. Their faces displayed the most intense anxiety, the mo- ment the priest informed them of the mysterious gift which the stranger had so solemnly presented to him. Sister Agatha immediately opened the box, and discovered in it a handkerchief, made of the finest cambric, and soiled with marks of perspiration. They unfolded it eagerly, and then found that it was defaced in certain places with dark stains.

“Those stains are
blood stains
! “ exclaimed the priest.

“The handkerchief is marked with the royal crown ! “ , cried Sister Agatha.

Both the nuns dropped the precious relic, marked by the King’s blood, with horror. To their simple minds, the mystery which was attached to the stranger, now deepened fearfully. As for the priest, from that moment he ceased, even in thought, to attempt identifying his visitor, or discovering the means by which he bad become possessed of the royal handkerchief.

Throughout the atrocities practised during a year of the Reign of Terror, the three refugees were safely guarded by the same protecting interference, ever at work for their advantage. At first, they received large supplies of fuel and provisions ; then the two nuns found reason to imagine that one of their own sex had become associated with their invisible protector, for they were furnished with the necessary linen and clothing which enabled them to go out without attracting attention by any peculiarities of attire. Besides this, warnings of danger constantly came to the priest in the most unexpected manner, and always oppor- tunely. And then, again, in spite of the famine which at that period afflicted Paris, the inhabitants of the garret were sure to find placed every morning at their door, a supply of the best wheaten bread, regu- larly left for them by some invisible hand.

They could only guess that the agent of the charitable attentions thus lavished on them, was the landlord of the house, and that the person by whom he was employed was no other than the stranger who had celebrated with them the funeral mass for the repose of the King’s soul. Thus, this mysterious man was regarded with especial reverence by the priest and the nuns, whose lives for the present and whose hopes for the future, depended on their strange visitor. They added to their usual prayers at night and morning, prayers for
him
.

 
At length the long-expected night of the 2lst of January arrived,
 
and, exactly as the clock struck twelve, the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs announced the approach of the stranger. The room had been carefully prepared for his reception, the altar had been arranged, and, on this occasion, the nuns eagerly opened the door, even before they heard the knock.

“Welcome back again ! most welcome ! “ cried they ; “ we have been anxiously awaiting you. “

The stranger raised his head, looked gloomily on the nuns, and made no answer. Chilled by his cold reception of their kind greeting, they did not venture to utter another word. He seemed to have frozen at their hearts, in an instant, all the gratitude, all the friendly aspirations of the long year that had passed. They now perceived but too plainly that their visitor desired to remain a complete stranger to them, and that they must resign all hope of ever making a friend of him. The old priest fancied he had detected a smile on the lips of their guest when he entered, but that smile — - if it had really appeared — - vanished again the moment he observed the preparations which had been made for his reception. He knelt to hear the funeral mass, prayed fervently as before, and then abruptly took his departure ; briefly declining, by a few civil words, to partake of the simple refreshment offered to him, on the expiration of the service, by the two nuns.

Day after day wore on, and nothing more was heard of the stranger by the inhabitants of the garret. After the fall of Robespierre, the church was delivered from all actual persecution, and the priest and the nuns were free to appear publicly in Paris, without the slightest risk of danger. One of the first expeditions undertaken by the aged ecclesi- astic led him to a perfumer’s shop, kept by a man who had formerly been one of the Court tradesmen, and who had always remained faithful to the Royal Family. The priest, clothed once more in his clerical dress, was standing at the shop door talking to the perfumer, when he observed a great crowd rapidly advancing along the street.
 
“ What is the matter yonder ? “ he inquired of the shopkeeper.

“Nothing, “ replied the man, carelessly, “ but the cart with the con- demned criminals going to the place of execution. Nobody pities them — -and nobody ought ! “

“You are not speaking like a Christian, “ exclaimed the priest. “ Why not pity them ?”

“Because, “ answered the perfumer, “ those men who are going to execution are the last accomplices of Robespierre. They only travel the same fatal road which their innocent victims took before them.

The cart with the prisoners condemned to the guillotine had by this time arrived opposite the perfumer’s shop. As the old priest looked curiously towards the state criminals, he saw, standing erect and un- daunted among his drooping fellow prisoners, the very man at whose desire he had twice celebrated the funeral service for the martyred King of France !

“Who is that, standing upright in the cart ? “ cried the priest, breathlessly.

The perfumer looked in the direction indicated, and answered — -
 
         
T
HE
 
E
XECUTIONER  OF
 
L
OUIS  THE
 
S
IXTEENTH
! “

THE NIGHT OF
the 30th of June, 1793, is memorable in the prison annals of Paris, as the last night in confinement of the leaders of the famous Girondin party in the first French revolution. On the morning of the 31st, the twenty-one deputies who represented the department of the Gironde, were guillotined to make way for Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.

With these men fell the last revolutionists of that period who shrank from founding a republic on massacre; who recoiled from substituting for a monarchy of corruption, a monarchy of bloodshed. The elements of their defeat lay as much in themselves, as in the events of their time. They were not, as a party, true to their own convictions; they temporized; they fatally attempted to take a middle course amid the terrible emergencies of a terrible epoch, and they fell — fell before worse men, because those men were in earnest.

Condemned to die, the Girondins submitted nobly to their fate; their great glory was the glory of their deaths. The speech of one of them on hearing his sentence pronounced, was a prophecy of the future, fulfilled to the letter.

‘
I
die,’ he said to the Jacobin judges, the creatures of Robespierre, who tried him. ‘
I
die at a time when the people have lost their reason;
you
will die on the day when they recover it.’ Valazé was the only member of the condemned party who displayed a momentary weakness; he stabbed himself on hearing his sentence pronounced. But the blow was not mortal — he died on the scaffold, and died bravely with the rest.

On the night of the 30th the Girondins held their famous banquet in the prison; celebrated, with the ferocious stoicism of the time, their last social meeting before the morning on which they were to die. Other men, besides the twenty-one, were present at this supper of the condemned. They were prisoners who held Girondin opinions, but whose names were not illustrious enough for history to preserve. Though sentenced to confinement they were not sentenced to death. Some of their number, who had protested most boldly against the condemnation of the deputies, were ordered to witness the execution on the morrow, as a timely example to terrify them into submission. More than this, Robespierre and his colleagues did not, as yet, venture to attempt: the Reign of Terror was a cautious reign at starting.

The supper-table of the prison was spread; the guests, twenty-one of their number stamped already with the seal of death, were congregated at the last Girondin banquet; toast followed toast; the
Marseillaise
was sung; the desperate triumph of the feast was rising fast to its climax, when a new and ominous subject of conversation was started at the lower end of the table, and spread electrically, almost in a moment , to the top.

This subject (by whom originated no one knew) was simply a question as to the hour in the morning at which the execution was to take place. Every one of the prisoners appeared to be in ignorance on this point; and the gaolers either could not, or would not, enlighten them. Until the cart for the condemned rolled into the prison-yard, not one of the Girondins could tell whether he was to be called out to the guillotine soon after sunrise, or not till near noon.

This uncertainty was made a topic for discussion, or for jesting on all sides. It was eagerly seized on as a pretext for raising to the highest pitch the ghastly animation and hilarity of the evening. In some quarters, the recognised hour of former executions was quoted as precedent sure to be followed by the executioners of the morrow; in others, it was asserted that Robespierre and his party would purposely depart from established customs in this, as in previous instances. Dozens of wild schemes were suggested for guessing the hour by fortune-telling rules on the cards; bets were offered and accepted among the prisoners who were not condemned to death, and witnessed in stoical mockery by the prisoners who were. Jests were exchanged about early rising and hurried toilets; in short, every man contributed an assertion, with one solitary exception. That exception was the Girondin, Duprat, one of the deputies who was sentenced to die by the guillotine.

He was a younger man than the majority of his brethren, and was personally remarkable by his pale, handsome, melancholy face, and his reserved yet gentle manners. Throughout the evening, he had spoken but rarely; there was something of the silence and serenity of a martyr in his demeanour. That he feared death as little as any of his companions was plainly visible in his bright, steady eye; in his unchanging complexion; in his firm, calm voice, when he occasionally addressed those who happened to be near him. But he was evidently out of place at the banquet; his temperament was reflective, his disposition serious; feasts were at no time a sphere in which he was calculated to shine.