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Atheism was now preached openly.
Robespierre pronounced in favor of an unknown deity, and in so magnificent a speech, that it may be said he gave back religion to France.
But his time had come.
What was his crime in the eyes of his accusers? Unpopularity.
One night he is addressing the Convention, when the uproar is so incessant, that in endeavoring to make himself heard, his voice fails him.
The people were already looking towards Napoleon—the man of the sword, not of the tongue.
Robespierre fell back upon silence, but he was always to be seen at his place at the Convention. Hour after hour, friends became enemies.
He knew he was condemned, but he waited.
Here is the final scene:—
Robespierre and his friends, St. Just, Couthon, and Lebas, seated in a room by themselves, hear the jingle of approaching soldiers. Lebas takes one of a couple of pistols, and presents it—“Robespierre, let us die.”
“No; I await the executioner,” says Robespierre, and the other two murmur in assent.
The sounds come nearer.
A report—and Lebas falls. He has shot himself through the heart.
The soldier-insurgents swarm into the room.
“Down with the tyrant! Where is he?”
These were the cries Robespierre heard.
He did not quail.
“Which is the man?” asks a soldier of Léonard Bourdon, who did not face his fallen enemy.
He pointed the questioner’s pistol at Robespierre, and he said, “That is the man.”
The report was heard, and the next moment Robespierre’s head fell upon the proclamation he was signing at the instant.
The ball had entered the left side of the face, and carried away part of the cheek and several teeth.
Couthon tried to rise, and fell to the ground.
St. Just sat calmly glancing from his fallen friend to his enemies.
The procession to the Convention was horrible enough. It was now daybreak.
First was carried Robespierre, on a litter, his face tied up in a handkerchief; then came his brother, insensible, in the arms of two men; then followed the dead body of Lebas, over which they had thrown a table-cover.
Couthon, who had rolled in the mud, followed; and the procession was closed by St. Just, walking bare-headed.
“The recreant Robespierre is here!” said the President of the Convention, a man just chosen. “Shall he be brought in?”
“No, no!” cried the Conventionists. “The corpse of a tyrant can carry nothing but contagion along with it. To the scaffold!”
Robespierre was put aside in a room, and hundreds of people pushed in to assure themselves the tyrant was dead.
He heard and saw all; but could not speak.
At three, he and his friends were tried. At six, they were being conveyed in carts to execution.
There was no lack of people to see Robespierre die; women dressed as for a ball, believing that with Robespierre the Reign of Terror was at an end.
Children huddled around the carts—orphans of his victims—crying, “Kill him! kill him!”
His procession to the scaffold was a line of loud-spoken imprecations.
He never spoke or uttered a cry, except when the bandage was taken from his face; then a scream, heard many hundred yards away, burst from him.
His head fell—he and the Terror ended together.
France fell into the hands of Napoleon.
My tale is done. I have said very little about myself—I, Réné Besson, found in my old age by Alexander Dumas, seated in the sunlight. I married Estelle Duplay (the furies broke into the house of Duplay, the day afterRobespierre’s death, and killed his poor wife), and found peace and happiness. One last word! I have never regretted saving Sophie Gerbaut, and the Viscount de Malmy, from the Terror. That I did. I am now an old man. My very last words are these. The Revolution was terrible, but it did the world more good in the long run than the world has yet found out.
Réné Besson.
THE END.