Danton — A Drama in Three Acts
Danton
This play was given, for the first time, at the Nouveau Théâtre, on 29 December 1900, by the Cercle des Escholiers, with the following cast:
Robespierre — MM. Henri Burguet. Danton — Henry-Perrin. Camille Desmoulins — Paul Capellani. Vadier — Séruzier. Billaud-Varenne — Bauer-Valin. Saint-Just — Georges Barrias. Herman — Robert Liser. Westermann — Carlo. Hérault de Séchelles — A. Schneider. Philippeaux — Daniel. Fouquier-Tinville — Gavarry-Carpenel. Lucile Desmoulins — Mmes Marie Marcilly. Éléonore Duplay — Blanche Toutain. Madame Duplay — Andral.
DANTON, 35 years old. — A Shakespearean Gargantua, jovial and grandiose. The muzzle of a mastiff, the voice of a bull. The forehead receding and uncovered, the eyes light blue, with an audacious gaze, the nose short and broad, the upper lip deformed by a scar, the jaw heavy and violent. Athletic, sanguine.
ROBESPIERRE, 36 years old. — Medium height, delicate complexion. Chestnut hair. Eyes dark green, large, fixed, and myopic. Heavy spectacles, raised upon the forehead. Nose straight, slightly turned up at the tip. Pale complexion. Thin lips, with a disdainful, disquieting expression, not without attraction.
CAMILLE DESMOULINS, 34 years old. — Brown eyes, a little divergent, long black hair. Face pale and bilious, irregular, swollen at the temples. Expression mobile, fantastical, seductive and troubled, passing through every emotion, from grace to grimace. Very feminine, laughing and weeping by turns, and sometimes both at once. No use trying to reproduce his stammer. But his speech, his movements, his physiognomy, have always something uncertain and contradictory.
SAINT-JUST, 27 years old. — Long blond hair, powdered, blue eyes. Oval face, with elongated chin. The look of a young aristocratic Englishman, calm, of cold and unshakable will. At bottom, the ferment of a fanatic faith.
HÉRAULT DE SÉCHELLES, 34 years old. — A handsome man, and elegant. The last representative in the Convention of the manners and the spirit of the old regime. A mixture of irony and affectionate indulgence. Very peaceful, very self-possessed.
BILLAUD-VARENNE, 38 years old. — Tall stature, broad and pale face. Wig of red hair. Wide shoulders. Sombre, absorbed by fixed ideas; crushed by fatigue, often with a wild air, with starts of mad exasperation.
VADIER, 58 years old. — “The Gascon Voltaire.” A tall and bony old man; the nose hooked, the chin pointed, the eyebrows thick, the mouth thin, wide and pinched, the face yellow. “Bent in two, raising his white head to snicker under his breath, with a dry and shrill sound, that vibrated without echoing.”
PHILIPPEAUX, 38 years old. — Thin. Face cold and severe. Wide black eyes. Long nose. Hair sparse and plastered. The look ascetic and violent.
FABRE-D’ÉGLANTINE, 39 years old.
GENERAL WESTERMANN, 43 years old.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, public prosecutor.
HERMAN, president of the revolutionary tribunal.
GENERAL HANRIOT.
LUCILE DESMOULINS, 22 years old. — Blonde, slender, black eyes, frizzy hair. “Bustling about like a sprite, showing her teeth like a cat.”
ÉLÉONORE DUPLAY, 25 years old. — Tall, calm eyes, the pure features of a classical drawing. Beneath her coldness there shows by moments a blushing soul. — “Cornélie Copeau.”
MADAME DUPLAY, 59 years old.
THE PEOPLE.
In Paris, March–April 1794.
ACT I
AT CAMILLE DESMOULINS’S
A bourgeois drawing-room of fanciful taste, where every style is mingled. On the walls, licentious prints of the eighteenth century. On the mantel, a bust of an ancient philosopher. On the table, a little Bastille. A child’s cradle in a corner of the room. A window is open. The sky is grey and sad. It is raining. Camille and Lucile, their little child in her arms, look outside. Philippeaux paces up and down, and casts a glance now and then through the window. Hérault de Séchelles, seated in an armchair near the mantel, observes his friends. Noise of a joyful crowd outside.
LUCILE, CAMILLE, HÉRAULT, PHILIPPEAUX.
LUCILE, leaning out the window.
There they are, there they are! They are passing at the end of the street!
CAMILLE, shouting.
Bon voyage, Père Duchesne! Don’t forget your stoves!
HÉRAULT, softly.
Camille, do not show yourself, my friend.
CAMILLE.
Come and see our old friends, Hérault! The general of the clubs, Bonsin; and Vincent, who wanted to treat himself to your head, Philippeaux; and Hébert, the braggart, who supped every evening on mine; and the Prussian Cloots, the fair Anacharsis!… The last voyage of young Anacharsis!… Behold the human race in great embarrassment: they are depriving it of its orator! The guillotine has work today. What a vintage!
LUCILE, to her child.
Look, Horace, look at these rascals. And commander Hanriot, galloping with his great sabre, do you see, darling?
PHILIPPEAUX.
He overdoes his zeal. He ought to be on the cart too.
CAMILLE.
It is like a feast: the people are in high spirits.
Outside, a clarinet plays a grotesque tune. The people laugh uproariously.
CAMILLE.
What is that?
LUCILE.
It is that little hunchbacked man, near the cart, playing the clarinet!
CAMILLE.
Ah! the delightful idea!
They burst out laughing.
CAMILLE.
Why do you not come, Hérault? Does it not interest you? You look melancholy. What are you thinking of?
The noise gradually grows distant in the street.
HÉRAULT.
I was thinking, Camille, that Anacharsis is thirty-eight years old, and Hébert thirty-five, your age, Philippeaux; and Vincent twenty-seven, six years younger than I, and than you, Desmoulins.
CAMILLE.
That is true.
Abruptly serious, he leaves the window and comes to the middle of the room: he stays a moment motionless, chin in hand.
LUCILE, at the window.
The rain! Ah! what a pity!
CAMILLE, displeased.
Don’t stay at the window, Lucile, it is cold. Come in.
LUCILE closes the window and comes back into the room with her child; she hums:
It rains, it rains, shepherdess, Bring in your white sheep. Quick, to the sheepfold! Come, shepherdess, come…
CAMILLE.
Lucile, Lucile, wicked woman, how can you sing that song? I cannot hear it without thinking that he who made it languishes at this hour in prison.
LUCILE.
Fabre? It is true! Our poor Églantine, they have locked him up in the Luxembourg, sick as he was. — Bah! He will get out.
HÉRAULT.
Pur troppo!
LUCILE.
What is he saying now? Some ugly thing, I am sure?
PHILIPPEAUX.
A sad thing, only too true.
LUCILE.
Hush, bird of ill omen! Fabre will get out, I tell you. Are we not here?
HÉRAULT.
Danton himself has been able to do nothing to save him.
LUCILE.
Oh! yes! Danton perhaps. But when Camille takes up his pen, and writes out once all that he has on his heart, you will see whether the doors of the prisons will not open of themselves!
HÉRAULT.
For whom?
LUCILE.
For the tyrants.
HÉRAULT.
O imprudent shepherdess, how badly you guard your sheep!… “Quick, to the sheepfold!” Listen then to your song.
A servant comes to take the child from Lucile’s hands, and carries him out. Lucile speaks in a low voice with her, goes out, comes back in, is always in motion throughout this whole scene, busies herself with the thousand little household matters, and takes part in the conversations only heedlessly.
CAMILLE.
Lucile is right: we must fight. It is for us to direct the Revolution which we made. This voice has not yet lost its power over the crowd. It was enough to speak in order to send the rabid ones to the guillotine. Never have we been stronger; let us pursue our successes: the Luxembourg is no harder to take than the Bastille. We have brought down nine centuries of monarchy; we shall surely make an end of a committee of rascals, who hold their power only from us, and who dare use it to put the Convention and France under a regular tax.
PHILIPPEAUX, pacing in agitation.
The scoundrels! If only they were content to assassinate! But no. They have implicated Fabre in the embezzlements and rapines of the East India Company; they have invented this implausible tale, this story of Jews, of German bankers buying our friend in order to corrupt the Assembly. They know they are lying; but their conscience would not be satisfied, if they did not begin by soiling their enemy before killing him.
HÉRAULT.
We have virtuous enemies: it is a consolation, when one is butchered, to be so in the name of sound principles.
CAMILLE.
France hates Tartuffe. Let us flog the pedant and cudgel Basile!
PHILIPPEAUX.
I have done my duty: let each man do the same! I have dragged into broad daylight the brigands of the Army of the West, the staff at Saumur. I have bitten these wretches by the throat; and nothing will make me let go, save the fall of my head. I have no illusions: I know what it costs to attack General Rossignol and his pimps. The Committee is collecting itself at this moment; but it is the better to ruin me. What infamy are they seeking to make me bear? I have a fever at the thought of it. Let them guillotine me if they will; but let them not touch my honour!
HÉRAULT.
I am calmer than you, Philippeaux. I already know the pretext they will use to suppress me. I have the misfortune of thinking that one can be the enemy of the governments of Europe without hating all who are not French. I had friends abroad; I did not think I should renounce them, to flatter the madness of Billaud-Varenne and the sick men of his sort. They have entered my house, forced my drawers, stolen some letters of pure affection: that is enough; I now form part of the famous conspiracy paid by the gold of Pitt to re-establish the king.
CAMILLE.
Are you sure of what you say?
HÉRAULT.
Quite sure, Camille. My head hardly holds any more.
CAMILLE.
Then take shelter.
HÉRAULT.
There is no shelter in the world for a republican. The kings hunt him down, and the Republic devours him.
CAMILLE.
You lack courage. We are still the most popular men of the Republic.
HÉRAULT.
Lafayette was popular too, and Pétion, and Roland. Capet himself was popular. A week ago, the man who has just passed by was the idol of the people. Who can flatter himself that he is loved by this brute? At moments, one thinks one catches, in its troubled eyes, gleams of one’s own thought. Whose conscience is not in accord, one day in his life, with the conscience of the crowd? But this accord cannot last: it is madness to persist in pursuing it. The brain of the people is a sea, swarming with monsters and nightmares.
CAMILLE.
Big words! We puff out our cheeks to say the word People, and we pronounce it with a ridiculous solemnity, so that Europe may believe in a mysterious force of which we are the instruments. I know it, this people: it has worked for me. The ass in the fable says: “I could not carry two pack-saddles”; but he does not suspect that he might carry none at all. We have had trouble enough to make him accomplish our Revolution: he only made it grudgingly. It is we who have been the engineers and the machinists of this sublime movement; without us, it would never have stirred. It did not ask for the Republic: it is I who led it there. I persuaded it that it had wanted to be free, in order to make it cherish liberty as its own work. That is the eternal means for directing the weak. One convinces them that they wanted something, of which they were not thinking; they do not delay to want it, indeed, like lions.
HÉRAULT.
Take care, Camille; you are a child, you are playing with fire. You think the people has followed you because you were running to the same goal. It has overtaken you now. Do not try to stop it: one does not tear from a dog the bone he is gnawing.
CAMILLE.
One has only to throw him another. Come, do they not hear my Vieux Cordelier? Does its voice not echo to the depths of the Republic?
LUCILE.
If you knew what a success his last number had! From every side they write to him: tears, kisses, declarations of love… Ah! were I jealous!… They beg him to continue, to save the country.
HÉRAULT.
How many of these friends will come to his aid if he is attacked?
CAMILLE.
I need no one. To me, my writing-desk! David’s sling — he shows his pen — has just overthrown the swaggerer of the guillotine. The king of the jean-foutres and the rough-handlers. I have broken Père Duchesne’s pipe, that famous pipe, like the trumpet of Jericho, which, when it had smoked three times around a reputation, the reputation crumbled of itself! From here was launched the shaft that struck on the forehead the impudent and cowardly Goliath. I have raised against him the hoots of his own people. You saw a moment ago, around the cart, Père Duchesne’s stoves? It is I who had the idea of having them carried. My invention was a wild success. Why do you look at me so?
HÉRAULT.
An idea.
CAMILLE.
Say it.
HÉRAULT.
Have you ever thought of death?
CAMILLE.
Of death? No, no, I do not care for that. Fie! it smells bad!
HÉRAULT.
Have you never thought how it hurts to die?
LUCILE.
What a horror! What a conversation!
HÉRAULT.
You are a good, a dear, an amiable child, and yet you are cruel, cruel as a child.
CAMILLE, moved.
You think, really, I am cruel?
LUCILE.
There he goes, the tears in his eyes now!
CAMILLE, moved.
It is true, he suffered, that man. The sweat of agony, the heart contracted with terror, awaiting the crushing of life… oh! it must be a horrible pain! However contemptible he was, he suffered as if he were honest, perhaps more. Poor Hébert!
LUCILE, her arms around Camille’s neck.
My poor Bouli-Boula, you are not going to be desolate over the death of a rascal who wanted to cut off your head?
CAMILLE, with anger.
Yes. Then why am I attacked with this indignity? Si quis atrâ dente me petiverit, inultus ut flebo puer!
LUCILE, to Hérault.
And you, dare to say still that my Camille is cruel!
HÉRAULT.
But certainly I dare. Dear boy! He is perhaps the most cruel of us all.
CAMILLE.
Oh! do not say so, Hérault: I shall end by believing it.
LUCILE, to Hérault, threatening him with her finger.
Say it is not true, or I will tear out your eyes.
HÉRAULT.
Well then, no, it is not true: the cruellest one is you.
LUCILE.
So much the better! That, I am willing to be.
CAMILLE.
What you said upsets me, Hérault. It is true, I have done so much harm, and yet I was not wicked. I made myself the prosecutor of the lamp-post. I do not know what diabolical mischievousness drives me. By me, the Girondins rot in fields drenched by this icy rain. My Brissot Unmasked caused thirty heads, young, amiable, generous, to be cut off. They loved life, as I do; they were made to live, to be happy, as I am. They too had sweet and dear Luciles. O Lucile, let us flee, let us save ourselves from this murderous action, which harms others, and perhaps oneself. If we too, if you too, if our little Horace!… Ah! could I but become unknown again to all men! Where is the asylum, the underground, that would hide me from all eyes, with my wife, my child, and my books? Oubi campi Guisiaque!…
PHILIPPEAUX.
You have entered the whirlwind: you can no longer leave it.
HÉRAULT.
Eh! do not oblige him to remain in this war which is not made for him.
PHILIPPEAUX.
He said so himself a moment ago: each must do his duty.
HÉRAULT, pointing to Camille embracing Lucile.
Look at him: does not our Camille’s duty seem to you to be happy?
CAMILLE.
It is true; I have a marvellous vocation for happiness. There are people who are made for suffering. I — suffering disgusts me: I will have none of it.
LUCILE.
Have I crossed your vocation?
CAMILLE.
My Vesta, my good wolf, my little Laridon!… You are a great criminal! You have made me too happy.
LUCILE.
Oh! the coward who complains!
CAMILLE.
It is that I have lost from it, you see, all strength, all faith.
LUCILE.
How is that?
CAMILLE.
I used to believe in the immortality of the soul. When I saw the miseries of the world, I said to myself: the world would be too absurd, if virtue did not have its reward elsewhere. But now, I am so happy, so completely happy, that I fear I have received my reward on earth; and I have lost my demonstration of immortality.
HÉRAULT.
Try never to find it again.
CAMILLE.
How simple it is to be happy! And how few people know how to be!
HÉRAULT.
The simpler a thing is, the more it escapes men. They claim that men want to be happy. What an error! They want to be unhappy, they cling to it absolutely. The Pharaohs and the Sesostrises, the kings with eagle’s head and tiger’s claws, the pyres of the Inquisition, the rotting-pits of the Bastilles, war that butchers and ruins, that is what pleases them. The obscurity of mysteries is needed to be believed. The absurdity of suffering is needed to be loved. But reason, tolerance, love returned, happiness… fie! it is to insult them!
CAMILLE.
You are bitter. We must do good to men in spite of themselves.
HÉRAULT.
Everybody is meddling in it today, the result is mediocre.
CAMILLE.
Poor Republic! What have they made of you?… O flowering countrysides, earth rejuvenated, whose air is lighter and light more limpid, since clear reason with its fresh breath has driven from the French sky the sad superstitions and the old Gothic saints,… rounds of young people dancing in the meadows, heroic armies, fraternal bosoms, brazen wall on which the lances of Europe break,… joy of beauty, of harmonious forms, conversations of the Portico, noble Panathenaea, where the white-armed maidens pass, wrapped in supple draperies,… liberty of living, pleasure victorious over all that is ugly, hypocritical or morose, Republic of Aspasia and of fair Alcibiades, what have you become? — A red cap, a dirty shirt, a hoarse voice, the fixed ideas of a maniac, the pedant’s rule of an Arras schoolmaster!
HÉRAULT.
You are an Athenian among barbarians, an Ovid among Scythians. You will not reform them.
CAMILLE.
At least I will try.
HÉRAULT.
You are wasting your time, your life perhaps.
CAMILLE.
What have I to fear?
HÉRAULT.
Beware of Robespierre.
CAMILLE.
I have known him since childhood: a friend has the right to say everything.
HÉRAULT.
An unpleasant truth is more easily pardoned to an enemy than to a friend.
LUCILE.
Hush; he must be great, he must save the country. — Whoever does not think as I do shall have none of my chocolate.
HÉRAULT, smiling.
I will say nothing more.
Lucile goes out.
PHILIPPEAUX.
So you are resolved to act, Desmoulins?
CAMILLE.
Yes.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Then, no truce! Press them without respite, the pen in their backs. The worst danger is the skirmishing war you are waging. You content yourself with harassing them with your stinging arrows: that is to give them more strength against you. Aim at the heart if you can: let us be done with it at one blow!
HÉRAULT.
My friends, I do not approve of the course you take; but if you are resolved on it, at least you must try to put all the chances on your side. Well, to go to war, it is not enough — (Camille will forgive me!) — it is not enough to have the pen of Desmoulins. The people does not read. The success of the Vieux Cordelier deludes you; it does not penetrate the crowd; its public is altogether different. You know it well, Camille; you yourself were complaining that one of your numbers had been sold for twenty sous by the publisher: it is aristocrats like us who buy it; the people know nothing of it but what their orators in the clubs tell them: they are not for you. In vain you raise the tone and stock your memory with expressions of the market-halls — you will never be of the people. There is only one means of acting on them, and that is to throw Danton into it. His thunder alone is capable of stirring this heavy human chaos. Danton has only to shake his mane to raise the Forum. But Danton lets himself drift, he goes to sleep, he keeps away from Paris; he does not speak in the Convention. We do not know what is becoming of him. Who has seen him these last days? Where is he? What is he doing?
Danton enters with Westermann.
THE SAME, DANTON, WESTERMANN.
DANTON.
Danton carouses. Danton caresses the girls. Danton rests from his labours by other labours, like Hercules!
Desmoulins goes to meet Danton and shakes his hand, laughing. Westermann remains aside, and keeps an anxious look.
CAMILLE.
Hercules does not throw down his club so long as there remain monsters to kill.
DANTON.
Do not speak of killing! That word horrifies me. France steams with blood; the odour of slaughtered meat rises from the earth as from a butcher’s shop. I have just crossed the Seine; the sun was setting: the Seine was red: it seemed to roll waves of human blood. If our rivers too are befouled, where shall we wash our rivers, where shall we wash our hands? Enough of the dead! Let us make the Republic fruitful. Let harvests and men spring up from the rejuvenated country! Let us make love, and cultivate our fields.
CAMILLE.
May a God give us this leisure, O Danton! It is on you that we count.
DANTON.
What do you want, children?
PHILIPPEAUX.
That you help us to fight!
DANTON.
What need have you of me? Must I always do everything? You are all alike. There is Westermann. Yet he is a man, that one! He has waged war, he has saved the country three or four times; before sitting down to table he cuts a man’s throat to give himself an appetite. And I must help him too! Must I get on a horse and sabre in his place?
WESTERMANN.
If it is a matter of fighting, I yield my place to no one. Lead me to a plain; show me a crowd to sweep aside, and you will see if I do not acquit myself. But to speak, to answer the phrasemongers of the Convention, to thwart the foul machinations of the scoundrels of the Committee who labour at my ruin, I do not know how. I feel lost in this town: they are a pack snapping at my heels, and I am forbidden to budge; I must endure everything, without doing anything to defend myself. Will you let me be devoured without coming to my aid? Thousand thunders! I fought for you in the past, I have the same enemies. My cause is also yours, — yours, Danton, — yours, Philippeaux, you know it well!
PHILIPPEAUX.
I know it, Westermann; it is because you have attacked, like me, Rossignol, Ronsin, all the scoundrels who dishonour the army, that the Jacobins pursue you with their furious clamours. We will not abandon you.
CAMILLE, to Danton.
We must act. I bring you my pen, and Westermann his sword. Direct us, Danton. Old campaigner, you have the experience of crowds, you know the strategy of revolutions: put yourself at our head, there is still a Tenth of August to be done.
DANTON.
Later.
PHILIPPEAUX.
You disappear from the arena, you let yourself be forgotten. Show yourself. What are you doing, for weeks, hidden in your province?
DANTON.
I embrace the native soil, to draw from it, like Antaeus, a new vigour.
PHILIPPEAUX.
You seek pretexts to withdraw from the combat.
DANTON.
I do not know how to lie. — It is true.
CAMILLE.
What is wrong?
DANTON.
I am sick of men. I vomit them up.
HÉRAULT.
You give credit to women, it seems.
DANTON.
Women at least have the frankness to be only what they are, what we all are: beasts. They go straight to pleasure, without trying to lie to themselves, to cloak their instincts with the mantle of reason. But I hate the hypocrisy of intelligence, the sanguinary idiocy of these idealists, these dictators of impotence, who name as corruption the frankness of legitimate needs, and pretend to deny nature, in order to gratify, under the name of virtue, their monstrous pride and their fury of destruction. Oh! to be a brute, a good and frank brute, who asks only to love others, provided they leave him a place in the sun!
CAMILLE.
Yes, we are gnawed by hypocrisy.
DANTON.
The most odious of hypocrisies. The hypocrisy of the dagger. The virtuous guillotine!
PHILIPPEAUX.
We destroyed Capet, and it is so that Tallien, Fouché, Collot d’Herbois, may re-establish the dragonnades in Bordeaux and Lyon!
CAMILLE.
These maniacs have founded a new religion, secular and obligatory, which permits the proconsuls to hang, to cut, to burn, by virtue.
DANTON.
There is no danger like that of men of principles in a State. They do not seek to do good, but to be right; no suffering touches them. The only morality for them, the only politics, is to impose their ideas.
HÉRAULT, reciting in a bantering tone.
An honest man has very different desires! He is happy only in giving pleasures…
LUCILE, coming back in, catching the last words, and continuing the quotation heedlessly.
A chaplain is not so hard to please. He pricks on his unruly mount,
Without inquiring whether the young thing, Under his sway, takes pleasure or not.
HÉRAULT.
The devil! you know your authors.
LUCILE.
Well, what harm is there? Everyone knows La Pucelle.
DANTON.
You are right, little one. It is the breviary of honest women.
HÉRAULT.
Have you ever recited some to Robespierre?
LUCILE.
I would not dare.
CAMILLE.
Have you seen him when a Gallic jest is told before him? His brow folds into great wrinkles and climbs up his skull; he clenches his hands, he grimaces, like a monkey with a toothache.
HÉRAULT.
Inheritance from his father. It is from Rousseau he gets his hatred of Voltaire.
LUCILE, heedlessly.
What! Is he Rousseau’s son?
HÉRAULT, mocking.
Did you not know?
DANTON.
Jesuitries, all that! He is more corrupt than the others. When one hides one’s liking for pleasure, it is because one has evil morals.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Possibly; but if Robespierre loves pleasure, he hides it well: and he is right, Danton. You, you show it too much. You would sacrifice your fortune for a night at the Palais-Royal.
DANTON.
It is because I prefer a good fortune to a bad one.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Meanwhile, you compromise your reputation; opinion follows your acts; and what will posterity say, when it learns that Danton, on the eve of a decisive combat for the State, thought only of pleasure?
DANTON.
Opinion is a whore, honour a piece of nonsense, posterity a stinking pit.
PHILIPPEAUX.
And virtue, Danton?
DANTON.
Go ask my wife if she is content with mine.
PHILIPPEAUX.
You do not mean what you say. You slander yourself at will, you play the game of your enemies.
WESTERMANN, who has made an effort to contain himself, bursts out.
You are all chatterers and braggarts boasting of themselves. Some declaim on their virtues, others on their vices. You know only how to talk. Your city is a nest of lawyers and prosecutors. The enemy threatens us. Danton, yes or no, will you charge?
DANTON.
Leave me alone! I have lost my life and my rest to save the Republic: it is not worth a single one of the hours I have sacrificed to it. Enough! Danton has bought the right to live at last for himself.
CAMILLE.
Danton has not bought the right to be a Sieyès.
DANTON.
Am I a one-eyed horse, condemned to turn the millstone till he dies?
CAMILLE.
You have launched yourself into a defile bordered by precipices. Impossible to turn back. You must go on. The enemy is there, breathing at your back: if you stop, he throws you down. Already he raises his hand and calculates the blow he means to strike.
DANTON.
I have only to turn around and show them my muzzle, for them to fall thunderstruck.
WESTERMANN.
Do so, then. What are you waiting for?
DANTON.
Later.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Your enemies stir. Billaud-Varenne is pouring out furious words against you. Vadier jests about your coming fall. The rumour of your arrest has already run through Paris.
DANTON, shrugging.
Foolishness. They will not dare.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Do you know what Vadier said? I hesitated to repeat his ignoble words. Vadier said of you: “This fat stuffed turbot, we shall soon empty it.”
DANTON, thundering.
Vadier said that? Well then, answer, answer that scoundrel that I will eat his brains, that I will crush his skull! When I fear for my life, I shall become fiercer than a cannibal!
He foams with fury.
WESTERMANN.
At last!… Come!
DANTON.
Where?
WESTERMANN.
To speak in the clubs, rouse the people, overthrow the committees, bring down Robespierre.
DANTON.
No.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Why?
DANTON.
Later. I do not want to.
CAMILLE.
You are losing yourself, Danton.
WESTERMANN.
I suffocate when I see the fear of action that weighs on honest men here. What diabolical poison flows in this air, that men like you, a day from the scaffold, fold their arms and wait, without daring to make a movement, either to fight or to flee? I can endure no more. I leave you. I will act without you. I will go find this Robespierre, of whom you are all afraid: (for you are afraid of him, yes, even while joking about him; your timidity makes all the strength of this wretch). I will spit the truth at him: he will see for the first time a man who resists him. I will shatter the idol!
He goes out impetuously.
PHILIPPEAUX.
I come with you, Westermann.
DANTON, calmly, with a little contempt.
He will shatter nothing at all. Robespierre will look at him — like that — and it will be over. Poor wretch!
PHILIPPEAUX.
Danton! Danton! where are you? Where is the athlete of the Revolution?
DANTON.
You are cowards. There is nothing to fear.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Quos vult perdere…
He goes out. Hérault rises, takes his hat and prepares to leave.
CAMILLE.
You leaving too, Hérault?
HÉRAULT.
Camille, you are not made for war in the Westermann style: I know it. But then, withdraw from it altogether. Let yourself be forgotten. What good is talk?
CAMILLE.
To satisfy my conscience.
HÉRAULT shrugs gently, and kisses Lucile’s hand.
Farewell, Lucile.
LUCILE.
Until we meet again.
HÉRAULT, smiling.
Who ever knows?
CAMILLE.
Where are you going?
HÉRAULT.
To the rue Saint-Honoré.
DANTON.
You too are paying a visit to Robespierre?
HÉRAULT.
No: my usual walk. I watch the carts go by.
CAMILLE.
I thought that spectacle displeased you.
HÉRAULT.
It is to learn how to die.
He goes out. Lucile accompanies him.
DANTON, CAMILLE.
DANTON, following Hérault with his eyes.
Poor devil, he is uneasy; he reproaches me with my inaction. And you too, Camille, you want to blame me, I see it in your gaze. Go on, do not hold back, my boy. You take me for a coward? You think Danton sacrifices his friends and his glory to his belly?
CAMILLE.
Danton, why will you not?
DANTON.
Children, Danton is not built on the measure of other men. Volcanic passions set fire to this breast; but they do of me only what I want them to do. My heart has vast appetites, my senses roar like lions; but the tamer is there.
He shows his head.
CAMILLE.
What is your thought, then?
DANTON.
To spare the country. To save it at all cost from our sacrilegious quarrels. Do you know the disease of which the Republic is dying? It lacks mediocrity. Too many intellects busy themselves with the State. It is too much for one nation to have had Mirabeau, Brissot, Vergniaud, Marat, — Danton, — Desmoulins, Robespierre. A single one of these geniuses would have made Liberty triumph. United, they devour one another, and France is bloodied by their hatreds. I have taken too great a part in it myself, although my heart renders me this justice, that I have never fought a Frenchman without being constrained to do so in defence of my life, and that even in the fury of combat, I have done everything to save my fallen enemies. I will not go now, for a personal interest, to engage in a struggle with the greatest man of the Republic, after myself. The forest thins around us; I do not want to depopulate the Republic. — I know Robespierre: I saw him emerge from the earth, growing from day to day by his tenacity, his labour, his faith in his ideas; and his ambition grew at the same time, conquering the assembly, imposing himself on France. One man alone still casts a shadow on him; my popularity counterbalances his own, and his sickly vanity bleeds at it. Several times — I render him this justice — he has tried to impose silence on his instincts of envy. But the fatality of events, his jealousy stronger than reason, my furious enemies who excite him, all leads us to the assault. Whatever the result may be, the Republic will be shaken to its foundations. Well then! it is for me to give the example of sacrifice. Let his ambition no longer be troubled by mine! I have drunk largely of this bitter drink, and it has left my mouth bitter. Let Robespierre finish the cup, if he will! I withdraw beneath my tent. Less rancorous than Achilles, I shall wait patiently for him to hold out his hand.
CAMILLE.
If one of you must sacrifice himself, why should it be you, and not he?
DANTON, shrugging.
Because I alone am capable of it; — after a moment of silence — and because I am the stronger.
CAMILLE.
And yet you detest Robespierre.
DANTON.
Hatred is unbearable to my heart. I am without gall, not by virtue (I do not know what that is), but by temperament.
CAMILLE.
Are you not uneasy at leaving the field free to your enemy?
DANTON.
Pooh! I have sounded his reins: he may well take the play through to the fourth act; but he would unfailingly bungle the dénouement.
CAMILLE.
Meanwhile, what harm he can do! Your strength is the only counterweight to the regime of violence and fanatical terror. And what do you do with your friends? Do you abandon them to the fate that threatens them?
DANTON.
I serve them more, by laying down my power for a time. They now bear the penalty of the fear I inspire. Robespierre will listen to me, when his jealousy lets him breathe. And I, I shall have my hands freer to act, when I am no longer the representative of a party, but of humanity. We must treat men like children, and know how to yield to them the toys their avidity demands, to prevent their stubbornly destroying themselves with you.
CAMILLE.
You are too generous. A renunciation like yours will be understood by no one. Robespierre cannot believe in the sincerity of your retreat; his suspicious mind will look for, will find in it, Machiavellian tricks. Fear that your enemies may profit by your abdication to strike you down.
DANTON.
Danton does not abdicate: he withdraws momentarily from the combat; but he remains always ready to re-enter it. Be at peace: alone, I am stronger than them all, and men of my sort do not fear oblivion; it is enough for them to be silent an instant, to make felt the enormous void of the world, when they are no longer there to fill it. I serve my popularity even in stepping aside. Instead of disputing power with the Achaeans, I let it crush their feeble shoulders.
CAMILLE.
The first use they will make of it will be against you. The whole pack of the Vadiers will rush to the kill.
DANTON.
I will give more than one of them a bout! I am used to fighting monsters. As a child, I struggled with the bulls. This crushed nose, this split lip, this muzzle, still bear the imprint of their bloody horns. Half-wild pigs, one day when I was chasing them with great shouts through the meadows, savagely bit me in the belly. I do not fear the Vadiers. And besides, they are too cowardly.
CAMILLE.
But if they dared? To put heart into themselves, they have just recalled Saint-Just from the army; it is said they are waiting for his return to act.
DANTON.
Well, if they push me to the limit, may the responsibility for the struggle crush them! I have a tough hide and patiently bear affronts. But from the day I throw myself against them, I shall not stop until all is brought down. The wretches! I would make but one mouthful of them all!
THE SAME, ROBESPIERRE, LUCILE.
Lucile enters precipitately.
LUCILE, running to Camille — in a frightened voice.
Robespierre!…
Robespierre enters, cold, impassive; he gives a sharp and rapid look; he makes no gesture.
CAMILLE, eager and slightly ironic, goes to meet him.
Ah! dear Maximilien, you arrive at the right moment. For an hour now you have presided, though absent, over our conversations.
DANTON, embarrassed.
Good day, Robespierre.
Undecided whether to hold out his hand, he waits for his rival to make the first advance. Robespierre does not reply, shakes Lucile’s and Camille’s hands coldly, salutes Danton briefly with his head, and sits down. Camille and Danton remain standing. Lucile, always in motion.
LUCILE.
How kind of you to find the time to visit us, amid your occupations! Sit closer to the fire. There is a fog outside that chills the soul. How are your dear hosts, citizen Duplay, and my little friend Éléonore?
ROBESPIERRE.
Thank you, Lucile. — Camille, I want to speak to you.
LUCILE.
Do you wish me to leave you alone?
ROBESPIERRE.
No, not you.
CAMILLE, stopping Danton who has made a movement to withdraw.
Danton has a half-share in all our thoughts.
ROBESPIERRE.
So public rumour says. I hesitated to believe it.
DANTON.
Does that annoy you?
ROBESPIERRE.
Perhaps.
DANTON.
What would you have? There is one thing you will never prevent: that Danton is loved.
ROBESPIERRE, contemptuously.
The name of love is banal, its reality is rare.
DANTON, maliciously.
There are certain men, they say, who do not know it.
ROBESPIERRE, after a short moment of silence, coldly, his hands a little nervous.
I have not come to speak of Danton’s debaucheries. — Camille, you persist, despite my warnings, in following the path where bad counsels and your thoughtlessness have cast you. Your malevolent pamphlet is going to sow divisions throughout France. You expend your wit in shaking the credit of men necessary to the Republic. All reactions arm themselves with your sarcasms against liberty. Long have I disarmed the hatreds you stir up; I have saved you twice: I shall not always save you. The State is moved by the plots of the factious; I have no will against that of the State.
CAMILLE, wounded and wounding.
Spare yourself the trouble of thinking so much of me. Your solicitude touches me, Maximilien, but I need no one: I know how to defend myself alone, and I walk without leading-strings.
ROBESPIERRE.
Vain man, do not reply: your thoughtlessness is your only excuse.
CAMILLE.
I want no excuse. I have well deserved of the country. I defend the Republic against the Republicans. I have spoken freely, I have spoken the truth. When every truth is no longer good to be told, then there is no more Republic. The motto of Republics is the winds that blow on the waves of the sea: Tollunt, sed attollunt! They stir them, but they raise them up!
ROBESPIERRE.
The Republic does not yet exist, Desmoulins. We are making it. It is not with liberty that one founds liberty. Like Rome in times of trial, the threatened nation has submitted to a dictatorship to break down the obstacles, and to conquer. It is a derision to claim that when Europe and the factions threaten to kill the Republic forever, one has the right to say anything, to do anything, and to furnish, by one’s words and acts, weapons to the enemy.
CAMILLE.
What weapons do I give him? I have defended what was purest in the world: fraternity, holy equality, the sweetness of republican maxims, that res sacra miser, that respect for misfortune which our sublime Constitution commands. I have made liberty loved. I have wished to make shine before the eyes of the peoples the radiant image of happiness.
ROBESPIERRE.
Happiness! There is the fatal word, with which you draw to yourselves all egoisms and all covetousnesses. Who does not want happiness? But it is not the happiness of Persepolis that we offer men, it is that of Sparta. Happiness is virtue. But you, you have abused its holy expression, to awaken in the minds of cowards the desires of that criminal good, which consists in forgetting others and enjoying the superfluous. Shameful thought, which would soon stifle the flame of the Revolution! Let France know how to suffer, let her put her pleasure in suffering to be free, in sacrificing her well-being, her rest, her affections for the happiness of the world!
CAMILLE, in a tone of courteous mockery, which abruptly, at the end of the tirade, becomes incisive and cutting.
Maximilien, as I listen to you, a passage of Plato comes to my mind: “When I hear,” said the good general Laches, “when I hear a man who speaks well of virtue and is a true sans-culotte, worthy of the words he speaks, it is for me an inexpressible pleasure; it seems to me that he is the only musician who renders a perfect harmony: for all his actions accord with all his words, not according to the Jacobin or Genevan modes, but according to the French tone, which alone deserves the name of republican harmony. When such a man speaks to me, he fills me with joy, and there is no one but believes I am mad with his discourses, so eagerly do I drink his words. But he who sings a virtue he does not practise afflicts me cruelly, and the better he seems to speak, the more aversion he gives me for his music.”
At the end of this passage, Desmoulins turns his back on Robespierre, who rises, without gesture and without words, to leave. Lucile, uneasy at the turn the conversation has taken, and who does not take her eyes off Robespierre, takes his hand and tries to make light of it.
LUCILE, pointing at Camille.
This naughty boy must always contradict. If you knew how he angers me sometimes! Dear Maximilien, you are always the same. You quarrel as at the Arras college.
Robespierre, icy, makes no reply and prepares to leave.
DANTON, changing tone and advancing toward Robespierre with sincere cordiality.
Robespierre, all three of us are in the wrong. Let us be men who obey only reason, and let us know how to sacrifice our rancours to the country. I come to you, and I offer you my hand. Forgive me a movement of impatience.
ROBESPIERRE.
Danton believes that a word suffices to erase his outrages. The offender has no trouble forgetting his offences.
DANTON.
I am wrong, no doubt, to lend my adversaries my own generosity. But the care of the Republic prevails: she needs my energy and your virtues. If my energy is repugnant to you, consider that your virtues are odious to me: we are quits. Do as I do, hold your nose, and let us save the country.
ROBESPIERRE.
I do not believe any man indispensable to the country.
DANTON.
That is the saying of all the envious. With this fine reasoning, they geld the nation of all that makes its strength.
ROBESPIERRE.
No strength where confidence is lacking!
DANTON.
You distrust me? You believe the nonsense spread about me, the hallucinations of Billaud-Varenne? Look at me. Have I the face of a hypocrite? Hate me, but do not suspect me!
ROBESPIERRE.
It is by their acts that men are judged.
DANTON.
What do you reproach mine with?
ROBESPIERRE.
With sparing every party.
DANTON.
I have a fraternal soul for all the unfortunate.
ROBESPIERRE.
One boasts of having no hatred, and indeed one does not hate the enemies of the Republic; but thus one destroys the Republic. Pity for the executioners is cruelty for the victims. This indulgence put us under the necessity of razing cities; it would cost us, one day, thirty years of civil war.
DANTON.
You see crime everywhere! It is a madness. If you are sick, treat your ill, but do not force those who are healthy to take medicine. The Republic is devouring itself. There is still time to arrest this absurd and ferocious Terror that is consuming France. But if you do not hasten, if you do not join us, you yourself will soon be incapable of limiting its ravages; you will wish to in vain: it will burn you with the others; it will burn you before the others. Wretched man, do you not see that the day Danton was no longer there, you would be the first struck? It is I who still protect you from the fire.
ROBESPIERRE, moving away from Danton, coldly.
Let it burn me!
CAMILLE, low to Danton.
You have said too much, Danton; you have wounded his self-love.
DANTON.
In the name of the country, Robespierre, of this country we adore with the same ardour, and to which we have given everything, let us make complete amnesty for all, friends and enemies, provided they love France! Let this love wash away all suspicions and all faults! Without it, no virtue. With it, no crime.
ROBESPIERRE.
No country without virtue!
DANTON, pressing, threatening.
Once again, I ask you for peace. Think how it costs me to make advances to you. But I swallow every humiliation, if it serves the Republic. Give me your hand; set Fabre at liberty; send Westermann back to the army; protect Hérault and Philippeaux from the furious ones!
ROBESPIERRE.
I am made to combat crime, not to govern it.
DANTON, on the point of bursting out, contains himself.
So it is war you want, Robespierre? Think well of it.
ROBESPIERRE, impassive, turns his back on Danton and addresses Desmoulins.
Camille, one last time: you will cease the attacks against the Committee.
CAMILLE.
Let it cease to deserve them!
ROBESPIERRE.
Submit like the others to the orders of the nation.
CAMILLE.
I am the representative of the nation; I have the right to speak for her.
ROBESPIERRE.
You owe her the example of obedience to the laws.
CAMILLE.
We know too well how laws are made. We are all lawyers, prosecutors, men of law, Robespierre; we know what the majesty of the law conceals. I would laugh to see us together, were I not thinking of the tears caused by the comedy we are playing. We cost men too much. Virtue itself would not be worth the price at which we make it paid for: how much less, then, crime.
ROBESPIERRE.
Whoever had not the strength to bear his task should not have accepted it. Whoever accepts it must march and be silent, until he falls crushed beneath the weight.
CAMILLE.
I consent to sacrifice myself, but not to sacrifice others.
ROBESPIERRE.
Farewell. Think of Hérault.
CAMILLE.
Why do you speak to me of Hérault?
ROBESPIERRE.
Hérault is arrested.
DANTON, CAMILLE.
Arrested? He has just left here.
ROBESPIERRE.
I know.
LUCILE.
But what has he done? Maximilien, what is his crime?
ROBESPIERRE.
His house served as asylum to a proscribed man.
CAMILLE.
He was doing his duty.
ROBESPIERRE.
The Committee did its own.
DANTON, bursting out.
Jean-foutre, you provoke me! So you mean to butcher us all, one after another? You strip the oak of its mighty branches before splitting its trunk?… My roots sink to the depths of the earth, into the heart of the people of France. You would tear them up only by killing the Republic. My fall will crush you all, and the filthy rats that gnaw at me will be the first victims. My long-suffering encourages you? The vermin climbs brazenly up my body… It is too much! The lion shakes himself… But, little wretch, do you not know that if I wished, I would crush you in my fingers like a louse? Long live war, since you want it! The ardour of the old struggles rises again to my brain. This voice too long repressed will at last make itself heard, and will launch the nation to the assault of the tyrants.
CAMILLE.
We shall mount the assault on the new Tuileries. The Vieux Cordelier will beat the charge.
Robespierre, without flinching, walks toward the door. Lucile, mortally anxious, incapable of speaking, has disappeared for a moment into the next room: she returns precipitately with her child, and brings him to Robespierre.
LUCILE.
Maximilien!…
Robespierre turns around, looks at little Horace, hesitates a moment, smiles at him, then takes him and sits down. He kisses the child, looks at Lucile and Camille. Then, still mute, he returns the child to Lucile, and goes out without looking at anyone. All this stage-play very sober and without any apparent emotion, save in Lucile.
LUCILE, CAMILLE, DANTON.
CAMILLE.
Poor Lucile, you are uneasy?
LUCILE.
Camille, Camille, how imprudent you are!
CAMILLE.
You were urging me on just a moment ago.
LUCILE.
Ah! I have remorse now!
CAMILLE.
We must say what we think. And then… He shrugs his shoulders. Bah! I have nothing to fear, I: he loves me at heart, he will always defend me!
LUCILE.
I am afraid.
CAMILLE.
He is more afraid than we are; Danton’s voice has had effect already. He is of those who need to fear those they love. Come! we must see our friends, come to an understanding with them. Let us lose no more time… Come, Danton.
DANTON, seated, preoccupied.
Yes. Where are we going?
CAMILLE.
To rejoin Philippeaux, Westermann, to save Hérault.
DANTON.
Tomorrow… tomorrow.
CAMILLE.
It will be too late.
DANTON, very sad, very affectionate.
Lucile, read me something, make me some music, console me.
LUCILE.
What is the matter with you?
Standing behind him, she leans on his shoulder; he takes her hand and presses it against his cheek.
DANTON.
O Republic! To destroy oneself. To destroy the work of one’s own hands, to destroy the Republic! Victors or vanquished, what does it matter? In either case, vanquished!
CAMILLE.
In either case, victors, crowned with Glory!
DANTON, violently, rising.
Come on, and may the Republic terrify the world with the crash of her fall!…
ACT II
Robespierre’s room, in the Duplay house. A casement window. Two doors. The walls white and bare. A walnut bed, with curtains of blue damask flowered in white. A very modest desk. A few straw chairs. A set of shelves serving as bookcase. A few flowers in a glass, on the windowsill. At the front of the stage, in the middle, a small stove, with a chair on one side, a stool on the other. The door at left leads to the Duplays’ dressing-room. The window opens onto a courtyard where carpenters work. One hears the sound of the workmen nailing, planing, and sawing. Robespierre is alone, seated at his desk.
MADAME DUPLAY, ROBESPIERRE.
MADAME DUPLAY, opening the door.
Am I disturbing you, Maximilien?
ROBESPIERRE, smiling amicably.
No, citizen Duplay.
He holds out his hand to her.
MADAME DUPLAY.
Always at work. You did not go to bed last night.
ROBESPIERRE.
I was at the Committee.
MADAME DUPLAY.
I heard you come in. It was past three. But could you not rest this morning?
ROBESPIERRE.
I sleep little, you know it: I have trained my body to obey me.
MADAME DUPLAY.
You had promised me not to stay up any more. You will tire yourself, you will fall sick. And what will become of us?
ROBESPIERRE.
My poor friends, you will yet have to get used to doing without me. I shall not always be here.
MADAME DUPLAY.
What, do you want to leave us?
ROBESPIERRE, with a mixture of sincerity and emphasis.
No; and yet I shall leave you sooner than you think.
MADAME DUPLAY.
I forbid it: I mean to go first, and I am in no hurry.
ROBESPIERRE, smiling.
I should be more at ease if I thought people cared less for me.
MADAME DUPLAY.
What? Does it not give you pleasure to be loved?
ROBESPIERRE.
France would be the better, if she thought less of Robespierre, and more of liberty.
MADAME DUPLAY.
Liberty is one with Robespierre.
ROBESPIERRE.
That is just what worries me on her behalf. I fear for her health.
MADAME DUPLAY, going to the window.
How they make a noise in the courtyard! I am sure this banging of hammers and planes tires you. I have asked Duplay twenty times that the workmen not begin work so early, so as not to wake you when you are asleep; but he says you forbid any change in the habits.
ROBESPIERRE.
He is right. This regular activity rests me. Work is beneficial to others and to oneself. Coming out of a night of feverish thoughts, such as those we are forced to live in, it renews the vitiated and deadly air.
MADAME DUPLAY.
What work kept you up last night?
ROBESPIERRE.
Not work, but care.
MADAME DUPLAY.
You look preoccupied, as on the eve of a catastrophe.
ROBESPIERRE.
A catastrophe, yes.
MADAME DUPLAY.
Can you not prevent it?
ROBESPIERRE.
Far from it, I must bring it about.
MADAME DUPLAY.
I have no right to question you; but you must not be sad today. The house is in feast. Le Bas and Saint-Just returned last night from the army.
ROBESPIERRE.
Saint-Just has returned? So much the better: I need his will.
MADAME DUPLAY.
I was forgetting to tell you: there is a general who wanted to speak to you, General Westermann. He was here before daylight; I would not let him come up. He said he would come back in an hour. Should I receive him?
ROBESPIERRE.
I do not know.
MADAME DUPLAY.
He waited a long while in the courtyard. It was raining.
ROBESPIERRE.
Very well.
MADAME DUPLAY.
What weather it was last night! I came back soaked.
ROBESPIERRE.
Where were you?
MADAME DUPLAY.
At the Halles. I queued from midnight. People were shoving! Impossible to close one’s eyes an instant; your place was taken at once. When the gates opened, there was a fight. Luckily I know how to defend my rights. At last I managed to get three eggs and a quarter pound of butter.
ROBESPIERRE.
Three eggs for the house, that is not much.
MADAME DUPLAY.
For Éléonore, for Élisabeth, and for you — my three children.
ROBESPIERRE.
Good mother Duplay, you don’t think I am going to take the bread out of your mouths?
MADAME DUPLAY.
You will not refuse: it is for you that I went there. You are unwell, you have a weak stomach. If at least you would have some meat! But you forbid us to buy any.
ROBESPIERRE.
Meat is becoming scarce; we must keep it for the soldiers and the sick. We have decreed a civic Lent. It is for me and my colleagues to give the example of abstinence.
MADAME DUPLAY.
Not all have your scruples.
ROBESPIERRE.
I know it; I have seen some of them feast, amid public misery: it horrifies me. Each of those meals robs the country of the strength of some thirty of its defenders.
MADAME DUPLAY.
What misery! no more meat, no more poultry, no more dairy. The vegetables are cornered by the army. With that, one can no longer get heat. This is the second night Duplay has been waiting his turn at the coal boat; he has just come home, empty-handed. As for wood, no use thinking of it. Do you know what price they wanted from me for a cord of it? — Four hundred francs! — Luckily, spring is coming. One month more, and we should all have perished. I have no memory, since I have been alive, of so hard a winter.
ROBESPIERRE.
Yes, you have suffered, you have all suffered, poor women, and with what courage! But admit that, despite all these pains, you have known also joys you knew not before: the joy of joining together, all of you, from the smallest to the greatest, in the sublime work: the liberty of the world!
MADAME DUPLAY.
Certainly, I am happy. Whatever may come now, this time of misery will remain the best of our life: these are not ordinary, absurd sufferings, that serve no purpose. Each of our fasts enriches the nation. What pride we owe you, Maximilien! Yesterday evening I was thinking, as I did the washing: little bourgeoise that I am, so uncertain of the morrow and so weary of beginning again each day the chase for daily bread, I am working at the salvation of the country; nothing of my pains is lost; each of my efforts counts for the victory, and I march with you at the head of humanity!
THE WORKMEN, in the courtyard, singing.
Let us saw, let us nail, let us forge well Gunstocks, pike-handles. Let us work at full speed. Soldiers of the Republic, You shall lack for nothing.
MADAME DUPLAY, smiling.
They have just finished an order for the army of the North; their bellies are empty, but they are content.
ROBESPIERRE.
Sublime people! how good it is to belong to them! who could pardon those who try to corrupt this source of abnegation and sacrifice?
Westermann is heard grumbling outside.
MADAME DUPLAY.
It is the general. He is impatient.
ROBESPIERRE.
Have him come up.
Madame Duplay goes out. — Robespierre casts a glance in his mirror. In an instant, his face changes, becomes hard, motionless, glacial.
ROBESPIERRE, WESTERMANN.
WESTERMANN, entering impetuously.
Thunder of God! it is not too soon. For two hours I have been kicking my heels at the door. By God, it is harder to get into your place than into a Vendean town…
Robespierre, hands behind his back, motionless, features rigid, lips pinched, looks Westermann full in the face. Westermann, taken aback for a moment, resumes.
WESTERMANN.
I thought you did not want to receive me. Desmoulins had told me they would prevent me from passing. And I had sworn I would enter, if I had to break down your door with cannon-shot… He laughs. You will excuse my martial frankness? Robespierre continues silent. Westermann, increasingly uneasy, tries to take an offhand air. By God! you are well guarded. There is a pretty girl on sentry at your door; she is darning stockings. No nonsense with the young lady! Like you, incorruptible. One would have had to walk over her body. In enemy country, that would not have been so disagreeable… He laughs in a forced way. Robespierre is silent, but moves his hands impatiently. Westermann sits down, wants to make himself comfortable. Robespierre remains standing. Westermann rises again. Some fools claim you are my enemy. I shrug at it. Virtue, enemy of virtue! Come now! Can Aristides be the enemy of Leonidas? Are not the bastion of the Republic and the rampart of the country made to lean each on the other? Fellows like us, who put the glory of the nation above all, will always come to terms, is that not true?… He holds out his hand. Robespierre neither moves nor replies. Will you not give me your hand?… Thunder! is it then true? you are my enemy? you plot my ruin? A thousand swine! if I knew it!… Am I some jean-foutre, that you leave me two hours moping in your court, and when I am in your room, that you do not even offer me a chair to sit on, that you leave me there, standing, talking, without answering? Name of God!
He stamps his foot on the floor.
ROBESPIERRE, glacial.
General, you are on the wrong track. There is a long way from Leonidas to Père Duchesne. You seek your models in a dangerous place.
WESTERMANN, taken aback.
What place?
ROBESPIERRE.
The place of the Revolution.
WESTERMANN, quite thrown off.
But after all, citizen, what have I done? of what do you accuse me?
ROBESPIERRE.
The Committee of Public Safety will tell you.
WESTERMANN.
I have the right to be warned.
ROBESPIERRE.
Question your conscience.
WESTERMANN.
It reproaches me with nothing.
ROBESPIERRE.
I pity the man who can no longer hear the voice of remorse.
WESTERMANN forces himself to be calm; but his voice trembles with pain and rage.
I have only one remorse: it is to have sacrificed my life to so ungrateful a country. For thirty years I have suffered for her all manner of miseries. I have saved her ten times from invasion. Never has she recognised my services. The first sycophant comes and denounces me: they listen to the anonymous letters of soldiers whose cowardice I have punished; they accuse me, they threaten me, they break me of my rank; and fools, goitred ones, scoundrels, ride over my back; I must obey a Rossignol, a stupid goldsmith, who knows nothing of war, who has made himself known only by his blunderings, and whose only titles are the dirt of his origin and the protection of the Jacobins. Kléber, Dubayet and Marceau eat their hearts out in trifling posts, and a shopkeeper of Niort commands two armies!
ROBESPIERRE.
The Republic prizes in a leader the strength of his republican convictions more than his military skill.
WESTERMANN.
Does the Republic also prize Rossignol’s defeats?
ROBESPIERRE.
The responsibility for Rossignol’s defeats does not weigh on him, but on those who surround him. If Kléber, Dubayet, Westermann are so proud of their talents, let them make the general the nation imposes on them profit by it!
WESTERMANN.
So, you want to rob us of the glory of our actions?
ROBESPIERRE.
Yes.
WESTERMANN.
Confess it: military glory frightens you, you want to humble it?
ROBESPIERRE.
Yes.
WESTERMANN, insulting.
It hampers the ambition of the lawyers?
ROBESPIERRE.
It insults reason, it threatens liberty. What makes you so proud? You do only your duty. You risk your life? Our heads, all of them, in France, are the stake in the formidable game we are playing with despotism. What merit have you, more than we, in braving death? We are all devoted to death or to victory. You are, like us, the instruments of the Revolution, the axe charged with clearing the way for the Republic through her enemies. It is a terrible task, which should be accepted without weakness, but without pride. You have no more reason to be proud of your cannon than we of the guillotine.
WESTERMANN.
You outrage the greatness of war.
ROBESPIERRE.
There is no greatness but virtue. Wherever she is to be found: soldiers, workmen, lawmakers, the Republic honours her. But let the criminal tremble! Nothing shall shield them from her blows, neither their titles, nor their swords.
WESTERMANN.
It is I you threaten?
ROBESPIERRE.
I have named no one. Woe to him who designates himself!
WESTERMANN.
Thunder!
He looks, with a threatening gesture, at the impassive Robespierre; he trembles in all his limbs, and goes toward the door with a wild step. Turning around.
Take care of yourself, Sulla! My head is more solid than Custine’s. There are still men who do not fear your tyranny. I am going to find Danton.
He bumps into the wall before finding the door, and goes out with a crash.
ROBESPIERRE, ÉLÉONORE DUPLAY.
ÉLÉONORE, coming out of the Duplays’ apartment.
At last! he has gone! Oh! Maximilien, how anxious I was while he was here!
ROBESPIERRE, smiling affectionately.
Dear Éléonore! you were listening?
ÉLÉONORE.
That man’s voice frightened me; I could not help coming; I was next door, in mother’s dressing-room.
ROBESPIERRE.
And what could you have done, if he had had evil intentions?
ÉLÉONORE, embarrassed.
I do not know.
ROBESPIERRE, taking her hand which she hides behind her back.
What is this?
ÉLÉONORE, blushing.
A pistol that Philippe left on the table last night when he came in.
ROBESPIERRE, taking it from her and keeping her hand in his.
No, no, let those hands not be soiled with these objects of murder! Even to save my life, let them not shed blood. Let there remain at least in the universe two friendly hands, two innocent hands, to purify the world and the heart of Robespierre of their bloody destinies — when the work shall be accomplished.
ÉLÉONORE.
Why expose yourself so? You provoked that man, and he is said to be cruel.
ROBESPIERRE.
I do not fear sabreurs. Once you take them out of combat, their strength is nothing but empty noise; their knees tremble when they are in the presence of this power new to them, that their iron has never met in the mêlée: the Law.
ÉLÉONORE.
Citizen Fouché also came; but they did not receive him, according to your orders.
ROBESPIERRE.
My door is forever closed to him who dishonoured the majesty of the Terror in the massacres of Lyon.
ÉLÉONORE.
He would not go away; he wept.
ROBESPIERRE, harshly.
The crocodile too weeps.
ÉLÉONORE.
He has gone to your sister, to beg her to intercede for him.
ROBESPIERRE, changing expression, uneasy, timid.
Ah! my God, she is going to come!… The rogue has persuaded her that he loves her; she does not esteem him; but praises always flatter a woman, from whatever quarter they come. She will take his defence. In the name of heaven, do not let her come in! Tell her I am busy, that I cannot see anyone.
ÉLÉONORE, smiling.
You brave all the tyrants of Europe, and your sister frightens you.
ROBESPIERRE, smiling.
She is a good woman, she loves me. But she is so tiring! Her continual jealousies, the scenes she makes at every turn, break my head. I think I would accept anything for her to be silent.
ÉLÉONORE.
Be at peace: mother is warned, she will prevent her from entering.
ROBESPIERRE.
Dear friends! with what care you watch over my rest!
ÉLÉONORE.
We are responsible for it to the nation.
ROBESPIERRE.
What good your house does me! What rest my soul tastes in it! It is not a selfish shelter far from the storms outside. The door is wide open to the cares of the country; but they take on as they enter I know not what august tint. Here one receives destiny like a man, without bowing the head, and eyes in eyes. I have never crossed this threshold without breathing in the air of this courtyard, in this smell of cut wood, peace and hope. The honest face of Duplay, the cordial voice of your mother, your hand, Éléonore, held out to me with a fraternal smile, so much loyal affection, make me know the most inestimable, the rarest good — oh! the good of which I am most in lack and of which I have the most need!
ÉLÉONORE.
What good?
ROBESPIERRE.
Trust.
ÉLÉONORE.
You distrust someone?
ROBESPIERRE.
I distrust all men. I read the lie in their gazes, I see the trickery lurking under protestations. Their eyes, their mouths, their handshakes, their whole bodies lie. Suspicion poisons all my thoughts. I was made for sweeter sentiments. I love men, I would believe in them. But how to believe in them still, when one sees them, as I do, each day, perjure themselves ten times, sell themselves, sell their friends, sell their armies, sell their country, by fear, by ambition, by debauchery, by malevolence? I have seen Mirabeau, Lafayette, Dumouriez, Custine, the king, the aristocrats, the Girondins, the Hébertists betray. The troops would have delivered the invaded country twenty times over, if they had not constantly felt at their backs the shadow of the guillotine. Three-quarters of the Convention conspire against the Convention. The vices are uneasy beneath the heroic discipline the Revolution imposes on them. They dare not attack virtue head-on; they mask themselves with pity, with clemency, to deceive opinion, to move it in favour of scoundrels, to stir it up against patriots. I will tear off the masks, I will force the Assembly to see what they conceal: the hideous face of treason; I will compel the disguised accomplices of the conspirators to condemn them with me, or perish with them: the Republic will conquer. But, O God! amid how many ruins! Vice is like the Hydra. Each drop of blood that falls gives birth to new monsters. The best let themselves be caught, one after another, by the contagion. The day before yesterday, Philippeaux; yesterday, Danton: today, Desmoulins… Desmoulins, my childhood friend, my brother!… Who will betray tomorrow?
ÉLÉONORE.
Is it possible? so many betrayals! And you have proofs of them?
ROBESPIERRE.
Yes, and more than proofs: moral certainty, that infallible light which never deceives me.
ÉLÉONORE.
No, you cannot be mistaken: you know everything, you see to the bottom of hearts. Alas! are they all corrupt?
ROBESPIERRE.
There are four or five men I esteem: the honest Couthon, insensible to his sufferings, that he may think only of those of the world; the amiable and modest Le Bas; my brother, who is generous, but loves pleasure too much; two children and a moribund man.
ÉLÉONORE.
And Saint-Just?
ROBESPIERRE.
Him I fear. Saint-Just, living sword of the Revolution, implacable weapon, who would sacrifice me like the others to his iron law. — All the rest betray. Hampered by my clear-sightedness, jealous of the love of the people, they work to render me odious. The proconsuls of Marseille and Lyon cover their atrocities with the name of Robespierre. The counter-revolution takes by turns the face of clemency and that of terror. Let weariness overwhelm me for an instant, and it is done with me, done with the Republic. Couthon is sick. Le Bas and my brother are two flighty youths. Saint-Just is far away, taming the armies. I remain alone amid these traitors, who circle around me, seeking to strike me from behind. They will kill me, Éléonore.
ÉLÉONORE, taking his hand with juvenile quickness.
If you die, you shall not die alone.
Robespierre looks at her affectionately. She blushes.
ROBESPIERRE.
Dear Éléonore, no, you shall not die. I am stronger than my cowardly enemies. I have Truth with me.
ÉLÉONORE.
Ah! what cares gnaw at you, when you should be so happy, you who work for the happiness of all! How unjust life is!
ROBESPIERRE.
I have made you sad. I was wrong to wither your confidence in life. Forgive me.
ÉLÉONORE.
Regret nothing. I am proud of your confidence. All night, I thought of those pages of Rousseau, which you read to us yesterday. They were rocking my soul deliciously. I heard the sound of your voice, and those tender words… oh! I know them by heart.
ROBESPIERRE, reciting, with a smile of affection a little melancholy, a little emphatic, sincere nevertheless:
“The communion of hearts gives to sadness an indescribable something of sweetness and tenderness which contentment has not, and friendship has been given especially to the unfortunate for the alleviation of their ills and the consolation of their sorrows.” Éléonore, her hand in Robespierre’s, is silent, smiling and blushing. You are silent?
ÉLÉONORE, reciting.
“Can what one says to a friend ever equal what one feels by his side?”
MADAME DUPLAY, from outside.
Maximilien, here is Saint-Just.
Éléonore escapes.
ROBESPIERRE, SAINT-JUST.
Saint-Just enters calmly. Robespierre goes to meet him. They shake hands, as though meeting again after a few hours of absence.
SAINT-JUST.
Good day.
ROBESPIERRE.
Good day, Saint-Just.
They sit down.
SAINT-JUST, looking at him calmly.
I am happy to see you again.
ROBESPIERRE.
Le Bas wrote us that it was a near thing whether we should see you again.
SAINT-JUST.
Yes. After a silence. They need arms there; the army lacks muskets.
ROBESPIERRE.
They are at work on it, all Paris is busy with it. They forge in the churches. Every other work is suspended. You could see in passing the carpenters of Duplay making gunstocks. The clockmakers are working on the locks; the anvils ring in the public squares.
SAINT-JUST, after a silence.
Provisions are scarce. Some divisions lack forage. Time presses, the campaign will open in three weeks at the latest; the blood of all France must be made to flow toward the North.
ROBESPIERRE.
The orders are given. France fasts so that her soldiers may eat.
SAINT-JUST.
As soon as you no longer need my counsels, send me back there. The first engagements will be decisive. Every spring of action must be tightened.
ROBESPIERRE.
This life does not wear you out, then?
SAINT-JUST, sincere, ardent, concentrated, speaking without any gesture.
It rests me from sterile discussions. Thought and action there fuse like the clash of clouds and the lightning that springs forth. Every will is inscribed on the spot, for eternity, in the blood of men and the destinies of the world… Grandeur of the task! Divine anguish!… In the night, in the snow, at the outposts of the army, on the dreary stretch of the Flemish plain, beneath the immensity of the frozen sky, I feel a shiver of joy pass through my body, and my blood beat in floods against my breast. Alone, lost amid the shadows of the Universe, surrounded by enemies, suspended over the tomb, we are in Europe the guardians of Reason, the living Light. At each decision, we wager the fate of the world. We re-create Man.
ROBESPIERRE.
Happy he whom a feeble body does not hold here, far from action!
SAINT-JUST.
Who acts more than you? The liberty of the world is enclosed in Paris.
ROBESPIERRE.
Here one feels withered with fighting vice. It soils in spite of oneself. I confess, when I see the mud of crimes the torrent of the Revolution rolls pell-mell with virtue, I fear to be soiled in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of perverse men.
SAINT-JUST.
Put the axe between them and you. The impure must be touched only with iron.
ROBESPIERRE.
Corruption gains everything. Men I most counted on. Old friends.
SAINT-JUST.
No friendships! the Country.
ROBESPIERRE.
Danton threatens. Danton is suspect. He pours forth violent and abusive words. He surrounds himself with intriguers, with debauchees, with ruined financiers, with officers broken of their rank. The malcontents of every sort rally around him.
SAINT-JUST.
Let Danton disappear!
ROBESPIERRE.
Danton was a republican. He loved the country. He loves her still, perhaps.
SAINT-JUST.
He does not love the country, he who does not respect her by the austerity of his life. He is no republican, he who has the vices and maxims of an aristocrat. I hate Catilina. His cynical heart, his cowardly intelligence, his ignoble policy, which floats between all parties, in order to make use of all, debases the Republic. Let Danton be struck down!
ROBESPIERRE.
He drags the imprudent Desmoulins down with him in his fall.
SAINT-JUST.
That brazen rhetorician, for whom the misfortunes of the country are matter for stylistic effects, that vain wit who would sacrifice Liberty to an antithesis!
ROBESPIERRE.
A child, the dupe of his friends and of his wit.
SAINT-JUST.
Wit too is a crime, when France is in danger. The misfortunes of the country have spread over the whole State a sombre and religious tinge. I distrust those who laugh.
ROBESPIERRE.
I love Desmoulins.
SAINT-JUST.
I love you. If you became criminal, I myself would accuse you.
ROBESPIERRE, embarrassed, moves aside. Then returning, after a short silence.
Thank you. — You are happy; never do you waver. Nothing balances in you the hatred of vice.
SAINT-JUST.
I have seen vice closer than you.
ROBESPIERRE.
Where then?
SAINT-JUST.
In myself.
ROBESPIERRE, astonished.
In you, whose whole life is a model of abnegation and austere sacrifice!
SAINT-JUST.
You do not know.
ROBESPIERRE, incredulous.
What sin of youth?
SAINT-JUST, sombre.
I have been at the edge of the abyss; I have seen the crime at the bottom, ready to devour me. Since then, I have sworn to destroy it in the world, as in myself.
ROBESPIERRE.
I am weary at times of this struggle. The enemy is too vast. Shall we be able to transform humanity? Shall we make our dream reign?
SAINT-JUST.
The day I am convinced that it is impossible to accomplish it, I shall stab myself.
ÉLÉONORE, opening the door. Softly.
Here are Billaud-Varenne and Vadier.
ROBESPIERRE, SAINT-JUST, BILLAUD-VARENNE, VADIER.
Billaud-Varenne, head bowed, sombre, looking crushed with fatigue, eyes a little haggard. Vadier, lips pinched, sneering, bitter. — Robespierre and Saint-Just rise very coldly. They greet each other with a small, brief and dry nod, without shaking hands.
BILLAUD-VARENNE.
Greetings and fraternity.
VADIER, seeing Saint-Just.
Saint-Just… Well, things will go. We shall make up for lost time.
Billaud and Vadier sit down without ceremony. Saint-Just paces. Robespierre remains standing, leaning against the window. — After a silence:
BILLAUD.
The guillotine! You have waited too long, Robespierre: we are in danger. If Danton still exists tomorrow, liberty is lost.
ROBESPIERRE.
What news?
BILLAUD, papers in hand.
Look. The traitor has continued.
ROBESPIERRE.
Who?
VADIER.
Your friend, Maximilien — Camille, dear Camille.
ROBESPIERRE.
He has written again?
BILLAUD.
These proofs have just been seized. Read.
VADIER, rubbing his hands.
The seventh of the Vieux Cordelier. The continuation of the Credo of the good apostle.
ROBESPIERRE.
The fool! Will he not be silent?
BILLAUD, fixed on his idea.
The guillotine!
SAINT-JUST, reading with Robespierre.
He is a wench. He suffers from the disease of dishonouring himself.
ROBESPIERRE.
And Danton?
BILLAUD.
Danton is agitating; he orates at the Palais-Royal. He insults Vadier, me, all the patriots. Desmoulins is with him. They are at table with Westermann and trollops; they utter obscene insults against the Committee. The people gather around and laugh.
SAINT-JUST.
Do you hear that, Robespierre!
ROBESPIERRE, disdainfully.
No danger. Before Danton has finished drinking, we have time to deliberate in peace. Looking at the papers. So, the madman is committing suicide!
VADIER.
Ah! this time, my dear, he has thrown his cap over Desmoulins.
BILLAUD.
Let his head follow the same path!
SAINT-JUST, reading.
He compares the Convention to Nero and to Tiberius.
BILLAUD, reading.
He dares to say that we pursued Custine on the orders of Pitt, not because Custine had betrayed, but because he had not betrayed enough.
VADIER, reading.
“The Committee will reduce the Assembly to the servile condition of a parliament whose rebellious members are sent to the Bastille.”
ROBESPIERRE, checking the reading.
It says “would reduce,” not “will reduce.”
VADIER.
It is the same thing.
BILLAUD, reading.
“What does the Committee lack to annihilate the Republic, if it sends to the Luxembourg those of the deputies it cannot buy?”
ROBESPIERRE, checking.
It says: “it could send them,” not “it sends them.”
BILLAUD, exasperated.
Do not keep quibbling!
SAINT-JUST, reading.
He has the effrontery to claim that “the War offices appoint to the head of the armies the brothers of the actresses they sleep with.”
VADIER.
To disorganise the Defence, to debase the nation before the foreigner — nothing stops him, when his babbling, stammering tongue burns him.
BILLAUD.
The whole wrapped in appeals to clemency, in phrases on humanity!…
VADIER.
Sugared tears, confectioner’s mottoes!
SAINT-JUST.
No plague of Egypt comparable to sensitive men. No tyrant costs humanity more griefs. They too called themselves sensitive men, the traitors of the Gironde, who paraded throughout France the torches of rebellion.
ROBESPIERRE.
Desmoulins is weak, childish, not factious. He was my childhood friend; I know him.
BILLAUD, suspicious.
Are there privileges for the friends of Robespierre?
VADIER, jeering. He reads the number of the Vieux Cordelier.
Listen still, Maximilien: here is something for you. It appears that if you close the houses of debauchery, if you make a show of zeal to purify morals and drive out the wenches, it is on Pitt’s instructions; for “you thus take from the government one of its greatest mainsprings: the relaxation of morals.” Do you hear, Incorruptible? This must please you?
SAINT-JUST.
The base and hypocritical soul!
BILLAUD, violently.
The guillotine!
He falls, head on the table, like an ox struck down.
ROBESPIERRE.
He has fainted?
VADIER, indifferent.
A dizzy spell.
Saint-Just opens the window. Billaud comes back to himself.
SAINT-JUST.
You are ill, Billaud?
BILLAUD, in a hoarse voice.
Who are you?… Scoundrels! — I can no more. For ten nights I have not slept.
VADIER.
He passes his nights at the Committee and his days at the Assembly.
ROBESPIERRE.
You work too much. Shall someone replace you for a few days?
BILLAUD.
My task is not to be improvised. To correspond with the departments, to hold in one’s hand all the threads of all France, no one can do it but me. If I stop, the whole skein gets tangled. No; I must remain till I drop.
SAINT-JUST.
We shall all die at the task.
BILLAUD.
O Nature! it was not for these storms that you had created me! My soul is wrinkled by the breath of the murderous winds of the desert. O too sensitive heart, you were made for retreat, for friendship, for the touching emotions of a tender family!
VADIER, ironic.
Let us not grow tender, Billaud.
BILLAUD, taking up again in a violent tone.
Let us purify the air! Desmoulins to the guillotine!
ROBESPIERRE.
I must give the example. I abandon Desmoulins.
VADIER, jeering under his breath.
Brutus, magnanimous man, virtuous man, I knew well you would not hesitate to rid yourself of a friend.
ROBESPIERRE.
Desmoulins’s fate is bound to that of another man.
BILLAUD.
Are you afraid to pronounce the name of Danton?
ROBESPIERRE.
I am afraid to break a talisman of the Republic.
VADIER.
Her lucky-piece.
ROBESPIERRE.
Danton is my enemy; but if my friendships do not count in our deliberations, my enmities should no more weigh on my judgments. Before joining battle, let us coldly discuss the risks there would be in dismantling that fortress of the Revolution.
BILLAUD.
A fortress for sale!
VADIER.
The bugbear of the Revolution! In public dangers, the monstrous idol is brought out to put the enemy to flight; but she frightens most those who carry her. Her hideous face frightens Liberty.
ROBESPIERRE.
It cannot be denied that his features are known and feared throughout Europe.
VADIER, teasing. It is true that as a good sans-culotte, he readily shows the world
What Caesar, without shame, submitted To Nicomedes, in his fair youth, What once the hero of Greece So admired in his Hephaestion, And what Hadrian placed in the Pantheon…
SAINT-JUST, violently.
Cease your filthy ironies! Is it in the name of corruption that you combat corruption?
VADIER.
You are not going to oblige me to recite Rousseau to you?
ROBESPIERRE makes an effort to be impartial, but brings no conviction to it.
I think it fitting to take some account of Danton’s past services.
SAINT-JUST.
The more good a man has done, the more he is bound to do. Woe to him who has defended the cause of the people, and who abandons it! He is more criminal than he who always fought against it; for he knew the good, and voluntarily betrayed it.
ROBESPIERRE.
The death of Hébert has stirred opinion. The police reports sent to me note that our enemies profit from the people’s disarray, suddenly disabused, to shake their confidence in their true friends. Everything is suspect today, the memory of Marat himself. We must act prudently and take care not to add to suspicions by our internal quarrels.
SAINT-JUST.
Let us put an end to suspicions by the death of the suspects.
VADIER, aside, looking at Robespierre, taking snuff.
The rascal! How afraid he is to touch his dear aristocrats! Cromwell secures himself a majority. By God! if this goes on, I shall have him guillotine a hundred toads of his Marsh.
ROBESPIERRE.
Such a head does not fall without shaking the State.
BILLAUD, suspicious and violent.
Are you afraid, Robespierre?
VADIER, slyly egging on Billaud.
Ask him, then, Billaud, whether he uses Danton as a padded mattress to take shelter behind, against the bullets?
BILLAUD, brutal.
Speak frankly: you are afraid of being uncovered by the fall of Danton. You stick to him as to a shield that protects you. Danton turns attention and shafts away from you.
ROBESPIERRE.
I despise these perfidious calumnies. What do the dangers matter to me? I do not cling to my life. But I have the experience of the past, and I see the future. You are furious men; your hatreds drive you mad. You think of yourselves, you do not think of the Republic.
SAINT-JUST.
Let us then examine without passion what the Republic should expect of the conspirators. And let us not ask if Danton has talents, but if those talents serve the Republic. — Whence have come, these three months past, all the attacks against the Revolution? From Danton. Who has inspired Philippeaux’s letters against the Committee? Danton. Who whispers to Desmoulins his venomous pamphlets? Danton. Each issue of the Vieux Cordelier is submitted to him, discussed with him, corrected by his hand. If the river is poisoned, let us take the evil at its source. Where is Danton’s sincerity? Where his bravery? In a year, what has he done for the Republic?
ROBESPIERRE pretends to let himself be little by little convinced and carried along by the others, with a mixture of hypocrisy and sincerity.
It is true that he has never spoken for the attacked Mountain.
SAINT-JUST.
No, but for Dumouriez, for his accomplice generals. The Jacobins accused him: you defended him, Robespierre. When you were accused, did he say a word for you?
ROBESPIERRE.
No; but seeing me alone, exposed to the calumnies of the Gironde, he said to his friends: “Since he wants to lose himself, let him lose himself! We shall not share his fate!” — But it is not a matter of me.
BILLAUD.
You yourself told me, Robespierre, that he did everything to save the Girondins, and to strike Hanriot, who arrested the traitors.
ROBESPIERRE.
It is true.
SAINT-JUST.
You yourself told me, Robespierre, that he had cynically confessed to you his swindles, and those of Fabre, his secretary, during his brief passage at the ministry of Justice.
ROBESPIERRE.
I admit it.
SAINT-JUST.
He was the friend of Lafayette. Mirabeau bought him. He was in correspondence with Dumouriez and Wimpfen. He flattered Orléans. All the enemies of the Revolution have been familiar with him.
ROBESPIERRE.
We must not exaggerate.
SAINT-JUST.
It is you who told me. I would know nothing of these facts, if you had not spoken to me of them.
ROBESPIERRE.
Doubtless… but…
BILLAUD, violent.
Do you deny it?
ROBESPIERRE.
I cannot deny it. Danton was assiduous at those royalist soirées, where Orléans himself made the punch. Fabre and Wimpfen attended. They sought to draw the deputies of the Mountain there, to seduce or compromise them. — But that is only a trifle.
BILLAUD.
A capital fact, on the contrary! manifest conspiracy!
ROBESPIERRE.
I recall a small detail, of little importance. Recently he is said to have boasted that, if accused, he would throw the dauphin at our legs.
BILLAUD.
The scoundrel! He said that! and you can defend him!…
ROBESPIERRE.
Westermann has just left here. He threatened me with Danton and an uprising.
BILLAUD.
And we are still discussing! and the tigers are not arrested!
ROBESPIERRE.
You wish it?
SAINT-JUST.
The country wishes it.
VADIER, sneering, aside.
The hypocrite! he is dying for it! He must be begged.
ROBESPIERRE.
He was great. — At least, he had the appearance of greatness, at moments almost of virtue.
SAINT-JUST.
Nothing so resembles virtue as a great crime.
VADIER, sarcastic.
You will make his funeral oration later, Maximilien. For the moment, let us put the beast in the ground.
SAINT-JUST.
Vadier, I call you to respect for Death.
VADIER.
The little fellow is still alive.
SAINT-JUST.
Danton is struck from life.
BILLAUD.
Who will draft the act of accusation?
VADIER.
Saint-Just. The young man acquits himself marvellously. Each of his sentences is worth a stroke of the guillotine.
SAINT-JUST.
It pleases me to measure myself with the monster.
ROBESPIERRE, fetching some papers which he gives to Saint-Just.
Here are some notes already prepared.
VADIER, aside.
He has such for each of his friends.
ROBESPIERRE.
Let us not do Danton the honour of a trial for him alone: it would draw too much the eyes of the nation upon him.
BILLAUD.
Let us drown him in a collective accusation.
VADIER.
Whom shall we put with him, to enrich the menu?
SAINT-JUST.
All those who have wished to corrupt Liberty by money, or by morals, or by wit.
VADIER.
Be precise. This vagueness is troubling.
ROBESPIERRE.
Danton loved gold. Let him be buried with gold! Let us mix him with the affair of the banks. Let him take his place among the embezzlers. He will find there his friend, his secretary, his Fabre d’Églantine.
VADIER.
Fabre, Chabot, the high Jewry, the Austrian bankers, the Freys, Diederischen — very good; that begins to take shape.
BILLAUD.
It will be well to add to the accused Hérault, the friend of the émigrés.
SAINT-JUST.
Before all, Philippeaux, the disorganiser of the army, the destroyer of discipline.
ROBESPIERRE.
Westermann, the bloody sword, always ready for rebellion. — Is that all?
VADIER.
Dear Camille, whom you forget.
ROBESPIERRE.
Would you not rather have Bourdon, or Legendre, who are the spokesmen of the faction in the Assembly?
VADIER.
No. Camille.
BILLAUD.
Camille.
SAINT-JUST.
Justice.
ROBESPIERRE.
Take him.
SAINT-JUST.
Farewell. I go to prepare the report. Tomorrow, at the Convention, I will overwhelm them.
VADIER.
Not so, not so, young man; the imprudence of your age carries you away. What! you wish to draw Danton to the tribune?
SAINT-JUST.
Danton counts on the idea that no one will dare attack him face to face. I will disabuse him.
VADIER.
The heart is not enough, my young friend; one must also have lungs capable of stifling the bellowings of the bull.
SAINT-JUST.
Truth dominates the storms.
ROBESPIERRE.
We must not deliver the Republic to the hazards of a combat in the lists.
SAINT-JUST.
What do you want then?
Robespierre does not reply.
BILLAUD.
That Danton be arrested this night.
SAINT-JUST, violently.
Never!
VADIER.
He who wants the end wants the means.
SAINT-JUST.
I do not strike an unarmed enemy. Put me face to face with Danton: such combats ennoble the Republic; but your proposal dishonours her: I spurn it with my foot.
BILLAUD.
No proprieties to respect with the enemies of the people!
VADIER.
In politics, useless temerity is a foolishness, sometimes a treason.
SAINT-JUST.
I will not.
He flings his hat violently to the ground.
BILLAUD, severely.
Is it then the combat for the Republic that you love, and not the Republic?
SAINT-JUST.
Such designs need danger to be sanctified. A Revolution is a heroic enterprise, whose authors march between the wheel and immortality. We should be criminal, if we were not ready constantly to immolate our lives, as well as those of others.
VADIER.
Be calm, you risk enough still. Danton imprisoned can raise the people; and do not doubt, if he is victor, but he will send you to the trap.
SAINT-JUST.
I despise the dust of which I am formed. My heart is the only good that belongs to me; I shall pass through the bloodied world without soiling its purity.
BILLAUD, with hard and contemptuous severity.
Self-esteem is an egoism. Whether Saint-Just’s heart be soiled or not, it matters not to us: let us save the Republic.
SAINT-JUST, questioning Robespierre with his eyes.
Robespierre!
ROBESPIERRE.
My friend, calm your soul. The storms of a Revolution are not subject to ordinary laws; it is not with common morality that one judges the force which transforms the world and re-creates morality on new bases. Nevertheless, one must be just; but here the measure of justice is not the individual conscience; it is the public conscience. In the people is our light; their salvation is our law. — We had but one question to ask: namely, whether the people wills the ruin of Danton. That question resolved, all is resolved; we must deliver battle so as to be victors. Justice is that what is just may triumph. We cannot wait. We must strike Danton at once. To leave him weapons, out of generosity, would be to offer one’s breast to the assassin’s dagger; military and financial despotism would then seize the reins of the Revolution; a century of civil wars would desolate our country; and the curses of the people would attach to our memory, which should be dear to the human race.
BILLAUD.
Conquer at all costs! Let everything blaze with the terrible brilliance of our dictatorship!
VADIER.
It is a matter of knowing, not whether a man will be judged according to the law, but whether Europe will be Jacobin.
SAINT-JUST, holding his breast with both hands, like the Robespierre of David in the painting of the Tennis Court Oath.
O Republic, take then my honour, since you will it, take me, drink me, devour me whole!
BILLAUD, vibrating, jerky.
Perhaps at this very moment the Republic is stifled, our ideas miscarry, Reason dies for centuries… Quick!
ROBESPIERRE.
Have Danton arrested. — He signs.
Billaud signs feverishly.
SAINT-JUST.
To you, Liberty! — He signs.
BILLAUD.
Will the Convention not flinch?
ROBESPIERRE, with contempt.
The Convention always knows how to sacrifice her members to the public happiness.
VADIER, signs.
I take charge of the matter.
ROBESPIERRE, sighs.
The weight of the Revolution presses heavier upon our shoulders.
VADIER, aside.
The tiger-cat makes a show, but he licks his chops.
ROBESPIERRE.
Sad necessity. We mutilate the Republic in order to save her.
SAINT-JUST, sombre and exalted.
The philosopher Jesus said to his disciples: “If thy hand make thee fall into sin, cut it off; if thy foot make thee fall into sin, sever it; if thine eye make thee fall into sin, pluck it out: for it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God having but one eye and the body mutilated, than to have two eyes and to be cast into the gehenna of fire.” — And I say: If thy friend is corrupt and corrupts the Republic, cut him off from the Republic; if thy brother is corrupt and corrupts the Republic, cut him off from the Republic. And if the blood of the Republic, if your own blood flows from the gaping wound, let it flow: let the Republic be pure, or let her perish! The Republic is virtue. Where there is taint, the Republic is no longer.
VADIER, aside.
They are mad. Mad to be tied up. We must not delay putting them in the padded cell. The most urgent first!
He goes to leave.
BILLAUD.
Wait until I sign.
VADIER.
You have signed.
BILLAUD.
I do not remember. — What have I done? Have I done well?… Tristis est anima mea!… Oh! to stretch out in the meadows, on the fresh earth; to smell the balsamic odour of the woods; a brook between the willows! Rest! Rest!…
ROBESPIERRE.
The founders of the Republic find rest only in the tomb.
- Vadier speaks with a very marked southern accent. He pronounces the b as v*, the* ou as u*, the* j as z*, and the* e as é*. It has not been thought necessary to indicate this in the text. It is for the actor, or for the reader, to supply it.*
ACT III
THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, public prosecutor, HERMAN, president. JURY, GENDARMES, CROWD. — On the bench of the accused, DANTON, DESMOULINS, HÉRAULT, PHILIPPEAUX, WESTERMANN, — CHABOT, THE FREYS, mute characters; — FABRE D’ÉGLANTINE, in an armchair in their midst. — In the front row of the public, the painter David and a few friends. — The windows of the hall are open. The murmur of the crowd is heard outside. From time to time, through the wicket of a door behind the president, the head of VADIER appears, overseeing the trial. — Near the door, standing, General HANRIOT. Herman and Fouquier-Tinville cast anxious glances toward him from time to time.
They are questioning Chabot and the Freys. — Danton is agitated with indignation. Desmoulins seems crushed. Hérault, calm, looks on, smiling. Philippeaux, jaws set, eyes fixed, prepares his retort. Fabre, suffering, is slumped in his armchair. — The crowd presses forward and watches avidly. They underscore every turn of the trial, like an audience attending a melodrama — amused and moved at the same time.
THE PRESIDENT, to the Freys.
You are the agents of Pitt. You wished to corrupt the Convention. To favour your speculations and your rapines, you formed the project of buying the representatives of the people. You set a tariff on each conscience.
DANTON, resounding.
President, give me the floor!
THE PRESIDENT.
Your turn will come, Danton.
DANTON.
What have I to do amid this filth? What connection between me and these thieves?
THE PRESIDENT.
You will be told.
DANTON.
The natural nobility of my character forbids me to overwhelm these wretches. You know it, and you abuse my silence to try to confuse me, in the people’s mind, with dirty bankers, schemers, embezzlers.
HÉRAULT.
Do not agitate yourself, Danton.
THE PRESIDENT.
Respect justice; you will explain yourself by and by.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
Be still, Danton. You will have to answer like your co-accused on the head of corruption.
DANTON.
The corruption of Danton does not follow in the wake of rabble. Give him at least the first place. Danton would not be second in anything, neither in vice nor in virtue.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Hush and be prudent.
THE PRESIDENT, to the Freys.
You are Jews by birth, originally from Moravia; you are named Tropuscka. You then took the name Schoenfeld, under which you bought in Austria letters of nobility; then you passed into France, and you call yourselves Frey, for the moment. One of your sisters has received baptism, and is kept by a German baron. The other has married Chabot, formerly a Capuchin, now a representative in the Convention. You associated with some adventurers of doubtful race like yourselves: Diederischen, originating from Holstein, bank employee in Vienna; Gusman, called the Spaniard, who passed himself off as a German baron; the former abbé d’Espagnac, supplier to the armies. The complicity of some bought deputies favoured your speculations. Chabot served you as intermediary with his colleagues. He had valued himself at 150,000 livres. He took it upon himself, on your behalf, to take 100,000 to Fabre d’Églantine. Fabre falsified for this price the Convention’s decree relating to the liquidation of the East India Company. I pass the original under the eyes of the jury.
VADIER, gently opening the wicket of the door, signals to General Hanriot, standing near the door.
All going well, Hanriot?
HANRIOT, low.
It will do.
VADIER, pointing to Fouquier and the tribunal.
They are not flinching?
HANRIOT, the same.
Have no fear. I have my eye on them.
VADIER.
Good; do not hesitate; and if the prosecutor weakens, arrest him.
He closes the wicket.
HÉRAULT, looking at the people.
How the people stare at us!
DANTON, ashamed at bottom, but forcing himself to laugh.
He is not used to seeing this muzzle on the bench of infamy; it is not an everyday spectacle: Danton conjured away by these mountebanks of the fair. Ha! ha! one must laugh at it! — Look at David, over there; his tongue hangs out of his mouth, he slavers with hatred like a dog. — Thunder! hold yourself up, Desmoulins! Straighten your back, by the devil! The people have their eyes on us.
CAMILLE.
Ah! Danton, I shall never see Lucile again!
DANTON.
Come, you shall sleep with her tonight.
CAMILLE.
Save me, Danton, tear me from here; I know not what to do, I shall not be able to defend myself.
DANTON.
You are weaker than a girl. Firm! think that we are making history.
CAMILLE.
Ah! much I care for history!
DANTON.
If you wish to see Lucile again, do not put on the air of a criminal crushed beneath the law! What are you looking at?
CAMILLE.
See, Danton — there…
DANTON.
What? What are you showing me?
CAMILLE.
Near the window, that young man…
DANTON.
That brazen lad, with a lock of hair falling over his eyes, that lawyer’s clerk pinching a girl’s waist?
CAMILLE.
It is nothing; I had a hallucination; I saw… I saw myself…
DANTON.
Yourself?
CAMILLE.
I suddenly saw myself in his place, attending the trial of the Girondins, my victims, — oh! Danton!
During this exchange, the document said to be falsified by Fabre has passed under the eyes of the jury.
THE PRESIDENT.
Fabre, do you persist in your denials?
FABRE D’ÉGLANTINE, very calm, weary, ironic.
It is useless that I begin again to explain myself; you do not listen to me, your judgment is made. I showed a moment ago that on the regular draft of the decree which I had drawn up, traitors introduced additions and suppressions which change its character. That is clear to anyone willing to look at the documents in a spirit of justice. That is not the case here; I know I am condemned in advance. I had the misfortune to displease Robespierre, and you have at heart to dress his wounded self-love. My life is lost. So be it! it is too used up, and makes me suffer too much, for me to make for it an effort that wearies me.
FOUQUIER.
You outrage justice, and you slander Robespierre. It is not Robespierre who accuses you of corruption: it is Cambon. It is not Robespierre who accuses you of conspiracy: it is Billaud-Varenne. Your spirit of intrigue is known. It serves you to make scoundrelly plots and bad plays.
FABRE.
Halt! Ne sutor ultra crepidam… Messieurs of the pit, I take you as witnesses: have not my plays entertained you fully?… Fouquier can make my head fall, but not my Philinte.
FOUQUIER.
An unhealthy curiosity has made you regard the Assembly of the Nation as a kind of theatre, where you sought to play upon the secret springs of the soul. You made use of everything: the ambition of some, the laziness of others, anxiety, envy — everything was good to you. This impudent skill has made of you the chief of a veritable system of counter-revolution, whether your effrontery and your meddling humour delighted to upset the established order, by I know not what unhealthy contempt for human reason, or rather your avowed aristocratism and your cupidity received long since earnest-money from Pitt to ruin the Republic. In ‘92, we find you already conspiring with the enemies. Danton sends you to Dumouriez for those criminal negotiations, which saved the Prussians, on the verge of being annihilated. — But this brings us to the other defendants. I leave you, since they are in such haste that I should tear off their masks. I shall take you up again presently, and show the knot that binds together all the threads of this monstrous intrigue.
The accused stir. The people grow more attentive. Danton speaks a few brief words of encouragement to his own.
FABRE, insolent, to Fouquier.
Plot ill-made, intrigue confused; too many characters; one does not know whence they come, and one knows too well where they are going: no use talking so much. Your piece is detestable, Fouquier. You would do better to have my head cut off at once: I have a toothache.
THE PRESIDENT, to Hérault de Séchelles.
Accused, your names and qualities.
HÉRAULT.
The late Hérault-Séchelles. Formerly advocate-general at the Châtelet: I sat in this hall. Formerly president of the Convention: I inaugurated in her name the republican Constitution. Formerly member of the Committee of Public Safety; formerly friend of Saint-Just and Couthon, who are murdering me.
THE PRESIDENT.
You are an aristocrat. Your fortune dates from your relations with the court, and from your presentation to the woman Capet by the Polignac. You never broke off your relations with the émigrés; you were the friend of Proly the Austrian, bastard of Prince Kaunitz, guillotined last month. You divulged the secrets of the Committee of Public Safety, and delivered important papers to foreign courts. Despite the law, you gave asylum to the former commissary of war, Catus, pursued as émigré and conspirator. You pushed audacity to the point of going to claim him and take his defence at the section Lepelletier, where he was arrested.
HÉRAULT.
Except for one point: the divulging of State secrets, which I formally deny, and which I defy you to prove — all the rest is true. I acknowledge it openly.
THE PRESIDENT.
What explanation do you give of it?
HÉRAULT.
No explanation. I had friends. No will of State could prevent me from loving them and helping them in need.
THE PRESIDENT.
You had been president of the Convention. It was for you to give the nation the example of obedience to the laws.
HÉRAULT.
I give her the example of death for duty.
THE PRESIDENT.
Is that all you have to say?
HÉRAULT.
All.
FOUQUIER.
To another, Herman!
THE PRESIDENT, to Desmoulins.
Your name, given names, qualities.
CAMILLE, very troubled.
Lucie-Camille-Simplice Desmoulins, deputy to the Convention.
THE PRESIDENT.
Your age?
CAMILLE.
The age of the sans-culotte Jesus when he was sacrificed: thirty-three.
THE PRESIDENT.
You are accused of having defamed the Republic. You have slandered the acts of the State, compared the glory in which we live to the turpitudes of the Roman Caesars. You have rekindled the hopes of the aristocrats, excited suspicion against the necessity of repressions, hindered the work of national defence. With a simulated humanity, that your past character belies, you wished to open the prisons to suspects, in order to submerge the Republic beneath the flood of counter-revolutionary vengeance. — What have you to answer?
CAMILLE, very troubled, tries to answer, stammers, raises his hand to his brow, with anguish. His friends watch him, uneasy.
I ask the indulgence of the tribunal. I do not know what is the matter with me. I cannot speak.
THE PRESIDENT.
Do you acknowledge the facts of which you are accused?
CAMILLE.
No, no.
THE PRESIDENT.
Then defend yourself.
CAMILLE.
I cannot. Forgive me. I have a sudden weakness.
His friends rush around him. He has sat down, breathes with difficulty and wipes his brow with his handkerchief. The president shrugs.
FOUQUIER.
Yes or no — do you confess?
PHILIPPEAUX.
Read the passages you incriminate!
DANTON.
Yes, read them, dare to read them to the people; let them judge on which side their friends stand!
THE PRESIDENT.
I have sufficiently designated them; it is not fitting to give renewed echo to dangerous words.
DANTON.
Dangerous for whom? for the bandits?
FOUQUIER.
This comedy is prepared in advance; we shall pass on.
CAMILLE, with anguish.
I am ashamed… I beg pardon of you all… But it is several nights since I have slept; the calumnies of which I am victim have shaken me; I am not master of myself, and I speak poorly. Let me have a moment’s respite: I have a kind of vertigo.
FOUQUIER.
We have no time to lose.
DANTON.
At what hour, then, are you bound to deliver our heads? Can you not wait, hangman?
PHILIPPEAUX.
You will wait for Desmoulins; you have not yet the right to butcher people without hearing them.
FABRE.
You know he is sensitive and impressionable: you wish to profit by a weakness to slaughter him: you shall not do it, while we live.
HÉRAULT, ironic.
It is the duel of Emperor Commodus, who, armed with a cavalry sabre, forced his enemy to fight him with a cork-tipped foil.
THE PRESIDENT.
Silence!
THE FOUR.
Silence yourself, hangman! People, protect our rights, the sacred rights of the defence!
The people stir.
DANTON, clapping his hands in Desmoulins’s.
Come, my child, take up your courage.
CAMILLE, still very weary, but become master of himself again, presses Danton’s hand, smiles at him and rises.
Thank you, friends, my unexplainable weakness is dissipated; your affection revives me. — That is what you will never have, monsters: the love of friends such as these! — You accuse me of having freely spoken my thought? I glory in it. Faithful to the Republic which I founded, I shall remain free, whatever it cost me. I have insulted liberty, you say? I have said that liberty is happiness, is reason, is equality, is justice. There are my outrages! People, judge by them of the praises which they deserve.
THE PRESIDENT.
Do not address the people.
CAMILLE.
To whom do you wish me to address myself? To the aristocrats? — I asked for a Committee of clemency; I wished that this people might at last enjoy the liberty which it seems to have conquered only to satisfy the rancours of a handful of scoundrels. I wished that men might put an end to their quarrels, and that love might make of them a great family fraternally united. It appears that such wishes are a crime. — And I, I call a crime the furious policy which debases the nation, which defames the people, by making it lay its hand in innocent blood, in the face of the universe.
THE PRESIDENT.
It is not you who accuse, it is you who are accused.
CAMILLE.
Well, I accuse myself, if you will; I accuse myself of not having always thought as I do today. Too long, I believed in hatred, the passion of combat led me astray, I have done too much harm myself; I have fanned vengeance; the axe was more than once sharpened by my writings. Here, innocents were led by my speech: that is my crime, my true crime, the one I share with you, the one I expiate today!
THE PRESIDENT.
Of whom do you mean to speak?
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
Whose death do you regret?
PHILIPPEAUX.
Be silent, Desmoulins!
FABRE.
It is a trap. Take care!
DANTON.
By God! swallow your tongue!
CAMILLE.
I speak of the Girondins.
The people murmur.
THE PRESIDENT.
The accused himself acknowledges that he had a hand in the Brissotists’ plots.
CAMILLE, shrugging.
It was my Brissot Unmasked that had them condemned.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
But you regret it today?
CAMILLE, without answering.
O my colleagues! I will tell you as Brutus told Cicero: “We fear too much death and exile and poverty. Nimium timemus mortem et exilium et paupertatem.” Does this life deserve, then, that we prolong it at the expense of honour? There is none of us who has not reached the summit of the mountain of life. It remains for us only to descend it through a thousand precipices, inevitable even for the most obscure man. This descent will offer us no landscapes, no sites which have not offered themselves a thousand times more delightfully to that Solomon who said, amid his seven hundred wives, and treading all that furniture of happiness: “I have found that the dead are happier than the living, and that the happiest is he who was never born.”
He sits down.
DANTON.
Imbecile! you are cutting our heads off! He embraces him.
Word is brought to Danton that his turn has come. He rises and goes toward the tribunal.
THE PRESIDENT, to Danton.
Accused, your names, given names, age, quality and residence.
DANTON, in a resounding voice.
My residence? Soon, nothingness. My name? At the Pantheon.
The people shudder. They speak, seem to approve; then abruptly, an absolute silence after the president’s words.
THE PRESIDENT.
You know the law: answer precisely.
DANTON.
I am Georges-Jacques Danton, aged thirty-four, native of Arcis-sur-Aube, lawyer, deputy to the Convention, residing in Paris, rue des Cordeliers.
THE PRESIDENT.
Danton, the National Convention accuses you of having conspired with Mirabeau and Dumouriez, of having known their liberticidal projects, and of having secretly supported them.
Danton bursts out in a thunderous laugh. The judges, taken aback, the people, and even the accused, lean forward to look at him, then are seized by the contagion of his laughter. The whole hall resounds with the transports of this Homeric joy. Danton strikes with his fist on the bar before him.
DANTON, laughing.
Liberty conspires against Liberty! Danton conspires against Danton! — Scoundrels!… Look me in the face. Liberty is here! He takes his head between his hands. She is in this mask kneaded by her savage imprint; she is in these eyes set on fire by her volcanic flames; she is in this voice, whose bellowings make the tyrants’ palaces tremble to their foundations. Take my head, nail it to the shield of the Republic. Like Medusa, she will yet make the enemies of Liberty fall dead with fright.
THE PRESIDENT.
I do not ask your eulogy, but your defence.
DANTON.
A man like me does not defend himself: my actions speak for themselves. I have nothing to defend, nothing to explain. There is nothing hidden in my life. I do not surround myself with mysteries, to fornicate with an old woman, like Robespierre. My door is wide open, there are no curtains around my bed; all France knows when I drink and when I make love. I am the people: my vices and my virtues belong to the people; I veil nothing from them. I show myself to the world, belly bare.
THE PRESIDENT.
Danton, this impudent language outrages justice. The ignominy of your expressions shows the baseness of your soul. Moderation is the mark of innocence, and audacity that of crime.
DANTON.
If audacity is a crime, I embrace crime, President, I kiss it full on the mouth, and leave you virtue: the lean cows of Pharaoh do not tempt me. I love audacity and I boast of it: audacity of rough embraces, of heavy breasts, at which heroes drink. The Revolution is the daughter of audacity. It is she who made the Bastilles crumble; it is she who through my voice launched the people of Paris against royalty; it is she who through my fist seized the severed head of Louis the Shortened by his fat ears and threw it in the face of the tyrants and their God.
The people approve and stir.
THE PRESIDENT.
All this violence serves nothing. I recall you to the precise accusations directed against you, and I invite you to answer them exactly, without departing from the facts.
DANTON.
Is it from a revolutionary like me that one should expect a cold reply? My soul is like brass burning in the forge. The statue of Liberty is cast in my breast. And it is I they would shut up in a squirrel’s wheel! It is I they would constrain to a catechism’s questionnaire! I will burst the net you would bind me with; my torso will break the too-narrow shirt. — I am accused, you say! Where are they, those who accuse me? Let them show themselves, and I will cover them with the shame they deserve!
THE PRESIDENT.
Once again, Danton, you fail in respect toward the national representation, toward the tribunal, and toward the sovereign people who have the right to demand account of your actions. Marat was accused as you are. He did not grow indignant against his accusers. To facts he did not oppose athlete’s and rhetorician’s fury; he applied himself to justifying himself, and succeeded in it. I can propose no better model to you than that great citizen.
DANTON.
I will then descend to my justification, I will follow the plan adopted by Saint-Just… As I run through this list of horrors, I feel my whole existence tremble! — I, sold to Mirabeau, Orléans, Dumouriez! I have always fought them. I thwarted Mirabeau’s designs, when I believed them dangerous for liberty. I defended Marat against him. I saw Dumouriez only to demand of him an account of the millions he had squandered. I sensed his projects, and to hinder them, I flattered the rascal’s vanity. Should I have pushed him to the limit, when he held in his hands the salvation of the Republic? Yes, I sent Fabre to him; yes, I had him promised that he would be generalissimo; but at the same time I charged Billaud to watch him closely. Will I be reproached with having lied to a traitor? I have committed many other crimes for the country! One does not save a State with sacristy virtues. All the crimes, all, I would have borne on these shoulders, without bending, if it had been necessary to save you, you all — judges, people, vile impostors even who accuse me!… I, conspire with royalty! I do remember provoking the re-establishment of monarchical power on the 10th of August, the triumph of federalists on the 31st of May, the victory of the Prussians at Valmy!… My accusers! let them be produced! I demand to speak of the scoundrels who are ruining the Republic. I have essential things to reveal; I demand to be heard.
THE PRESIDENT.
These indecent outbursts can only harm your cause. Those who accuse you enjoy public esteem. Clear yourself first: an accused becomes worthy of belief only when he has cleared himself of the suspicions which deprive all his denunciations of value. — Your republicanism is not alone in question; we accuse your whole character, your scandalous morals, your debaucheries, your prodigalities, your rapines, your embezzlements.
DANTON.
Do not pour out all at once! Recork the cask of your eloquence; dispense it drop by drop, that none of it be lost. — Of what am I accused? Of loving life, of enjoying it?… Certainly, I love life. All the pedants of Arras and of Geneva will not succeed in smothering the joy that ferments in the soil of Champagne, swelling the buds of vines and the desires of men. Am I to blush at my strength? Nature has given me as my portion athletic forms and vast needs. Exempt from the misfortune of being born of a privileged and effete race, I have preserved, through the storms of a devouring career, all my native vigour. What do you complain of? It is that vigour which has saved you. What does it matter to you that I pass my nights at the Palais-Royal? I deprive Liberty of not a single caress. My flanks suffice for every embrace. Do you proscribe pleasure? Has France taken a vow of chastity? Have we fallen under the rule of a sullen schoolmaster, or, because an old fox has had his tail cut, must we lose ours?
THE PRESIDENT.
You are accused of having diverted to your profit a portion of the money entrusted to you by the State; you employed the secret funds for your pleasures; you squeezed Belgium and brought back three wagons of plunder from Brussels.
DANTON.
I have already answered these foolish inventions. When I was minister of the Revolution, fifty millions were deposited with me: I acknowledge it; I have offered to render a faithful account of it. Cambon gave me 400,000 livres for secret expenses. I spent 200,000 of it openly. I gave a blank cheque to Fabre, to Billaud. These funds were the levers with which I raised the departments. — As for the ridiculous story of the archduchess’s napkins, brought back from Belgium and unmarked by me — do they take me for a thief of handkerchiefs? They opened my trunks at Béthune; they drew up a report; there was nothing but my old clothes and a flannel corset. Does that corset offend Robespierre’s modesty? Is that what is reproached to me?
THE PRESIDENT.
The proof of your rapines is in the lavish life you have been leading for two years, which the modesty of your fortune would not have permitted you, if you had not fattened it with the spoils of the State.
DANTON.
With the reimbursement of my charge as advocate to the councils, I bought a small property in the district of Arcis. I assured small annuities to mother, to my father-in-law, to the worthy citizeness who nursed me. These sums do not exceed the value of my charge before the Revolution. — As for the life I have led in Paris or Arcis, it may be that I did not bind myself to a base economy. I do not oblige my friends, when I receive them, to mother Duplay’s herb-soup. I no more know how to be stingy for myself than for others. Are you not ashamed to quibble with Danton about what he drinks and eats? A contemptible hypocrisy threatens to infect the nation. She blushes at nature; energy frightens her, she veils her face before a free gesture. Negative virtues take the place of others. Provided a man has a bad stomach and atrophied senses, provided he lives on a bit of cheese and sleeps in a narrow bed, you name him Incorruptible, and that word dispenses him from courage and from spirit. I despise these anaemic virtues. Virtue is to be great, for oneself and for the country. When you have the good fortune of having a great man among you, do not reproach him his bread. Needs, passions, sacrifices, everything in him is built on another plan than in others. Achilles ate an ox’s back at his meal. If a Danton requires vast nourishment to feed his furnace, throw it in without counting: here is the conflagration whose flames protect you against the wild beasts that watch the Republic.
THE PRESIDENT.
You therefore acknowledge the dilapidations of which you are accused?
DANTON.
You lie, I have just denied them. I have lived largely, honestly, frugal but not miserly with the sums entrusted to me. I have rendered to Danton what I owed to Danton. Have the witnesses come whom I have demanded, and we shall clear up the doubts. It is not accusations and answers that must remain in the vague; only a precise discussion, point by point, will end the trial. Those witnesses, where are they? Why do they delay in bringing them?
THE PRESIDENT.
Your voice tires, Danton: rest.
DANTON.
It is nothing, I can continue.
THE PRESIDENT.
You will resume your justification presently, with more calm.
DANTON, furious.
I am calm! — My witnesses! it is three days since I have demanded them; none yet has been summoned. I call upon the public prosecutor to declare to me, in the face of the people, why justice is refused me.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
I have not opposed their citation, and I do not oppose it.
DANTON.
Have them come, then; nothing is done without your orders.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
I declare then that I permit the witnesses to be called — other, however, than those designated by the accused in the Convention: for the accusation emanates from the entire Assembly, and it would be ridiculous to claim to make your own accusers, above all the representatives of the people, depositaries of the supreme power, who answer for it only to the people, contribute to your justification.
HÉRAULT.
Ah! the good jesuitry!
He laughs with Fabre.
DANTON.
So my colleagues may murder me, and I shall be forbidden to confound my murderers?
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
Do you dare insult the national representation?
PHILIPPEAUX.
We are here, then, only for form? Do they wish to reduce us to playing a mute role?
CAMILLE.
People, you hear it! They are afraid of the truth. They fear the testimonies that crush them.
THE PRESIDENT.
Do not address the people.
PHILIPPEAUX.
The people is our only judge; you are nothing without it.
CAMILLE.
I appeal to the Convention!
DANTON.
You wish to gag us. You shall not succeed in it. My voice will stir Paris to its entrails. Light! light!
THE PRESIDENT.
Silence!
THE PEOPLE.
The witnesses!
The judges are alarmed.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
It is time to put an end to this scandalous debate; I will write to the Convention, I will transmit to it your request: we will obey it.
The people applaud. — Fouquier and Herman consult, write, read in low voice what they have written.
CAMILLE, exulting.
Ah! the case is won!
DANTON.
We shall confound these wretches; you will see them collapsed, nose in their own filth. If the French people is what it should be, I shall be obliged to ask their pardon.
PHILIPPEAUX.
The pardon of those who want our death!
CAMILLE, cheerfully.
Bah! we shall name Saint-Just schoolmaster at Blérancourt, and Robespierre churchwarden at Saint-Omer.
HÉRAULT, shrugging.
They are incorrigible. They will hope still, in the cart.
DANTON.
The fools! to accuse Danton and Desmoulins of combating the Republic! It is Barère who is the patriot at present, isn’t it? And Danton an aristocrat!… France will not swallow these tall tales, not for a long while. — To a juror. Do you think us conspirators? See, he laughs, he does not believe it. Write that he laughed.
FOUQUIER, interrupting himself in the middle of his work.
I beg you to cease these private conversations. The law does not permit it.
DANTON.
Are you going to teach your father how to make children? It is I who had this tribunal instituted; I should know about it.
CAMILLE.
I take pleasure again in the light. A moment ago, it seemed to me extinguished, dead, as in a tomb.
DANTON.
It is not the light that has recovered its colours, it is you. You were not looking so brave just now.
CAMILLE.
I am humiliated by my weakness. My body is cowardly.
DANTON.
Schemer! you wanted to make yourself sympathetic to the women? You have succeeded. Look at that girl over there making eyes at you.
HÉRAULT, softly.
My poor friends, you make me pity you.
DANTON.
Why, pretty boy?
HÉRAULT.
You are selling the bear’s skin, and yours is already delivered.
DANTON.
My skin? Yes, I know, it has its admirers. Saint-Just covets it. Well then, let him come and take it! If he succeeds, I willingly let him make of it a bedside rug.
HÉRAULT.
What is the use of agitating?
He shrugs and is silent. Meanwhile, Fouquier has written a letter, which a guard takes and carries away.
THE PRESIDENT.
While awaiting the Convention’s reply, we will continue the interrogation. The gendarmes make the accused sit down again. To Philippeaux. Your name, given names, qualities.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Pierre-Nicolas Philippeaux, formerly judge at the presidial of Le Mans, representative of the people in the Convention.
THE PRESIDENT.
Your age?
PHILIPPEAUX.
Thirty-five years.
THE PRESIDENT.
You attempted to paralyse the national defence, during your mission in the Vendée; you wished to cast discredit on the Committee of Public Safety, by injurious pamphlets; you formed part of the conspiracy of Danton and of Fabre to re-establish royalty.
PHILIPPEAUX.
I exposed to public indignation the brigandage of certain generals. It was my duty: I fulfilled it.
THE PRESIDENT.
Your duty was — in the implacable struggle of which France is the prize — to tighten every spring of national action. You broke them.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Ronsin and Rossignol dishonour humanity.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
You were not representative of humanity, but of the country.
PHILIPPEAUX.
My country is humanity.
THE PRESIDENT.
Those who excite your pity, the royalists crushed by Rossignol — did they respect humanity?
PHILIPPEAUX.
Nothing excuses crime.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
Victory does.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Prosecutor, I accuse you.
CAMILLE.
I denounce to the people these infamous words.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE, shrugging.
Let the people judge!
The people is divided; they have applauded Fouquier and talk noisily.
DANTON, low to Desmoulins.
Be silent, animal! you are throwing stones in my garden.
CAMILLE, surprised.
How so?
DANTON.
I have said many worse things!
THE PRESIDENT, to Westermann.
Accused, rise.
WESTERMANN.
It’s my turn? Thunder! forward!
THE PRESIDENT.
Your name?
WESTERMANN.
You know it well.
THE PRESIDENT.
Your name!
WESTERMANN, shrugging.
Fuss-makers!… Ask the people.
THE PRESIDENT.
You are François-Joseph Westermann, originally from Alsace, brigadier general. You are forty-three. It is you who were to be the sword of the plot. Danton brought you back to Paris to command the troops of the counter-revolution. You committed atrocities in your army. You were the cause of the defeat at Châtillon. In agreement with Philippeaux, you tried to overthrow the patriots whom you had the charge to defend. — Your antecedents besides are deplorable. You have had three accusations of theft.
WESTERMANN.
You lie, pig!
THE PRESIDENT.
I will have you sent back to prison for insults to justice, and judged without being heard.
WESTERMANN.
At fifteen, I was a soldier. On the 10th of August, I commanded the people at the taking of the Tuileries. I fought at Jemmapes. Dumouriez abandoned me in Holland, amid the enemies; I brought my legion back to Antwerp. Then I went to the Vendée; I gave hard work to the brigands of Charette and Cathelineau. Savenay, Ancenis, Le Mans are fat with their carrion. The jean-foutres accuse me of having been cruel? They do not say enough: I have been ferocious to the cowards. Do you want proofs against me? Here are some: at Pontorson, I had my cavalry charge my own soldiers who were fleeing. At Châtillon, I split open the face of a cowardly officer with sabre-blows. I would have had my army burned, if it had been necessary, for victory… I have plundered, you say? How does that concern you? You are fools. I have done my soldier’s trade; I am not a merchant. My duty is to defend the land of my country, by every means: I have fulfilled it for thirty years, sparing neither my sweat nor my blood. I have received seven wounds, all in front; I have only one in the back: my act of accusation.
THE PRESIDENT.
You have several times, before witnesses, uttered insulting words against the Convention. You have threatened to make the palace fall on the backs of the representatives.
WESTERMANN.
It is true. I hate this suspicious and prattling rabble, which hampers every action by its jealous silliness. I said that the Convention needed a sweep of the broom, and that I would undertake to carry away the dung.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
You acknowledge the conspiracy?
WESTERMANN.
What do you speak of conspiracy? I have thought alone. I have acted alone. I am not the friend of any of those who are here. I have spoken sometimes with Danton, I esteem his energy; but he too is a lawyer, and I have no confidence in lawyers. France cannot be saved by speeches, but by sabres.
THE PRESIDENT.
That is enough. The case is clear.
WESTERMANN.
Guillotine me! The guillotine too is a sabre-stroke. I ask only one thing: that I be laid on my back; I want to face the blade.
Vadier and Billaud-Varenne enter. Fouquier rises and goes to shake their hands. Rumour in the crowd.
BILLAUD-VARENNE, in a half-voice.
The scoundrels, we have them!
VADIER, in a half-voice, to Fouquier.
Here is something to put you at ease.
FOUQUIER, the same.
We needed it.
Agitation, — then deep silence. Fouquier reads, standing, — the two Conventionnels standing beside him.
FOUQUIER, reading.
“The National Convention, after hearing the report of its Committees of Public Safety and General Security, decrees that the Revolutionary Tribunal shall continue the investigation relative to the conspiracy of Danton and others; that the president shall employ every means the law gives him in order to make his authority respected and to repress every attempt by the accused to disturb public tranquillity and hinder the march of justice, — decrees that any defendant charged with conspiracy who resists or insults the national justice shall be excluded from the debates on the spot.”
Stupor. Then suddenly the crowd talks loudly, with animation, and the accused, at first stunned, burst out.
CAMILLE.
Infamy! they are smothering us!
PHILIPPEAUX.
These are not judges, they are butchers.
DANTON, to Fouquier.
You have not read everything. There is something else. The reply! The reply to our demand!
THE PRESIDENT.
Silence!
FOUQUIER.
The Convention communicates the following letter, which the Committees have received from the police administration, that the tribunal may see what peril threatens Liberty.
Reading: “Commune of Paris.
“We, administrators of the department of police, on a letter written to us by the concierge of the prison of the Luxembourg, immediately betook ourselves to the said prison, and we caused to appear before us citizen Laflotte, formerly minister of the Republic at Florence, detained in the said house for about six days; who declared to us that yesterday, between six and seven in the evening, being in the chamber of citizen general Arthur Dillon, the said Dillon, after drawing him aside, told him that one must resist oppression, that the men of head and heart detained at the Luxembourg and the other prisons must unite; that the wife of Desmoulins was putting at his disposal one thousand écus, to the end of being able to muster a crowd around the revolutionary tribunal…”
CAMILLE, beside himself.
The wretches! not content with murdering me, they want also to murder my wife! — He tears at his hair.
DANTON, shaking his fist at Fouquier.
Scoundrels! Scoundrels! they have invented this plot to ruin us!
Rumour of the people.
FOUQUIER, continuing to read, dominating the noise, succeeding in recapturing the interest of the crowd.
”…Laflotte resolved to feign sharing their ideas, the better to know their plan. Dillon, imagining he had associated him with his infamous plot, detailed for him the different projects. Laflotte places himself at the disposal of the Committee of Public Safety to reveal to it the details…”
The agitation of the crowd covers his voice.
CAMILLE, as though mad.
Monsters! Cannibals! He crumples the papers he holds in his hand, and throws them at Fouquier’s head. — To the people: Help! help!
DANTON, thunderous.
Cowardly murderers, while you are at it, have us bound on this bench, take a knife and bleed us!
PHILIPPEAUX.
Tyranny!
DANTON.
People, they are killing us, they are slaughtering you with us! Danton is being murdered! Paris, rise up! rise up!
WESTERMANN.
To arms!
Immense rumbling within and without.
FOUQUIER, pale, agitated, to the two Conventionnels.
What to do? At any moment, the crowd will rush in.
BILLAUD.
The brigands!… Hanriot, have the hall evacuated.
VADIER.
That would be the signal for the struggle, and who knows if we should be the stronger?
FOUQUIER, who has just looked through the window.
The crowd is gathered on the quay. They may force the doors.
DANTON.
People, we can do anything; we have triumphed over kings, over the armies of Europe. To battle! Let us crush the tyrants!
VADIER, to Fouquier.
The first thing of all: have them sent back to prison; put that bellower in the dark.
DANTON, shaking his fist at Vadier.
See these cowardly assassins! they will follow us even to death… Vadier! Vadier! dog! come here! Since it is a struggle of cannibals, let them at least come and dispute my life with fists!
VADIER, to Fouquier.
Prosecutor, execute the decree.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
The frightful indecency with which the accused defend themselves, the insults, the menaces, which they have the impudence to utter against the tribunal, must determine it to take measures proportioned to the gravity of the circumstances. In consequence, I request that the questions be posed and judgment pronounced in the absence of the accused.
THE PRESIDENT.
The tribunal will deliberate. Have the accused sit down again.
DANTON seems not to have understood, suffocates, gives out a bestial roar.
VADIER, in a half-voice.
Shout, my good man, shout! you are in the bag.
HÉRAULT, rising and dusting off his coat.
It is finished.
DANTON allows himself to be led back to his bench by the gendarmes, and sinks down, crushed.
Done for!… At the paroxysm of violence, abruptly containing himself. Peace, Danton, peace! The destinies are accomplished.
CAMILLE, shouting.
I am the friend of Robespierre! I cannot be condemned…
WESTERMANN, to Danton.
Prevent that wretch from dishonouring himself.
DANTON, crestfallen.
They are mad. Poor country, what will become of it, deprived of a head like this?
HÉRAULT, to Desmoulins.
Come, my friend, let us show that we know how to die.
DANTON.
We have lived enough to fall asleep in the bosom of glory; let them lead us to the scaffold!
CAMILLE.
O my wife! O my son! I shall see you no more!… no, it cannot be. My friends, my friends, help!
THE PRESIDENT.
Have the accused withdraw.
DANTON.
Stay calm, then, and leave this vile rabble.
HÉRAULT, as if eager to have done with it, goes toward Fabre, without waiting for the gendarmes, who make the accused rise.
Give me your arm, my friend: here is the end of your ills.
FABRE D’ÉGLANTINE.
We shall have had a fine spectacle before dying.
DANTON.
Well, Fabre, without doing you wrong, here is a piece that puts yours to shame!
FABRE.
You have not read my last; there were good things in it. I tremble lest Collot d’Herbois destroy the manuscript. He is jealous of me.
DANTON.
Console yourself; we are all going to do down there what you have done all your life.
FABRE.
What then?
DANTON.
Verses.
HÉRAULT.
The Convention will be very empty tomorrow. I yawn at the thought that those who survive us will be condemned to hear, without sleeping, on pain of death, Robespierre and Saint-Just, Saint-Just and Robespierre.
DANTON.
They will not hear them long. I open the grave, Robespierre will follow me into it.
FABRE.
I would have wished, however, to see the development of the character of certain little scoundrels: Barras, Tallien, Fouché. But one must not ask too much. Let us go, Hérault.
They go out.
CAMILLE, clinging to his bench, from which the gendarmes tear him.
I will not leave! You want to kill me in prison. Help! help me! O people, I made the Republic! Defend me, I have defended you!… You shall not tear me away from here, monsters! Cowards! assassins!… Ah! Lucile! Horace! beloved! beloved!
He is carried off, howling.
DANTON, moved.
And I too, I have a wife, children. — Recovering himself. Come, Danton, no weakness.
WESTERMANN, to Danton.
Why do you not profit by the emotion of the people? They are near to fighting.
DANTON.
This rabble! Come on now!… Audience of ham actors! They are amused by the spectacle we give them; they are there to applaud the victory. I have too much accustomed them to acting for them.
WESTERMANN.
Act then!
DANTON.
Too late. — And besides, I don’t give a damn. The Republic is lost: I prefer to die before.
WESTERMANN.
There is the fruit of your hesitations. Why did you not get ahead of Robespierre?
DANTON.
The Revolution cannot live without our two heads. I could have defended myself only by murdering him. I love the Revolution better than myself.
Westermann goes out.
PHILIPPEAUX.
Come, Danton, it is comforting to die as one has lived.
DANTON.
I have committed every crime for Liberty. I have shouldered every dreaded task that the hypocrisy of others fled. I have sacrificed all to the Revolution, and I see well now that it is in vain. This jade has deceived me; she sacrifices me today; she will sacrifice Robespierre tomorrow; she will give herself to the first adventurer who enters her bed. — No matter! I regret nothing; I love her, I am content to have dishonoured myself for her. I pity the poor wretches who will not have rubbed their skin to that of Liberty. When once one has kissed the divine wench, one can die: one has lived.
He goes out with Philippeaux.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
I invite the jury to declare whether it is sufficiently instructed.
THE PRESIDENT.
The jury withdraws to deliberate.
The jury goes out. The crowd is restless, undecided, ill-disposed. — Outside, one hears the voice of Danton, and the vociferations of the people. — The public presses to the windows. Some people of the tribunal also go to see. Those in the hall repeat the words from outside, first in a half-voice, then louder.
FOUQUIER.
The riot is beginning. We shall be cut to pieces.
VADIER.
Let us prevent these cries from influencing the mind of the jury. Let us go enlighten them.
They go out. The crowd protests against Vadier and Fouquier, who enter the jury room.
THE PRESIDENT, terrified.
Citizens… the sanctity of the tribunal… the respect of justice…
The tumult covers his voice.
THE PRESIDENT.
We are overwhelmed. They will massacre everything.
He retreats toward the exit, his hand on the doorknob. The crowd, furious, breaks the benches and invades the tribunal, vociferating death-threats.
SAINT-JUST enters. The people suddenly fall silent, intimidated. — Saint-Just looks at the crowd, coldly, harshly, face to face. They retreat. Glacial silence of a few seconds. Then murmurs rise again, but less violent. VADIER has returned in the wake of Saint-Just and profits by the momentary lull.
Citizens, the Commission of Subsistence and Provisioning of the Republic…
The crowd silences those who speak.
VADIER, continuing.
…brings to the public’s knowledge the arrival this evening of a convoy of flour and wood at the port of Bercy.
A great clamour rises. General stampede. The crowd jostles and fights to get out. Only a small number of obstinate curiosity-seekers remain until the end of the trial.
VADIER, looking at the crowd, with a jeering air.
The heart is good, but the stomach is better.
The jury returns. The monotony of the president’s questions is lost in the cries of the departing crowd. Gradually, the noise dies away outside, and Herman’s voice is heard more distinctly. The sentence is pronounced in a deathly silence.
THE PRESIDENT, to the jurors.
Citizen jurors, — there has existed a conspiracy tending to defame and abase the national representation, to re-establish the monarchy and to destroy by corruption the republican government. — Has Georges-Jacques Danton, lawyer, deputy of the National Convention, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT.
Has Lucie-Simplice-Camille Desmoulins, lawyer, deputy to the Convention, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT.
Has Marie-Jean Hérault-Séchelles, advocate-general, deputy to the Convention, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT.
Has Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre, called d’Églantine, deputy to the Convention, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT.
Has Pierre-Nicolas Philippeaux, formerly judge, deputy to the Convention, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT.
Has François-Joseph Westermann, brigadier general, had a hand in this conspiracy?
THE FOREMAN.
Yes.
FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.
I request the application of the law.
THE PRESIDENT.
In consequence, the tribunal pronounces that Georges-Jacques Danton, Lucie-Simplice-Camille Desmoulins, Marie-Jean Hérault-Séchelles, Philippe-François-Nazaire Fabre called d’Églantine, Pierre-Nicolas Philippeaux, François-Joseph Westermann, are condemned to the penalty of death; — orders that this judgment be notified to them between the two wickets of the prison of the Conciergerie by the clerk of the tribunal; — to be executed this day, 16 germinal, on the Place de la Révolution.
The crowd flows out. Outside, distant rumours that gradually die away. — Saint-Just, Vadier, Billaud-Varenne, remaining at the front of the stage, look at each other, implacable and mute.
VADIER.
The rotten colossus is brought down. The Republic breathes.
BILLAUD-VARENNE, looking at Saint-Just with a savage eye.
The Republic shall not be free, until the dictators are no more.
SAINT-JUST, looking harshly at Vadier and Billaud.
The Republic shall not be pure, until the men of prey are no more.
VADIER, sneering.
The Republic shall not be free, the Republic shall not be pure, until the Republic is no more.
SAINT-JUST.
Ideas have no need of men. Peoples die, that God may live.
- Only a portion of the movements and clamours of the crowd has been noted. These indications must vary with the elements available, on the stage.
- This tirade is taken from the Vieux Cordelier.
-
THE PEOPLE.
Murmurs at the rising of the curtain.
-
Ah! scoundrels! traitors! sold men!
-
Stirring, interested, pushing to see:
Danton… Danton… it is Danton who has spoken!…
-
Laughing. — Did you hear? He gets into a rage…
-
He is a famous one!… you will see by and by…
-
Laughs.
-
Louder laughs.
-
Exclamations.
-
A girl, pointing at Fabre. — It is that one, over there, in an armchair.
-
— Danton holds his nose. — He plays the disgusted!
David. — He grimaces with fury and fear.
— What a mug he has! — Bravo, Danton!
Three women. — Do you think they will condemn him? — When will his turn come? — Because I am in a hurry!
-
David, drawing a notebook from his pocket. — Let me do it, I shall have his mug. He sketches Danton.
-
David. — I want posterity to laugh themselves sick before his monkey-face.
-
A young clerk, pinching a girl. — To the tune of a song of the time: “Mam’sel’, will she dance a little bit?”
The girl, slapping him. — Hey, none of that, brute!
The clerk, continuing the song. — “She said to me, giving me her hand…”
-
The crowd that talks during all the interruptions of the trial falls silent at once and silences those who speak.
-
Laughs.
-
Laughs. — A man at the back: What, what did he say?
-
Murmurs.
David. — Eh! you see? — Yes… Yes…
-
Murmurs.
-
Ah! ah! — The crowd stirs, interested.
-
Laughs.
-
Who is it? who is that aristo? — It is Hérault.
-
A girl. — Ah! he is a handsome man!
-
There’s an aristo for you!
A knitter. — Another swank of the old regime!
-
Throughout the crowd, the name of Desmoulins is repeated. — It is Desmoulins… Desmoulins… Camille, Camille…; then, at once, silence.
-
Various murmurs, of pity and discontent.
A knitter, shaking her fist. — Choirboy!
-
Two girls. — What is the matter with him? What is the matter with him?
-
A man. — He is turning faint.
The knitter. — Miss has her vapours!
A girl. — Poor little one, he is all pale.
-
Ah! ah! — The crowd stirs, content and curious.
-
A girl. — Loosen his cravat!
The knitter. — That, a man? He is as soft as tripe!
-
Yes! yes!
-
Bravo!
-
Ah! ah! — They push to see him.
-
Bravo!
-
The clerk. — There, by God!
-
Movement. — The crowd follows with passionate attention the words of Desmoulins.
-
David. — He confesses! he confesses!
-
A girl. — All the same, he is sweet!
-
A great surge, in the public, when Danton rises. A buzz of voices. — There he is… There he is…
-
A general shudder.
A man, enthusiastic. — Eh! what do you think? Eh!…
-
The people writhe with laughter. A frenzy of gaiety shakes the whole crowd.
-
Applause.
-
Laughs.
A woman, furious. — He blasphemes!
-
David. — The Sardanapalus! Look at him vomit!
-
Bravos.
-
The greater part of the crowd approves. David and his neighbours protest.
-
A woman, in a deeply moved tone. — The martyr!
-
Movement.
-
Ah! I should think so!
-
But yes! but yes!
David. — Not so many tales! Head in the bag!
-
Laughs.
-
Loud and prolonged laughs.
-
Laughs.
-
Laughs.
-
Laughs.
-
Movement of approval.
David. — The bumpkin! How he bellows! If only he would give himself a loss of voice!
-
But yes! but yes!
-
A few voices. — The witnesses!
David, to his neighbour. — Will you shut up! Take care of yourself. Are you defending the traitors? They will put your head in the window too.
-
Yes! yes!
-
Several voices. — The witnesses!
-
Ah!
-
Approbations.
-
Movement.
-
Approbations.
-
The Convention!
-
The light! — The agitation of the crowd, which has been mounting in formidable crescendo, since the first appeal of Danton to his witnesses, bursts into a tempest of cries and bravos, which covers all the words.
-
All together, on the same furious rhythm: The witnesses! The witnesses! — David and his friends who protest are roughly handled.
-
Ah!
-
A few laughs. Conversations and discussions in the crowd.
-
A few laughs.
-
A few laughs, in the group Danton is addressing, and among the jurors.
-
Laughs and joyful conversations throughout Danton’s exchange with his friends.
-
Hush! Hush!
-
David. — He is a Vendean!
-
A few bravos and many protests.
-
David. — Bravo, Fouquier!
— Yes, yes, bravo!
-
Murmur of voices, interested. — Westermann… Westermann…
-
Laughs.
-
Laughs and bravos.
-
Laughs and protests.
-
A few approvals, and numerous protests. Some begin by applauding, then are indignant louder than the others.
-
A few applauses, and agitation. One feels the crowd has sympathy for Westermann; but it watches itself, and awaits, in order to take sides, an initiative that does not come.
-
Clamour. — Ah! the reply! the reply! the reply of the Convention! of the Convention!…
-
Profound and mute agitation.
-
Movement. The crowd whispers. Then, rapid crescendo. — Ah! well, that is strong! — Noisy conversations.
-
Agitation. — Yes! Yes!
-
Yes! Yes! The reply!
-
Glacial silence.
-
Movement of curiosity. People question one another.
-
Silence again.
-
Agitation.
-
The people approve and grow indignant. — The noise continues throughout the rest of Fouquier’s reading, and bursts out more violently afterward.
-
Clamours.
-
The people, moved, interested, jubilate and applaud. — He is choking! He foams! It is magnificent! What a voice he has!… Bravo!
-
Two voices at the back, then all repeat: — Tyranny!
-
The whole people. — To arms!
The tumult covers the voices. One barely hears the howlings of Danton, amid the storm. He launches himself at Vadier, whom the gendarmes and the president’s table separate from him. He shakes his fist at him. The crowd hoots Vadier, who, his back bent, lets the storm pass, and watches, out of the corner of his eye, with an ironic and wicked indifference.
-
To the lamp-post, Vadier!
-
The tumult subsides, when the president strikes on the table.
-
Stupor and mute agitation.
The people continue to stir afterward and to talk, throughout the rest of the scene — prey to a kind of fever.
-
No, no, that, it is too much, it is cowardly! poor little one, leave him, he must not be condemned!
The crowd is very moved, would like to act, dares not; but one feels revolt is fermenting.
-
The clerk, leaning at the window. — There they are, coming out!
The people around him, pressing to see. — Let us see, let us see…
The clerk. — Desmoulins is howling and struggling.
A girl. — Poor devil! he is mad; his clothes are torn; his chest is bare.
The clerk. — Danton is speaking.
The people. — Listen! Voice of Danton, outside.
The people, outside. — Long live Danton! Fouquier to the lamp-post!
The people, inside, repeating the cries from outside. — Long live Danton, death to Fouquier!
-
The part of the public far from the window. — Ah! no, none of that, Vadier! Vadier! it is not just! it is not justice!
The others, near the window, continuing to look:
The clerk. — They are running after the carriage. They wave their hats.
The crowd. — Ah! Ah!
The clerk. — There is a gendarme thrown off his horse!
The crowd. — Bravo! They must not condemn them!… The others, if they wish, but not Danton! Danton free! Danton free! — Deafening tumult, within and without.
-
Danton! we want Danton!
-
Danton!… The Committee is murdering the patriots! Death to the Committee!
-
Saint-Just… Saint-Just… — A shudder passes through the crowd. — A young man who has begun the cry of “Danton free!” interrupts himself in the middle, and stands, his mouth open.
-
A woman, alone. — Danton free, Saint-Just!
Several voices. — Pardon for Danton! — Murmurs.
-
Eh! what?… Silence!
-
General hubbub. — Let me through! — After me, then! — I am in a hurry. — Well, and me? — You will wait! — To the devil! — Quick! — Wait, I want to see the end.
Two old bourgeois. — Let us go gently, and let them shout. Step by step, one goes far.
-
David and his friends. — Eh! come on then! the beast is on the ground, we shall eat sausages… Long live the Convention! — They go out…
Two old bourgeois, in a half-voice. — What do you say of this? — Come, we must be silent. — By living, one grows old.
They lift their arms, and withdraw, shaking their heads, fearfully.