This lesson served to render Nanette (chiefly through fear for me) more circumspect, but her imprudenee became a source of constant alarm to my mother.
The latter, in her prison, derived some consolation from the society of several distinguished female fellow prisoners, who evinced for her the sincerest sympathy. с 4
32ANECDOTES OF PRISON LIFE.
Among others were Mademoiselle Picot, and Mes-dames de Lameth, d'Aiguillon, and de Beauharnais, aftenvards the Empress Josephine. This last named lady was placed in the same room with my mother, and they mutually performed for each other the offices of afemine de chamhre.
With the exception of Madame de Beauharnais, these young and beautiful women took a pride in maintaining a high decree of courage and fortitude. The former exhibited all the thoughtlessness of the ereole, and often betrayed a pusillanimity and peevish restlessness that made her companions in misfortune blush. But though she had no magnanimity of character, she was naturally graceful; and gracefulness can dispense with every other rpialification. Her mien, her manner, and, above all, her way of speaking, possessed a peculiar charm.
Many curious details connected with the prison life of this period have been written. Had my mother left any memoirs, they would have revealed to the public traits and occurrences still unknown. In the ancient Carmelite convent, among other female prisoners, was an English woman, very old, deaf, and almost blind. She had never been able to learn the reason of her imprisonment; to ascertain which she constantly addressed every one with whom she had an opportunity of speaking. The executioner was the last person who replied to her inquiry.
In the same chamber with this last was the wife of a man who exhibited a puppet-show. They had been arrested, they said, because their puppets were too aristocratic. The woman had a profound respect for the fallen great; and, thanks to this feeling ! the
ANECDOTES OF PRISON LIFE.33
prisoners of noble birth received from her a homage greater than they had ever met with in their own houses.
The plebeian voluntarily waited upon them, and was continually performing little obliging offices, actuated by the pure pleasure of the service: she never approached their persons without testifying marks of the most profound respect; and in finally bidding farewell to these illustrious companions, to proceed with her husband to the place of execution, the poor woman did not for a moment forget to use all those antiquated forms of obeisance with which she was accustomed to address them at other times.
The prisoners, both male and female, used to meet at certain hours in a kind of garden, where the men played at prisoners' bars. It was usually during these moments of recreation that the revolutionary tribunal sent to summon its victims. If the one singled out was in the midst of a game, he bade a simple adieu to his friends, after which the party continued their play! I Tin's prison was a world in miniature, of which Robespierre was the god. What could so much resemble hell, as this caricature of providence ?
After having been five months in prison, my mother saw M. de Beauharnais depart for the scaffold. In passing her, he presented her with an arabesque talisman set in a ring. She always kept it, and it is now worn by me.
Time was then no longer reckoned by weeks, but
by periods of ten days; the tenth was termed décadi,
and answered to our Sunday, as they neither worked
nor guillotined on that day. Its arrival, therefore, as-
C 5
34THE HUNCH-BACKED SHOEMAKER
sured to the prisoners an existence of twenty-four hours; this appeared an age in prospect, and the day was always viewed as a fete in the prison.
Such was the life of my mother after the death of her husband. It continued during the last six months of the reign of terror. Considering her connections, her celebrity, and the circumstances of her arrest, it was wonderful that she had escaped the scaffold so long. On three different occasions she was taken from prison to her own house, where her inquisitors examined before her, and questioned her upon every insignificant paper which they could find in the drawers and secretaries; searching every corner of the apartment, and omitting only to examine the sofa, which it was the will of God should be overlooked. It may be readily imagined that my mother's heart would irrepressibly beat every time they approached this spot. She has often told me that she did not dare, in one single instance, to look towards the fatal sofa, and yet that she equally feared her eyes might have the appearance of being too consciously averted.
This was not the only token of protection which God vouchsafed her in her misfortunes. The sentiments of the men on whom her fate depended were softened by an invisible power.
Twelve members of the section superintended the searches. They invariably concluded by subjecting the prisoner to a long and scrutinising inquiry. The first time she was thus questioned, the president of this species of revolutionary jury was a little hunch backed shoemaker, who was as malicious as he was ugly. This man had found in a corner, a shoe, which he pretended wTas made of English leather.
INTEEROGATES MADAME DE CUSTINE.35
The accusation was serious. My mother at first maintained that the leather was not English, hut the shoe-making president insisted on the fact.
" It is possible that it may be," my mother at length conceded; " you ought to know better than I. All that I can say is, that I have never procured any thing from England."
They tried it on her foot: it fitted her. " Who is your shoemaker?" demanded the president. She named him. He had been the fashionable shoemaker at the commencement of the revolution.
" A bad patriot," observed the jealous hump-back.
" A good shoemaker!" remarked my mother.
" We would imprison him," replied the president, " but the aristocrat has concealed himself. Do you know where he is ? "
My mother answered in the negative, and intimated that if she did she would not tell.
Her courageous answers, which contrasted strangely with her timid mien; the species of involuntary irony to which these scenes, alike burlesque and tragic in their character, excited her; the exquisite beauty of her person; her youth; her widow's dress; the expression of her face, at once wayward and resigned ; her air, lofty in spite of herself; her perfectly easy and elegant manners ; her celebrity, already national; the dignity of misfortune; the unequalled accent of her silver voice; and, finally, the instinct of the woman, that constant desire to please, which always succeeds when it is innate and consequently natural, — all contributed to win the hearts of her judges, hard and cruel as they were; in short, all felt favourably disposed towards her except the little hunchback. с 6
36MEANS ADOPTED BY JEROME
My mother had a remarkable talent for drawing, especially for taking likenesses. In the intervals of her examination she amused herself by taking those of the persons who surrounded her, and in a few minutes had made an excellent sketch of the terrible picture in which she was the chief figure.
A master mason, of the name of Jerome, one of the most ardent jacobins of the day, was present on this occasion. He took the sketch from my mother and passed it to the others; each recognised himself, and all amused themselves at the expense of the president. The rage of the latter might have been fatal to my mother; nevertheless, it was the imprudence she on this occasion committed which saved her life.
The drawing was attached to the other documents connected with her case. Jerome, the mason, who affected the most violent hostility to her, and who never addressed her without some horrible oath, Jerome, ferocious though he might be, was young ; and, struck with admiration of her many charms, he conceived the idea of saving her from the guillotine.
He had free access to the office of Fouquier Tin-ville, the public accuser, where lay the box of papers on which were inscribed the names of every prisoner in Paris. These papers were used to furnish the executions of the day, which often reached to the number of sixty or eighty, and the spectacle of which constituted the chief amusement of the people of Paris.
The selection of the victims was generally made with little choice, the names that were uppermost being first taken. Jerome was acquainted with the fatal box: during six months he did not once fail to enter the office every evening, and, unobserved, to
FOR SAVING MADAME DE CUSTINE.37
place the paper on which was inscribed the name of my mother at the bottom of the box, or, at least, to assure himself that it remained there. "When fresh papers were put in, they were, by a species of distributive justice, placed undermost, so that each name should come in its turn. It was the business of Jerome constantly to search out my mother's, and restore it to the bottom place.
I am now only repeating what I have myself often heard Jerome relate. He has told me that, at night, when every one had retired, he has often returned to the office, under the fear that some one might at the last moment have disturbed the order of the papers — that order on which the life of my mother entirely depended. In fact on one occasion her name appeared at the top of the pile ; Jerome shuddered, and again placed it under the others.
Neither I nor the friends who listened to this fearful recital dared to ask Jerome the names of the victims whose death he had hastened in my mother's favour. The latter knew nothing, until after her deliverance from prison, of the stratagem that had saved her life.
When the day of the 9th Thermidor arrived, the prisons were found to be almost emptied; there remained only three sheets in the box of Foucµùer Tim`ille, and it was not likely that many would be added; the bloody spectacles of the Place de la Revolution began to weary the public; and the project of Robespierre and his confidential counsellors was to make an end of the families of the old regime, by commanding a general massacre in the interior of the prisons.
38 END OF THE REIGN OF TEEKOE.
My mother, who contemplated death on the scaffold with such high resolution, has often told me that she felt her courage sink at the idea of being murdered in this manner.
During the last weeks of the Reign of Terror, the old keepers of the Carmelite prison had been replaced by the more ferocious men who were destined to aid in effecting the secret executions. They did not conceal from their victims the plan formed against them ; the rules of the prison were made more severe; visitors were no longer admitted; every distant sound the prisoners caught seemed to them the signal of carnage; every night appeared to them the last.
This agony of suspense was relieved the very day that Robespierre fell.
Some who have dealt in over-refined subtleties, in reviewing the history of the Reign of Terror, pretend that Robespierre only fell because he was better than his opponents.
It is true that his accomplices did not become his enemies, until they trembled for their own lives ; but in saving themselves they saved France, which would have become a den of wild beasts had Robespierre's plans been carried out. The revolution of the 9th Thermidor was, it is also true, the revolt of a banditti; but surely the fact of their captain having fallen a victim to their conspiracy, does not render him any the worthier character. If misfortune served to justify crime, what would become of the principle of conscience ? Equity would perish under the influence of a false generosity—a most dangerous sentiment, for it seduces noble minds, and causes them
CHARACTER OF ROBESriEKRE.39
to forget that a good man should prefer justice and truth to every other consideration.
It has been said that Robespierre was not naturally cruel. `Yhat of that ? He was one in whom envy had become omnipotent. Envy, nursed and fed by the well-merited humiliations that this man had endured, under the state of society which preceded the revolution, had suggested to him the idea of a revenge so atrocious, that the meanness of his soul and the hardness of his heart scarcely suffice to persuade us that he was capable of realising it. To write in blood, to calculate by heads, such were the processes of political arithmetic to which France submitted under the government of Robespierre. She does yet worse in the present day — she listens to those who would justify him.
To accept as an excuse for murder, that which renders it the more odious, the sang froid and the ulterior plans of the murderer, is to contribute to one of the most crying evils of our age, the perversion of human judgment. The men of the present day, in the decisions dictated by their false sensibility, proceed with an impartiality that annihilates the principles of good and evil; to arrange matters upon earth to their own liking, they have abolished, at one blow, heaven and hell.
Such are the sophisms to which the pretended amelioration of our manners leads—an amelioration which is nothing more than a supreme moral indifference, a deeply-rooted religious incredulity, and an ever-increasing avidity for sensual gratifications ; but patience,—the world has ere now recovered from a yet more hopeless state.
40STATE OF THE PRISONS.
Two days after the 9th Thermidor, the greater number of the prisons of Paris were empty. Madame de Beaidiarnais, through her connection with Tallien, came out in triumph; Mesdames d'Aiguillon and de Lameth were also speedily liberated. My mother was almost the only one left in the Carmelite prison. She beheld her noble companions in misfortune give place to the terrorists, who, after the political revolution that had been effected, daily changed places with their victims. All the friends and relatives of my mother were dispersed; no one thought of her. Jerome, proscribed, in turn, as a friend of Bobespierre, was obliged to conceal himself and could not aid her. For two months she remained thus abandoned, under a desolation of feeling, that, she has often told me, was more difficult to endure than the previous more immediate sense of peril.
The struggle of parties continued; the government was still in danger of falling again into the hands of the Jacobins. But for the couraíre of Boissy-d'Anglas, the murder of Feraud had beeome the signal for a second Iìeign of Terror, more terrible than the first. My mother knew all this ; my illness also, though she did not know its extent, added to her griefs.
At length Nanette, having saved my life by her careful nursing, set seriously about rescuing that of her mistress. She went to the house of one Dyle, a manufacturer of china, in order to consult with about fifty workmen of our province, who were then employed by this rich individual, and who had formerly worked at a porcelain manufactory founded by my grandfather at Niderviller, at the foot of the Vosges,
PETITION OF NANETTE.41
and subsequently confiscated with his other property.
It was to these men, among whom was Malriat her father, that Nanette applied, urging them to interest themselves in the fate of their former mistress.
They eagerly signed a petition, framed by Nanette, who both spoke and wrote the German-French of Lorraine. This document she herself earned to Legendre, formerly a butcher, and then president of the bureau to which petitions in favour of prisoners were addressed. The paper of Nanette was received and thrown aside, among a multitude of similar petitions.
One evening, three young persons, connected with Legendre, entered the bureau, rather heated with wine, and amused themselves with chasing each other over the tables, and with other similar freaks. In the midst of this sport, some of the surrounding papers were disturbed; one fell, and was picked up by a member of the party. " What have you there ? " asked the others.
" No doubt a petition," replied Rossigneux, which was the name of the person addressed,
" Yes; but for what prisoner ?"
They called for lights. In the interval of their appearing, the three hot-headed youths took an oath among themselves to obtain, that very evening from Legendre, the signature that would give liberty to the captive, whoever he might be, and to announce to him his freedom within the same hour.
" I swear it, though it should be the liberation of the Prince de Condé," said Rossigneux.
" No doubt," said the others, laughing; " he is no longer a prisoner."
42 DELIVERANCE OF MADAME DE CUSTINE.
They read the petition; it was that dictated by Nanette, and signed by the workmen of Niderviller.
&
nbsp; " How fortunate," shouted the young men; " the lovely Custine, a second Roland ! ЛУе will go and fetch her from prison in a body."
Legendre returned home at one o'olock in the morning, under the influence of wine like the others. The petition fur my mother's liberty was presented by three giddy youths, signed by a drunken man, and at three o'clock in the morning, the former, empowered to open her prison gates, knocked at the door of her apartment.
She at that time slept alone ; and would neither open her door, nor consent to leave the prison.
Her liberators explained to her as well as they could, the circumstances of their coming; but she resisted all their urgent entreaties; she feared to enter a hackney coach with strangers in the middle of the night; and all they could obtain from her was the permission to return at the hour of ten.
When she finally left the prison, they related to her, with many details, the circumstances to which the liberation was owing, more especially with the view of proving to her that she had nobody to thank for it; fur at that time a species of traffic in liberty was carried on by certain intriguers, who would often extort largely from the liberated parties, for the most part already ruined by the revolution.
Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia Page 6
