Gradually the old man’s pleasing and benevolent countenance grew overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy glances towards his companion.
The charming Duchesse de G—archly pointed out to the lively guests the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte, “Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution—how, at least, will it affect us?”
At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him in surprise.
“Speak!” whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of the old wit.
At that word Cazotte’s face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in the text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in La Harpe’s posthumous works. The MS. is said to exist still in La Harpe’s handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot’s authority, volume i. page 62. It is not for me to enquire if there be doubts of its foundation on fact.—Ed.)—
“You ask how it will affect yourselves—you, its most learned, and its least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, will die in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peaceful happiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not the elixir but the poison.”
“My poor Cazotte,” said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, “what have prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty and brotherhood?”
“It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons will reek, and the headsman be glutted.”
“You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte,” said Champfort.
(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the walls, “Fraternite ou la Mort,” he observed that the sentiment should be translated thus, “Sois mon frere, ou je te tue.” (“Be my brother, or I kill thee.”)) “And what of me?”
“You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Be comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerable Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly—I see them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, your murderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!”
The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire—the prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe—cried with a sarcastic laugh, “Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate of my companions. Shall I have no part to play in this drama of your fantasies.”
At this question, Cazotte’s countenance lost its unnatural expression of awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and played in his brightening eyes.
“Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become—a Christian!”
This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed grave and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, while Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, and breathed hard and heavily.
“Nay,” said Madame de G—, “you who have predicted such grave things concerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself.”
A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet—it passed, and left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation and calm. “Madame,” said he, after a long pause, “during the siege of Jerusalem, we are told by its historian that a man, for seven successive days, went round the ramparts, exclaiming, ‘Woe to thee, Jerusalem—woe to myself!’ ”
“Well, Cazotte, well?”
“And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machines of the Romans dashed him into atoms!”
With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
CHAPTER 1.VII.
Qui donc t’a donne la mission s’annoncer au peuple que la
divinite n’existe pas? Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
l’homme qu’une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
hasard le crime et la vertu?—Robespierre, “Discours,” Mai 7,
1794.
(Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
that there is no God? What advantage find you in persuading man
that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called an epitome of Paris itself—the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats, to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister, savage, and yet timorous; the man’s face was of an ashen paleness, and the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. “Water,” he moaned feebly—“water:—I parch—I burn!” The intruder approached the bed, bent over him, and took his hand. “Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!” said the sufferer; “hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir, I am poor, but I can pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young man’s sake.” And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes anxiously on his visitor.
“What are your symptoms, your disease?”
“Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!”
“How long is it since you have taken food?”
“Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began.”
The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet left there.
“Who administered this to you?”
“Who?