Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/126

 114 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The story of his flight, his occupation during his refuge, and the final tragedy of his death, though well known, cannot be retold too often. In his article on Condorcet in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Professor Flint gives the following account:

Friends had found him a resting-place in the house of a Madame Vernet. Without even requesting to know his name, this truly heroic woman, as soon as she was assured that he was an honest and virtuous man, said : " Let him come, and lose not a moment, for while we talk he may be seized." When the execution of the Girondists showed him that his presence exposed his pro- tectress to a terrible danger, he resolved to seek a refuge elsewhere. " I am outlawed," he said ; " and if I am discovered, you will meet the same sad end as myself. 1 must not stay."

Madame Vernet's reply deserves to be immortal, and should be given in her own words : " The Convention, Sir, has the right to put you outside the law ; it has not the power to put you outside humanity ! You will remain."

From that time she had his movements watched, lest he should attempt to quit her house. It was partly to turn his mind from the idea of attempting this, by occupying it otherwise, that his wife and some of his friends, with the co-operaton of Madame Vernet, prevailed on him to engage in the compo- sition of the work by which he is best known the Esquisse d'un tableau his- torique dt progres de I'esprit hutnain. Certain circumstances having led him to believe that the house of Madame Vernet was suspected and watched by his enemies, he, by a fatally successful artifice, baffled the vigilance of his generous friend and escaped. Disappointed in finding even a night's shelter at the chateau of one whom he had befriended, he had to hide for three days and nights in the thickets and stone-quarries of Clamart. On the evening of April 7, 1754, .... with garments torn, with wounded leg, with famished looks, he entered a tavern in the village named, and called for an omelette. "How many eggs in your omelette?" "A dozen." "What is your trade?" " A carpenter." " Carpenters have not hands like these, and do not ask for a dozen eggs in an omelette." When his papers were demanded, he had none to show ; when his person was searched, a Horace was found on him. The villagers seized him, bound him, haled him forthwith on bleeding feet toward Bourg-la-Reine ; he fainted by the way, was set on a horse offered in pity by a passing peasant, and, at the journey's end, was cast into the cold, damp prison-cell. When the jailers looked in on the morning, his body lay dead on the floor.

The Sketch composed amid such an intensity of tragedy, writ- ten, as Professor Flint well says, " almost under the executioner's ax" contains Condorcet's permanent contribution to theoretical sociology.