Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/19

Rh of its present master was impressed on all around him. A door opened into a vast chamber crowded with fierce and eager faces, every eye assuming the expression of murder as the ruthless Danton called down their vengeance on those whom he denominated their old and arrogant oppressors. "Some there are," exclaimed he, as he caught sight of Julian’s pale and expressive countenance, "who delude themselves with the belief that their own preferences are sufficient cause for exception—who merge the public cause in private interests. What are such but cowards and traitors? unworthy to bring one stone towards the great temple of liberty about to overshadow the world, but whose foundations must be laid in blood—ay, blood!" A hoarse and sullen murmur rather than acclamation ran through the crowd, and a few minutes elapsed ere the business of the night proceeded. Then began those fearful denunciations, which seemed to loosen every tie of nature—the father witnessed against the son, and the son against the father; the young, the aged, the innocent, the beautiful, were alike marked as victims. Suddenly Julian arose: a close observer might have noted that his brow was knit, as it is in inward pain, that his lip was white, as if the life-current had been driven back upon the heart, prophetic of the future, which doomed it to freeze there for ever; but to the careless eye he seemed stern, calm, ferocious as the rest, while he denounced Amalie, Comtesse de Boufflers, as an aristocrat, and an enemy to the people. Danton looked at him for an instant, but cowered before the wild and fiery glance that met his own. To denounce, to condemn, to execute, were, in those ruthless days, but the work of four-and-twenty hours. The next noon but one an almost insensible female form was carried or rather dragged to the scaffold. It was the Comtesse Amalie. Her long bright hair fell in disorder over her shoulders;