Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/275

 pale, ineffectual;—and days when his Mother nursed and wrapped him are all-too sternly contrasted with this day! Danton, Camille, Hérault, Westermann, and the others, very strangely massed up with Bazires, Swindler Chabots, Fabre d'Églantines, Banker Freys, a most motley Batch, 'Fournée, as such things will be called, stand ranked at the Bar of Tinville. It is the 2nd of April 1794. Danton has had but three days to lie in Prison; for the time presses.

What is your name? place of abode? and the like, Fouquier asks; according to formality. 'My name is Danton,' answers he; 'a name tolerably known in the Revolution: my abode will soon be Annihilation (dans le Néant); but I shall live in the Pantheon of History.' A man will endeavour to say something forcible, be it by nature or not! Hérault mentions epigrammatically that he 'sat in this Hall, and was detested of Parlementeers.' Camille makes answer, 'My age is that of the bon Sansculotte Jésus; an age fatal to Revolutionists.' O Camille, Camille! And yet in that Divine Transaction, let us say, there did lie, among other things, the fatalest Reproof ever uttered here below to Worldly Right-honourableness; 'the highest fact,' so devout Novalis calls it, 'in the Rights of Man.' Camille's real age, it would seem, is thirty-four. Danton is one year older.

Some five months ago, the Trial of the Twenty-two Girondins was the greatest that Fouquier had then done. But here is a still greater to do; a thing which tasks the whole faculty of Fouquier; which makes the very heart of him waver. For it is the voice of Danton that reverberates now from these domes; in passionate words, piercing with their wild sincerity, winged with wrath. Your best Witnesses he shivers into ruin at one stroke. He demands that the Committee-men themselves come as Witnesses, as Accusers; he 'will cover them with ignominy.' He raises his huge stature, he shakes his huge black head, fire flashes from the eyes of him,—piercing to all Republican hearts: so that the very Galleries, though we filled them by ticket, murmur VOL. III.