Of all the sights of that melancholy traverse, this the most disheartened
me, whatever had been my carelessness of life before. It was now almost
scorn. The thoughts fell heavy on my mind. What was I, when such victims
were prepared for sacrifice? What was the crush of my obscure hopes, when
the sitters on thrones were thus leveled with the earth? If I perished in
the next moment, no chasm would be left in society; perhaps but one or two
human beings, if even they, would give a recollection to my grave. But
here the objects of national homage and gallant loyalty, beings whose
rising radiance had filled the eye of nations, and whose sudden fall was
felt as an eclipse of European light, were exposed to the deepest
sufferings of the captive. What, then, was I, that I should murmur; or,
still more, that I should resist; or, most of all, that I should desire to
protract an existence which, to this hour, had been one of a vexed spirit,
and which, to the last hour of my career, looked but cloud on cloud?
Some of this depression may have been the physical result of fatigue, for
I had been now four-and-twenty hours without rest; and the dismal streets,
the dashing rain, and the utter absence of human movement as we dragged
our dreary way along, would have made even the floor of a dungeon welcome.
I was as cold as its stone.
At length our postilion, after nearly relieving us of all the troubles of
this world, by running on the verge of the moat which once surrounded the
Bastile, and where nothing but the screams of my companion prevented him
from plunging in, wholly lost his way. The few lamps in this intricate and
miserable quarter of the city had been blown out by the tempest, and our
only resource appeared to be patience, until the tardy break of winter's
morn should guide us through the labyrinth of the Faubourg St Antoine.
However, this my companion's patriotism would not suffer. "The Club would
be adjourned! Danton would be gone!" In short, he should not hear the
Jacobin lion roar, nor have the reward on which he reckoned for flinging
me into his jaws. The postilion was again ordered to move, and the turn of
a street showing a light at a distance, he lashed his unfortunate horses
towards it. Utterly indifferent as to where I was to be deposited, I saw
and heard nothing, until I was roused by the postilion's cry of "Place de
Grève."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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