Fabre, who had best known how omnipresent is this complexity—Fabre, who had said, “Between the giving and taking of snuff there is a comedy”—furnished the example now. Danton hearing so much weakness and so many groans from the sick man said, “What is your complaint?” He answered, “I have written a play called ‘The Maltese Orange,’ and I fear the police have taken it, and that some one will steal it and get the fame.” Poor Fabre! It is lost, and no one has the ridicule of his little folly. Danton answered him with a phrase to turn the blood: “Tais toi! Dans une semaine tu feras assez de vers,” and imposed silence. Nor did this satisfy Fate; there were other points in the framework of the incongruous which she loves to throw round terror. A play was running in the opera called the “10th of August;” in this the Dantonists were represented on the stage. When the Dantonists were hardly buried it was played again that very night, and actors made up for Hérault and the rest passed before a public that ignored or had forgotten what the afternoon had seen. More than this, there was already set in type a verse which the street-hawkers cried and sold that very night. For the sake of its coincidence I will take the liberty of translating it into rhymed heroics:— “When Danton, Desmoulins, and D’Eglantine Were ferried over to the world unseen, Charon, that equitable citizen, Handed their change to these distinguished men. ‘Pray keep the change,’ they cried; ‘we pay the fare For Couthon, and St. Just, and Robespierre.’”[163] Danton spared only Camille, and as he did not stop appealing to the people, told him gently to cease. “Leave the rabble there,” he said, “leave them alone.” But for himself he kept on throwing angry jests at death. “May I sing?” he said to the executioner. Sanson thought he might, for all he knew. Then Danton said to him, “I have made some verses, and I will sing them.” He sang loudly a verse of the fall of Robespierre, and then laughed as though he had been at the old café with his friends. There was a man (Arnault of the Academy) who lived afterwards to a great age, and who happened to be crossing the Rue St. Honoré as the carts went past. In a Paris that had all its business to do, many such men came and went, almost forgetting that politics existed even then. But this batch of prisoners haunted him. He had seen Danton standing singing with laughter, he hurried on to the Rue de la Monnaie, had his say with Michael, who was awaiting him, and then, full of the scene, ran back across the Tuilleries gardens, and pressing his face to the railings looked over the great Place de la Révolution. The convoy had arrived, the carts stood at the foot of the guillotine, and his memory of the scene is the basis of its history.