Another wall was covered with engravings, some coloured and some plain.
They hung in chronological order from left to right, from top to bottom,
so that one could read the whole history of the Revolution pictorially.
The Oath in the ball-room on June 20, 1789, with Mirabeau’s portrait;
the burning of the Bastille, and the head of the commandant; the
Jacobite Club, with Marat, Saint-Just, Couthon, Robespierre; the Feast
of Brotherhood on the Champ du Mars; the King’s Flight to Varennes;
Lafayette; the Girondists; the execution of the King and Queen;
the Committee of Public Welfare, with Danton and the newly hatched
Robespierre; the Reign of Terror; Charlotte Corday stabbing Marat in the
bath; Robespierre again; Feast of the Supreme Being; Voltaire’s Funeral;
Robespierre again, this time on the 9th Thermidor. Then came Buonaparte
and the Directory, mixed with Pyramids and Alps.
In the middle of the room stood a very large table. At the one end were
the bookbinder’s tools; at the other, writing materials. The inkstand
was a skull; the ruler was a fore-arm; the paper-weight was a
guillotine, and the penholder a rib.
The bookbinder himself, a centenarian, with an apostolic beard, sat and
wrote under a lantern which hung from the roof. He was the only person
visible in the room. Outside it was stormy, and the roof-plates rattled
from time to time; it was cool in the room, but not cold, for a stove
was lit in a corner, where lay the watchman’s belongings--a great
wolfskin fur-coat, a speaking trumpet, some flags, and a lantern with
variously coloured glass sides. The old man pushed his glasses up his
forehead, looked up, and spoke, though the person with whom he talked
could not be seen.
“Are you hungry?”
A voice behind the bookcase answered: “Fairly so.”
“Are you cold?”
“No, not yet.”
“Wait a little; I must just go outside and make an observation.”
“What are you writing?”
“My reminiscences.”
“Is it quiet in the town?”
“Yes, but they have gone out to Saint Cloud.”
“Then it will soon come to shooting.”
“It won’t come to shooting, but we may expect a proclamation. Be quiet
now; I must step out, and send a message. Then you will get some food
and drink; perhaps a pipe of tobacco also.”
There was silence behind the bookcase, and the old man put on his
fur-coat, lit his many-coloured lamp, took up a speaking-trumpet, and
stepped out on the balcony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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