France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction
It is all indelibly placed on record in the "Bulletin du Tribunal
Révolutionnaire," under date 25th Fructidor, year I. of the Revolution.
Anyone who cares may read, for the Bulletin is in the Archives of the
Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.
One by one the accused had been brought forth, escorted by two men of
the National Guard in ragged, stained uniforms of red, white, and blue;
they were then conducted to the small raised platform in the centre of
the hall, and made to listen to the charge brought against them by
Citizen Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Presecutor.
They were petty charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally
arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with
highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil
feminine ingenuity could invent.
These two were condemned to the guillotine, the others sent to the
galleys at Brest or Toulon--the forger along with the petty thief, the
housebreaker with the absconding clerk.
There was no room in the prison for ordinary offences against the
criminal code; they were overfilled already with so-called traitors
against the Republic.
Three women were sent to the penitentiary at the Salpêtriere, and were
dragged out of the court shrilly protesting their innocence, and
followed by obscene jeers from the spectators on the benches.
Then there was a momentary hush.
Juliette Marny had been brought in.
She was quite calm, and exquisitely beautiful, dressed in a plain grey
bodice and kirtle, with a black band round her slim waist and a soft
white kerchief folded across her bosom. Beneath the tiny, white cap her
golden hair appeared in dainty, curly profusion; her child-like, oval
face was very white, but otherwise quite serene.
She seemed absolutely unconscious of her surroundings, and walked with a
firm step up to the platform, looking neither to the right nor to the
left of her.
Therefore she did not see Déroulède. A great, a wonderful radiance
seemed to shine in her large eyes--the radiance of self-sacrifice.
She was offering not only her life, but everything a woman of refinement
holds most dear, for the safety of the man she loved.
A feeling that was almost physical pain, so intense was it, overcame
Déroulède, when at last he heard her name loudly called by the Public
Prosecutor.
All day he had waited for this awful moment, forgetting his own misery,
his own agonised feeling of an irretrievable loss, in the horrible
thought of what _she_ would endure, what _she_ would think, when first
she realised the terrible indignity, which was to be put upon her.
Yet for the sake of her, of her chances of safety and of ultimate
freedom, it was undoubtedly best that it should be so.
Arraigned for conspiracy against the Republic, she was liable to secret
trial, to be brought up, condemned, and executed before he could even
hear of her whereabouts, before he could throw himself before her judges
and take all guilt upon himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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