Empress Josephine: An Historical Sketch of the Days of Napoleon Part 17

A strife arose among the sixteen condemned ones--not as to who might remain behind, but as to those who might mount into the wagon.

The ladies declared that, according to the rules of common politeness, which allowed ladies to go first, the choice belonged to them; the gentlemen objected to this motion of the ladies on the plea that to reach the guillotine steps had to be ascended, and as etiquette required that in going up-stairs the gentlemen should always precede the ladies, they were also now ent.i.tled to go first and to mount the steps of the scaffold before the ladies. At last all had to give way to the claims of the d.u.c.h.ess de Grammont, who declared that at this festival as at every other the order of rank was to be observed, and that she, as well as all the gentlemen and ladies of superior rank, had the undisputed privilege now, as at all other celebrations, to take the precedency.

No one ventured to oppose this decision, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Grammont, proud of the victory won, was the first to leave the room and mount the wagon.

Another time the turnkey began to read the list: every one listened with grave attention, and at every call a clear, cheerful "Here I am!"

followed.

But after the jailer, with wearied voice, had many times repeated a name from his list, the accustomed answer failed. No one came forward, no one seemed to be there to lay claim to that name and to the execution.

The jailer stopped a few minutes, and as all were dumb, he continued, indifferent and unmoved, to call out the names.

"We will then have only fifteen heads to deliver to-day," said he, after reading the list, "for there must have been a mistake. One of the names is false, or else the person to whom it belongs has already been delivered."

"It is probably but a blunder of the pen!" exclaimed a handsome young man who, smiling, stepped out of the crowd of listeners and pa.s.sed on to the side where the victims stood. "You read Chapetolle. There is no such name here. The hand of the writer was probably tired of writing the numerous lists of those who are sentenced to death, and he has therefore written the letters wrong. My name is Chapelotte, and I am the one meant by Chapetolle."

"I do not know," said the jailer, "but it is certain that sixteen sentenced ones ought to go into the wagons, and that only fifteen have reported themselves in a legal way."

"Well, then, add me in an illegal manner to your fifteen," said the young man, smiling. "Without doubt it is my name they intended to write.

I do not wish to save my life through a blunder in writing, and who knows if another time I may find such good company as to-day in your chariot? Allow me then to journey on with my friends."

The jailer had no reason to refuse him this journey, and he had the satisfaction besides of being thus able to deliver sixteen sentenced prisoners to the guillotine.

Such was the society of the aristocrats, among whom Josephine lived the long, dreary days of her imprisonment. The cell she occupied was shared by two companions of misfortune, the d.u.c.h.ess de Aguillon and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who afterward became Madame Tallien, so distinguished and renowned for her beauty and wit. Therese de Fontenay knew, and every one knew, that she was already sentenced, even if her sentence was not yet written down and countersigned. It was recorded in the heart of Robespierre. He had sentenced her, without any concealment.

She had but a few weeks more to endure the martyrdom, the anguish of hope and of expectation. She was his secure victim; Robespierre needed not hasten the fall of this beautiful head, which was the admiration of all who saw it. This beauty was the very crime which Robespierre wanted to punish, for with this beauty, Therese de Fontenay, who then resided in Bordeaux with her husband, had captivated the old friend and a.s.sociate in sentiments of Robespierre, the fanatical Tallien; with this beauty she had converted the man of blood and terror into a soft, compa.s.sionate being, inclined to pardon and to mercy toward his fellow-beings.

Tallien had been sent as commissionnaire from the Convention to Bordeaux, and there with inexorable severity he had raged against the unfortunate merchants, from whom he exacted enormous a.s.sessments, and whom he sentenced to the guillotine if they refused, or were unable to pay. But suddenly love changed the bloodthirsty tiger into a sensitive being, and the beautiful Madame de Fontenay, who had become acquainted with Tallien in the prison of Bordeaux, had worked a complete change in his whole being. For the first time this man, who unmoved had condemned to death King Louis and the Girondists, found on his lips the word "pardon;" for the first time the hand which had signed so many death-warrants wrote the order to let a prisoner go free.

This prisoner was Therese de Fontenay, the daughter of the Spanish banker Cabarrus, and she rewarded him for the gift of her life with a smile which forever made him her captive. From this time the death-warrants were converted into pardons from his lips, and for every pardon Therese thanked him with a sweet smile, with a glowing look of love.

But this leniency was looked upon as criminal by the tribunal of terror in Paris. They recalled the culprit who dared pardon instead of punis.h.i.+ng; and if Robespierre did not think himself powerful enough to send Tallien as a traitor and as an apostate to the scaffold, he punished him for his leniency by separating from him Therese de Fontenay, who had abandoned the husband forced upon her, and who had followed Tallien to Paris, and Robespierre had sent her to prison.

There, at the Carmelites', was Therese de Fontenay; she occupied the same cell as Josephine; the same misfortune had made them companions and friends. They communicated one to the other their hopes and fears; and when Josephine, with tears in her eyes, spoke to her friend of her children, of her deep anguish, for they were alone and abandoned in the world outside of the prison walls, whilst their unfortunate pitiable mother languished in prison, Therese comforted and encouraged her.

"So long as one lives there is hope," said Therese, with her enchanting smile. "Myself, who in the eyes of you all am sentenced to death, hope--no, I hope not--I am convinced that I will soon obtain my freedom.

And I swear that, as soon as I am free, I will stir heaven and earth to procure the liberty of my dear friend Josephine and of her husband the Viscount de Beauharnais, and to give back to the poor orphaned children their parents."

Josephine answered with an incredulous smile, and a shrugging of the shoulders; and then Therese's very expressive countenance glowed, and her large, black eyes flashed deeper gleams.

"You have no faith in me, Josephine," she said, vehemently; "but I repeat to you, I will soon obtain my freedom, and then I will procure your liberty and that of your husband."

"But how will you obtain that?" asked Josephine, shaking her head.

"I will ruin Robespierre," said Therese, gravely.

"In what do your means of ruining him consist?"

"In this letter here," said Therese, as she drew out of her bosom a small paper folded up. "See, this sheet of paper; it consists but of a few lines which, since they would not furnish me with writing-materials, I have written with my blood on this sheet of paper, which I found yesterday in the garden during the promenade. The turnkey will give this letter to-day to Tallien. He has given me his word, and I have promised him that Tallien will recompense him magnificently for it. This letter will ruin Robespierre and make me free, and then I will procure the freedom of the Viscount and of the Viscountess de Beauharnais."

"What then, in that letter is the magic word which is to work out such wonders?"

Therese handed the paper to her friend.

"Read," said she, smiling.

Josephine read: "Therese of Fontenay to the citizen Tallien. Either in eight days I am free and the wife of my deliverer, the n.o.ble and brave Tallien, who will have freed the world from the monster Robespierre, or else, in eight days, I mount the scaffold; and my last thought will be a curse for the cowardly, heartless man who has not had the courage to risk his life for her he loved, and who suffers for his sake, for his sake meets death--who had not the mind to consider that with daring deed he must destroy the bloodthirsty fiend or be ruined by him. Therese de Fontenay will ever love her Tallien if he delivers her; she will hate him, even in death, if he sacrifices her to Robespierre's blood-greediness!"

"If, through mishap, Robespierre should receive this letter, then you and Tallien are lost," sighed Josephine.

"But Tallien, and not Robespierre, will receive it, and I am saved,"

exclaimed Therese. "Therefore, my friend, take courage and be bold. Wait but eight days patiently. Let us wait and hope."

"Yes, let us wait and hope," sighed Josephine. "Hope and patience are the only companions of the captive."

CHAPTER XV. DELIVERANCE.

Meanwhile the patience of the unfortunate prisoners of the Carmelite convent were to be subjected to a severe trial; and the very next day after this conversation with Therese de Fontenay, Josephine believed that there was no more hope for her, that she was irrevocably lost, as her husband was lost. For three days she had not seen the viscount, nor received any news from him. Only a vague report had reached her that the viscount was no longer in the Carmelite convent, but that he had been transferred to the Conciergerie.

This report told the truth. Alexandre de Beauharnais had once more been denounced, and this second accusation was his sentence of death. For some time past the fanatical Jacobins had invented a new means to find guilty ones for the guillotine, and to keep the veins bleeding, so as to restore France to health. They sent emissaries into the prisons to instigate conspiracies among the prisoners, and to find out men wretched enough to purchase their life by accusing their prison companions, and by delivering them over to the executioner's axe. Such a spy had been sent into that portion of the prison where Beauharnais was, and he had begun his horrible work, for he had kindled discord and strife among the prisoners, and had won a few to his sinister projects. But Beauharnais's keen eye had discovered the traitor, and he had loudly and openly denounced him to his fellow-prisoners. The next day, the spy disappeared from the prison, but as he went he swore b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance on General de Beauharnais. [Footnote: "Memoires du Comte de Lavalette," vol. i., p.

175.]

And he kept his word; the next morning De Beauharnais was summoned for trial, and the gloomy, hateful faces of his judges, their hostile questions and reproaches, the capital crimes they accused him of, led him to conclude that his death was decided upon, and that he was doomed to the guillotine.

In the night which followed his trial, Alexandre de Beauharnais wrote to his wife a letter, in which he communicated to her his sad forebodings, and bade her farewell for this life. The next day he was transferred to the Conciergerie--that is to say, into the vestibule of the scaffold.

This letter of her husband, received by Josephine the next day after her conversation with Therese de Fontenay, ran thus:

"The fourth Thermidor, in the second year of the republic. All the signs of a kind of trial, to which I and other prisoners have been subjected this day, tell me that I am the victim of the treacherous calumny of a few aristocrats, patriots so called, of this house. The mere conjecture that this h.e.l.lish machination will follow me to the tribunal of the revolution gives me no hope to see you again, my friend, no more to embrace you or our children. I speak not of my sorrow: my tender solicitude for you, the heartfelt affection which unites me to you, cannot leave you in doubt of the sentiments with which I leave this life.

"I am also sorry to have to part with my country, which I love, for which I would a thousand times have laid down my life, and which I no more can serve, but which beholds me now quit her bosom, since she considers me to be a bad citizen. This heart-rending thought does not allow me to commend my memory to you; labor, then, to make it pure in proving that a life which has been devoted to the service of the country, and to the triumph of liberty and equality, must punish that abominable slanderer, especially when he comes from a suspicious cla.s.s of men. But this labor must be postponed; for in the storms of revolution, a great people, struggling to reduce its chains to dust, must of necessity surround itself with suspicion, and be more afraid to forget a guilty man than to put an innocent one to death.

"I will die with that calmness which allows man to feel emotion at the thought of his dearest inclinations--I will die with that courage which is the distinctive feature of a free man, of a clear conscience, of an exalted soul, whose highest wishes are the prosperity and growth of the republic.

"Farewell, my friend; gather consolation from my children; derive comfort in educating them, in teaching them that, by their virtues and their devotion to their country, they obliterate the memory of my execution, and recall to national grat.i.tude my services and my claims.

Farewell to those I love: you know them! Be their consolation, and through your solicitude for them prolong my life in their hearts!

Farewell! for the last time in this life I press you and my children to my heart!--ALEXANDRE BEAUHARNAIS."

Josephine had read this letter with a thousand tears, but she hoped still; she believed still in the possibility that the gloomy forebodings of her husband would not be realized; that some fortunate circ.u.mstance would save him or at least r.e.t.a.r.d his death.

But this hope was not to be fulfilled. A few hours after receiving this letter the turnkey brought to the prisoners the bulletin of the executions of the preceding day. It was that day Josephine's turn to read this bulletin to her companions. She therefore began her sad task; and, as slowly and thoughtfully she let fall name after name from her lips, here and there the faces of her hearers were blanched, and their eyes filled with tears.

Suddenly Josephine uttered a piercing cry, and sprang up with the movement of madness toward the door, shook it in her deathly sorrow, as if her life hung upon the opening of that door, and then she sank down fainting.

Unfortunate Josephine! she had seen in the list of those who had been executed the name of General Beauharnais, and in the first excitement of horror she wanted to rush out to see him, or at least to give to his body the parting kiss.