This was, above all others, the aristocratic prison of the Revolution. It was fitly chosen for the reception of that brilliant contingent of nobles, just ready to fly the country, whom the famous Law of the Suspects had routed from their hÔtels in Paris. To confine them in the Luxembourg, converting that ancient and renowned palace into a dungeon of aristocrats, was in itself an apt stroke of vengeance on the part of the people. Few indeed of the historic dwellings of Paris could have put them more forcibly in mind of the tyrannies of kings and regents, of the splendid and licentious fÊtes and orgies of princes and princesses of the blood, the cost of which was wrung from the lean pockets of those who were told to eat cake when there was no bread in the cupboard! Had not Marie de MÉdicis passed here, and Gaston de France, and Duchesse de Montpensier, and Elizabeth d'OrlÉans, who gave it to Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., who gave it, in 1779, to Monsieur his brother, who after the days of storm and terror was to reign, not too satisfactorily, as Louis XVIII.? Was it not here that Duchesse de Berri, in the early years of the eighteenth century, held those surprising revels the details of which may be read only in secret and unpublished memoirs? Sedate historians merely hint at them.^[20] And, palace though it was, the revolutionary judges might have found ready to their hands at the Luxembourg, bars, bolts, fetters and dungeons enow. For that "symbolic hierarchy" of palace, cloister, and prison, proper to all princely and noble dwellings of the old rÉgime, had existed at the Luxembourg; and during long years the penal justice of priest and monk had passed that way.

This was the place to which the noble and courtly suspects were conveyed by hundreds in August, 1793. One can imagine, though but very faintly, with what feelings they resigned themselves into the hands of concierge BenoÎt. Their King had been decapitated; their Queen, a prisoner elsewhere, was expecting her husband's fate. They knew how little their sovereign's life had weighed in the people's balance; was it likely that theirs would be of greater weight? Judgment and death disquieted them.

"A diverting spectacle in its way," wrote one sarcastic prisoner, "to see arriving in a miserable hackney-coach two marquises, a duchess, a marchioness, and a count; all ready to faint on alighting, and all seized with the megrims on entering." Dames of great rank came with their brisk femmes de chambre, old noblemen with their valets, youths separated from their governors and tutors,—children even; whole battalions of the most distinguished suspects, the very flower of the aristocracy of France. The dungeons were not requisitioned, but hasty preparations had been made for them. Under concierge BenoÎt's polite and sympathetic conduct, they mounted the splendid staircase—up which had flitted in a costume of no weight at all the unblushing guests of De Berri—to the splendid chambers, picture-gallery, ball-room, salon, dining-room, and the whole sumptuous suite, which rude partitions of naked lath and timber had converted into some semblance of prison lodgings. The wide windows had been armed with iron bars, and guards were posted at every story.

The gallant company of French suspects found some of the chambers in the occupation of a party of English suspects, who had been placed under arrest some weeks earlier, "as a response to the insults offered by the English government to the Republic" (pour rÉpondre aux insultes dirigÉes par le gouvernement anglais contre la RÉpublique). Amongst them were Miss Maria Williams, who had gone to France, pen in hand, to see what liberty, equality, and fraternity were like in practice (and who returned to write one of the dullest books on record); and Thomas Paine, who was studying "The Rights of Man" under alarming aspects.

This was the first Battue; the royalist suspects of Republican France were the second.

The salons of the palace, made into prison chambers, were named afresh. Miss Williams and her sister occupied the chamber of Cincinnatus; hard by were the chambers of Brutus, Socrates, and Solon; and the derisive name of Liberty was given to the room in which nobles under special guard were confined in the strictest privacy. High personages, whose titles but a little while before might have made their gaolers tremble, were lodged in every quarter of the palace. In this cabinet were Marshal de Mouchy and his wife, "rigorous observers of courtly etiquette"; a little way off, in chambers no bigger than prison cells, the Comte de Mirepoix, the Marquis de Fleury, President Nicolai, M. de Noailles, and the Duc de LÉvi.

Parlous in a high degree as the situation was for all of them, they did not at this date suffer any special discomfort, the deprivation of liberty excepted. Their captors were satisfied at having them under lock and key, and did not insult their captivity. A gossiping history, which may be history or fable, describes a visit of Latude to one of the political prisoners, a certain M. Roger. The great prison-breaker laughed the Luxembourg to scorn: "A prison? You call this a prison, mon cher? I call it a bonbonniÈre, a boudoir!"

Indeed, to be precise, the Luxembourg was not exactly a Bastille. There were sad and evil days in store for these suspects, but they were days as yet distant. For the present, heart-questionings apart, it was not too dismal a confinement; and rumour went so far as to hint that there were relaxations of an evening which would not have discredited the character of the Luxembourg of history.

The palace-prison might be compared to an unseaworthy vessel in which one shipped for a compulsory voyage, in dangerous waters, with a doubtful chart. One might reach port, or founder in mid-ocean. Meanwhile, there was no choice but to sail; and the rotten ship had good berths and was well-provisioned.

The Luxembourg was not as yet governed as a prison, the suspects of the Revolution were under no extraordinary restraint, there was no surveillance, and the sentries allowed the prisoners to come and go as they pleased within the wide walls of the palace and its gardens. Their friends called upon them, and they wrote and received letters. One of them had a dog in his chamber which used to fetch and carry messages and packets between the "prison" and free Paris. A confectioner outside was allowed to furnish whatever was ordered for the tables, and the rich paid ungrudgingly for the poor. Plain sans-culottes came in as suspects with the nobles, and were regularly fed by them.

"How many are you feeding?" asked one marquis of another.

"Twelve; and pretty hungry ones."

"Well, what do you give them?"

"Meat at dinner always, and dessert."

"That's not so bad. My fellows want meat twice a day, and coffee once a week."

A strained position made matters easier. The nobles kept apart from the plebs, and took their share of snubs from the "common patriots" whom their purses kept in food; but a sense of general danger minimised the hostilities of class. Succour, whenever needed, was never lacking. The regulation mattress for the beds is described as "of about the thickness of an omelette" and the bolster "of the leanest"; but bolsters and mattresses ran short in a month or two, and the men stripped themselves of coats and waistcoats to make beds for the women. It was a camp or caravanserai, with the style of a court.

The aristocrats assembled of an evening in a common room which was always called the salon, powdered and dressed in the fashion, saluted one another by the titles which they had ceased to own, and disputed precedence as at Versailles. Visits were paid and returned, and never was a fool's paradise so scrupulously ordered. It was admirable in its way; the old order would die by rule.

The prisoners were fortunate in their concierge, BenoÎt. A veteran of seventy, gentle and genial, with a heart as fine as the manners of his royalist prisoners, he smoothed all paths, and ushered in a new-comer to a lodging of four bare walls and a naked floor with an apology that transformed it into a royal boudoir. He seemed to know all his guests as they arrived, and placed them where he thought they would find the easiest entertainment and the most congenial company. He played the part of master of ceremonies, and put each guest into his proper niche. In BenoÎt's hands, the marquis who had arrived without his valet found himself handling the broom, fetching water, and taking his turn at the spit, as if the custom of a lifetime had used him to those offices. It was BenoÎt who learned at once what money a prisoner had brought in with him, and who saved the needy suspect the humiliation of begging his meals, by a whisper in the ear of a good-natured noble.

By-and-bye, the suspects had the gratification of knowing that their perils, present and to come, were shared by the enemy himself. There arrived as a prisoner one evening a president of the revolutionary tribunal. It was one Kalmer, a German Jew, and reputed millionaire (he had an income of about £8000), who had been active in filling the chamber-cells of the Luxembourg. He presented himself in sabots and a costume of the shabbiest simplicity, and his reception was of the coolest. He displayed from the first a voracious appetite, and every day an ass laden with provisions was brought for him to the palace door. The ex-president seemed well disposed to end his days eating and drinking in the Luxembourg, and was not a little shocked on receiving the news that he had been sentenced to death, "for conspiring secretly with the enemy abroad." He went to the guillotine without a benediction.

Came next the much more notable Chaumette, ex-sailor, ex-priest, and recently Procureur of the Commune, in which capacity he had been foremost in demanding and promoting the Law of the Suspects. He was as chapfallen as a wolf in a snare, but he did not escape the mordant jests of the company. It was Chaumette who had declared in the Chamber that "you might almost recognise a suspect by the look of him." He himself was recognised on the instant.

"Sublime Procureur!" exclaimed one, "thanks to that famous requisition of yours, I am suspect, thou art suspect, he is suspect; we are suspect, you are suspect, they are all suspect"—which indeed was the case, for at that date, as Carlyle says, "if suspect of nothing else, you may grow," as came to be a saying, "Suspect of being Suspect."

One night, the wildest rumour circulated in the prison. It was said that Danton, Camille Desmoulins, HÉrault de SÉchelle, Lacroix, Philippeaux, and others, the head and front of the party of the Moderates, had been arrested by Robespierre's order, and were to be sent forthwith to the Luxembourg. It was even so; and the next night the news sped through every corridor of the palace that Danton and his fellows had arrived, and were with the concierge. The prisoners swarmed to the reception room, and gratified their eyes with that unlooked-for spectacle. The brilliant Camille, whose young wife was a prisoner with him, was denouncing the tribunal in a storm of passion; Danton bade him be calm: "When men act with folly," he said, "one should know how to laugh at them." Then, recognising Thomas Paine, he said: "What you have done for the liberty of your country, I have tried to do for mine. I have been less fortunate than you! They will send me to the scaffold; well, I shall go there cheerfully enough!" Camille Desmoulins had brought with him some rather melancholy reading—Hervey's Meditations and Young's Night Thoughts. The merry RÉal, who had arrived a day or two earlier, exclaimed against these works: "Do you want to die before your time? Here, take my book, La Pucelle d'OrlÉans; that will keep your spirits up!"

General Dillon, who was of the earliest batch of suspects, was amongst the first to visit the imprisoned Moderates in the chamber which had been set apart for them.^[21] Camille was still fuming, and Danton playing the part of moderator. Lacroix was debating with himself whether he should cut his hair, or wait till Samson dressed it for him. Another of the party, Fabre d'Eglantine, lay sick in bed, tenderly nursed by his comrades. He was saved for the scaffold, for the turn of the Moderates was not long delayed. At the brief trial of the party, Danton and Camille showed a characteristic front to their judges. "You ask my name!" thundered the Titan of the Revolution. "You should know it! It is Danton, a name tolerably familiar in the Revolution. As for my abode, it will soon be the Unknown, but I shall live in the Pantheon of history!" "My age," answered Camille, "is the age of the good sans-culotte Jesus Christ; an age fatal to Revolutionists!" Returning to the Luxembourg after condemnation, he said to BenoÎt: "I am condemned for having shed a tear or two over the fate of other unfortunates. My only regret is that I was not able to be of better service to them." Camille wrote with one of the wittiest pens of his day, and busied himself in the Luxembourg with a comedy called The Orange, the model of which was Sheridan's School for Scandal. He had evoked in a greater degree than any other of the Moderates the sympathies of the suspects in the Luxembourg, and up to the last there was a general belief in the prison that both he and Danton would be saved by the intervention of Robespierre. But Robespierre could not, if he would. Executioner Samson received in due course his order to proceed with them—a document drawn up in the style and almost in the terms of a commercial invoice—and made his own note in pencil at the foot: "One cart will be enough." Even at the steps of the guillotine, Camille turned to denounce the crowd. "Leave that canaille!" said Danton, quietly; "we are done with it." To the headsman Danton said, as he stood on the scaffold: "You must show my head to the people. It is a head worth looking at."

This hecatomb of the Moderates sent a thrill of fear through the Luxembourg. Whose turn next?

Up to this date, the principal political prisoners had enjoyed unrestrained communication with their friends outside, and General Dillon had private news twice a day from the tribunal. Two days after the bloody despatch of the Moderates, the prisoners of the Luxembourg were confined to their chambers. Evening receptions and parties of trictrac (in one's sober intervals) were suppressed; communication of every kind was forbidden; and the journals of the day, which had been freely circulated in the prison, were no longer admitted. The prisoners awaited "in silence and fear" the explanation of this rigorous consigne.

It was the outcome of the first of those rumours of a "plot in the prison." A certain Lafflotte, a suspect of low origin, denounced General Dillon and one Simon (nicknamed in the prison Simon-Limon) as the author of a secret conspiracy. The revolutionary journals were full of the affair, but it was never very clearly explained, nor, for that matter, was any precise explanation ever offered of other prison plots so-called. There were pretended discoveries and expositions of plots in the Luxembourg, Saint-Lazare, BicÊtre, and the Carmes. That the prisoners of the Revolution in all these goals were eager to recover their liberty, is a statement which may pass without dispute; and it is no less natural to suppose that they would have seized upon any means that offered a reasonable hope of escape. But the truth seems to have been, and it is rather curious in the circumstances (though the presence of so many women and children would have multiplied the difficulties) that no concerted efforts to break prison were ever made by the suspects. Statements or rumours to the effect that they were planning a forcible release for themselves, and that, once out of prison, they intended to put Paris to the sword, should have been regarded as quite too silly for credence. Surely those poor aristocrats had given proof enough of their weakness! Of all the enemies of the Republic, they were the least capable of harming it.

Dillon and Simon, nevertheless, were delivered over to Samson. The terror had begun for the prisoners of the Luxembourg.

An unexpected calamity succeeded. BenoÎt, most humane and benevolent of concierges, was arrested. It was as if the father had been snatched from his family, and the suspects were inconsolable; they had lost their best friend within the prison. The tribunal acquitted him, but he did not return to his post. BenoÎt had two successors at the Luxembourg within a space of weeks, the second of whom was a man who would have been regarded with terror in any French prison at that epoch. This was Guiard, who had been fetched expressly from Lyons, where he had acquired a hideous celebrity as gaoler of the "Cellar of the Dead," the name bestowed upon the dungeon or black hole in which the victims of the commission populaire passed their last hours between condemnation and execution.

A few days after the removal of BenoÎt, the prisoners awoke one morning to find that sentinels had been posted at every door. A stolid police officer named Wilcheritz, a Pole by birth, who had been nominated to a principal post in the prison, came round with the order that there was to be no communication between the suspects. They, believing that they were on the eve of another September massacre, prepared to bid each other farewell. On this occasion, however, it was merely a question of stripping them of their belongings. Money, paper notes, rings, studs, pins, shoebuckles, penknives, razors, scissors, keys, were gathered in cell after cell, and deposited in a heap in one of the larger rooms; no notes or inventory being taken. Wilcheritz and his inquisitors were the objects of some pleasantries which, it is said, "annoyed them greatly." One prisoner, after handing over his writing-case was asked for his ring. "What!" said he, "isn't the stationery enough? Are you setting up in the jewellery line too?" Another, when it was pointed out to him that he had retained the gold buckles of his garters, replied: "I think, citizens, you had better undress me at once." They entered the cell of the playwright Parisau. "Citizens," said the author, "I am really distressed; you have come too late. I had three hundred livres here, but another citizen has just relieved me of them. I hope that you will have better luck elsewhere. They tell me, however, that you are leaving us fifty livres apiece, and as I have only just five and twenty, no doubt you will make up the sum to me." "Oh no, citizen," returned the stolid Pole.—"Ah! I see. You are merely 'on the make,' citizen. It is unfortunate in that case that there are gentry in the prison more active than you. However, if you follow the other citizen, I dare say you will catch him up, and then you can settle accounts with him. You are the ocean, citizen, and all the little tributaries will join themselves to you."

In another apartment it was proposed to carry off his silver coffee-pot from a prisoner, who, to preserve it, explained that it was "not exactly silver," but "some sort of English metal." That was possible, observed Wilcheritz, for he had one just like it himself. "Ah!" returned the prisoner, "now that you mention it, I remember there was another like mine in the prison!"

Suspects belonging to the working-classes,—tailors shoemakers, engravers, and the like—were allowed to retain the tools of their crafts; and the barbers received their razors in the morning, returning them to the gaolers at night.

To all requests addressed to him by the prisoners, imploring information as to their fate, the phlegmatic Pole made answer: "Patience! Justice is just. This durance will not endure for ever. Patience!"

Patriots and nobles were now massed in hundreds within the same walls, shared the same chambers, and were fed from the same kitchen; and all alike were now in the same state of siege. What news penetrated within the palace-prison was not the most inspiriting; the tumbrils were moving steadily to the guillotine, and in the copies of the Courrier Republicain which were smuggled into the Luxembourg, the principal intelligence was the "Judgment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which has condemned to death" thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty "conspirators."

Word was passed that the commissions populaires were to take in hand the cases of the suspects, which was more comforting to the patriots than to the nobles; but the days crept on, and nothing happened.

The prisoners amused themselves by teasing Wilcheritz, a fair butt for raillery, who carried out his orders imperturbably, but was never a bully. The day came of the "Feast of the Supreme Being," and citizen Wilcheritz honoured it with a radiant suit. His big feet were cramped in a pair of new shoes with the finest of silver buckles. One of the despoiled suspects fancied or pretended that he recognised the buckles, and a whisper went round. The prisoner whose coffee-pot had been appropriated came to the rescue. "Citizens," he said, "those buckles don't look to me like silver. They are a sort of English metal." "They have been in my family for three generations, citizens, I assure you. I had them long before the visitation," stammered Wilcheritz. "The visitation" had grown to be the polite mode of reference to the act of spoliation. "Citizen," said the defender of Wilcheritz, "your answer is complete. You told us the other day that no good Republican should stoop to wear jewellery, but no citizen here would have the heart to claim your shoebuckles."

The coming of Guiard as concierge (cet homme fÉroce is Nougaret's dismissal of him) quenched all pleasantries, and made the palace-prison a prison complete. Two suspects hopeless of being brought to the bar, had committed suicide by throwing themselves from their windows; Guiard ordered that no prisoner should approach within a yard of his window. The sentries had orders to enter every cell and chamber, with drawn sabres, at midnight, rouse the occupants from their beds, and count them. At intervals, all through the night, they were to hail one another loudly in every corridor: "Sentinelles, prenez-garde À nous!" so that there should be no sleep for the prisoners. No letters were allowed to pass out from or into the prison; and no visitors were admitted.

Meals could no longer be sent in from the confectioner's, and a common table was established. At noon precisely, the bell was struck for dinner, and the nine hundred prisoners were ranged in the corridors, each with his couvert under his arm, a wooden fork, knife, and spoon. They descended by batches to the dining-room, marching two and two, and this singular procession was half an hour on its journey. Arriving at the dining-room, three hundred took their places at the table, three hundred waited with their backs to the wall, and three hundred cooled their heels in the passage.

At this time, all money and paper notes, having been taken from them, the suspects were receiving an allowance of about two shillings a day, though it is not quite clear what they were to spend it on.

At the distribution one morning, Guiard said significantly: "There won't be quite so many to receive it to-morrow!" That same night, a long row of tumbrils stopped under the walls of the Luxembourg, and one hundred and sixty-nine prisoners were dragged from bed to fill them.

It was the first seizure on the grand scale, and in a few minutes the whole prison was in confusion and panic terror. The warders were heard going from door to door, and calling the names of the victims; one from one chamber, two, three, or four from another. Here were sobbings and loud wails, and clinging embraces; husbands and fathers trying to animate the weeping women whom they were leaving; priests called for in the dark to bless together for the last time two who were to be separated. No one dared descend to the great gallery, but elsewhere there were frightened rushings to and fro; meetings and partings in darkened doorways and half-illumined corridors; friend seeking friend, and women and girls imploring with streaming eyes for leave to say good-bye again to the lost ones who were already seated in the tumbrils. Happy were the friends and whole families who were despatched together. In one moving instance, weeping was turned into joy. A family of father, mother, and two daughters were divided; the younger daughter was left behind, almost distracted; her name was not upon the list. Presently came another warder with another list. The girl started from the empty bed on which she had thrown herself, snatched the list from the gaoler, and read her own name there. Carrying the sheet, and with a face beaming as if a free pardon had been handed to her, she ran down the corridor, crying: "Mamma, I have found my name! See, it is here! Now we shall die together!" So by minutes, of which each minute was an Æon, that night of horror was exhausted, and at daybreak the long file of tumbrils dragged scaffold-wards.

Not less wretched was the situation of the hundreds who remained. Racking fears were their portion day and night; death was in their hearts. Every evening a new list came in. The "ferocious" Guiard had a very suitable assistant in a turnkey called Verney, whose duty is was to read out the roll of the proscribed, and who did it with a terrible art, dallying with the syllables of a name, and pausing to watch the strained faces around him. Sometimes instead of reading the list, he would pass it round, when the struggle to reach it prolonged the agony. An eyewitness of the scene has left a description:

"In the evening, those prisoners who were allowed to do so assembled in one of the large rooms and played, or made a pretence at playing, vingt-et-un, chess, and other games. While these were in progress, the terrible Verney, head turnkey, appeared, bringing what was called the lottery list. This little paper contained the names of those who were to go the same night to the Conciergerie, and the next morning to the guillotine. The fatal list went round amid the most pitiful silence. Those who found their names on it rose pale and trembling from the table, embraced and bade farewell to their friends, and left us. Verney would then produce the evening paper, where we read the list of the day's dead,—the dead who had been at the table with us the night before! I was playing chess one evening with General Appremont, General Flers looking on. I had just put him in check when the summons came for him, and Verney carried him off. Flers took the vacant seat, with a pretence of finishing the game, when he too was called. This officer had proved his courage in battle a score of times, but I have never seen terror so horribly painted on any human countenance. His whole visage seemed undone, and when he struggled to his feet, he could scarcely support himself. He gave me his hand, speechless, and staggered from the room."^[22]

In the Luxembourg as in the other prisons at this epoch there were miserable creatures, also under lock and key, who made a kind of trade of denouncing their fellows. The Luxembourg had seven of these spies, who assisted in preparing the lists, "embellishing" them, as they said, with details which they had scraped together or invented in the prison. These wretches enjoyed and boasted of the terror which they inspired; and the chief of them, Boyaval (a tailor by trade, who had served in and deserted from the Austrian army), used to say that anyone who looked askance at him in the Luxembourg might count on spending the next night in the Conciergerie! Scarcely a suspect whom Boyaval denounced escaped the guillotine, and one night he scandalised the prison by offering love to a young widow of a day, whose husband he had sacrificed. The husband was an artist, who had painted portraits in the Luxembourg of nobles who had reason to suppose that they would leave their families no other legacy. He was accused of assembling the nobles in his room, and plotting with them against the Republic. As lightly as this, during the Terror, were lives devoted to Samson, in every prison in Paris. The "plots" were not credible, and it is impossible at this date to suppose that they were ever credited; but Paris was still obedient to the word of the Danton whom it had guillotined, that "one must strike terror into the aristocrats"; and these "prison plots" served to fill the tumbrils to the last.

An epidemic of sickness came to crown the sufferings of the dwindling population of the Luxembourg. They were reduced almost to the last extremity of despair. They had no news from without, except the nightly list of the proscribed, and the nightly journal, with its monotonous tale of executions. Between morning and evening, there was no other event, except the swift good-bye at night to the friends or relatives whose names were mumbled out by Verney. A silence almost unbroken had settled on the prison; parties of ghosts assembled at dinner, and whispered together in the common-room until bedtime. Their misery culminated in the epidemic of sickness. The rations had been cut down to one meal a day, and Guiard was the caterer. The wasted prisoners sent back their rotten meat to the kitchen, and lived on bread and thin soup. Half the prison fell ill; poisoned or underfed. Doctor's aid could be had only on a warrant from the police, and applications remained a week or a fortnight at the bureau. Samson had a rival in diseased or exhausted nature; and Guiard's requiem for the dead was an unvarying formula: "Peste! there's another lost to the guillotine!"

This agony of a season was dissolved in an hour. The "walking corpses" (les cadavres ambulans) of the Luxembourg were recalled to life by the revolution of the 9th of Thermidor. It came with the din of the tocsin, and the beat to arms which, until that day had gathered the rabble to follow the tumbrils to the guillotine. The tocsin continued, and the rattle of the drums increased, and the trampling of feet towards the Luxembourg grew louder. The remnant of the suspects gathered in the gallery: the last massacre was to come. No! The doors were burst open; a shout went up. Robespierre had fallen. The Reign of Terror was finished.