  Louise, guided by her faithful attendant Pierre, had left the courtroom directly after the condemnation. Leaning heavily upon him, the blind girl had staggered out, or pressed by the awful knowledge that her sister Henriette was doomed to die. “Oh, take me to her!” she had cried. There was only one thing to do: to follow the route of the death tumbrils, in the slight hope of overtaking her. The crippled Pierre could not walk fast, and the steps of Louise had to be most carefully directed. Now and again Pierre could see the death carts a long way ahead, he tried to hasten their steps, but presently the transports of death were out of sight again. A traffic tie-up and street delay that halted the tumbrils just beyond the scene of the bacchanalian Feast of Reason, gave them their opportunity. Here the revelers had burlesqued Henriette as the “Woman of Sorrows,” and here the guardsman had thrown off the chaplet and rebuked the crowd. During the halt Pierre and his companion came up with what speed they could; he led Louise to the back of the death cart, and placed her hands on the bound and standing figure of poor little Henriette. “It is your sister!” said Pierre softly. Gently the blind girl’s fingers traveled up to the wet face of her little foster-mother, now bending towards her. With a handkerchief Louise tenderly wiped it, her fingers gave loving little pats of the heaving neck and bosom, she kissed the stained cheeks, and then the girls’ lips met––met long and passionately! No words were spoken, none was needed for a reunion that was also a farewell. The cart moved. The loving lips were parted. Now one might see Louise’s imploring arms still held out toward the sad receding little figure. It was indeed a busy day for the executioners. Batches of men and women preceded Henriette and Maurice. Two of these were beautiful young girls who, in default of priest, were saying the last offices of the Church as they knelt on the bare ground. In tragic glory Faith’s clear Their lovely heads dropped in the basket as the knitting women clicked their needles and cried “Two!” Henriette, with a physical retch at the sight, fell back half-fainting on Maurice. Roughly the soldiers yanked them asunder. “Citizeness, your time is come!” said one of the brawny butchers. He half led, half supported her up the steps of the guillotine.... The Chief executioner turned Henriette about, inspecting her fine points as an equine connoisseur would inspect a filly. He gloated over her not yet budded form, the swan-like neck, unlined piquant features, the golden head-curls that fell in ringlets. “A pretty one––eh, Jean?” he commented to his assistant. Between the two, they had strapped her unresisting on the board. They lowered it below the razor edge of the knife, so that she lay prone with her neck directly underneath. The finale was to fasten on the neck piece, a round-holed cross board Alas! what avails it that five miles away––in the heart of the city––the hoofbeats of a company of cavalry resound rhythmically over the flagstones? Danton and his Northern riders are straining every nerve, galloping their steeds furiously––eyes fixed on the seeming-impossible goal. Rather are they modern centaurs, each rider and steed a unit of undivisible will and energy: Danton a furious resistless hippogriff, fire-striking, fire-exhaling, in unity with his white charger; the lean-jawed, sternly set Captain on his lean galloping Arabian, cyclonic, onrushing like some Spectral Horseman; the rest riding like the Valkyries––as it were, twixt Heaven and earth––their galloping beats scorning the ground as they rush by to the hissing of the cleaved and angry winds. But what avails it?... Even on the straightway ’twere a quarter-hour ride to the outer-suburban locality where the guillotine does its dreadful work. Ancient Paris with its tortuous streets delays them. Ahead, are Jacques-Forget-Not––Jacobin Poor little Henriette’s golden head! Is it not fated to drop in the basket long, long before they can appear? |
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