A TRIBUNAL UNDER THE TERROR.
By George H. Westley.
AMONG the pictures exhibited in the Salon of 1881 was one by M. Georges Cain, the title of which I have borrowed for the heading of this article. Those who have seen this painting will remember that the scene is laid in a dismantled cathedral. Behind a stone sarcophagus, a most appropriate bench for their merciless methods, sit the three stern-faced judges. In front of the sarcophagus is seen the man of law, his desk, a beautiful and costly piece of furniture looted from some neighboring chateau. To the right stands the public accuser, pointing with outstretched arm at a fair girl who with pleading looks confronts the judges, and who is closely guarded by gendarmes with fixed bayonets. A howling, bloodthirsty mob in the background completes the picture of a tribunal under the Reign of Terror.
During this awful period in French history, such episodes as the one depicted by M. Cain were daily to be witnessed. The girl prisoner, we are told, was of noble family, and her only crime was that she was possessed of a wealth, position and culture above that of the rabble who clamored for her life. It is difficult for us in these calmer days to conceive of the state of affairs which existed in Paris at that time. The annals of the period show the most fearful travesties upon justice. Under the motto "liberty, fraternity and equality," perverted to mean that the person of more gentle birth, greater gifts, or larger fortune than the common citizen was a traitor to the republic, hundreds and thousands of innocent victims were dragged before the dread tribunal, and having run the gauntlet of suborned witnesses, were sentenced and executed within an hour. Woe betide the unfortunate who exhibited a trait which suggested the aristocrat; let but that hated name be applied to him and his neck would shortly have intimate acquaintance with the guillotine.
The infamous Robespierre had no more zealous follower than Fouquier Tinville, the bankrupt to whom he gave the position of public prosecutor. This man was an exaggerated Jeffreys, exaggerated not only in the cruelty of his prosecutions, but also in the strain of repulsive jocularity with which he sent his victims to the death. In so whole sale a manner did Fouquier commit his judicial murders, that some considered him to have been irresponsible as a human agent. One writer says: "The labors of this enthusiast in his vocation were incessant. His mind became disordered from overwork. To his haggard eyes the Seine presented the aspect of a river of blood mingled with the corpses of his victims. In the zeal of extermination he believed him self the arm of the people, the glaive of the revolution; a life spared, one accused acquitted, preyed upon his spirits." Another says: "He had no soul — not even that of a tiger, which at least pretends to be pleased with what it devours."
Having reached a condition of callous indifference to human suffering, Fouquier allowed himself scarce a moment's respite from the terrible duties of his office. After a day's session, during which he snatched his meals from the table on which he drew up the sentences of death, he spent his evening counting over the new list of the doomed received from the Committee of Public Safety. So long were these lists that to draw up individual accusations was impossible, even if he had deemed it necessary, which he did not, for, as he frequently observed, one victim was as good as another, and if by some error in the charge a prisoner should go free to-day, he should surely not escape to-morrow. Having finished his
