Much of the city must have slept at night. But so much of it waked, so much of it roamed the streets, pressed with business, or watching and hearkening to others pressed with business, so much of it, all night through, burned candles in rooms great and small, so much of it talked, harangued and chanted that a visitor, suddenly in presence from afar, might have asked, “Have you conquered sleep?” Presumably children and the very old slept. Most others seemed in the streets or in the lighted rooms, or upon the floors or in the galleries of the red-capped, and tri-coloured, the haranguing, the fierce and red-hot, the immensely Patriot, the double-distilled revolutionary clubs. The city was fevered, fevered! Voices never stopped, footfalls never stopped, small surging, rushing sound of many patriot feet together never stopped. Lights never went out. At the deadest hour, when the night side of earth has almost forgotten the sun, yet rose in the streets voices of proclamation, yet some speaker found a group to address, yet somewhere beat a drum, yet somewhere, gusts of wind in leaves, Paris whirled in Ronde patriotique, later to be called Carmagnole.
Jacobins’ Club. They sat, they stood, they harangued, they applauded, they dissented, they stayed late in the Club of the Jacobins. At times they stayed all night, gods denouncing the old Titans. The gods, an unnamed Titan in their own element, had all the nave of the Jacobins{410}’ church. Up from pavement to hollow roof, tier on tier, climbed the benches, narrow stairs and galleries giving access. Thus was made circle above circle for patriot Paris, for patriot provinces come up to Paris, for forward-looking, revolutionary-minded units drawn to Paris from the elsewhere world, come to observe France and Paris and the cradle turnings of a mighty Change. Circle above circle sat full, even crowded. The topmost circle, putting up its hand, might touch the groined roof. The lowermost circle, shuffling feet on pavement, must look up a little to the platform and the seated officers of the Society.
The platform was built against a pyramidal, tall shape of black marble, a sepulchral monument left in the Church of the Jacobins. Back of officers were ranged, each in white plaster, each on his pedestal, busts of Patriots whom men must honour. Here were Mirabeau, American Franklin, and others. The lower throng of the amphitheatre faced these and the platform. But midway from floor to roof the circles drew level with the tribune. The tribune was built high, built very high, and midmost of the nave. A light stair climbed to it. Up here, as from a Simeon’s Pillar, as from a fount, hill-top high, came the voices addressing the Jacobins’ Society, Paris, France, Europe, and America, Mankind, Reason, and Unreason.
The autumn it was of 1791. In the Tuileries, guarded by red Swiss, still waked or slept as the case might be, a King and his family. The old Constituent Assembly had passed away; a new Assembly was beginning what work it might do. In the prisons waked or slept Suspects, but the prisons were not filled as they would come to be filled. Hope of a world that must change, changing temperately—it was still possible to indulge that hope! Even in{411} nightly meetings of the Society of the Jacobins it might be indulged. The gods had not yet loosed the mad god. They were going to war to the end with the Titans, but there seemed room for hope that these might be vanquished without calling in the ghastly allies, the monsters of the gods’ own deeps. There was room for pure natures to believe that. Why should victory be a Pyrrhic victory?
The Club of the Jacobins on an autumn night, and a fever of thought, crescent thought and senescent thought; concepts, rulers to come, hardly out of swaddling bands, and concepts tottering, failing, old men fiercely loth to come to the grave. Thought in a fever, and emotion a boiling deep....
The circles, red-capped, glowed like poppy beds. But the poppies stood not for sleep, nor for languorous “let the world go daffing by!” Noise ran and leaped through all the circles, fierce outbursts of “Yes!” and “No!”—fierce, exultant laughter, fierce muttering and growling of dissent. At times the myriad-brained produced from the heights of itself clearness, intelligence, and nobility. These were halcyon times, clear intelligence in the tribune, clear intelligence in the circles! The next hour, intelligence might weaken and doze away, and all the past rise in murk and storm.
From the tribune many and many had spoken, tongues eloquent and tongues stumbling, heavy-laden, minds of varying scope. Darkness and cold had spoken, and darkness and heat. Glowing heat had often spoken. Now and then light spoke. Hunger spoke, hunger of the body, hunger of the mind, hunger of the spirit, hunger and longing and all in varying degrees.
The night was September. Above Paris the cauldron{412} hung a tranquil sky, a great full moon. The cauldron boiled and bubbled, it sent forth restless particles, rising steam-mist, colours, blue and green and wine-red, scintillating. Where rose the ancient Church of the Jacobins, where debated the Revolutionary Society, called of the Jacobins, the cauldron boiled intensest.
The circles swept crowded from pavement to roof with patriots, citoyens, citoyennes, Parisians, provincials, citizens of elsewhere in the world, dreamers, hopers, and builders, sometimes with clouds, dwellers in Idea-land. Back of the platform, of the gleaming busts of Patriots, flags were draped. There were old Ideas made visible! Why should not other and greater Ideas get their incarnation?
Upon the president’s platform, beside the president and lesser officers of the Jacobins’ Society, sat, tricolor-cockaded, three or four who might speak this night, mounting the tribune high-raised between pavement and dome. One speaker was there now, a bulky Patriot, dark-visaged, black-headed, with a great voice that boomed and reverberated in the nave of the Jacobins. And he was a favourite, and the circles applauded. Passionate he waxed, sublime upon the Rights of Man!
At last he made an end, though still he spoke, coming down the stair, and while he made his way across the crowded pavement. The Jacobins applauded like a roaring wind, up and down the poppies shook!
The president rang his bell. He was speaking of the next speaker—a Patriot from the South. The Patriot from the South, nimble and dark, climbed the tribune stair and from the space atop saluted every quarter of the Jacobins, then fell to speaking, fierily and well. He had{413} for subject kings in their palaces, aristocrats entrenched, and National Assemblies too fondly dandling the past. The Jacobins roared assent, by acclamation gave him more than his set time. When he was done the circles were like a red sea in storm.
The president rang his bell thrice.... Here in the tribune stood an Englishman, slow but weighty, member of the London Corresponding Society, friend of Revolutions. He spoke of Independence, of the Power of the Mind, of the decaying foundations of Oppressions, of fair play and equal way, of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, lastly of the call to action very fully provided by this moment in the World-Epic.... The Jacobins applauded because they felt friendly toward English friends of Liberty, and because, indeed, many sat there who could listen absorbed to speech of abstractions. The Englishman ended, went with his cool deliberateness back to the platform. The president’s bell rang....
In the circles were very many women; in all Paris and France women were afoot while men rode. Women as spectators, as consolers, encouragers, applauders, inciters, women as m?nad participants, priestesses of the marching god, furies when there was need for furies—France and Paris understood these! In the circles sat citoyennes enough. Often enough, passionate and fluent enough, citoyennes sprang to their feet and harangued, urging bread for their young, freedom du peuple, bread—bread! Women, to-night, had place in all the circles, the higher, the midmost and the lower,—attendants’ place, sympathizers’, encouragers’ place, under due orders, participants’ place....
Upon the platform, on the bench behind the president, sat, with those who had earlier spoken, a man and a{414} woman. Behind them gleamed the flags and the Patriots’ busts and the great monument of black marble. The man and woman seemed about of an age, just this side perhaps of thirty-five. They were well-made, fair to look upon, light and strong, dressed, needfully, with simplicity, but here, where that was not required, with a clean simplicity. They sat looking into the hollow of the Jacobins, into the resounding shell.
The president’s bell rang. Standing, he was speaking of these two whom he himself had brought here to-night, of Jean and Espérance Merlin. It seemed that they had come from Brittany, from the sea, drawn to Paris, as others were drawn, because it announced itself soil for the sowing of Ideas. It seemed that Jean Merlin was a teacher who taught in a way that was not usual—a way that he and his wife had worked out together—Espérance Merlin no less than Jean. It seemed also that they were good, if quiet, lovers of France and that they had long and heroically relieved misery in their town by the sea. It seemed that once they had done the speaker a kindness—a kindness that he had never forgotten. If their ideas should ring strange to some.... Still, in that beautiful future that all might plainly see, many ideas that once rang strange.... “Citoyens, citoyennes, the Society of the Jacobins is hospitable to Ideas! They come to us upon the clouds, from east and west and north and south. And some we will take to heart and some we will not, but we will give to all a hearing. We shall not be afraid of strangeness.... Jean and Espérance Merlin!”
Speakers to-night to the Jacobins had each but short time. When the tribune was done, the floor, the galleries, the circles must speak. Now the red caps moved about,{415} the voices strongly murmured like a turbulent sea. Then the sea settled to hear Jean and Espérance Merlin.
The two mounted together the tribune stair. The man stood first in the speaker’s place, the woman sat down upon the topmost stair, awaiting her turn. A few in the hall of the Jacobins knew them, or knew of them, of what they did and thought in their country by the sea. These applauded. Jean Merlin began to speak.
Presently he motioned to the seated woman. She rose and stood beside him. She spoke, he resting from speech. Her voice was a deep bell, carrying through the Jacobins’ amphitheatre. She spoke of the Freeing of Women. The sweet and deep bell sound of her voice ceased; she stood silent while the man took the word. Again, the Freeing of Women. Freedom of Man and Freedom of Woman. The two speakers had simplicity, largeness, and strength; they had holding power. Deep and wide by now was their wisdom-garden, and beautiful, at times, the light that played there.
What they had come to say was said. They quitted the tribune, descended the tribune stair. In the hall of the Jacobins those travellers abreast with them, or close behind them, gave them applauding recognition. But very many disagreed, and some gave fierce expression to that disagreement. The two reached the floor, stood there among the throng. The president’s bell rang and rang again.... Here was a Patriot, urging from the tribune Fêtes and Demonstrations. The poppy circles were giving ear. On went the night in the Society of the Jacobins.
Continuously persons entered or quitted the amphitheater. The coming and going received no especial attention. On went the voices, the emotional heat, rapturous{416} agreements, sudden and violent disagreements.... Jean and Espérance Merlin rose at last from a bench in the shadow of that monument of black marble and, unobserved by most, went out of the Church of the Jacobins. Near the door stood together a woman and a man. As Espérance approached, the woman stepped forward; she put out her hand and touched the hand of Espérance. “I am an Englishwoman,” she said. “Mary Wollstonecraft. I cry ‘yea’ to what you said!”
Forth from the Society of the Jacobins, in the street, the two looked up to the heavens and the round moon. After heat and noise within here seemed infinite stillness and balm. The next moment the fevered heart beats, the fevered breathing of the city made themselves felt; the outward stillness and balm were gone. The fancy of each turned to their house by the sea, the cliffs and the sand and the sea and the world behind the sea. “Shall we go back soon?”
“Shall we?... This sea also calls for sailors.”
They had rented a clean, topmost floor in a house by the Seine. Now they made their way thither through the unsolitary, the still sounding streets. Up many steps they climbed, past doors of other occupants of the house. They unlocked and went in at their own door. Only the roof stood now between them and the sky of night. Moreover, there stretched a lower and jutting bit of roof, parapetted, and reached by a door opening from one of their two rooms. They lighted a candle; seated at a clean, bare table they ate a little bread, drank a little wine, then, rising, put out the candle and stepped from that other door out upon the guarded bit of roof. Here they had placed a bench. Now they sat down upon this, their arms upon the para{417}pet, above and around them the splendour of the night. They were up so high that the sound of the streets came muted, coalesced, like an ever running, even running stream. For a time they kept silence, then they talked, though with silences between their words.
“Put what will come on the top of the moment away.... The moonlight ... and thou and I.”
“Thou and I.”
“The long, the terrible, entrancing, ugly, and beautiful past!”
“And now all welcome. Rich ground for the fruit tree!”
“The without comes within ... and is made lovely.”
“And makes in time a without lovelier than the first.... And it goes on.... To dwell in the wondrous centre!”
They sat quiet. The sunlight poured upon the moon, the foam and spray back springing gave light to night-time earth. “Thou and I.... It is a night for memory!”
“I hear a voice singing in the street. Do you remember&m............