The Memoirs of Victor Hugo Part 32

There were some horrible details.

On Friday night, while those who formerly were called _les maitres des ba.s.ses oeuvres_* were erecting the scaffold at the Barriere de Fontainebleau, the _rapporteur_ of the court-martial, accompanied by the clerk of the court, repaired to the Fort of Vanves.

* The executioner in France is officially styled _l'executeur des hautes-oeuvres_.

Daix and Lahr, who were to die, were sleeping. They were in casemate No.

13 with Nourry and Chopart. There was a delay. It was found that there were no ropes with which to bind the condemned men. The latter were allowed to sleep on. At 5 o'clock in the morning the executioner's a.s.sistants arrived with everything that was necessary.

Then the casemate was entered. The four men awoke. To Nourry and Chopart the officials said: "Get out of here!" They understood, and, joyful and terror-stricken, fled into the adjoining cas.e.m.e.nt. Daix and Lahr, however, did not understand. They sat up and gazed about them with wild, frightened eyes. The executioner and his a.s.sistants fell upon them and bound them. No one spoke a word. The condemned men began to realise what it all meant and uttered terrible cries. "If we had not bound them,"

said the executioner, "they would have devoured us!"

Then Lahr collapsed and began to pray while the decree for their execution was read to them.

Daix continued to struggle, sobbing, and roaring with horror. These men who had killed so freely were afraid to die.

Daix shouted: "Help! Help!" appealed to the soldiers, adjured them, cursed them, pleaded to them in the name of General Brea.

"Shut up!" growled a sergeant. "You are a coward!"

The execution was performed with much ceremony. Let this fact be noted: the first time the guillotine dared to show itself after February an army was furnished to guard it. Twenty-five thousand men, infantry and cavalry, surrounded the scaffold. Two generals were in command. Seven guns commanded the streets which converged to the circus of the Barriere de Fontainebleau.

Daix was executed first. When his head had fallen and his body was unstrapped, the trunk, from which a stream of blood was pouring, fell upon the scaffold between the swing-board and the basket.

The executioners were nervous and excited. A man of the people remarked: "Everybody is losing his head on that guillotine, including the executioner!"

In the faubourgs, which the last elections to the National a.s.sembly had so excited, the names of popular candidates could still be seen chalked upon the walls. Louis Bonaparte was one of the candidates. His name appeared on these open-air bulletins, as they may be termed, in company with the names of Raspail and Barbes. The day after the execution Louis Napoleon's name wherever it was to be seen had a red smear across it.

A silent protest, a reproach and a menace. The finger of the people pending the finger of G.o.d.

III. THE SUICIDE OF ANTONIN MOYNE. April, 1849.

Antonin Moyne, prior to February, 1848, was a maker of little figures and statuettes for the trade.

Little figures and statuettes! That is what we had come to. Trade had supplanted the State. How empty is history, how poor is art; inasmuch as there are no more big figures there are no more statues.

Antonin Moyne made rather a poor living out of his work. He had, however, been able to give his son Paul a good education and had got him into the Ecole Polytechnique. Towards 1847 the art-work business being already bad, he had added to his little figures portraits in pastel.

With a statuette here, and a portrait there, he managed to get along.

After February the art-work business came to a complete standstill. The manufacturer who wanted a model for a candlestick or a clock, and the bourgeois who wanted a portrait, failed him. What was to be done?

Antonin Moyne struggled on as best he could, used his old clothes, lived upon beans and potatoes, sold his knick-knacks to bric-a-brac dealers, p.a.w.ned first his watch, then his silverware.

He lived in a little apartment in the Rue de Boursault, at No. 8, I think, at the corner of the Rue Labruyere.

The little apartment gradually became bare.

After June, Antonin Moyne solicited an order of the Government. The matter dragged along for six months. Three or four Cabinets succeeded each other and Louis Bonaparte had time to be nominated President. At length M. Leon Faucher gave Antonin Moyne an order for a bust, upon which the statuary would be able to make 600 francs. But he was informed that, the State funds being low, the bust would not be paid for until it was finished.

Distress came and hope went.

Antonin Moyne said one day to his wife, who was still young, having been married to him when she was only fifteen years old: "I will kill myself."

The next day his wife found a loaded pistol under a piece of furniture.

She took it and hid it. It appears that Antonin Moyne found it again.

His reason no doubt began to give way. He always carried a bludgeon and razor about with him. One day he said to his wife: "It is easy to kill one's self with blows of a hammer."

On one occasion he rose and opened the window with such violence that his wife rushed forward and threw her arms round him.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded.

"Just get a breath of air! And you, what do you want?"

"I am only embracing you," she answered.

On March 18, 1849, a Sunday, I think it was, his wife said to him:

"I am going to church. Will you come with me?"

He was religious, and his wife, with loving watchfulness, remained with him as much as possible.

He replied: "Presently!" and went into the next room, which was his son's bedroom.

A few minutes elapsed. Suddenly Mme. Antonin Moyne heard a noise similar to that made by the slamming of a front door. But she knew what it was.

She started and cried: "It is that dreadful pistol!"

She rushed into the room her husband had entered, then recoiled in horror. She had seen a body stretched upon the floor.

She ran wildly about the house screaming for help. But no one came, either because everybody was out or because owing to the noise in the street she was not heard.

Then she returned, re-entered the room and knelt beside her husband.

The shot had blown nearly all his head away. The blood streamed upon the floor, and the walls and furniture were spattered with brains.

Thus, marked by fatality, like Jean Goujon, his master, died Antonin Moyne, a name which henceforward will bring to mind two things--a horrible death and a charming talent.

IV. A VISIT TO THE OLD CHAMBER OF PEERS. June, 1849.