She wrote out carefully and with a steady hand that denunciation of Citizen-Deputy Déroulède which has become an historical document, and is preserved in the chronicles of France.
You have all seen it at the Musée Carnavalet in its glass case, its yellow paper and faded ink revealing nothing of the soul conflict of which it was the culminating victory. The cramped, somewhat schoolgirlish writing is the mute, pathetic witness of one of the saddest tragedies that era of sorrow and crime has ever known:
To the Representatives of the People now sitting in Assembly at the National Convention
You trust and believe in the Representative of the people: Citizen-Deputy Paul Déroulède. He is false, and a traitor to the Republic. He is planning, and hopes to effect, the release of ci-devant Marie Antoinette, widow of the traitor Louis Capet. Haste! ye representatives of the people! proofs of this assertion, papers and plans, are still in the house of the Citizen-Deputy Déroulède.
This statement is made by one who knows.
II. The 23rd Fructidor.
When her letter was written she read it through carefully, made the one or two little corrections, which are still visible in the document, then folded her missive, hid it within the folds of her kerchief, and, wrapping a dark cloak and hood round her, she slipped noiselessly out of her room.
The house was all quiet and still. She shuddered a little as the cool morning air fanned her hot cheeks: it seemed like the breath of ghosts.
She ran quickly down the stairs, and as rapidly as she could, pushed back the heavy bolts of the front door, and slipped out into the street.
Already the city was beginning to stir. There was no time for sleep, when so much had to be done for the safety of the threatened Republic. As Juliette turned her steps towards the river, she met the crowd of workmen whom France was employing for her defence.
Behind her, in the Luxembourg Gardens, and all along the opposite bank of the river, the furnaces were already ablaze, and the smiths at work forging the guns.
At every step now Juliette came across the great placards, pinned to the tall gallows-shaped posts, which proclaim to every passing citizen that the people of France are up and in arms.
Right across the Place de l'Institut a procession of market carts, laden with vegetables and a little fruit, wends its way slowly towards the centre of the town. They each carry tiny tricolour flags, with a Pike and Cap of Liberty surmounting the flagstaff.
They are good patriots the market-gardeners, who come in daily to feed the starving mob of Paris, with the few handfuls of watery potatoes, and miserable, vermin-eaten cabbages, which that fraternal Revolution still allows them to grow without hindrance.
Every one seems busy with their work thus early in the morning: the business of killing does not begin until later in the day.
For the moment Juliette can get along quite unmolested: the women and children are mostly hurrying on towards the vast encampments in the Tuileries, where lint, and bandages, and coats for the soldiers are manufactured all the day.
The walls of all the houses bear the great patriotic device: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, sinon La Mort"; others are more political in their proclamation: "La Republique une et indivisible."
But on the walls of the Louvre, of the great palace of whilom kings, where the Roi Soleil held his Court, and flirted with the prettiest women in France, there the new and great Republic has affixed its final mandate.
A great poster glued to the wall bears the words: "La Loi concernan les Suspects." Below the poster is a huge wooden box with a slit at the top.
This is the latest invention for securing the safety of this one and indivisible Republic.
Henceforth every one becomes a traitor at one word of denunciation from an idler or an enemy, and, as in the most tyrannical days of the Spanish Inquisition one-half of the nation was set to spy upon the other, that wooden box, with its slit, is put there ready to receive denunciations from one man against another.
Had Juliette paused but for the fraction of a second, had she stopped to read the placard setting forth this odious law, had she only reflected, then she would even now have turned back, and fled from that gruesome box of infamies as she would from a dangerous and noisome reptile or from the pestilence.
But her long vigil, her prayers, her ecstatic visions of heroic martyrs had now completely numbed her faculties. Her vitality, her sensibilities were gone: she had become an automaton gliding to her doom without a thought or a tremor.
She drew the letter from her bosom, and with a steady hand dropped it into the box. The irreclaimable had now occurred. Nothing she could henceforth say or do, no prayers or agonized vigils, no miracles even, could undo her action or save Paul Déroulède from trial and guillotine.
One or two groups of people hurrying to their work had seen her drop the letter into the box. A couple of small children paused, finger in mouth, gazing at her with inane curiosity; one woman uttered a coarse jest, all of them shrugged their shoulders, and passed on, on their way. Those who habitually crossed this spot were used to such sights.
That wooden box, with its mouth-like slit, was like an insatiable monster that was constantly fed, yet was still gaping for more.
Having done the deed Juliette turned, and as rapidly as she had come, so she went back to her temporary home.
A home no more now; she must leave it at once, to-day if possible. This much she knew, that she no longer could touch the bread of the man she had betrayed. She would not appear at breakfast, she could plead a headache, and in the afternoon Pétronelle should pack her things.
She turned into a little shop close by, and asked for a glass of milk and a bit of bread. The woman who served her eyed her with some curiosity, for Juliette just now looked almost out of her mind.
She had not yet begun to think, and she had ceased to suffer.
Both would come presently, and with them the memory of this last irretrievable hour and a just estimate of what she had done.
Chapter XI
"Vengeance is Mine"
The pretence of a headache enabled Juliette to keep in her room the greater part of the day. She would have liked to shut herself out from the entire world during those hours which she spent face to face with her own thoughts and her own sufferings.
The sight of Anne Mie's pathetic little face as she brought her food and delicacies and various little comforts, was positive torture to the poor, harrowed soul.
At every sound in the great, silent house she started up, quivering with apprehension and horror. Had the sword of Damocles, which she herself had suspended, already fallen over the heads of those who had shown her nothing but kindness?
She could not think of Madame Déroulède or of Anne Mie without the most agonizing, the most torturing shame.
And what of him--the man she had so remorselessly, so ruthlessly betrayed to a tribunal which would know no mercy?
Juliette dared not think of him.
She had never tried to analyze her feelings with regard to him. At the time of Charlotte Corday's trial, when his sonorous voice rang out in its pathetic appeal for the misguided woman, Juliette had given him ungrudging admiration. She remembered now how strongly his magnetic personality had roused in her a feeling of enthusiasm for the poor girl, who had come from the depths of her quiet provincial home, in order to accomplish the horrible deed which would immortalize her name through all the ages to come, and cause her countrymen to proclaim her "greater than Brutus."