The Elusive Pimpernel | Page 4

of France; brave

generals, Custine, Blanchelande, Houchard, Beauharnais; worthy
patriots, noble-hearted women, misguided enthusiasts, all by the score
and by the hundred, up the few wooden steps which lead to the
guillotine.
An achievement of truth!
And still that sigh for more!
But for the moment,--a few seconds only,--Paris looked round her
mighty self, and thought things over!
The man-eating tiger for the space of a sigh licked his powerful jaws
and pondered!
Something new!--something wonderful!
We have had a new Constitution, a new Justice, new Laws, a new
Almanack!
What next?
Why, obviously!--How comes it that great, intellectual, aesthetic Paris
never thought of such a wonderful thing before?
A new religion!
Christianity is old and obsolete, priests are aristocrats, wealthy
oppressors of the People, the Church but another form of wanton
tyranny.
Let us by all means have a new religion.
Already something has been done to destroy the old! To destroy!
always to destroy! Churches have been ransacked, altars spoliated,
tombs desecrated, priests and curates murdered; but that is not enough.
There must be a new religion; and to attain that there must be a new
God.

"Man is a born idol-worshipper."
Very well then! let the People have a new religion and a new God.
Stay!--Not a God this time!--for God means Majesty, Power, Kingship!
everything in fact which the mighty hand of the people of France has
struggled and fought to destroy.
Not a God, but a goddess.
A goddess! an idol! a toy! since even the man-eating tiger must play
sometimes.
Paris wanted a new religion, and a new toy, and grave men, ardent
patriots, mad enthusiasts, sat in the Assembly of the Convention and
seriously discussed the means of providing her with both these things
which she asked for.
Chaumette, I think it was, who first solved the difficulty:--Procureur
Chaumette, head of the Paris Municipality, he who had ordered that the
cart which bore the dethroned queen to the squalid prison of the
Conciergerie should be led slowly past her own late palace of the
Tuileries, and should be stopped there just long enough for her to see
and to feel in one grand mental vision all that she had been when she
dwelt there, and all that she now was by the will of the People.
Chaumette, as you see, was refined, artistic;--the torture of the fallen
Queen's heart meant more to him than a blow of the guillotine on her
neck.
No wonder, therefore, that it was Procureur Chaumette who first
discovered exactly what type of new religion Paris wanted just now.
"Let us have a Goddess of Reason," he said, "typified if you will by the
most beautiful woman in Paris. Let us have a feast of the Goddess of
Reason, let there be a pyre of all the gew-gaws which for centuries
have been flaunted by overbearing priests before the eyes of starving
multitudes, let the People rejoice and dance around that funeral pile,

and above it all let the new Goddess tower smiling and triumphant. The
Goddess of Reason! the only deity our new and regenerate France shall
acknowledge throughout the centuries which are to come!"
Loud applause greeted the impassioned speech.
"A new goddess, by all means!" shouted the grave gentlemen of the
National Assembly, "the Goddess of Reason!"
They were all eager that the People should have this toy; something to
play with and to tease, round which to dance the mad Carmagnole and
sing the ever-recurring "Ca ira."
Something to distract the minds of the populace from the consequences
of its own deeds, and the helplessness of its legislators.
Procureur Chaumette enlarged upon his original idea; like a true artist
who sees the broad effect of a picture at a glance and then fills in the
minute details, he was already busy elaborating his scheme.
"The goddess must be beautiful ... not too young ... Reason can only go
hand in hand with the riper age of second youth ... she must be decked
out in classical draperies, severe yet suggestive ... she must be rouged
and painted ... for she is a mere idol ... easily to be appeased with
incense, music and laughter."
He was getting deeply interested in his subject, seeking minutiae of
detail, with which to render his theme more and more attractive.
But patience was never the characteristic of the Revolutionary
Government of France. The National Assembly soon tired of
Chaumette's dithyrambic utterances. Up aloft on the Mountain, Danton
was yawning like a gigantic leopard.
Soon Henriot was on his feet. He had a far finer scheme than that of the
Procureur to place before his colleagues. A grand National fete,
semi-religious in character, but of the new religion which destroyed and
desecrated and never knelt in worship.

Citizen Chaumette's Goddess of Reason by all