for several months thirty feet under
ground, in a sort of well; the poor people who showed him hospitality
paid for it with their heads. Ah! how disenchanted he must have been
with that revolutionary policy of which he had been the enthusiastic
promoter! How sad was the farewell to life signed by him and Buzot:
"Now that it has been demonstrated that liberty is hopelessly lost;
that the principles of morality and justice are trodden under foot;
that there is nothing to choose between two despotisms,--that of the
brigands who are tearing the vitals of France and that of foreign
powers; that the nation has lost all its energy; that it lies at the
feet of the tyrants by whom it is oppressed; that we can render no
further service to our country; that, far from being able to give
happiness to the beings we hold most dear, we shall bring down hatred,
vengeance, and misfortune upon them, so long as we live,--we have
resolved to quit life and be no longer witnesses of the slavery which
is about to desolate our unhappy country."

{124}

After ending with this cry of grief and indignation: "We devote the
vile scoundrels who have destroyed liberty and plunged France into an
abyss of evils to the scorn and indignation of all time," the two
proscripts were found dead in a wheat-field about a league from
Saint-Emilion. Their bodies were half devoured by wolves.

And how will Andre Chenier end? On the day of the Swiss fete, the city
where such a scandal took place seemed to him insupportable. For
several days he sought refuge in the country where he could breathe a
purer air beneath the blossoming trees. But contemplation of nature
did not soothe him. Running to meet danger, he returned and threw
himself into the furnace, more ardent and indignant than before. With
manly enthusiasm he exclaimed: "It is above all when the sacrifices
which must be made to truth, liberty, and country are dangerous and
difficult, that they are accompanied by inexpressible delights. It is
in the midst of spying accusations, outrages, and proscriptions, it is
in dungeons and on scaffolds, that virtue, probity, and constancy taste
the pleasures of a proud and pure conscience." Andre had a
presentiment of his fate.

He was to die on the same day and the same scaffold as his friend
Roucher, a few hours earlier than the moment when Robespierre's
condemnation would have saved them. It is thus that he was to pay with
his life for his opposition to