however, never fully investigated, or, at any
rate, the results of the investigation were never published.[37]

[Footnote 37: I have inserted them here in order not to fall
into repetitions on the same subject.--EDITOR.]

"We were all more or less aware," said my informant, "that Rouget de
l'Isle was not the author of the whole of the words of the Marseillaise.
But none of us in Lyons, where I was born, knew who had written the last
strophe, commonly called the 'strophe of the children,' and I doubt
whether they were any wiser in Paris. Some of my fellow-students--for I
was nearly eighteen at that time--credited Andre Chenier with the
authorship of the last strophe, others ascribed it to Louis-Francois
Dubois, the poet.[38] All this was, however, so much guess-work, when,
one day during the Reign of Terror, the report spread that a ci-devant
priest, or rather a priest who had refused to take the oath to the
Republic, had been caught solemnizing a religious marriage, and that he
was to be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal that same afternoon.
Though you may not think so, merely going by what you have read, the
appearance of a priest before the Tribunal always aroused more than
common interest, nor have you any idea what more than common interest
meant in those days. A priest to the Revolutionaries and to the
Terrorists, they might hector and bully as they liked, was not an
ordinary being. They looked upon him either as something better than a
man or worse than a devil. They had thrown the religious compass they
had brought from home with them overboard, and they had not the
philosophical one to take its place. You may work out the thing for
yourself; at any rate, the place was crammed to suffocation when we
arrived at the Hotel de Ville. It was a large room, at the upper end of
which stood an oblong table, covered with a black cloth. Seated around
it were seven self-constituted judges. Besides their tricolour scarfs
round their waists, they wore, suspended by a ribbon from their necks, a
small silver axe.

[Footnote 38: Louis-Francois Dubois, the author of several
heroic poems, "Ankarstroem," "Genevieve et Siegfried," etc.,
which are utterly forgotten. His main title to the recollection
of posterity consists in his having saved, during the
Revolution, a great many literary works of value, which he
returned to the State afterwards.--EDITOR.