]

"As a rule there was very little speechifying. 'La mort sans phrase,'
which had become the fashion since Louis XVI.'s execution, was strictly
adhered to. Half a dozen prisoners were brought in and taken away
without arousing the slightest excitement, either in the way of
commiseration or hatred. After having listened, the judges either
extended their hands on the table or put them to their foreheads. The
first movement meant acquittal and liberation, the second death; not
always by the guillotine though, for the instrument was not perfect as
yet, and did not work sufficiently quickly to please them. All at once
the priest was brought in, and a dead silence prevailed. He was not a
very old man, though his hair was snow-white.

"'Who art thou?' asked the president.

"The prisoner drew himself up to his full height. 'I am the Abbe
Pessoneaux, a former tutor at the college at Vienne, and the author of
the last strophe of the Marseillaise,' he said quietly.

"I cannot convey to you the impression produced by those simple words.
The silence became positively oppressive; you could hear the people
breathe. The president did not say another word; the priest's reply had
apparently stunned him also: he merely turned round to his
fellow-judges. Soldiers and gaolers stood as if turned into stone; every
eye was directed towards the table, watching for the movement of the
judges' hands. Slowly and deliberately they stretched them forth, and
then a deafening cheer rang through the room. The Abbe Pessoneaux owed
his life to his strophe, for, though his story was not questioned then,
it was proved true in every particular. On their way to Paris to be
present at the taking of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, the
Marseillais had stopped at Vienne to celebrate the Fete of the
Federation. On the eve of their arrival the Abbe Pessoneaux had composed
the strophe, and but for his seizure the authorship would have always
remained a matter of conjecture, for Rouget de l'Isle would have never
had the honesty to acknowledge it."

My tutor was right, and I owe him this tardy apology; it appears that,
after all, Rouget de l'Isle had not the honesty to acknowledge _openly_
his indebtedness to those who made his name immortal, and that his share
in the Marseillaise amounts to the first six strophes. He did not write
a single note of the music. The latter was composed by Alexandre
Boucher, the celebrated violinist, in 1790, in the drawing-ro