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You are to postpone execution so as to include all the Bouffay prisoners in the sentence." Although an ardent revolutionary, Phelippes was a logically minded man with a lawyer's reverence for the sacredness of legal form. This command, issued with such cynical coldness, and repudiated by none of those present, seemed to him as grotesque and ridiculous as it was horrible.
A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. "An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a bridge is like a link between Meryon and Piranesi," says D.S. MacColl. Meryon also studied under the tuition of a painter named Phelippes.
It is fitting that the scoundrels should die, and not eat the bread of starving patriots." Carrier shook his fist at the assembly. "You hear, you ! I cannot pardon whom the law condemns." It was an unfortunate word, and Phelippes fastened on it. "That is the truth, Citizen Representative," said Phelippes. "And as for the prisoners in Le Bouffay, you will wait until the law condemns them."
And, after all, what the Revolutionary Committee as a body intimidated by Phelippes dared not do could be done by his faithful and less punctilious friends of the Marat Company.
Let some one fetch the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal." He was fetched a man of good family and a lawyer, named Francois Phelippes. "Citizen President," Carrier greeted him, "the administration of Nantes has been considering an important measure. To-day you sentenced to death six prisoners in Le Bouffay for attempting to escape.
But there were members of the assembly who thought with Phelippes, and who, whilst lacking the courage to express themselves, yet found courage to support another who so boldly expressed them. Carrier sprang up quivering with rage before that opposition.
He was too amazed to be angry. "Moreover," Phelippes pursued calmly, "there is the fact that all the other prisoners in Le Bouffay are innocent of the offence for which the six are to die." "What has that to do with it?" roared Carrier. "Last year I rode a she-ass that could argue better than you! In the name of , what has that to do with it?"
"But that is impossible, Citizen Representative," said he. "Impossible!" snarled Carrier. "A fool's word. The administration desires you to understand that it is not impossible. The sacred will of the august people " Phelippes interrupted him without ceremony. "There is no power in France that can countermand the execution of a sentence of the law." "No no power!" Carrier's loose mouth fell open.
"Published according to the Scottish copie. Phelippes to Thos. Barnes, Cal.
He saw how the opposition of Phelippes had stiffened the weaker opposition of some of those in the assembly. If he was to have his way he would contrive better without the legal-minded President of the Revolutionary Tribunal. And his way he had in the end, though not until he had stormed and cursed and reviled the few who dared to offer remonstrances to his plan of wholesale slaughter.
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