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of Versailles, seconded the motion of adjournment. Robespierre immediately came forward to combat this unexpected resistance. "There are," said he, "two opinions as old as our revolution; one, which tends to punish conspirators in a prompt and inevitable manner; the other which tends to absolve the guilty; this latter has never ceased to show itself on all occasions. It again manifests itself to-day, and I come to put it down. For these two months, the tribunal has been complaining of the shackles which obstruct its progress; it complains of the lack of jurors; a law therefore is required. Amidst the victories of the republic, the conspirators are more active and more ardent than ever. It behoves us to strike them. This unexpected opposition which manifests itself is not natural. You wish to divide the Convention; you wish to intimidate it." "No, no," cried several voices, "nobody shall divide us." "It is not we," added Robespierre, "who have always defended the Convention, it is not we that it will have occasion to fear. At any rate we have now arrived at the point where they may kill us, but where they shall not prevent us from saving the country."

Robespierre never missed a single occasion to talk of daggers and of assassins, as though he were still threatened. Bourdon of the Oise replied to him, and said that, if the tribunal was in need of jurors, it had but to adopt immediately the proposed list, for nobody had any wish to clog the march of justice, but that the rest of the projet out to be adjourned. Robespierre again ascended the tribune, and said that the law was neither more complex nor more obscure than a great many others which had been adopted without discussion, and that, at a moment when the defenders of liberty were threatened with the dagger, people ought not to strive to retard the repression of the conspirators. He concluded with proposing to discuss the whole law, article by article, and to sit till midnight, if needful, that it might be decreed that very day. The sway of Robespierre once more triumphed. The law was read and adopted in a few moments.

Bourdon, Tallien, and all the members who entertained personal apprehensions, were nevertheless alarmed at such a law. As the committees were empowered to bring all the citizens before the revolutionary tribunal, and not a single exception was made in favour of the members of the national representation, they were afraid of being some night apprehended and delivered up to Fouquier, before the Convention should even be apprized of it. On the following day the 23d of Prairial, Bourdon begged leave to speak. "In giving," said he, "to the committees of public welfare and of general safety the right to send the citizens before the revolutionary tribunal, the Convention certainly could not mean that the power of the committees should extend over all its members without a previous decree." There were cries from all quarters of "No, no."- " I fully expected these murmurs," continued Bourdon; they prove to me that liberty is imperishable." This remark caused a deep sensation. Bourdon proposed to declare that members of the Convention could not be delivered up to the tribunal without a decree of accusation. The committees were absent; Bourdon's motion was favourably received. Merlin moved the previous question; murmurs arose against him, but he explained and demanded the previous question with a preamble to this effect, that the Convention could not strip itself of the right of alone decreeing respecting its own members. The preamble was adopted, to the general satisfaction.

A scene which occurred in the evening gave still greater notoriety to this novel opposition. Tallien and Bourdon, walking in the Tuileries, were closely followed by spies of the committee of public welfare. At length Tallien, indignantly turned round, provoked them, called them base spies of the committee, and bade them go and tell their masters what they had seen and heard. This scene caused a strong sensation. Couthon and Robespierre were enraged. Next day they went to the Convention, resolved to complain bitterly of the resistance which they experienced.

have no other course left than to blow their own brains out.' From this moment there was mortal, though secret war, between Robespierre and the most distinguished members of the Assembly, who began to devise means of screening themselves from power which, like the huge anaconda, enveloped in its coils, and then crushed and swallowed, whatever came in contact with it."-Scott's Life of Napoleon. E.

Delacroix and Mallarmé furnished them with occasion to do so. Delacroix desired that those whom the law called corrupters of morals should be characterized in a more precise manner. Mallarmé inquired what was meant by these words; The law gives calumniated patriots no other defender than the conscience of patriot jurors. Couthon then ascended the tribune, complained of the amendments adopted on the preceding day, and of those which were then proposed. "It was slandering the committee of public welfare," he said, " to appear to suppose that it wished to have the power of sending members of the Convention to the scaffold. That tyrants should calumniate the committee was perfectly natural; but that the Convention itself should listen to the calumny-such an injustice was insupportable, and he could not help complaining of it. Yesterday a member prided himself on a lucky clamour which proved that liberty was imperishable, as if liberty had been threatened. The moment when the members of the committee were absent was chosen for making this attack. Such conduct," added Couthon, "is unmanly, and I propose to rescind the amendments adopted yesterday, and those which have just been submitted to-day." Bourdon replied, that to demand explanations concerning a law was not a crime; that, if he prided himself on a clamour, it was because he was pleased to find himself in unison with the Convention; that, if the same acrimony were to be shown on both sides, discussion would be impossible. "I am accused," said he, "of talking like Pitt and Coburg. Were I to reply in the same spirit, where should we be? I esteem Couthon, I esteem the committees, I esteem the Mountain, which has saved liberty."

These explanations of Bourdon's were applauded; but they were excuses, and the authority of the dictators was still too strong to be unreservedly defied. Robespierre then addressed the Assembly in a prolix speech full of pride and bitterness. "Mountaineers!" said he, "you will still be the bulwark of the public liberty, but you have nothing in common with the intriguers and the perverse, whoever they be. If they strive to thrust themselves among you, they are not the less strangers to your principles. Suffer not intriguers, each more despicable than the other, because more hypocritical, to attempt to misguide a portion of you, and to set themselves up as leaders of a party." Bourdon of the Oise here interrupted Robespierre, saying that he had never attempted to set himself up for the leader of a party. Robespierre without answering him proceeded thus: "It would be the height of disgrace, if calumniators, leading astray our colleagues-" Bourdon again interrupted him. " I insist," said he, "that the speaker prove what he is advancing; he has asserted in plain terms that I am a villain." -" I have not named Bourdon," replied Robespierre; "wo be to him who names himself! Yes, the Mountain is pure, it is sublime; intriguers belong not to the Mountain." Robespierre then expatiated at great length on the efforts which had been made to frighten the members of the Convention, and to persuade them that they were in danger. He said that it was the guilty only who were thus alarmed, and who strove to alarm others. He then related what had occurred the preceding evening between Tallien and the spies, whom he called the messengers of the committee. This recital drew very warm explanations from Tallien, and brought upon the latter abundance of abuse. At length, all these discussions terminated in the adoption of the demands made by Couthon and Robespierre.* The amendments of the preceding day were rescinded, those of that day rejected, and the horrible law of the 22d was left in its original state.

The leaders of the committee were once more triumphant. Their adversaries trembled. Tallien, Bourdon, Ruamps, Delacroix, Mallarmé, and all those who had made objections to the law, gave themselves up for lost, and feared every moment that they should be arrested. Though a previous decree of the Convention was still necessary for placing a member under accusation, it was still so intimidated, that it was likely to grant whatever should be demanded of it. It had issued a

* " Robespierre had at this critical period a prodigious force at his disposal. The lowest orders, who saw the Revolution in his person, supported him as the best representative of their doctrines and interests; the armed force of Paris was at his beck; he ruled with absolute sway at the Jacobins; and all important places were filled with his creatures." - Mignet. E.

decree against Danton; it was to be presumed that it would not hesitate to issue another against such of his friends as survived him. A report was soon circulated that the list was drawn up, and the number of the victims was stated to be twelve, and afterwards eighteen. Their names were mentioned. The alarm soon spread, and more than sixty members of the Convention ceased to sleep at their own homes.

There was, nevertheless, an obstacle which prevented their lives from being disposed of so easily as they apprehended. We have already seen that BillaudVarennes, Collot, and Barrère, had replied coldly to the first complaints of Robespierre against his colleagues. The members of the committee of general safety were more adverse to him than ever, for they were to be kept aloof from all cooperation in the law of the 22d, and it even appears that some of them were threatened. Robespierre and Couthon carried their demands to a great length. They were for sacrificing a great number of deputies; they talked of Tallien, Bourdon of the Oise, Thuriot, Rovère, Lecointre, Panis, Monestier, Legendre, Fréron, Barras. They wanted even Cambon, whose financial reputation annoyed them, and who had seemed adverse to their cruelties; lastly, they meant to include in their vengeance several of the stanchest members of the Mountain, as Duval, Audouin, and Leonard Bourdon.* The members of the committee of public welfare, Billaud, Collot, and Barrère, and all those of the committee of general safety, refused their assent. The danger, now extending to so great a number of lives, might very soon threaten their own.

They were in this hostile position, with not the slightest inclination to agree to a new sacrifice, when another circumstance produced a definitive rupture. The committee of general safety had discovered the meetings that were held at the house of Catherine Theot. They had learned that this extravagant sect regarded Robespierre as a prophet, and that the latter had given a certificate of civism to Dom Gerle. Vadier, Vouland, Jagot, and Amar, immediately resolved to revenge themselves, by representing this sect as an assemblage of dangerous conspirators, by denouncing it to the Convention, and by thus throwing upon Robespierre a share of the ridicule and odium which would attach to it. They sent an agent, named Senart, who, pretending to be desirous of becoming a member of the society, was admitted to one of its meetings. In the midst of the ceremony, he stepped to a window, gave a signal to the armed force, and caused almost the whole sect to be secured. Dom Gerle and Catherine Theot were apprehended. Upon Dom Gerle was found the certificate of civism given him by Robespierre, and in the bed of the mother of God was discovered a letter written by her to her beloved son, to the chief prophet, to Robespierre.

When Robespierre learned that proceedings were about to be instituted against the sect, he opposed that course, and provoked a discussion on this subject in the committee of public welfare. We have already seen that Billaud and Collot were not very favourably disposed towards deism, and that they viewed with umbrage the political use which Robespierre wished to make of that creed. They were for the prosecution. Upon Robespierre persisting in his endeavours to prevent it, the discussion grew extremely warm. He had to endure the most abusive language, failed to carry his point, and retired weeping with rage. The quarrel had been so vehement that, lest they should be overheard by persons passing through the galleries, the members of the committee resolved to adjourn their sitting to the floor above. The report on the sect of Catherine Theot was presented to the Convention. Barrère, in order to revenge himself in his own way on Robespierre, had secretly drawn up the report, which Vouland was to read. The sect was thus rendered equally ridiculous and atrocious. The Convention, horror-stricken by some parts of the report, at others diverted by the picture drawn by Barrère, decreed the accusation of the principal leaders of the sect, and sent them to the revolutionary tribunal.

Robespierre, indignant at the resistance which he had experienced and the insult* See the list given by Villate in his Memoirs.

ing language used towards him, resolved to cease attending the committee and to take no further part in its deliberations. He withdrew towards the end of Prairial (the middle of June). This secession proves of what nature his ambition was. An ambitious man never betrays ill-humour; he is irritated by obstacles, seizes the supreme power, and crushes those who have affronted him. A weak and vain declaimer is pettish and gives way when he ceases to meet with either flattery or respect. Danton retired from indolence and disgust, Robespierre from wounded vanity. His retirement proved as fatal to him as that of Danton.* Couthon was left alone against Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, and Barrère, and these latter were about to seize the helm of affairs.

These divisions were not yet bruited abroad. People only knew that the committees of public welfare and of general safety were at variance. They were delighted at this misunderstanding, and hoped that it would prevent fresh proscrip tions. Those who were threatened courted, flattered, implored the committee of general safety, and had even received the most cheering promises from some of its members. Elie Lacoste,† Moyse Bayle, Lavicomterie, and Dubarran, the best of the members of the committee of general safety, had promised to refuse their signature to any new list of proscription.

Amidst these dissensions, the Jacobins were still devoted to Robespierre. They made as yet no distinction between the different members of the committee, between Couthon, Robespierre, and St. Just, on the one hand, and Billaud-Varennes, Collot, and Barrère, on the other. They saw only the revolutionary government on one side, and on the other some relics of the faction of the indulgents, some friends of Danton's, who, on occasion of the law of the 22d Prairial, had opposed that salutary government. Robespierre, who had defended that government in defending the law, was still in their estimation the first and the greatest citizen of the republic; all the others were but intriguers, who must be completely destroyed. Accordingly, they did not fail to exclude Tallien from their committee of correspondence, because he had not replied to the accusations preferred against him on the sitting of the 24th. From that day, Collot and Billaud-Varennes, aware of Robespierre's influence, abstained from appearing at the Jacobins. What could they have said! They could not have exposed their solely personal grievances, and made the public judge between their pride and that of Robespierre. All they could do

* " Robespierre now in his retirement began to sink beneath the weight of a part greatly superior to his talents. New vices, foreign to his temper, but superinduced by the perturbation of his mind, added to the perplexity that bewildered him. That man whose heart was, I believe, never moved by the voice or appearance of a woman, latterly abandoned himself to debauchery. Often stretched out in a park, the proprietor of which had been his victim, and surrounded by the most degraded women, he sought the gratification of his sensual appetites. How many torments surrounded Robespierre in his asylum, the papers there found attest. He received a multitude of letters expressive of the wildest adoration; but others contained imprecations that must have congealed his blood. Read these appalling words that were addressed to him!' This hand that writes thy doom-this hand which thy bewildered eye seeks in vain this hand that presses thine with horror-this hand shall pierce thy heart! Every day I am with thee-every day I see thee -at every hour my uplifted arm seeks thy breast. Vilest of men! live still awhile to think of me. Sleep to dream of me! let my image and thy fear be the first prelude of thy punishment! Farewell! This very day, on beholding thee, I shall gloat over thy terrors!" "-Lacretelle. E.

† "Lacoste, minister of the marine in 1792, was, before the Revolution, head clerk in the navy office. Having attached himself to the Jacobins, he gave great displeasure to the royalists, who looked on him as a coarse and violent man. His enemies, however, confess that Lacoste was a worthy man, who, while following the Revolution, detested its excesses. In the year 1800 Bonaparte gave him a seat in the council of captures, which he still held in 1806."-Biographie Moderne. E.

+ " L. Lavicomterie, a writer, was deputy to the Convention, where he voted for the King's death. He was afterwards a member of the committee of general safety during the Reign of Terror, and participated in the proceedings of the members of the government. Some time after the fall of Robespierre he presented a statement on morality considered as a calculation; in this he insisted that the idea of a retributive and avenging God was absurd, that the human race would be eternal, and that men had no punishments to fear, no rewards to hope, beyond the present world. In 1798 Lavicomterie obtained a place in the office for regulating the registers, but was afterwards dismissed, and lived in obscurity at Paris."-Biographie Moderne. E.

was to be silent and to wait. Robespierre and Couthon had therefore an open field.

The rumour of a new proscription having produced a dangerous effect, Couthon hastened to disavow before the society the designs imputed to them against twenty-four, and even sixty, members of the Convention. "The spirits of Danton, Hebert, and Chaumette, still walk among us," said he; "they still seek to perpetuate discord and division. What passed in the sitting of the 24th is a striking instance of this. People strive to divide the government, to discredit its members, by painting them as Syllas and Neros; they deliberate in secret, they meet, they form pretended lists of proscription, they alarm the citizens in order to make them enemies to the public authority. A few days ago, it was reported that the committees intended to order the arrest of eighteen members of the Convention; nay, they were even mentioned by name. Do not believe these perfidious insinuations. Those who circulate such rumours are accomplices of Hebert's and of Danton's; they dread the punishment of their guilty conduct; they seek to cling to pure men, in the hope that, whilst hidden behind them, they may easily escape the eye of justice. But be of good cheer; the number of the guilty is happily very small; it amounts but to four or six, perhaps; and they shall be struck, for the time is come for delivering the republic from the last enemies who are conspiring against it. Rely for its salvation on the energy and the justice of the committees."

It was judicious to reduce to a small number the proscribed persons whom Robespierre intended to strike. The Jacobins applauded, as usual, the speech of Couthon; but that speech tended not to cheer any of the threatened victims, and those who considered themselves in danger continued nevertheless to sleep from home. Never had the terror been greater, not only in the Convention, but in the prisons and throughout France.

The cruel agents of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville, the accuser, and Dumas the president, had taken up the law of the 22d of Prairial, and were preparing to avail themselves of it for the purpose of committing fresh atrocities in the prisons. Very soon, said Fouquier, there shall be put up on their doors bills of This house to let. The plan was to get rid of the greater part of the suspected persons. People had accustomed themselves to consider these latter as irreconcilable enemies, whom it was necessary to destroy for the welfare of the republic. To sacrifice thousands individuals, whose only fault was to think in a certain manner, nay, whose opinions were frequently precisely the same as those of their persecutors, -to sacrifice them seemed a perfectly natural thing, from the habit which people had acquired of destroying one another. The facility with which they put others to death or encountered death themselves,* had become extraordinary. In the field of battle, on the scaffold, thousands perished daily, and nobody was any longer shocked at it. The first murders committed in 1793 proceeded from a real irritation caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; the republic was victorious; people now slaughtered not from indignation, but from the atrocious habit which they had contracted. That formidable machine, which they had been obliged to construct in order to withstand enemies of all kinds, began to be no longer necessary; but once set a-going, they knew not how to stop it. Every government must have its excess, and does not perish till it has attained that excess. The revolutionary government was not destined to finish on the same day that all the enemies of the republic should be sufficiently terrified; it was destined to go beyond that point, and to

* " During the latter part of the French Revolution it became a fashion to leave some mot' as a legacy; and the quantity of facetious last words spoken during that period would form a melancholy jest-book of considerable size." -Lord Byron. E.

"One prisoner alone raised piteous cries on the chariot, and struggled, in a perfect frenzy of terror, with the executioners on the scaffold-it was the notorious Madame du Barri, the associate of the licentious pleasures of Louis XV."-Lacretelle. E.

† "One of the most extraordinary features of these terrible times was the universal disposition which the better classes both in Paris and the provinces evinced to bury anxiety in the delirium of present enjoyment. The people who had escaped death went to the opera daily, with equal unconcern whether thirty or a hundred heads had fallen during the day."-Alison. E.