principle, he went forth from this assembly a greater man than he had ever entered it. He had torn with a courageous hand the seal from the public conscience; that feeling responded to him throughout the nation, and throughout all Europe with secret applause. He had fortified himself, and had, if we may so say, endeavoured to consecrate himself by forming alliance with the loftiest idea of humanity. He who confessed God in the face of the people, would not hesitate, it was said, to disown crime and death. Every heart weary of hatred and contention secretly wished Robespierre all-powerful. This general desire in a government of opinion is, in effect, already omnipotence. He had seized the moral dictatorship on that day, upon the altar of the idea he had proclaimed. The force and the grandeur of the dogma which he had restored to the republic seemed to cast a halo round his name. On the morrow the remains of Jean Jacques Rousseau were conveyed to the Pantheon, in order that the master might be buried in the triumph of the disciple. Robespierre inspired this apotheosis. He bestowed upon the Revolution his true feelings, by this homage to the religious and almost Christian philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

BOOK LVIII.

I. THE hopes of a return to something like justice and moderation which were excited by these debates, were checked by two accidental causes, which prevented Robespierre from disclosing his projects, and moderating the revolutionary government, by raising himself above the committees. He did not at present dare to attempt two enterprises, either of which would prove amply sufficient to shake his popularity. He had just assailed atheism, and he now meditated the downfal of the reign of terror. But he still felt it necessary to grant the terroristes a short impunity until he had acquired the degree of popularity requisite to make all his colleagues bow before his pleasure. The committees were full of his secret enemies, and he knew that they would avail

themselves of the least appearance of moderation, to crush him by the hand of La Montagne, beneath an accusation of clemency, which they would pervert into treason. Before Billaud-Varennes, Barrère, Collot d'Herbois, and Vadier, he wore a mask of inflexibility, which exceeded their own; he felt that he could only quell them with their own weapons; and to attack them successfully, he must apparently surpass them in severity.

Hence a mutual contest of suspicion, proscription, and bloodshed; whilst the victims who perished beneath this struggle equally accused the barbarity of the one and the dissimulation of the other.

The committees suspected the moderate designs of Robespierre, and delighted in thwarting them by shielding themselves beneath his name; and the fear of his reproaches served as a pretext for all their crimes. This was the moment when this man must have felt the most remorse and humiliation, and have most bitterly repented having chosen so bloody a path through which to lead the people to their regeneration. The men whom he had first incited to this work, now swept him away in the current; and he served, whilst he detested them.

II. One of those adventurers who, born to misery, attribute to men the effects of chance, had just arrived at Paris, with the intention of killing Robespierre. His name was Ladmiral, and he was born amongst the mountains of Puyde-Dôme. He had been, previous to the Revolution, in the service of the Minister Bertin, and afterwards had been placed by Dumouriez in one of those precarious posts created by conquest, in Brussels, whence the changes of the Revolution had driven him. Maddened by his fall, his misfortunes preyed upon his mind until he looked upon his own discontent as the opinion of the nation; and he sought to involve in his destruction one of those famous tyrants whose name cleaves to that of their assassin and elevates him to immortality.

Robespierre was the man who occupied Ladmiral's thoughts, -for the Terror bore the name of Robespierre, and he assumed the responsibility of the age.

It so happened that Ladmiral lodged in the same house as Collot d'Herbois. Armed with pistols and a dagger, he watched

for Robespierre, and even awaited him for whole days in the passages of the Committee of Public Safety, but chance always deprived him of his intended victim. At length, wearied of seeking him, he deemed that fate pointed out another, and he waylaid Collot d'Herbois on the stairs of his house one night, when the proscriber of Lyons returned from the Jacobins, and snapped two pistols at him; the first flashed in the pan, and the second hung fire; the ball passed close by Collot's head and lodged itself in the wall; whilst Collot, grappling with his assassin, rolled down the stairs. The report of the pistol, and the noise of the struggle, soon gave the alarm. Ladmiral barricaded himself in his room, and threatened to fire on the first man who dared lay hands on him. A locksmith named Geffroy ventured to enter, and Ladmiral instantly discharged a pistol at him, which wounded him severely; he was, however, after a desperate struggle, seized, and brought before Fouquier-Tinville, and replied, when questioned, that he sought to deliver his country.

III. At the same moment a young girl of seventeen went to Robespierre's house and asked to see him; her youth and innocent appearance lulled all suspicion, and she was shown into the anteroom, where she remained, until at length her pertinacity excited attention, and she was desired to withdraw. She however refused, saying, that "a public man should at all times be accessible to those who wished to see him." The guard was then called in, and she was searched. In her basket were some clothes, and two small knives, quite incapable of being used by her as instruments of assassination. She was however brought before the tribunal of the Rue des Piques, and examined. "Why did you visit Robespierre?" she was asked. "I wished," she replied, "to see what a tyrant was like." This reply was tortured into a confession of a plot, and her arrest was supposed to be connected with Ladmiral's attempt. It was reported she was an agent of the English government, and that at a bal masqué at London, a woman dressed as Charlotte Corday, had brandished a poignard over her head, exclaiming, "I seek Robespierre." Others said the Committee of Public Safety had guillotined her lover, and that this was an attempt at revenge. Both were deceived; it was but the whim of a child, who sought to learn if the aspect of a tyrant would inspire her with

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hate or love. Her name was Cécile Renault, and her father was a paper-maker in the Cité. Why," she was asked, "did you provide yourself with these clothes?" "Because expected to be sent to prison." "Why had you these two knives; did you intend to stab Robespierre?" "No; I never wished to hurt any one in my life." "Why did you wish to see Robespierre?" "To satisfy myself if he was like the man I had pictured to myself." Why are you a royalist ?" "Because I prefer one king to sixty tyrants." She was however, with Ladmiral, placed in strict confine

ment.

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IV. The news of these two attempts, at the Convention and the Jacobins, caused an explosion of fury against the royalists, admiration for the deputies, and idolatry for Robespierre. Collot d'Herbois gained importance in proportion to the dangers he had undergone; for the poignard seemed to have marked the importance of these two leaders by singling them out. A poignard had deified Marat; the pistol of Ladmiral rendered Collot d'Herbois illustrious; and the knife of Cécile Renault consecrated Robespierre.

The Convention, on learning the first attempt, received Collot as the degraded senate of Rome received the tyrants of the empire when protected by the clemency of the gods. The sections were unanimous in their thanks to the genius of liberty, and it was proposed to decree a guard to the members of the Committee of Public Safety. On the 6th, the Jacobins assembled, and Couthon, borne on the shoulders of the people, thanked Heaven for the preservation of a life he devoted to his country. "The tyrants," cried he, "wish to rid themselves of us by assassination, but they know not that when a patriot expires, those who survive him swear over his corpse to avenge the crime, and perpetuate liberty."

Legendre sought to expiate his imprudence by the arrest of Danton, and again proposed to decree a guard to the members of the committee; but Couthon saw the snare, and replied that the members of the committee wished for no other guard than that of Providence, who watched over them, and that when necessary, republicans knew how to die."

Robespierre was the last to mount the tribunal, and in vain endeavoured to obtain a hearing amidst the thunder

of applause that welcomed him. When however, he at last could speak:

"I am," said he, "one of those whom these attempts have threatened the last. But I fully expected that the defenders of liberty would be a mark for the daggers of tyranny; and I have before told you that if we unmask factions and defeat our foes, we should be assassinated. What I predicted has come to pass; the soldiers of the tyrants have fallen traitors, have expiated their crimes on the scaffold, and poignards are sharpened against us. I felt it more facile to assassinate us than to vanquish our principles, and defeat our armies. I felt that the more the life of the defenders of the people is uncertain, so much the more they should hasten to perform actions useful to freedom. The crimes of tyrants, and the assassin's steel, have but rendered us more free, and more terrible to the foes of the people."

At these words a general shout of admiration burst from the people, and Robespierre threw himself into the arms of the Jacobins. He, however, soon remounted the tribune, and disdainfully opposed the motion of Legendre. The more Robespierre humbled himself, the more he triumphed; for the people pay in adoration all that their idol refuses to receive in majesty.

V. At the sitting of the Convention the next day, 17th June, Barrère exaggerated the dangers in two emphatic reports. He attributed to foreign governments, and especially to Mr. Pitt, the facts of having excited the madness of Ladmiral, and the childishness of Cécile Renault. The Convention pretended to believe these plots, and that it would protect the whole by shielding Robespierre beneath its ægis and its devotion. Barrère concluded by proposing an atrocious decree, which ordered the massacre of all the English or Hanoverian prisoners hereafter taken by the armies of the republic.

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Robespierre, called upon by the looks and gestures of all around him, followed Barrère. "It will be," he said to his colleagues, a fine theme for posterity; it is already a spectacle worthy of heaven and earth, to see the assembly of the representatives of the French people placed in an inextinguishable volcano of conspiracies, with one hand bring to