Robespierre, in which he humbled himself before him, and which was found amongst the latter's papers after his death. "Robespierre," said Tallien, "the terrible and unjust words you have uttered yet rankle in my wounded heart; and I come, with all the frankness of an honest man, to give you some explanations! You have been for a long time surrounded by intrigants, who love to behold divisions amongst the patriots, and who fill you with prejudices against several of your colleagues, and more especially against me. Let my conduct be remembered at a time when I had much revenge to wreak. I appeal to you! Well, Robespierre, I have changed neither my principles nor my conduct; a friend to liberty, truth, and justice, I have not for an instant deviated. As for the expressions ascribed to me, I deny them; I know that to your eyes, and those of the committees, I am represented as a man of immoral conduct: let any one beset my house, and they will find me with my aged and venerable mother in the dwelling we occupied previous to the Revolution. All luxury is banished thence; and, with the exception of a few books, my property has not been augmented one sou. I have, doubtless, committed some errors; but they were involuntary, and the inevitable consequence of human frailty. Such is my profession of faith; and never will I abjure it, for such would be the conduct of a bad citizen, who sought to retard the progress of the Revolution. Such, Robespierre, are my sentiments. Living alone and isolated, I have but few friends, but I shall be ever the friend of the real defenders of the people."

Robespierre made no reply, for he did not esteem Tallien sufficiently to believe that his pen could ever be converted into a poignard. In a revolution, servile men are never sufficiently mistrusted; they alone are dangerous.

XIV. Some days after, Robespierre attacked a man more pliable and more redoubtable than Tallien - Fouché, and caused him to be expelled from the society for having preached atheism at Nevers. "Does this man fear to appear before you?" said he, to the Jacobins, "Does he fear the eyes and ears of the people? Does he fear, lest his sinister features should too openly display crime, and that the eyes of six thousand men should read his soul in his looks, and read his thoughts written there in spite of nature?"

The hatred felt against him now broke out more openly in the committees. Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just imperiously demanded that they should make use of the decree they had obtained, to send before the revolutionary tribunals the men who agitated the Convention. These men, Fouché, Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, Fréron, Thuriot, Robert, Lecointre, Barras, Legendre, Cambon, Léonard Bourdon, Duval, Audouin, Carrier, and Joseph Lebon. The committees hesitated, and Couthon appealed to the Jacobins.

"The shades of Danton, Hébert, and Chaumette are yet amongst us," said he, at the sitting of the 26th," and seek to perpetuate the evil done us by these conspirators. The republic has placed all her confidence in the Convention, who merits it, although there still exists amongst its members some few disaffected; but the time is come in which these scoundrels are to be unmasked and punished. Happily," continued he, "their number is but small -four or six. Let the wicked fall-let them perish!"

Violent altercations frequently took place between Robespierre and his colleagues. Billaud-Varennes made no secret of his suspicions of the use which the triumvirs proposed to make of the secret of the Prairial. "You then seek to guillotine all the Convention?" said he, one day, to Robespierre. Carnot and Collot d'Herbois also reproached Robespierre with the oppression he exercised over the government. Carnot was offended with Saint-Just, who affected to disarrange his military combinations with the thoughtlessness of a young man; whilst Vadier, the president of the Committee of Public Safety, shared the animosity of his colleagues.

On the evening of the day when Elie Lacoste was to make his report on the conspiracy of Ladmiral and Cécile Renault, Vadier came to the Committee. "To-morrow," he said to Robespierre, "I shall make my report in an affair which relates to this, and shall propose that the Sainte-Amaranthe family be included in the accusation." "You will do no such thing," replied Robespierre, imperiously. "I shall do it," was Vadier's rejoinder. "I have all the documents in my hand; they prove the conspiracy, and I will unveil the whole mystery." "Proofs or not, if you venture, I will attack you," retorted Robespierre. "You are the tyrant of the Committee of Public Safety," said Vadier. "Ah! I am the

tyrant of the Committee of Public Safety!" replied Robespierre, with difficulty restraining tears of rage; “Well then, I free you of my tyranny. I withdraw; save my country without me, if you can. I am resolved I will not renew the character of Cromwell." And he withdrew as he spoke, and never again entered the Committee of Public Safety.

Some regarded this absence and voluntary abdication as weakness, others as a skilful policy. The courage which Robespierre had hitherto shown in presence of his enemies, and which he subsequently exhibited in the presence of death, would not at all allow us to suppose that it was weakness that actuated him. From the moment when Robespierre could no longer restrain the committees by the ascendency of his will and his popularity, it seemed wiser to him to separate himself ostensibly from his colleagues. He thus acquitted himself of the responsibility of the crimes which marked his absence. He declared himself, by this absence, in open opposition with the government; and, as he meditated the overthrow of the committee, he could not remain, in the eyes of opinion, an accomplice of its acts. To abandon the committees, was a mute denunciation, more significative and more menacing than vain words. They waited to see on which side public opinion would range, and who would seize on it - the man or anarchy.

XV. But the retreat of Robespierre did not completely disarm him, even in the bosom of the committee itself; he still maintained an invisible hand in the focus of government. Saint-Just had just left for the army of the Rhine. His absence had left vacant in the Committee of Public Safety the presidency of the bureau of the General Police. Robespierre was charged with replacing his young colleague, and thus held in his hands the thread of every plot that could be contrived against him, and through the mediation of numerous spies of this police could catch his enemies in their own snares. Secret papers, found at his house after his fall, show the watchfulness he observed over all the most formidable members of the Convention and the committees. He kept up the main-spring of a proscribing government-information. He was no longer the head, but he was still the ear and eye of the revolutionary government. He was, too, the sole voice of the people, and had no doubt but that on the

day he should raise that voice accusingly against his enemies, he should upset the weak scaffolding of their hatreds and intrigues against him. But he desired that they should enter further into the snare which his absence opened to them, and be thus wounded themselves to death with the weapons he abandoned to them. He silently accumulated secret reports of them, noted down all their comings and goings, marked their language, and put his own construction on their thoughts. The following are amongst the testimonies or suspicions which he collected to enable him to select, at the hour of vengeance, from amongst his victims or his partisans. "Legendre," (thus wrote his spies to him,)" was seen yesterday, walking with General Perrin; their conversation was mysterious and animated. They parted at eleven o'clock. Legendre entered the Convention at noon, and left at one o'clock. It was remarked whilst he was walking in the Tuileries, that his physiognomy was marked with care and ennui. He was accosted by a person unknown, and they conversed in a low tone."

"Thuriot went out at seven o'clock, with a female from an unknown house, and they proceeded to the garden of the palace Egalité, where they walked under the trees. They entered into the house to sup, and had not quitted it at midnight."

"Tallien remained at the Jacobins' yesterday until the close of the sittings; when he left he was accompanied by a man who is generally with him, carrying a large stick. They took each other's arm, and conversed in a low voice as they left the garden Egalité. They were together until midnight. Tallien then went in a hackney-coach to Rue de Belle-Perle. The man with the thick stick escaped without our discovering his residence. He wears a red and white waistcoat, with wide stripes. He has light hair, and is about Tallien's age.

"Tallien did not leave his home yesterday until three o'clock P.M. One of his confidants told us that having asked why he no longer was talked about in the Convention, Tallien replied that he was disgusted from the time they had told him, in the committee, that he had not guillotined enough persons at Bordeaux. He has trusty agents, who inform him of all that is going on in the committees, and when he leaves home he is escorted by four citizens, who watch him from a short distance.

"Thuriot, Charlier, Fouché, Bourdon de l'Oise, Gaston, and Bréard, had a secret conversation together to-day in the Convention."

"Bourdon de l'Oise was seen yesterday in the street, motionless, deep in thought, and not knowing which way to go."

"Tallien was buying some books to-day, for an hour in front of a bookseller's, and looking around with a restless and suspicious glance."

XVI. These notes hourly informed Robespierre of the steps of his enemies. Couthon watched for him the interior of the Committee of Public Safety; David and Lebas, the Committee of General Security; and Coffinhal, the Revolutionary Tribunal; Payan, the Commune. No movement, no symptom, could escape him. Notes, in his own hand, revealed his continual meditations over the characters and previous lives of the men whom he prepared to crush with the committees, or to raise to the government. He drew up, in his secret manuscripts, a catalogue of his suspicions or his confidences.

"Dubois-Crancé," he writes, "amenable to the law which banishes from Paris for having usurped false titles of nobility, sent away, as an intriguer, to the army at Cherbourg. He has said it was necessary to destroy the last Vendean. A friend of Danton: partisan of D'Orléans, with whom he was extremely intimate."

"Delmas, a ci-devant noble, a worn-out intriguer-connected with the Gironde-friend of Lacroix-ally of Danton-is intimate with Carnot."

"Thuriot never was any thing but a partisan of D'Orléans. His silence, since Danton's fall, contrasts with his eternal chattering before that period. He secretly agitates la Montagne, and excites the factious. He was at Danton's and Lacroix's dinner at Gusman's, and in other suspicious places."

"Bourdon de l'Oise was covered with crimes in La Vendée, when he was participator with the traitor Tunk in all his orgies, killing soldiers with his own hand. He joined treachery to his fury- has been a fierce defender of the system of atheism. On the day of the fête of the Supreme Being, he uttered, on this question, some very coarse sarcasms on