on me.

this subject. He pointed out, with much affectation, to his colleagues, the marks of favour which the people bestowed Ten days ago he was at Boulanger's, when he saw that citizen's niece. Taking down a brace of pistols from the mantlepiece, she said they were loaded. Well,' said he, if I kill myself, they will say you assassinated me, and you will be guillotined!' He then fired at the young girl, but the pistols did not go off, because there was no priming. This man always had the air of an assassin who meditates a crime, and seems pursued by the image of the scaffold and the furies."

"Léonard Bourdon,'an intriguer despised by all—one of the inseparable accomplices of Hébert-Clootz' friend. Nothing can equal the baseness of the intrigues he practised to increase the number of his pupils, and to get scholars of the country. He was one of the first who introduced into the Convention the habit of debasing it by indecent customs, such as speaking with the hat on, and sitting in a cynical

"Merlin, celebrated for the capitulation of Mayence, and more than suspected of having received the price."

"Montaut, ci-devant Marquis, seeking to avenge his humiliated caste by eternal denunciations against the Committee of Public Safety."

XVII. In opposition to these men, and his mistrusts of them, he inscribed the names of those whom he proposed to call to the high functions of the republic. There was

Hermann for the Home Government; Payan or Jullien for Public Instruction; Henriot for the Mairie of Paris; Buchot or Fourcade for Foreign Affairs; D'Albarade for the Marine; Jaquier, brother-in-law of Saint-Just; Coffinhal, Subleyras, Arthur, Darthé, and a multitude of other obscure names, chosen from men amongst artisans, but remarkable for zeal, patriotism, and civic virtues.

Beside these names, fallen from his pen, to be gathered up again in the day of his power, were hundreds of letters signed or anonymous, which, at the same time, devoted to the tyrant of the Convention, apotheosis or death. These letters attested also, by their enthusiasm or invective, the powerful hold this name had taken, which, by itself, filled so many imaginations in the republic.

"Thou, who enlightenest the universe by thy writings," said one of these letters; "thou fillest the world with thy renown; thy principles are those of nature; thy language that of humanity: thou restorest men to their natal dignity. Second creator, thou regeneratest the human race!" "Robespierre! Robespierre!" says another; "I see youyou are looking to the Dictatorship, and you would destroy liberty. You have succeeded in removing the foremost supporters of the republic. It was thus that Richelieu contrived to reign, by causing the scaffold to flow with the blood of all enemies to his plans. You have contrived to get rid of Danton and Lacroix,- can you avert the blow from my hand, and the hands of twenty-two Brutuses like myself? Thirty times already I have tried to thrust a poisoned dagger into your heart. I would have shared this glory with others! You shall perish by the hand you do not suspect, and which presses yours!"

"I have seen thee," runs a third, "beside Pétion and Mirabeau, those sires of liberty; and now I see thee above corruption-proof in the bosom of corruption-erect in the midst of ruins. Do not trust to any but thyself for the execution of thy designs. Thou shalt be regarded in ages to come as the corner-stone of our constitution!"

"Thou livest still-tiger thirsting for the blood of France," says another epistle, "executioner of thy country! Thou still survivest! but thy hour approaches: this hand, which thy wandering eyes vainly seek to discover, is raised against thee. Every day I am with thee; every day, at every hour, I seek where to strike thee. Adieu: this very evening, gazing on thee, I will enjoy thy terror!"

Again: "Robespierre, column of the republic, soul of patriots, genius incorruptible, enlightened Montagnard, who seest all, foreseest all, unmaskest all, real orator-real philosopher, thou whom I know not, as God, but by thy miracles: the crown, the triumph are due to thee whilst awaiting until the civic incense smokes before the altar which we will raise to thee, and which posterity will revere so long as men shall know the reward of liberty and virtue!"

"You cannot choose a more favourable moment," (writes Payan, his most enlightened confederate in the Commune,) "to strike all the conspirators. Make, I repeat to you, an

extended report, comprehending all the conspirators, exhibiting all the conspiracies combined into one, so that all may see therein the Fayettists, Royalists, Federalists, Hébertists, Dantonists, and the Bourbons! Make a great work of it! This letter may destroy me-burn it!"

XVIII. In the midst of these public correspondences, domestic correspondence distracted the statesman by calling his attention to the divisions in his family. "Our sister, writes his young brother, "has not one drop of blood which resembles ours. I have learned and seen of her so many things, that I consider her our greatest enemy. She abuses our stainless reputation to make us the law, and threatens to take such an infamous step as will destroy us. A decided measure must be taken with her to compel her to go to Arras, and thus remove to a distance from us a woman who will else cause us deep despair. She would confer upon us the reputation of bad brothers!"

"It is then necessary for your tranquillity, that I remove to a distance from you," writes this sister in her turn; "It is even requisite, I am told, for the public good, that I do not live in Paris. I ought, above all things, to deliver you from so odious a sight. To-morrow you may enter your apartment without any fear of meeting me. Let my being in Paris no longer make you uneasy- I have no desire to associate my friends in my disgrace. I have need only of a few days to calm the disorder of my ideas, and to decide me as to the place of my exile. The quarter where the Citoyenne Laporte dwells, is where I shall go to for a time, as the place in the whole republic where I should be the least known."

But if Robespierre did not allow himself to be called off from his watchfulness over his foes, either by his domestic annoyances, or his extreme indigence, or by the flatteries he received, or the threats of his correspondents; neither did the committee allow their hatred, alarm, and sullen conspiracies against him to repose for a moment. Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Barrère, Vadier, Amar, Elie Lacoste endeavoured, by a redoubling of terror, to fortify themselves before the Convention and the Jacobins against any charges of indulgence which Robespierre might bring against them; on the other hand, they affected to cast on him solely the execu

tion of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and to represent him in their disclosures as the insatiable decimator of his colleagues. "Let him demand," said Barrère, "the heads of Tallien, Bourdon, Legendre, and we may discuss the matter; but the heads of all the chiefs of the Convention who disquiet him, we cannot consent to such wholesale demand for blood!"

They circulated amongst the benches pretended lists of the heads demanded by Robespierre, in order to excite by terror those who were not excited by envy. Moise Bayle, an influential member of the Committee of Public Safety, one day confessed this duplicity of the committee with respect to Robespierre. "Tallien," said Möise Bayle, " has committed so many crimes, that of five hundred thousand heads he would not preserve one if they rendered him justice. The committee has proofs and documents; but it is sufficient for him to be attacked by Robespierre for us to keep silence." The men menaced by Robespierre were warned by the care of the committee, even those whom he had only viewed with indifference. Nightly councils were held, sometimes at Tallien's, sometimes at Barras', with Lecointre, Fréron, Barras, Tallien, Garnier de l'Aube, Rovère, Thirion, Geoffroy, and the two Bourdons. They there concocted the means of rendering his name unpopular, of parrying or preventing Robespierre's blows, unmasking his ambition, and branding his tyranny. The extreme danger, profound mystery, the scaffold prepared and at hand, gave to this rising opposition the character, secrecy, and desperation of a conspiracy. Tallien, Barras, and Fréron were the prime movers. These three deputies, recalled from their missions at Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Toulon, threatened with the severe reckoning which Robespierre demanded of them, had very reluctantly laid down the omnipotence of their functions. Long absolute proconsuls, sovereign arbiters of life and property, it cost them much to become again simple deputies, trembling before a master. The dictatorial power they had exercised at the armies, the habits of combat, the pride of victories, services done to the republic, the uniform they had worn at the head of the regiments, imprinted something more martial and more peremptory on their acts and wishes. Camps learn to despise tribunes. Barras,

Fréron, and Tallien formed, in the midst of these men of words, the germ and nucleus of a military party, ready to cut with the sword the knot of the plot which was closing around them. Tallien communicated desperation, Fréron vengeance, Barras confidence, to the conspirators. They were three men of action, the more fit for hard blows, as they had the less superstition for the laws, and fewer scruples for liberty. Conspirators after Danton's mould, forgetting in revolutions principles, and seeing only circumstances; more in love with power and its enjoyment than of institutions; and desirous of saving, at any sacrifice, their heads, rather than laying them down calmly on the scaffold. Their tactics were to act-anticipate — strike.

BOOK LIX.

I. WHILE these men, afterwards called the Thermidoriens, devised means to destroy tyranny by force, the committees were occupied, with more cunning, in adopting means of compromising, isolating, and surrounding Robespierre in public opinion and in the Convention. To resist the influence against him before the Jacobins, it was necessary to combat with rigour and ferocity in the application of the terrible law of the 22d Prairial. Never had terror struck en masse more guilty, more suspected, and more innocent people, than since the day when Robespierre had resolved to put a limit to it. Fouquier-Tinville, the juries, and the executioners could not suffice for the daily immolation commanded by the committees. The Committee of General Safety, which had been held in secret, and which had as yet played but a subaltern part, while Robespierre ruled and surpassed all in the Committee of Public Safety, had become insatiable for proscription since his absence. There was an emulation of rigour and death between the two committees. Vadier, Amar, Jagot, Louis du Bas-Rhin, Voulland, and Elie Lacoste, the ruling members of the Committee of General Safety, equalled Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes in ardour. "This goes well, the harvest is good, -the baskets are filled," said one of them, signing the long

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