such is the name I give him-wished to divide the two committees. Do you know why he had principally marked me? Because I had drawn up a report that displeased him. Beneath the mattress of the mother of God, Catherine Théos, there was a letter addressed to Robespierre, announcing that his mission was foretold, and that he would establish a religion without priests, and be the pontiff of a new faith."

Robespierre shrugged his shoulders, and Vadier continued: 66 According to himself he is the only defender of liberty. His eternal note is, I am oppressed, — I cannot obtain a hearing; and yet he is the only one who speaks, and every word is an order. He says such a one conspires against me, therefore he conspires against the republic. Every deputy is followed by his spies; and I was pursued to the very table where I dined."

Vadier prolonged this portrait too much reflection might avert the blow. Tallien felt this, and exclaimed, — "I demand this discussion be brought back to the real question."

"I will bring it back myself," cried Robespierre, advancing, but his voice was again drowned amidst the clamours of the Montagne: and Tallien again spoke: -"Let us abandon these individual accusations," said he; "there is not one of us who could not lay some act of tyranny to his charge; but it is to the speech he made yesterday at the Jacobins I direct you, for it is there that the tyrant unmasks himself; there that I wish to strike at him. This man, who vaunts his virtue and patriotism at the epoch of the 10th of August, did not appear until three days after the Revolution, this man, who should have been the defender of the oppressed in the committees, has abandoned them for six weeks, to return and calumniate them at the moment when they saved the country; and if I wished to retrace all the acts of oppression which have taken place, I could prove they happened during the time Robespierre was at the head of the police."

Robespierre rushed forward. "It is false," exclaimed he, stretching forth his hand; "I- "The tumult again prevented him from being heard, and deprived him even of his courage. More irritated at the injustice of his foes than

alarmed at their number, he quitted the tribune, ascended the steps of La Montagne, and rushing amongst his former friends, appealed to them, reproached them with their defection, entreating them to give him a hearing. They all turned away their heads. "Withdraw from those benches, where the shades of Danton and Camille Desmoulins repulse thee," exclaimed the Montagnards. "Is it Danton, then, you would avenge?" asked Robespierre, as though overcome by astonishment and remorse. The benches falling was the only reply of the Montagnards. He descended again to the centre, and addressing the reliques of the Girondists with suppliant air, he said, "Well, it is from you, pure men, that I demand asylum, and not from these wretches;" and he pointed to Fouché, Bourdon, Legendre, &c., as he seated himself on an unoccupied bench. "Wretch," exclaimed the Girondists, "that was Vergniaud's seat!" At the name of Vergniaud, Robespierre arose, and went away hurriedly.

Rejected by all parties, he again took refuge in the tribune, and addressing the president in an angry tone, cried, in a voice which failed him, for the last time, "President of assassins! will you hear me?" "In your turn," answered Thuriot, to whom Collot d'Herbois had resigned the chair. "No! no! no!" shouted the conspirators, resolved to strike without a hearing. The tumult overwhelmed him,— nothing could be heard but the uproar of voices, nor seen but gestures, alternately threatening and suppliant. Robespierre's voice became hoarser, and finally extinct. "Danton's blood stifles thee," shouted Garnier de l'Aube, the friend and fellow-countryman of Danton. This was the finishing blow for Robespierre.

The hitherto unheard voice of an obscure representative, named Louchet, at last uttered the words on every lip, but which none had dared to pronounce. "I demand," exclaimed Louchet," the arrest of Robespierre."

XVIII. So momentous a resolution, the danger from without, long respect, for a moment paralysed the Convention. It appeared as though they were about assailing, in the person of Robespierre, the majesty and divinity of the people. Silence precedes explosion. The Assembly hesitated. The conspirators felt the danger. Some hands on the benches of

La Montagne gave the signal for applauding the proposal of Louchet. These applauses were prolonged and increased, until they burst forth into general applause.

At this moment a young man arose, in spite of the efforts of his colleagues to keep him down. It was young Robespierre, innocent, esteemed, pure from crimes and the tyranny reproached to his blood. "I am as guilty as my brother," he said, with a look which disdained entreaty and refused indulgence; "I have shared his virtues, I will share his fate." Some exclamations of admiration and pity responded to this fraternal devotion. The mass, indifferent or impatient, accepted the sacrifice without even honouring it with attention.

Robespierre endeavoured again to speak, not for himself, but for his brother: "I accept my condemnation: I have deserved your hatred; but, crime or virtue, he is not guilty of that which you strike in me." A noise of trampling of feet and sullen murmurs replied to him. In vain did he turn, now towards the president, now to La Montagne, now to La Plaine, to obtain the right of defending his brother. They were afraid of his voice, mistrusted all emotion, and shrunk from the voice of nature. "President," cried Duval, "shall it be said that one man is master of the Convention?" "He has been so too long!" shouted another. "Oh, how difficult it is to strike down a tyrant!" shouted Fréron, moving his arm as if he were driving an axe into the trunk of a tree. This phrase seemed to root out Robespierre from the tribune, and thrust him forth from the Convention. "Divide — divide! arrest- arrest!" This general exclamation appeared to overcome the feigned forbearance of the president. arrest was voted unanimously. All the members rose, and cried "Vive la Republique!" "The republic!" exclaimed Robespierre, ironically, "it is destroyed, for scoundrels triumph;" and he descended from the tribune with folded

arms.

The

Lebas, seated beside young Robespierre, rose also, and nobly stood apart from the proscribers of his friend: "I will not share the opprobrium of this decree: I demand the arrest of myself." The sentence of death Lebas asked was accorded to him; and he was included in the warrant of arrest of the two Robespierres, Couthon, and Saint-Just. Barrère,

the impassive and mechanical instrument of the Convention, drew up in haste the warrants against his colleagues of the previous evening.

Whilst Barrère was writing, "Citizens!" exclaimed Fréron, in order that the anger of the Convention might not doze, "it is now that the country and liberty will come forth from their ruins! There has been an attempt to form a triumvirate, which would have recalled the proscriptions of Sylla! These triumvirs, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just would have made of our bodies so many steps for mounting to the throne!" "I aspire to a throne!" replied Couthon, with melancholy irony, raising the cloak which covered his knees, and pointing to his powerless legs. Collot reassumed the president's chair. "Citizens," said he, "you have just saved the country. The country, rent to pieces, has not appealed to you in vain. They say that it was necessary to renew against you a 31st of May!" "You have lied!" cried Robespierre, from the foot of the tribune. At this the Convention affected to be insulted; and the shouts from La Montagne redoubled. They insisted on having the accused placed at the bar. Robespierre advanced towards it like a combatant still heated by his struggle; Saint-Just, like a disciple, proud of sharing his master's fate; Couthon, like a victim already mutilated; the two others, like innocent men, who voluntarily accept the penalty of their crime that they may not disavow their doctrines and their friends. There, mute and degraded from their rank of representatives, they forced them to hear, beneath the gaze of the tribunes, lengthened declamations of Collot d'Herbois, and the congratulations which their fall extracted from their adulators of the previous evenings. At three o'clock the sitting adjourned, and gens d'armes led the accused across the Place de Carrousel to the Hôtel de Brionne, where the Committee of General Safety was sitting. A crowd of deputies and lookers on crowded round to gaze on this last sport of fortune. The two Robespierres, arm-in-arm, in token of their individual attachment in life or death, walked foremost. Saint-Just and Lebas followed, calm and sorrowful. Two gens d'armes carried Couthon in an armchair. Sarcasms, shouts of laughter, and maledictions followed them.

XIX. At the same moment, a procession of carts, contain

ing forty-five victims, left the court-yard of the palace, and was advancing towards the Rue Saint Antoine to the scaffold. Some friends of the condemned, and some generous citizens, learning that the Convention was at issue, and believing that mercy would spring from tyranny destroyed, rushed after the carts, with cries of "Pardon," re-echoed by the people. Henriot, for whom the continuation of the terror was the sign of power, mounted on horseback, with a troop of satellites, dispersed the compassionate citizens with strokes of the sabre, and the executions were completed.

The previous evening, sixty-two heads had fallen between Robespierre's first harangue and his fall. Of this number was that of Roucher, author of Les Mois (the Months), those French Fasti; and that of the young poet, André Chénier, then the hope, and afterwards the everlasting regret, of French poesy. These two poets were seated side by side on the same bench, their hands fastened behind their backs. They conversed serenely of another world, disdainfully of that they were leaving: they turned away their eyes from the troop of slaves, and recited verses as immortal as their memories. They evinced the firmness of Socrates. André Chénier, when on the scaffold, striking his head against one of the posts of the guillotine, said, "It is a pity, for I had something here." Sole, but touching reproach to destiny, which complains not of life, but of genius, cut off before its time. The punishment completed, Henriot, returned with slow steps and as a conqueror, through the faubourg. France, like the crazed Ophelia of Shakspeare, tore from her brow and cast into the blood at her feet the brightest ornaments of her crown.

BOOK LXI.

I. THE moment was dangerous and critical, the two government committees had remained at the Tuileries during the suspension of the sitting of the Convention; this suspension was a great risk to the Convention, whose only strength consisted in itself. To bestow one minute on reflection was