Then every revolutionary element began at once to combine against the king and the party which was thus supporting him.  It was soon apparent that the king and the Girondists could neither govern the country nor save themselves if they acted together.  The Gironde, from about this time, pusillanimously conceded point by point to the anarchic demands made by their enemies and the king’s.  Madame Roland did not join them in this, but when she saw that her husband was but a minister in name, that he and his associates were powerless to punish murder and prevent anarchy, doubtless the vision which she had seen of a people regenerated and free began to fade away.  The Gironde consented to the imprisonment of the royal family in the Temple.  This was not concession enough.  The Jacobins, with the mob at their back, accused them not only of lack of works, but of lack of faith, and when such an accusation against a party becomes the expression of a popular conviction, that party has nothing to do except to die.  To prove this charge untrue, the Gironde united with their enemies in abolishing the monarchy and establishing a republic.  Madame Roland drew up a plan for a republic, but it was too late for such a one as she desired.  Her scheme was federative, like our own, in which the provinces of France should have the status of states.  This plan was a blow at the mob of Paris, which, through the Jacobin clubs, with which France was thickly sown, controlled the nation.  The republic which followed was such only in name.  The mob of Paris now stepped from behind the transparent screen, whence it had moved all parties like wire-hung puppets, and stood disclosed before the world in all its colossal horror, stained with blood, breathing flames, and grasped directly the springs of power.  The national assembly was like a keeper of lunatics captured by his patients.  Its members were crowded in their seats by blood-thirsty men, depraved women, and by merciless visionaries, who clamored for extirpation and destruction, absolute and universal.

The power of Roland as a minister became as feeble as a shadow’s hand.  The blade of the guillotine rose and fell automatically.  Thousands fled from the city, upon which heaven itself seemed to rain fire and plagues.  The armies of foreign kings were upon the soil of France, and were fast advancing, and the wild rumors of their coming roused the people to panic, and frenzied resolutions of resistance and retribution.  Thousands, whose only crime was a suspected want of sympathy, were crowded into the prisons of Paris.  Hoary age, the bounding boy, the tender virgin, the loving wife, the holy priest, the sainted nun, the titled lady, filed along with the depraved of both sexes in endless procession through those massive gates, never more to see the sky and the green earth again.  For the mob had resolved to extirpate its enemies in the city before marching against foreign invaders.  It went from prison to prison, bursting in the doors, and slaughtering