a plan for a National Dictatorship, of which he himself was to be the first possessor.  The charge was sufficiently probable, and was not now heard for the first time.  But the keenness and fiery promptitude with which the speaker poured the charge upon him, gave it a new aspect; and I could see in the changing physiognomies round me, that the great democrat was already in danger.  He obviously felt this himself; for starting up from the bench to which he had returned, he cried out, or rather yelled—­

“Citizens, this man thirsts for my blood.  Am I to be sacrificed?  Am I to be exposed to the daggers of assassins!” But no answering shout now arose; a dead silence reigned:  all eyes were still turned on the tribune.  I saw Danton, after a gaze of total helplessness on all sides, throw up his hands like a drowning man, and stagger back to his seat.  Nothing could be more unfortunate than his interruption; for the speaker now poured the renewed invective, like a stream of molten iron, full on his personal character and career.

“Born a beggar, your only hope of bread was crime.  Adopting the profession of an advocate, your only conception of law was chicanery.  Coming to Paris, you took up patriotism as a trade, and turned the trade into an imposture.  Trained to dependence, you always hung on some one till he spurned you.  You licked the dust before Mirabeau; you betrayed him, and he trampled on you; you took refuge in the cavern of Marat, until he found you too base even for his base companionship, and he, too, spurned you; you then clung to the skirts of Robespierre, and clung only to ruin.  Viper! known only by your coils and your poison; like the original serpent, degraded even from the brute into the reptile, you already feel your sentence.  I pronounce it before all.  The man to whom you now cling will crush you.  Maximilien Robespierre, is not your heel already lifted up to tread out the life of this traitor?  Maximilien Robespierre,” he repeated with a still more piercing sound, “do I not speak the truth?” “Have I not stripped the veil from your thoughts?  Am I not looking on your heart?” He then addressed each of the Jacobin leaders in a brief appeal.  “Billaud Varennes, stand forth—­do you not long to drive your dagger into the bosom of this new tyrant?  Collot d’Herbois, are you not sworn to destroy him?  Couthon, have you not pronounced him perjured, perfidious, and unfit to live?  St Just, have you not in your bosom the list of those who have pledged themselves that Danton shall never be Dictator; that his grave shall be dug before he shall tread on the first step of the throne; that his ashes shall be scattered to the four winds of heaven; that he shall never gorge on France?”