“We are told ’the emigres have no evil designs against their country; it is only a temporary absence:  where are the legal proofs of what you assert? when you produce them it be time enough to punish the guilty.’  Oh you who use such language, why were you not in the Roman senate when Cicero denounced Catiline?  You would have asked him for the legal proof.  I can picture his astonishment to myself:  whilst he sought for proofs Rome would have been sacked, and you and Catiline have reigned over a heap of ruins.  Legal proofs!  And have you calculated the blood they will cost you to obtain?  Now let us forestall our enemies, by adopting rigorous measures; let us rid the nation of this swarm of insects, greedy of its blood,—­by whom it is pursued and tormented.  But what should these measures be?  In the first place seize on the property of the absentees.  This is but a petty measure you will say.  What matter its importance or its insignificancy, so that it be just.  As for the officers who have deserted, the Code penal prescribes their fate—­death and infamy.  The French princes are even more culpable; and the summons to return to their country, which it is proposed to address to them, is neither sufficient for your honour nor your safety.  Their attempts are openly made; either they must tremble before you, or you must tremble before them; you must choose.  Men talk of the profound grief this will cause the king:  Brutus immolated his guilty offspring at the shrine of his country, but the heart of Louis XVI. shall not be put to so severe a trial.  If these princes, alike bad brothers and citizens, refuse to obey, let him turn to the hearts of the French nation, and they will amply repay his losses.” (Loud applause.)

Pastoret, who spoke after Vergniaud, quoted the saying of Montesquieu, “There is a time when it is necessary to cast a veil over the statue of Liberty, as we conceal the statues of the Gods.”  To be ever on the watch, and to fear nothing, should be the maxim of every free people.  He concluded by proposing repressive, but moderate and gradual measures, against the absentees.

XVII.

Isnard declared that the measures proposed until then were satisfactory to prudence, but not to justice, and the vengeance which an outraged nation owed to itself; and he thus continued:—­

“If I am allowed to speak the truth, I shall say, that if we do not punish all these heads of the rebellion, it is not that we do not know, at the bottom of our hearts, that they are guilty, but because they are princes; and, although we have destroyed the nobility and distinctions of blood, these vain phantoms still affect our minds.  Ah! it is time that this great level of equality, which has passed over France, should at length take its full effect.  Then only will they believe in our equality.  You should fear by this evidence of impunity that you may urge the