This letter passed over the heads of the parties who disputed the conscience of the people; but the petition of the Directory of Paris, which demanded the veto of the king against the decrees of the Assembly, produced violent opposition petitions.  For the first time, Legendre, a butcher of Paris, appeared at the bar of the Assembly, where he vociferated in oratorical strain the imprecations of the people against the enemies of the nation and crowned traitors.  Legendre decked his trivial ideas in high-sounding language.  From this junction of vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence of the period resembles the ill-combined display at an extravagant parvenu.  The populace was proud at robbing the aristocracy of its language, even to turn it against them; but whilst it filched, it soiled it.  “Representatives,” said Legendre, “bid the eagle of victory and fame to soar over your heads and ours; say to the ministers, We love the people,—­let your punishment begin:  the tyrants must die!”

XIX.

Camille Desmoulins, the Aristophanes of the Revolution, then borrowed the sonorous voice of the Abbe Fauchet, in order to make himself heard.  Camille Desmoulins was the Voltaire of the streets; he struck on the chord of passion by his sarcasms.  “Representatives,” said he, “the applauses of the people are its civil list:  the inviolability of the king is a thing most infinitely just, for he ought, by nature, to be always in opposition to the general will and our interest.  One does not voluntarily fall from so great a height.  Let us take example from God, whose commandments are never impossible; let us not require from the ci-devant sovereign an impossible love of the national sovereignty; is it not very natural that he should give his veto to the best decrees?  But let the magistrates of the people—­let the Directory of Paris—­let the same men, who, four months since, in the Champ-de-Mars, fired upon the citizens who were signing a petition against one decree, inundate the empire with a petition, which is evidently but the first page of a vast register of counter-revolution, a subscription to civil war, sent by them for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all the slaves, all the robbers of the eighty-three departments, at the head of which are the exemplary names of the members of the Directory of Paris—­fathers of their country!  There is in this such a complication of ingratitude and fraud, prevarication and perverseness, philosophical hypocrisy and perfidious moderation, that on the instant we rally round the decrees and around yourselves.  Continue faithful, mandatories, and if they obstinately persist in not permitting you to save the nation, well, then, we will save it ourselves!  For at last the power of the royal veto will have a term, and the taking of the Bastille is not prevented by a veto.