Robespierre himself requested silence for his enemy.  “Well,” added Guadet, alarmed or softened by Robespierre’s feigned generosity, “I denounce to you a man who, from love of the liberty of his country, ought perhaps to impose upon himself the law of ostracism; for to remove him from his own idolatry is to serve the people!” These words were smothered under peals of affected laughter.  Robespierre ascended the steps of the tribune with studied calmness.  His impassive brow involuntarily brightened at the smiles and applauses of the Jacobins.  “This speech meets all my wishes,” said he, looking towards Brissot and his friends; “it includes in itself all the inculpations which the enemies by whom I am surrounded have brought against me.  In replying to M. Guadet, I shall reply to all.  I am invited to have recourse to ostracism; there would, no doubt, be some excess of vanity in my condemning myself—­that is the punishment of great men, and it is only for M. Brissot to class them.  I am reproached for being so constantly in the tribune.  Ah! let liberty be assured, let equality be confirmed; let the Intrigants disappear, and you will see me as anxious to fly from this tribune, and even this place, as you now see me desirous to be in them.  Thus, in effect, my dearest wishes will be accomplished.  Happy in the public liberty, I shall pass my peaceful days in the delights of a sweet and obscure privacy.”

Robespierre confined himself to these few words, frequently interrupted by the murmurs of fanatical enthusiasm, and then adjourned his answer to the following sittings, when Danton was seated in the arm-chair, and presided over this struggle between his enemies and his rival.  Robespierre began by elevating his own cause to the height of a national one.  He defended himself for having first provoked his adversaries.  He quoted the accusations made, and the injurious things uttered against him, by the Brissot party.  “Chief of a party, agitator of the people, secret agent of the Austrian committee,” he said, “these are the names thrown in my teeth, and to which they urge me to reply!  I shall not make the answer of Scipio or La Fayette, who, when accused in the tribune of the crime of leze-nation, only replied by their silence.  I shall reply by my life.

“A pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, his doctrines have inspired my soul for the people.  The spectacles of the great assemblies in the first days of our Revolution have filled me with hope.  I soon understood the difference that exists between those limited assemblies, composed of men of ambitious views, or egotists, and the nation itself.  My voice was stifled there; but I preferred rather to excite the murmurs of the enemies of truth, than to obtain applauses that were disgraceful.  I threw my glance beyond this limited circle, and my aim was to make myself heard by the nation and the whole human race.  It is for this that I have so much frequented the tribune.  I