No.  Hasten then!  Let the sword of the laws strike horizontally at the heads of great conspirators.  The news which has arrived to us from the army is of threatening import.  Already it sows division amongst the national guards and the troops of the line; already the blood of citizens has flowed at Metz; already the best patriots are incarcerated at Strasbourg.  I tell you, you are accused of all these evils:  wipe out these suspicions by uniting with us, and let us be reconciled; but let it be for the sake of saving our common country.”

BOOK XIV.

I.

Night was far advanced at the moment when Robespierre concluded his eloquent discourse in the midst of the enthusiasm of the Jacobins.  The Jacobins and the Girondists then separated more exasperated than ever.  They hesitated before this important severance, which, by weakening the patriotic party, might deliver the army over to La Fayette, and the Assembly to the Feuillants.[20] Petion, friend of Robespierre and Brissot, at the same time closely allied to the Jacobins and with Madame Roland, kept his popularity in equilibrium for fear of losing half of it if he decided positively for one side or the other.  He tried next day to effect a general reconciliation.  “On both sides,” he said, with a tremulous voice, “I see my friends.”  There was an apparent truce; but Guadet and Brissot printed their speeches, with offensive additions, against Robespierre.  They doggedly sapped his reputation by fresh calumnies.  On the 30th of April another storm broke out.

It was proposed to interdict all denunciations unaccompanied by proofs.  “Reflect on what is proposed to you,” said Robespierre:  “the majority here belongs to a faction, which desires by this means to calumniate us freely, and stifle our accusations by silence.  If you decree that I am prohibited from defending myself from the libellers who conspire against me, I shall quit this place, and will bury myself in retreat.”  “We will follow you, Robespierre,” exclaimed the women in the tribunes.  “They have profited by the discourse of Petion,” he continued, “to disseminate infamous libels against me.  Petion himself is insulted.  His heart beats in sympathy with mine; he groans over the insults with which I am assailed.  Read Brissot’s journal, and you will there see that I am invited not always to be apostrophising the people in my discourses.  Yes, it is to be forbidden to pronounce the name of the people under pain of passing for a malcontent,—­a tribune.  I am compared to the Gracchi:  they are right so to compare me.  What may be perhaps common between us is their tragical end.  That is little:  they make me responsible for a writing of Marat, who points me out as a tribune by preaching blood and slaughter.  Have I ever professed such principles?  Am I guilty of the extravagance of such an excited writer as Marat?”