The butcher, Legendre, was to Danton what Danton was to Mirabeau, a step lower in the abyss of sedition.  Legendre had been a sailor during ten years of his life, and had the rough and brutal manners of his two callings, a savage look, his arms covered with blood, his language merciless, yet his heart naturally good.  Involved since ’89 in all the Revolutionary movements, the waves of this agitation had elevated him to a certain degree of authority.  He had founded, under Danton, the Cordeliers club, the club of coups de main, as the Jacobins was the club of radical theories; and he convulsed it to its very centre, by his eloquence untaught and unpolished.  He compared himself to the peasant of the Danube.  Always more ready to strike than to speak, Legendre’s gesture crushed before he spoke.  He was the mace of Danton.  Huguenin, one of those men who roll from profession to profession, on the acclivity of troublous times, without the power to arrest his course; an advocate expelled from the body to which he belonged; then a soldier, and a clerk at the barriere; always disliked, aspiring for power to recover his fortune, and suspected of pillage.  Alexandre, the commandant of the battalion of the Gobelins, the hero of the faubourg, the friend of Legendre.  Marat, a living conspiracy, who had quitted his subterranean abode in the night; a living martyr of demagogism, revelling in excitement, carrying his hatred of society to madness, exulting in it, and voluntarily playing the part of the fool of the people as so many others had played at the courts the part of the king’s fool.  Dubois Crance, a brave and educated soldier.  Brune, a sabre, at the service of all conspiracies.  Mormoro, a printer, intoxicated with philosophy.  Dubuisson, an obscure writer, whom the hisses of the theatre had forced to take refuge in intrigue.  Fabre d’Eglantine, a comic poet, ambitious of another field for his powers.  Chabot, a capuchin monk, embittered by the cloister, and eager to avenge himself on the superstition which had imprisoned him.  Lareynie, a soldier-priest.  Gonchon, Duquesnois, friends of Robespierre.  Carra, a Girondist journalist.  An Italian, named Rotondo.  Henriot, Sillery, Louvet, Laclos, and Barbaroux, the emissary of Roland and Brissot, were the principal instigators of the emeute of the 20th of June.

V.

All these men met in an isolated house at Charenton, to concert in the stillness and secrecy of the night on the pretext, the plan, and the hour of the insurrection.  The passions of these men were different, but their impatience was the same; some wished to terrify, others to strike, but all wished to act; when once the people were let loose, they would stop where destiny willed.  There were no scruples at a meeting at which Danton presided; speeches were superfluous where but one feeling prevailed; propositions were sufficient, and a look was enough to convey all their meaning.  A pressure