“How can the republic hope to avoid destruction?  We are continually told of the necessity of uniting ourselves; but when Antony encamped at the side of Lepidus, and all the foes to freedom were united to those who termed themselves its defenders, nought remained for Brutus and Cassius, save to die.

“It is to this point that this feigned unanimity, this perfidious reconciliation of patriots, tends.  Yes, this is the fate prepared for you.  I know that by daring to unveil these conspiracies I sharpen a thousand daggers against my own life.  I know the fate that awaits me; but if, when almost unknown in the National Assembly, I, amongst the earliest apostles of liberty, sacrificed my life to the cause of truth, of humanity, of my country; to-day, when I have been so amply repaid for this sacrifice, by such marks of universal goodwill, consideration, and regard, I shall look at death as a mercy, if it prevents my witnessing such misfortunes.  I have tried the Assembly, let them in their turn try me.”

XIX.

These words so artfully combined, and calculated to fill every breast with suspicion, were hailed like the last speech of a martyr for liberty.  All eyes were suffused with tears.  “We will die with you,” cried Camille Desmoulins, extending his arms towards Robespierre, as though he would fain embrace him.  His excitable and changeable spirit was borne away by the breath of each new enthusiastic impulse.  He passed from the arms of La Fayette into those of Robespierre like a courtezan.  Eight hundred persons rose en masse; and by their attitudes, their gestures, their spontaneous and unanimous inspiration, offered one of those most imposing tableaux, that prove how great is the effect of oratory, passion, and circumstance over an assembled people.  After they had all individually sworn to defend Robespierre’s life, they were informed of the arrival of the ministers and members of the Assembly who had belonged to the club in ’89, and who in this perilous state of their country, had come to fraternise with the Jacobins.

“Monsieur le President,” cried Danton, “if the traitors venture to present themselves, I undertake solemnly either that my head shall fall on the scaffold, or to prove that their heads should roll at the feet of the nation they have betrayed.”

The deputies entered:  Danton, recognising La Fayette amongst them, mounted the tribunal, and addressing the general, said:—­“It is my turn to speak, and I will speak as though I were writing a history for the use of future ages.  How do you dare, M. de La Fayette, to join the friends of the constitution; you, who are a friend and partisan of the system of the two chambers invented by the priest Sieyes, a system destructive of the constitution and liberty?  Did you not yourself tell me that the project of M. Mounier was too execrable for any one to venture to reproduce it, but that it was possible