appeared, and begged them to pardon the citizen who had insulted him.  His generous intercession was hailed with applause, and enthusiasm for Robespierre was at its height.  “Sacred vaults of the Jacobins,” were the words of an address from the departments; “you guarantee to us Robespierre and Danton, these two oracles of patriotism.”  Laclos proposed a petition to be sent into the departments, and covered with ten millions of signatures.  A member opposes this proposition, from love of order and peace.  Danton rises,—­“And I, too, love peace, but not the peace of slavery.  If we have energy, let us show it.  Let those who do not feel courage to rise and beard tyranny refrain from signing our petition:  we want no better proof by which to understand each other.  Here it is to our hand.”

Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau.  “They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!” More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition.  A man of calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly movement would split against the organised resistance of the bourgeoisie.  He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly.  Laclos pressed his motion, and the people carried it.  At midnight they separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition.

The day following was lost to sedition, by disputes between the clubs as to the terms of the petition.  The Republicans negotiated with La Fayette, to whom they offered the presidency of an American government.  Robespierre and Danton, who detested La Fayette—­Laclos, who urged on the Duc d’Orleans, concerted together, and impeded the impulse given by the Cordeliers subservient to Danton.  The Assembly watchful, Bailly on his guard, La Fayette resolute, watched in unison for the repression of all outbreak.  On the 16th the Assembly summoned to its bar the municipality and its officers, to make it responsible for the public peace.  It drew up an address to the French people, in order to rally them around the constitution.  Bailly, the same evening, issued a proclamation against the agitators.  The fluctuating Jacobins themselves declared their submission to the decrees of the Assembly.  At the moment when the struggle was expected, the leaders of the projected movement were invisible.  The night was spent in military preparations against the meeting on the morrow.

XI.