“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre, tenderly.  “Good Couthon,—­poor Couthon!  Ah, the malice of men!—­how we are misrepresented!  To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!  Ah, it is that which pierces the heart!  To be an object of terror to the enemies of our country,—­that is noble; but to be an object of terror to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,—­that is the most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest heart!” (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be found expressed in his various discourses.)

“How I love to hear him!” ejaculated Couthon.

“Hem!” said Payan, with some impatience.  “But now to business!”

“Ah, to business!” said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his bloodshot eyes.

“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the Republic demands a complete concentration of its power.  These brawlers of the Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct.  They hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy by institutions.  How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being:  they would have no ruler, even in heaven!  Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one.  The first step towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers.  While we deliberate, your enemies act.  Better this very night to attack the handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions they may raise to-morrow.”

“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of Payan; “I have a better and safer plan.  This is the 6th of Thermidor; on the 10th—­on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete Decadaire.  A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the young pupils de l’Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd.  Easy, then, to strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents.  On the same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient number of ‘the suspect’ to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law.  The 10th shall be the great day of action.  Payan, of these last culprits, have you prepared a list?”

“It is here,” returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.

Robespierre glanced over it rapidly.  “Collot d’Herbois!—­good!  Barrere!—­ay, it was Barrere who said, ’Let us strike:  the dead alone never return.’ (’Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.’—­Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!—­good—­good!  Vadier of the Mountain.  He has called me ‘Mahomet!’ Scelerat! blasphemer!”

“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthon, with his silvery accent, as he caressed his spaniel.