The physician answered, “I can no longer resist the impulse of nature.  I know I shall thereby oppose myself to your power, but I must tell you, you are generally abhorred,—­considered the Attila, the Sylla, of the age,—­the two-footed plague, that, walks about to fill peaceful abodes with miseries and family mournings.  The myriads you are daily sending to the slaughter at the Place de Greve, who have, committed no crime, the carts of a certain description, you have ordered daily to bear a stated number to be sacrificed, directing they should be taken from the prisons, and, if enough are not in the prisons, seized, indiscriminately in the streets, that no place in the deadly vehicle may be left unoccupied, and all this without a trial, without even an accusation, and without any sanction but your own mandate—­these things call the public curse upon you, which is not the less bitter for not being audible.”

“Ah!” said Robespierre, laughing.  “This puts me in mind of a story told of the cruelty and tyranny, of Pope Sixtus the Fifth, who, having one night, after he had enjoyed himself at a Bacchanalian supper, when heated with wine, by way of a ‘bonne bouche’, ordered the first man that should come through the gate of the ‘Strada del popolo’ at Rome to be immediately hanged.  Every person at this drunken conclave—­nay, all Rome—­considered the Pope a tyrant, the most cruel of tyrants, till it was made known and proved, after his death, that the wretch so executed had murdered his father and mother ten years previously.  I know whom I send to the Place de Greve.  All who go there are guilty, though they may not seem so.  Go on, what else have you heard?”

“Why, that you have so terrified all descriptions of persons, that they fear even your very breath, and look upon you as worse than the plague; and I should not be surprised, if you persist in this course of conduct, if something serious to yourself should be the consequence, and that ere long.”

Not the least extraordinary part of the story is that this dialogue between the devil and the doctor took place but a very, few hours previous to Robespierre’s being denounced by Tallien and Carriere to the national convention, as a conspirator against the republican cause.  In defending himself from being arrested by the guard, he attempted to shoot himself, but the ball missed, broke the monster’s jaw-bone only, and nearly impeded his speaking.

Singularly enough, it was this physician who was sent for to assist and dress his wounds.  Robespierre replied to the doctor’s observations, laughing, and in the following language: 

“Oh, poor devils! they do not know their own interest.  But my plan of exterminating the evil will soon teach them.  This is the only thing for the good of the nation; for, before you can reform a thousand Frenchmen, you must first lop off half a million of these vagabonds, and, if God spare my life, in a few months there will be so many the less to breed internal commotions, and disturb the general peace of Europe.