Meanwhile, during these eight days, events were to pass which were to give a very different form to the state of things, and impart to the young republic a new, unexpected attitude.

Robespierre ruled yet, he was the feared dictator of France!  But Tallien had received the note of his beautiful, fondly-loved Therese, and he swore to himself that she should not ascend the scaffold, that she should not curse him, that he would possess her, that he would win her love, and destroy the fiend who stood in the way of his happiness, whose blood-streaming hands were every day ready to sign her death-warrant.

On the very same day in which he received the letter of Therese, he conversed with a few trusty friends, men whom he knew detested Robespierre as much as himself, and who all longed for an occasion to destroy him.  They planned a scheme of attack against the dictator who imperilled the life of all, and from whom it was consequently necessary to take away life and power, so as to be sure of one’s life.  It was decided to launch an accusation against him before the whole Convention, to incriminate him as striving after dominion, as desirous of breaking the republic with his bloody hands, and ambitious to exalt himself into dictator and sovereign.  Tallien undertook to fulminate this accusation against him, and they all agreed to wait yet a few days so as to gain amongst the deputies in the Convention some members who would support the accusation and give countenance to the conspirators.  On the ninth Thermidor this scheme was to be carried out; on the ninth Thermidor, Tallien was to thunder forth the accusation against Robespierre and move his punishment!

This enterprise, however, seemed a folly, an impossibility, for at this time Robespierre was at the height of his power, and fear weighed upon the whole republic as a universal agony.  No one dared oppose Robespierre, for a look from his eye, a sign from his hand sufficed to bring death, to lead to the scaffold.

The calm, peaceful, and united republic for which Robespierre had toiled, which had been the ultimate end of his bloodthirstiness, was at last there, but this republic was built upon corpses, was baptized with streams of blood and tears.  And now that the republic had given up all opposition, now that she bowed, trembling under the hand of her conqueror, now, Robespierre wanted to make her happy, he wanted to give her what the storms of past years had ravished from her—­he wanted to give the republic a God!  On the tribune of the Convention, on this tribune which was his throne, rose Robespierre, to tell with grave dignity to the republic that there was a Supreme Being, that the soul of man was immortal.  Then, accompanied by the Convention, he proceeded to the Champ de Mars, to inaugurate the celebration of the worship of a Supreme Being as his high-priest.  But amid this triumph, on his way to the Champ de Mars, Robespierre the conqueror had for the first time noticed the murmurs of the Tarpeian rock; he had noticed the dark, threatening glances which were directed at him from all sides.  He felt the danger which menaced him, and he was determined to remove it from his person by annihilating those who threatened.