Robespierre had indeed fallen!  Tallien and his friends had in the Convention brought against the despot the accusation that he was striving for the sovereign power, and that he had enthroned a Supreme Being merely to proclaim himself afterward His visible representative, and to take all power in his own hands.  When Robespierre had endeavored to justify himself, he had been dragged away from the speaker’s tribune; and, as he defended himself, Tallien had drawn a dagger on Robespierre, and was prevented from killing the tyrant by a few friends, who by main force turned the dagger away.  Immediately after this scene, the Convention decided to arrest Robespierre and his friends Couthon and St. Just; and the prisoners, among whom Robespierre’s younger brother had willingly placed himself, were led away to the Luxemburg. [Footnote:  The next day, on the tenth Thermidor, Robespierre, who in the night had attempted to put an end to his life with a pistol, was executed with twenty-one companions.  His brother was among the number of the executed.]

The prisoners welcomed this news with delight; for with the fall of Robespierre, had probably sounded for them the hour of deliverance, and they could hope that their prison’s door would soon be opened, not to be led to the scaffold, but to obtain their freedom.

Therese de Fontenay, with the messengers sent by Tallien, left the Carmelite cloisters to fulfil the promise made by her to Tallien in her letter, to become his wife, and to pass at his side new days of happiness and love.

She embraced Josephine tenderly as she bade her farewell, and renewed to her the assurance that she would consider it her dearest and most sacred duty to obtain her friend’s liberty.

In the evening of the same day, Josephine’s camp-bed was restored to her; and, stretching herself upon it with intense delight, she said smilingly to her friends:  “You see, I am not yet guillotined; I will be Queen of France.” [Footnote:  “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine,” ch. xxxiii.]

Therese de Fontenay, now Citoyenne Tallien, kept her word.  Three days after obtaining her liberty, she came herself to fetch Josephine out of prison.  Her soft, mild disposition had resumed its old spell over Tallien, whom the Convention had appointed president of the Committee of Safety.  The death-warrants signed by Robespierre were annulled, and the prisons were opened, to restore to hundreds of accused life and liberty.  The bloody and tearful episode of the revolution had closed with the fall of Robespierre, and on the ninth Thermidor the republic assumed a new phase.

Josephine was free once more!  With tears of bliss she embraced her two children, her dear darlings, found again!  In pressing her offspring to her heart with deep, holy emotion, she thought of their father, who had loved them both so much, who had committed to her the sacred trust of keeping alive in the hearts of his children love for their father.