“But too much labour will bring on disease,” said Eleanor, in a tone which plainly showed the sincerity of the anxiety which she expressed.  “We never get a walk with you now; do you know that it is months since we were in the Champs Elysees together; it was in May, and this is October now.”

“Affairs must be greatly altered, Eleanor; many things which are now undone must be completed, before we walk again for our pleasure:  a true patriot can no longer walk the streets of Paris in safety, while traitors can come and go in security, with their treason blazoned on their foreheads.”

“And yet do not many traitors expiate their crimes daily?”

“Many are condemned and die; but I fear not always those who have most deserved death.  Much blood has been shed, and it has partly been in compliance with my counsel.  I would that the vengeance of the Republic might now stay its hand, if it could be so, with safety to the people.  I am sick of the unchanging sentences of the judges, and the verdicts of juries who are determined to convict.  I doubt not that those who are brought before them are traitors or aristocrats—­at any rate, they are not at heart republicans, and if so, they have deserved death; but I should be better pleased, if now and then a victim was spared.”  He paused for a while, and then added, “The blood of traitors is very sickening; but there are those Eleanor, in whose nostrils it has a sweet savour:  there are butchers of the human kind, who revel in the horrid shambles, in which they are of necessity employed.  Such men are to me accursed—­their breath reeks of human blood.”

Eleanor shuddered as she listened to him:  but it was not the thought of all the blood, which he whom she loved had shed, which made her shudder:  she had no idea that Robespierre was a sanguinary man:  she sympathized with the weakness of humanity which he confessed, and loved him for the kindness of his heart—­and he was not a hypocrite in his protestation; he believed that there was nothing in common between himself and the wretches who crowded round the last sufferings of the victims whom he had caused to ascend the scaffold.  He little thought that, in a few years, he would be looked upon as the sole author of the barbarities of which he now complained.

It was seldom that Robespierre had spoken so openly to Eleanor Duplay of his inmost thoughts.  She was flattered and gratified to think he had thought her worthy of his confidence, that he had chosen her to listen to the secrets of his heart, and she felt that, if she had influence with him, it would become her as a woman to use it on behalf of those whom it might be in his power to save from a fearful death.

“And are there many more who must die?” said she.  “When I hear the wheels of that horrid cart, as it carries the poor creatures who have been condemned, on their last journey, my heart, too, sickens within me.  Will these horrid executions go on much longer?”