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Their vices, too, were the same; only Mirabeau's were those of a patrician, Danton's those of a democrat; that which there was of daring in the conceptions of Mirabeau, was to be found in Danton, but in another way, because, in the revolution, he belonged to another class and another epoch.
There was a rustling behind them of a lady's-dress, and the deep tones of a man's voice talking. Rose started away from his side, the guilty blood rushing to her face at sight of her elder sister on Doctor Danton's arm. Kate's clear eyes fixed on her sister's flushed, confused face, on the waxen camellia, her gift to her lover, and then turned upon Mr. Stanford.
On the 7th of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee. It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious attitude, his universal church of nature.
It would have been an easy matter for one of Leroux's agents to have cast a few handfuls of the deadly powder over the fish while the sleigh stood waiting outside Danton's door, and the jolting of the vehicle would have shaken the substance down into the middle of the heap, so that it would be three or four days before the dogs got to the poisoned fish. I was mad with anger.
Danton was so popular and so strong before a jury that the government appears to have distrusted even Fouquier-Tinville, for an order was given, and held in suspense, apparently to Henriot, to arrest the President and the Public Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal, on the day of Danton's trial. Under such a stimulant Fouquier did his best, but he felt himself to be beaten.
Henri was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left.
I had already come to the conclusion that M. Danton's instructions were to be taken by and large, for we could not now be more than twenty-five miles from the château, and it was only here that the Rivière d'Or left us, whirling in quick cascades, ice-free, among the rocks of its narrow bed, some distance east of us.
They shone, brilliant and keen, from beneath great tufted eyebrows, above which waved a very lion's mane of rough, dark hair. "A face to be remembered, this Monsieur Danton's," said Calvert to himself. And, indeed, it was. Years afterward, when he saw it again and for the last time, every detail of that rugged countenance was as fresh in his memory as it was at that moment in the Café de l'École.
To stamp a movement of the human mind, to stamp an age, to give the design to one gold coin from the mint of Time, what other prize worth striving for? The design? one thought of moderate Liberty and the head of Washington, another thought of Liberty and the head of Jefferson, another of License and a head like Danton's, another of Empire and a conqueror's head.
He had been handsome, you could see, even through that bloodless pallor, and there was a look in his great blue eyes that startlingly reminded you of Kate. "You two know each other already," said the Captain. "I claim you both as sons." Reginald grasped Harry Danton's extended hand, and shook it heartily. "Being brothers, I trust we shall soon be better acquainted," he said.
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