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"Well," added Guadet, alarmed or softened by Robespierre's feigned generosity, "I denounce to you a man who, from love of the liberty of his country, ought perhaps to impose upon himself the law of ostracism; for to remove him from his own idolatry is to serve the people!" These words were smothered under peals of affected laughter.
He tried next day to effect a general reconciliation. "On both sides," he said, with a tremulous voice, "I see my friends." There was an apparent truce; but Guadet and Brissot printed their speeches, with offensive additions, against Robespierre. They doggedly sapped his reputation by fresh calumnies. On the 30th of April another storm broke out.
Emilion, they resolved that, rather than expose their benefactors to further peril, they would make an attempt to escape in different directions. Louvet got to Paris, and was the only one of the seven who did not come by a violent death. Guadet and Salles were captured at St. Emilion, and were executed, as a matter of course.
It only remained now to deprive the Girondists of their last asylum the assembly; this they set about on the 10th of April, and accomplished on the 2nd of June. Robespierre attacked by name Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Petion, and Gensonne, in the convention; Marat denounced them in the popular societies.
Scarcely was the report terminated than Guadet, who presided that day at the Assembly, mounted the tribune, and began to comment on the report of his friend and colleague.
M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions. "Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity.
Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Condorcet, Gensonné, Pétion, their friends in the Assembly, the council-chamber of Madame Roland, their Seids amongst the Jacobins balanced between two ambitions equally open to their abilities to destroy power or seize on it. Brissot counselled this latter measure.
The nomination of the ministers, which was entirely under the influence of Girondists, the councils held at Madame Roland's, the presence of Brissot, of Guadet, of Vergniaud at the deliberations of the ministers, the appointment of all their friends to the government offices, served as themes for the clamours of the exaltés of the Jacobins.
Gensonné, an advocate of Bordeaux, elected to the Legislative Assembly on the same day as Guadet and Vergniaud, his friends and countrymen, composed, with these deputies, that triumvirate of talent, opinion, and eloquence, afterwards termed the Gironde.
Brissot, Condorcet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Guadet, and especially Buzot, the friend and most intimate confidant of Madame Roland, strengthened at their evening meetings the mistrust of the minister.
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