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Bridoul folded the precious document and placed it in his pocket; then he turned to the assistant who was supporting Dolores and ordered him to deliver his charge to Robespierre's clerks; the man at once obeyed. Bridoul then came down from the platform and went to Coursegol. The latter began at once to question him. "Hush!" said he. "Not a word now! I will explain all in time!

How angered would not Robespierre be upon discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures contravened and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were few things more terrible in '93. It was an anger that shore away heads as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the idler's cane. For a second it daunted him.

Couthon, the execrable associate of Robespierre, was mildness itself Robespierre's harangues are in a style of distinguished sensibility and even Carrier, the destroyer of thirty thousand Nantais, is attested by his fellow-students to have been of an amiable disposition.

"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.

And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its meshes are reduced in size and its width increased; with such admirable contraption, the fishpond could not fail to be exhausted. A little before the 9th of Thermidor, David, who was one of Robespierre's devoted adherents, himself exclaimed: "Will twenty of us be left on the Mountain?"

Robespierre's speech should be printed, but it should not be placarded on the walls. At the Jacobin Club the rescinded vote of the Convention conveyed a meaning not to be mistaken. Robespierre repeated his Convention speech, which was greeted with acclamations. Billaud and Collot were received with hoots and groans, were driven out, and were erased from the list of members.

Then he sprang to the tribune, poured forth a Carmagnole about Pisistratus and Catiline, and concluded by moving that the heads of Robespierre and Robespierre's accomplices should be cut off without a trial. The motion was carried. On the following morning the vanquished members of the Committee of Public Safety and their principal adherents suffered death.

I remember that the Convention ordered the placing of these hemicycles in the garden, and they were executed from Robespierre's designs; but I suppose I am the only person who ever saw the games played that were expected to be played before them. It was a curious coincidence that the little livid-green man was also there, leaning against a tree and looking on with a half sneer.

After a time he came to the list of those marked out for execution on the following day, and saw with a fresh pang the name of Marie de St. Caux. So the crisis had arrived. That night or never Marie must be rescued, and his plan of forging Robespierre's signature must be put into effect that day.

This constitution of 1793 was, however, Robespierre's work, and certainly did not mean the introduction of Anarchy. But among the chiefs, at least, of that secret society that was once so powerful, we find no trace of it; on the contrary they declared absolute freedom to be a delusion which could never be realised.