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On 1st August, 1793, it was resolved that she should be tried. Robespierre opposed the measure, but Barere roused into action that deep-rooted hatred of the Queen which not even the sacrifice of her life availed to eradicate. "Why do the enemies of the Republic still hope for success?" he asked. "Is it because we have too long forgotten the crimes of the Austrian?
Then it was seen that, in naming Cambon, the orator had made a mistake. For Cambon, having had the self-command to wait until the Convention had passed its approving vote, rose to reply. He repelled the attack which Robespierre had made upon him, and turned the entire current of opinion by saying, "What paralyses the Republic is the man who has just spoken."
There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Ben, in France; by the English Government in the East Indies; or by any other assassin in modern times. Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done?
"She is no more, Madame," said the Marquis; "she was, unfortunately, guillotined two days before " the father of Madame Louis, he was going to say, when Talleyrand interrupted him with a significant look, and said, "Before the fall of Robespierre, you mean."
The Nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourgenieff, and completed by Dostoieffski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out of the debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life.
The man fired, and the head of Robespierre dropped on the table, deluging with blood the proclamation he had not finished signing. Next morning, adds this authority, Léonard Bourdon 'presented the gendarme who had fired at Robespierre to the notice of the Convention. Further: on Robespierre being searched while he lay on the table, a brace of loaded pistols were found in his pocket.
As to him, he seemed to regard the crowd with contemptuous pity; Saint-Just looked calmly at them; the rest, in number twenty-two, were dejected. Robespierre ascended the scaffold last; when his head fell, shouts of applause arose in the air, and lasted for some minutes. With him ended the reign of terror, although he was not the most zealous advocate of that system in his party.
He opened the next few papers mechanically, but steadied himself upon Robespierre asking him a question. For a time he worked on; but his brain was swimming, and he was on the point of saying that he felt strangely unwell, and must ask to be excused his work for that day, when he heard a ring at the bell, and a moment later Lebat entered the room.
A cousin of his was a member of the National Convention, and one of those called Mountaineers, or sturdy partisans of Marat and Robespierre. It was to the influence of this cousin, that he was indebted, first for a commission as an adjutant-general, and afterwards for his promotion to a general of brigade.
He proposed that Décadi should be converted into a new Sabbath; he caused the dregs of the Hébertists, including Gobel, to be indicted for atheism when their turn came for the Revolutionary Tribunal. Robespierre sending a renegade Archbishop of Paris to the scaffold for atheism marks how very far the Revolution had moved since the days of the States-General at Versailles.
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