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He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud's that most eloquent Girondon and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution.
"Yes, I know it," and Vergniaud's eyes were clouded and his brows knitted, "I know it only too well! Greater than any fault of Church- discipline is a wrong to human life, and I wronged and betrayed an innocent woman who loved me! Her soul was as sweet as the honey-cup of a flower, I poisoned it. That was as bad as poisoning the Sacrament!
And he easily perceived where the real trouble lay, namely, in the fact of his having condoned the Abbe Vergniaud's public confession.
Gherardi raised his dark eyes and fixed them, full of bitterest scorn, on the speaker. "So YOU are Gys Grandit!" he said in accents which thrilled with an intensity of hatred. "You are the busy Socialist, the self- advertising atheist, who, like a yelping cur, barks impotently under the wheels of Rome! You Vergniaud's bastard "
He recognised that there was a desire on the part of the Pope to place Cardinal Bonpre under close observance and restraint on account of his having condoned the Abbe Vergniaud's confession to his congregation in Paris; and he rightly judged that anything he could do to aid the accomplishment of that end would not be without its reward.
His demeanor and his language also were widely different from those of the Girondists. Their hearts were heavy, and their deportment was that of men oppressed by sorrow. It was Vergniaud's duty to proclaim the result of the roll call. His face was pale, and he trembled with emotion, as in a low and broken voice he announced that Louis was condemned to death.
Through the swaying, tumultuous, murmuring throng came a sudden stillness, and everyone drew back as the gendarmes responding to Abbe Vergniaud's command, pushed their way along, dragging and hustling their prisoner between them, a young black-browed, black- eyed peasant with a handsome face and proud bearing, whose defiant manner implied that having made one fierce struggle for liberty and finding it in vain, he was now disdainfully resigned to the inevitable.
Will he be more fortunate than ourselves? No, the soul is too weak to nourish the roots of civic liberty; this people is too childish to wield its laws without hurting itself. We were deceived as to the age in which we were born, and in which we die for the freedom of the world." A long silence followed this speech of Vergniaud's, and the conversation turned from earth to heaven.
Abbe Vergniaud's sermon had stung him in several ways, and the startling FINALE had vexed him still more. "What folly!" he thought, as he entered his luxuriously appointed flat, and threw himself into a chair with a kind of angry weariness, "How utterly stupid of Vergniaud to blazon the fact that he is no better than other men, in the full face of his congregation! He must be mad!
Among the ugly columns, and against the heavy ceiling divided into huge raised lumps of paint and gilding, Abbe Vergniaud's voice had often resounded, and his sermons were looked forward to as a kind of witty entertainment.
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