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He instantly applied to the minister of war to join the army of the north, and fell there. The soldiers were introduced, and Collot d'Herbois presented them to the admiring tribunes. The national guard of Versailles, who had followed them to the Assembly, defiled in the hall amidst the sound of drums, and cries of "Vive la Nation!"
In April, 1795, a decree was passed banishing Billaud de Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and Barère. In the following month the leaders of the Committee of General Security were thrown into prison. The revolution had passed into new currents. We cannot see any reasons for thinking that those currents would have led to any happier results if Robespierre had won the battle.
At Lyons, Fouché and Collot d'Herbois established city granaries, but the sums spent on filling them were woefully insufficient. The town councils made great efforts to procure corn; the bakers who hoarded flour were hanged and still the people lacked bread. Then they turned on the royalist conspirators and laid the blame at their door.
He knew quite well that Marguerite would make no attempt at escape, but he had long ago given up all hope of persuading a man of the type of Collot d'Herbois that a woman of her temperament would never think of saving her own life at the expense of others, and that Sir Percy Blakeney, in spite of his adoration for his wife, would sooner see her die before him, than allow the lives of innocent men and women to be the price of hers.
And mothers, sisters, sweethearts stood watching by the gates, for loved ones to-night would be set free, all along of the capture of that English spy, the Scarlet Pimpernel. To Chauvelin the day had been one of restless inquietude and nervous apprehension. Collot d'Herbois harassed him with questions and complaints intermixed with threats but thinly veiled.
Very leisurely he rose from his chair, stretched out his loose limbs, shook himself like a shaggy cur, and without uttering another word he gave his colleague a curt nod, and slowly lounged out of the room. Chauvelin heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction when Collot d'Herbois finally left him to himself.
Collot d'Herbois, the President, did not rebuke them, and having surrendered his place to a colleague whom he could trust, descended to take part in the fray. If the Convention was suffered once more to hear the dreaded voice of Robespierre, nobody could be sure that he would not recover his ascendency. These tactics succeeded.
He could not have thrown off all his old ideas of refinement quite so easily, as to feel happy in the presence of such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Marat in his day men who had become brute beats, more ferocious far than any wild animal, more scientifically cruel than any feline prowler in jungle or desert.
People would station themselves at the windows of houses overlooking the Temple gardens, and evince by gestures their loyal affection, and some of the sentinels showed, even by tears, that their duty was painful to them. On the 21st September the National Convention was constituted, Petion being made president and Collot d'Herbois moving the "abolition of royalty" amidst transports of applause.
* The Convention formally voted their approbation of this measure, and Collot d'Herbois, in a report on the subject, makes a kind of apostrophical panegyric on the humanity of his colleagues. Which of you would not joyfully have destroyed all these traitors at a blow?" About this time a woman who sold newspapers, and the printer of them, were guillotined for paragraphs deemed incivique.
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