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These indecorous and malicious allusions were received with shouts of derisive laughter from the Jacobin benches. The majority, however, frowned upon Danton with deep reproaches for such an attack upon a lady. One of the Girondists immediately ascended the tribune.
If Hébert had triumphed, the Convention was overthrown, the Republic hastening to the abyss; if Desmoulins and Danton had triumphed, the Convention had lost its virtue, ready to surrender the Republic to the aristocrats, the money-jobbers and the Generals.
With the serenity of martyrs they met their fate, each one emulous of showing to her companions how much like a heroine she could die. These scenes were enacted at the instigation of the Jacobins. Danton and Marat urged on these merciless measures of lawless violence. "We must," said they, "strike terror into the hearts of our foes. It is our only safety."
The insistent vision of a world in full retreat from the world of Alfred and Charlemagne and the saints and the fight for Jerusalem from this and the allied world of Danton and Robespierre, and the rush to the Bastille has driven him back upon a partly well-founded and partly ill-founded Christian pessimism.
These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime" style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a decree, that the citizens should, in future, express their adorations in plain prose, and without any musical accessories.
We were all oppressed and dismal. I hardly dared to look at Kate, who sat playing softly in the dim piano-recess. This morning brought me the dreaded despatch. Captain Danton had gone to Quebec; Mr. Stanford was not in Montreal. I cannot describe to you how I passed yesterday. I never was so miserable in all my life.
The debate was opened by an address from the department of Finisterre, expressing their wishes, and adding, that these were likewise the wishes of the nation at large that Marat, Robespierre, Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, Danton, and their accomplices, might be expelled the Convention as caballers and intriguers paid by the tyrants at war with France."
Rose would have given a good deal to be miles away; but the fish-pond must be passed, and she, the "maiden forlorn," must be seen. Kate gayly touched her plumed-hat; Kate's cavalier bent to his saddle-bow, and then they were gone out of sight among the budding trees. "Heartless, cold-blooded flirt!" thought the second Miss Danton, apostrophizing the handsomest of his sex.
Take two places in the stage for yourself and your femme de chambre, in her name, and give me the memorandum, that our old friend, the driver, may procure the passports. You must not be seen; for there is no doubt that Danton has given the police a full description of your person. Now go and prepare: we shall see each other again before your departure."
This man, formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the Ursulines. This, however, did not prevent the worthy sans-culotte from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold under the name of national domain.
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