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the strongest feelings of commiseration, and nothing astonished the few who escaped from confinement so much as the want of sympathy for the sufferings of mankind which generally prevailed in the world.

From the farthest extremities of France crowds of prisoners daily arrived at the gates of the Conciergerie, which successively sent forth its band of victims to the scaffold. Gray hairs and youthful forms, countenances blooming with health and faces worn with suffering, beauty and talent, rank and virtue, were indiscriminately rolled together to the fatal doors. With truth might have been written over their portals what Dante placed over the entrance of the infernal regions:

"All ye who enter here, leave Hope behind.” Sixty persons often arrived in a day, and as many were on the following morning sent out to execution. Night and day the cars incessantly discharged victims into the prison; weeping mothers and trembling orphans were thrust in without mercy with the brave and the powerful; the young, the beautiful, the unfortunate, seemed in a peculiar manner the prey of the assassins. Nor were the means of evacuating the prisons augmented in a less fearful progression. Fifteen only were at first placed on the chariot, but their number was soon augmented to thirty, and gradually rose to eighty persons, who daily were sent forth to the place of execution; when the fall of Robespierre put a stop to the murders, arrangements had been made for increasing it to one hundred and fifty. An immense aqueduct to remove the gore had been dug as far as the Place St. Antoine, and four men were daily employed in emptying the blood of the victims into that reservoir.

It was three in the afternoon when the melancholy procession set out from the Conciergerie; the troop slowly passed through the vaulted passages of the prison amid crowds of captives, who gazed with insatiable avidity on the aspect of those about to undergo a fate which might so soon become their own. The higher orders, in general, behaved with firmness and serenity; silently they marched to death with their eyes fixed on the heavens, lest their looks should betray their indignation. Numbers of the lower class piteously bewailed their fate and called Heaven and earth to witness their innocence. The pity of the spectators was in a peculiar manner excited by the bands of females led out together to execution; fourteen young women of Verdun, of the most attractive forms, were cut off together. "The day after their execution," says Riouffe, "the court of the prison looked like a garden bereaved of its flowers by a tempest." On another occasion twenty women of Poitou, chiefly the wives of peasants, were placed together on the chariot; some died on the way, and the wretches guillotined their lifeless remains. One kept her infant in her bosom till she reached the foot of the scaffold; the executioners tore the innocent from her breast, and the screams of maternal agony were only stifled with her life.

Such accumulated horrors annihilated all the charities and intercourse of life. Before daybreak the shops of the provision-merchants were besieged by crowds of women. and children clamoring for the food which. the law of the maximum in general prevented them from obtaining. The farmers trembled to bring their fruits to the market, the shopkeepers to expose them to sale. The

richest quarters of the town were deserted; | pronounced a discourse on the qualities suited

no equipages or crowds of passengers were to be seen on the streets; the sinister words Propriété Nationale ("National Property i —that is, confiscated to the state), imprinted in large characters on the walls, everywhere showed how far the work of confiscation had proceeded. Passengers hesitated to address their most intimate friends on meeting: the extent of calamity had rendered men suspicious even of those they loved the most. Every one assumed the coarsest dress and the most squalid appearance: an elegant exterior would have been the certain forerunner of destruction. At one hour only were any symptoms of animation to be seen: it was when the victims were conveyed to execution. The humane fled with horror from the sight; the infuriated rushed in crowds to satiate their eyes with the sight of human agony.

Night came, but with it no diminution of the anxiety of the people. Every family early assembled its members; with trembling looks they gazed round the room, fearful that the very walls might harbor traitors. The sound of a foot, the stroke of a hammer, a voice in the streets, froze all hearts with horror. If a knock was heard at the door, every one, in agonized suspense, expected his fate. Unable to endure such protracted misery, numbers committed suicide. "Had the reign of Robespierre," says Fréron, "continued longer, multitudes would have thrown themselves under the guillotine: the first of social affections, the love of life, was already extinguished in almost every heart."

In the midst of these unparalleled atrocities the Convention were occupied with the establishment of the civic virtues. Robespierre

to a republic. He dedicated a certain number of the decennial fêtes to the Supreme Being, to Truth, to Justice, to Modesty, to Friendship, to Frugality, to Good Faith, to Glory and to Immortality. Barère prepared a report on the suppression of mendicity and the means of relieving the indigent poor. Robespierre had now reached the zenith of his popularity with his faction; he was denominated the Great Man of the Republic; his virtue, his genius, his eloquence, were in every mouth. The speech which Robespierre made on this occasion was one of the most remarkable of his whole career:

ROBESPIERRE'S ADDRESS.

"The idea of a Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul is a continual call to justice; it is therefore a social and republican principle. Who has authorized you to declare that the Deity does not exist? Oh, you who support in such impassioned strains so arid a doctrine, what advantage do you expect to derive from the principle that a blind fatality regulates the affairs of men, and that the soul is nothing but a breath of air impelled toward the tomb? Will the idea of nonentity inspire man with more pure and elevated sentiments than that of immortality? Will it awaken more respect for others or himself, more courage to resist tyranny, greater contempt for pleasure or death? You who regret a virtuous friend, can you endure the thought that his noblest part has not escaped dissolution? You who weep over the remains of a child or a wife, are you consoled by the thought that handful of dust is all that remains of the be loved object? You, the unfortunate, who expire under the strokes of an assassin, is not your last voice raised to appeal to the justice

of the Most High? Innocence on the scaf-| between what was just and unjust, probity a fold, supported by such thoughts, makes the an affair of taste or good breeding, the world tyrant turn pale on his triumphal car. Could as the patrimony of the most dextrous of such an ascendant be felt if the tomb levelled scoundrels. alike the oppressor and his victim?

"Observe how, on all former occasions, tyrants have sought to stifle the idea of the immortality of the soul. With what art did Cæsar, when pleading in the Roman Senate in favor of the accomplices of Catiline, endeavor to throw doubts on the belief of its immortality! while Cicero invokes against the traitor the sword of the laws and the vengeance of Heaven. Socrates, on the verge of death, discoursed with his friends on the ennobling theme; Leonidas, at Thermopyla, on the eve of executing the most heroic design ever conceived by man, invited his companions to a banquet in another world. The principles of the Stoics gave birth to Brutus and Cato even in the ages which witnessed the expiry of Roman virtue; they alone saved the honor of human nature, almost obliterated by the vices and the corruption of the empire.

"The Encyclopédists, who introduced the frightful doctrine of atheism, were ever in politics below the dignity of freedom; in morality they went as far beyond the dictates of reason. Their disciples declaimed against despotism and received the pensions of despots; they composed alternately tirades against kings and madrigals for their mistresses; they were fierce with their pens and rampant in antechambers. That sect propagated with infinite care the principles of materialism; we owe to them that selfish philosophy which reduced egotism to a systein, regarded human society as a game of chance where success was the sole distinction

"The priests have figured to themselves a God in their own image; they have made him jealous, capricious. cruel, covetous, implacable; they have enthroned him in the heavens as a palace, and called him to the earth only to demand for their behoof tithes, riches, pleasures, honors and power. The true temple of the Supreme Being is the universe; his worship, virtue; his fêtes, the joy of a great people assembled under his eyes to tighten the bonds of social affection and present to him the homage of pure and grateful hearts."

In the midst of the acclamations produced by these eloquent words, the Assembly decreed unanimously that they recognized the existence of the Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, and that the worship most worthy of him was the practice of the social virtues.

This speech is not only remarkable as containing the religious views of so memorable an actor in the bloodiest periods of the Revolution, but as involving a moral lesson of perhaps greater moment than any that occurred during its whole progress. For the first time in the annals of mankind a great nation had thrown off all religious principles and openly defied the power of Heaven itself, and from amid the wreck which was occasioned by the unchaining of human passions arose a solemn recognition of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. It seemed as if Providence had permitted human wickedness to run its utmost length in order, amid the frightful scene, to demonstrate the necessity of religious belief and vindicate

the majesty of its moral government. In vain an infidel generation sought to establish the frigid doctrine of materialism. Their principles received their full development: the anarchy they are fitted to induce was experienced, and that recognition was wrung from a suffering which had been denied by a prosperous age.

Nor is this speech less striking as evincing the fanaticism of that extraordinary period and the manner in which, during revolutionary convulsions, the most atrocious actions are made to flow from the most pure and benevolent expressions. If you consider the actions of Robespierre, he appears the most sanguinary tyrant that ever desolated the earth; if you reflect on his words, they seem dictated only by the noblest and most elevated feelings. There is nothing impossible in such a combination; the history of the world exhibits too many examples of its occurrence it is the nature of fanaticism, whether religious or political, to produce it. The Inquisition of Spain, the autos-da-fé of Castile, arose from the same principles as the daily executions of the French tyrant. It is because revolutions lead to such terrible results by so flowery and seductive a path that they are chiefly dangerous, and because the ruin thus induced is irrecoverable that the seducers of nations are doomed by inexorable justice to the same infamy as the betrayers of individuals..

Two unsuccessful attempts at assassination increased, as is always the case, the power of the tyrant. The first of these was made by an obscure but intrepid man, of the name of L'Admiral, who tried to assassinate Collot d'Herbois; the second, by a young woman named Cecile Renaud. L'Admiral, when

brought before his judges, openly avowed that he had intended to assassinate Robespierre before Collot d'Herbois. When called on to divulge who prompted him to the commission of such a crime, he replied firmly that it was not a crime; that he wished only to render a service to his country; that he had conceived the project without any external suggestion; and that his only regret was that he had not succeeded. The latter called at his house and entreated in the most earnest manner to see Robespierre; the urgency of her manner excited the suspicion of his attendants, and she was arrested. Two knives found in her bundle sufficiently evinced the purpose of her visit. Being asked what was her motive for wishing to see him, she replied, "I wished to see how a tyrant was made. I admit I am a royalist, because I prefer one king to fifty thousand." She behaved on the scaffold with the firmness of Charlotte Corday. Her whole relations, to the number of sixty, were involved in her fate, among whom were number of young men bravely combating on the frontier in defence of their country.

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Meanwhile, a magnificent fête was prepared by the Convention in honor of the Supreme Being. Two days before it took place Robespierre was appointed president and entrusted with the duty of supreme pontiff on the occasion. He marched fifteen feet in advance of his colleagues, in a brilliant costume, bearing flowers and fruits in his hands. His address, which followed, to the people was both powerful and eloquent; the generous sentiments which it contained revived hopes long dormant in their breasts, but were all dashed by the concluding words: "People, to-day

let us give ourselves up to the transports of! pure happiness; to-morrow we will with increased energy combat vice and the tyrants." The ceremony on this occasion, which was arranged under the direction of the painter David, was very magnificent. An amphitheatre was placed in the gardens of the Tuileries, opposite to which were statues representing Atheism, Discord and Selfishness, which were destined to be burned by the hand of Robespierre. Beautiful music opened the ceremony, and the president, after an eloquent speech, seized a torch and set fire to the figures, which were soon consumed; and when the smoke cleared away, an effigy of Wisdom was seen in their place, but it was remarked that it was blackened by the smoke of those that had been consumed. Thence they proceeded to the Champs de Mars, where patriotic songs were sung, oaths taken by the young and homage offered to the Supreme Being.

The Committee of Public Safety being now avowedly in possession of supreme power, their adulators in the Convention and Jacobin Club offered them the ensigns of sovereignty. But they had the good sense to perceive that the people were not yet prepared for this change, and that the sight of guards or a throne might shake a power which five hundred thousand captives in chains could not expose to obloquy. "The members of the committee," said Couthon, "have no desire to be assimilated to despots; they have no need of guards for their defence. Their own virtue, the love of the people, Providence, watch over their days; they have no occasion for any other protection. When necessary, they will know how to die at their post in defence of freedom."

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The bloody intentions announced by Robespierre were too effectually carried into effect on the day following the fête of the Supreme Being by the decree of the 22d Prairial, passed on the motion of Couthon. By this sanguinary law every form, privilege or usage calculated to protect the accused were swept away. "Every postponement of justice," says Couthon, "is a crime: every formality indulgent to the accused is a crime. The delay in punishing the enemies of the country should not be greater than the time requisite for identifying them." The right of insisting for an individual investigation and of being defended by counsel were withdrawn. In addition to those struck at by former laws, there were included in this new decree "all those who have seconded the projects of the enemies of France either by favoring the retreat of or shielding from punishment the aristocracy or conspirators, or by persecuting and calumniating the patriots, or by corrupting the mandatories of the people, or by abusing the principles of the Revolution, of the laws or of the government by false or perfidious applications, or by deceiving the representatives of the people, or by spreading discouragement or false intelligence, or by misleading the public by false instruction or depraved example." The proof requisite to convict of these multifarious offences was declared to be "every piece of evidence, material, moral, verbal or written, which is sufficient to convince a reasonable understanding." The Revolutionary Tribunal was divided into four separate courts, each possessing the same powers as the original, and a public accuser and sufficient number of judges and jurymen awarded to each to enable them to proceed with rapidity in the work of extermination.

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