Nevertheless they too, these glutted sovereigns, are anxious, and very much so, we have just seen why; it's a question of remaining in office in order to remain alive, and henceforth this is their sole concern.—A good Jacobin, up to the 9th of Thermidor, could, by shutting his eyes, still believe in his creed.5101 After the 9th of Thermidor, unless born blind, like Soubrany, Romme and Goujon, a fanatic whose intellectual organs are as rigid as the limbs of a fakir, nobody in the Convention can any longer believe in the Contrat-Social, in a despotic equalizing socialism, in the merits of Terror, in the divine right of the pure. For, to escape the guillotine of the pure, the purest had to be guillotined, Saint-Just, Couthon and Robespierre, the high-priest of the sect. That very day the "Montagnards," in giving up their doctor, abandoned their principles, and there is no longer any principle or man to which the Convention could rally. In effect, before guillotining Robespierre and his associates as orthodox, it guillotined the Girondins, HÉbert and Danton, as heretics. Now, "the existence of popular idols and of head charlatans is irrevocably ended."5102 Ever the same conventional symbol before the empty sanctuary in the blood-stained temple, and ever the same loud-intoned anthem; but faith is gone, and only the acolytes remain to drone out the revolutionary litany, old train-bearers and swingers of incense, the subaltern butchers who, through a sudden stroke, have become pontiffs; in short, the valets of the church who have donned the mitres and croziers of their masters after having assassinated them.

From month to month, under the pressure of public opinion, they detach themselves from the worship at which they have officiated, for, however blunted or perverted their consciences, they cannot avoid admitting that Jacobinism, as they have practiced it, was the religion of robbery and murder. Previous to Thermidor an official phraseology5103 drowned with its doctrinal roar the living truth, while each Conventional sacristan or beadle, confined to his own chapel, saw clearly only the human sacrifices in which he himself had taken part. After Thermidor, the friends and kindred of the dead, the oppressed, make their voices heard, and he is forced to see collectively and in detail all the crimes to which, nearly or remotely, he has contributed either through his assent or through his vote, the same as in Mexico, the priest of Huichilobos walks about in the midst of the six hundred thousand skulls amassed in the vaults of his temple.—In quick succession, during the whole of year III., through the freedom of the press and the great public discussions, the truth becomes known. First, comes an account of the funereal journey of one hundred and thirty-two Nantese, dragged from Nantes to Paris,5104 and the solemn acquittal, received with transports, of the ninety-four who survive. After this, come the trials of the most prominent terrorists, that of Carrier and the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, that of Fouquier-Tinville and the old revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, that of Joseph Lebon,5105 and, during thirty or forty consecutive sessions, hundreds of minute, verified depositions ending in the most complete and satisfactory testimony.—In the mean time, revelations multiply at the tribune of the Convention; these consist of the letters of the new representatives on mission and the denunciations of the towns against their overthrown tyrants; against Maignet, Dartigoyte, Piochefer-Bernard, Levasseur, Crassous, Javogues, Lequinio, Lefiot, Piorry, Pinet, Monestier, FouchÉ, Laplanche, Lecarpentier, and many others. Add to these the reports of commissions charged with examining into the conduct of old dictators, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, BarÈre, Amar, Vouland, Vadier and David, the reports of the representatives charged with investigating certain details of the abolished system, that of GrÉgoire on revolutionary vandalism, that of Cambon on revolutionary taxes, that of Courtois on Robespierre's papers.—All these rays combine in a terrible illumination which imposes itself even on the eyes that turn away from it: It is now but too plain that France, for fourteen months, has been devastated by a gang of bandits. All that can be said in favor of the least perverted and the least vile is that they were born so, or had become crazy.5106—The majority of the Convention cannot evade this growing testimony and the Montagnards excite its horror; and all the more, because it bears them a grudge: the 73 who were imprisoned and the sixteen who were proscribed have resumed their seats, the 400 silent who have for so long held their seats under the knife, remember the oppression to which they have been subject. They now recover and turn first against the most tainted scoundrels, and then against the members of the old committees.—Whereupon the "Mountain," as was its custom, launches its customary supporters, the starved populace, the Jacobin rabble, in the riots of Germinal and Prairial, in year III., and proclaims anew the reign of Terror; the Convention again sees the knife over its head. Saved by young men, by the National Guard, it becomes courageous through fear, and, in its turn, it terrorizes the terrorists. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is disarmed, ten thousand Jacobins are arrested,5107 and more than sixty Montagnards are decreed under indictment; Collot, Billaud, BarÈre and Vadier are to be deported; nine other members of former committees are to be imprisoned. The last of the veritable fanatics, Romme, Goujon, Soubrany, Duquesnoy, Bourbotte and Duroy are condemned to death, Immediately after the sentence five of them stab themselves on the stairs of the tribunal; two of the wounded who survive are borne, along with the sixth, to the scaffold and guillotined. Two Montagnards of the same stamp, Rhul and Maure, kill themselves before their sentence.—Henceforth the purged Convention regards itself as pure; its final rigor has expiated its former baseness, the guilty blood which it spills washing away the stains of the innocent blood it had shed before.

Unfortunately, in condemning the terrorists, it pronounced its own condemnation; for it has authorized and sanctioned all their crimes. On its benches, in its committees, often in the president's chair, at the head of the ruling coterie, still figure the members of the revolutionary government, many of the avowed terrorists like Bourdon de l'Oise, Bentabolle, Delmas, and Reubell; presidents of the September commune like Marie ChÉnier; those who carried out "the 31st of May," like Legendre and Merlin de Douai, author of the decree which created six hundred thousand suspects in France; provincial executioners of the most brutal and most ferocious sort, the greatest and most cynical robbers like AndrÉ Dumont, FrÉron, Tallien and Barras. Under Robespierre, the four hundred mutes "du ventre" were the reporters, the voters, the claqueurs, and the agents of the worst decrees against religion, property and persons. The foundations of Terror were all laid by the seventy-three in confinement before they were imprisoned, and by the sixteen who were proscribed before their proscription. Excepting ten or a dozen who stayed away, the Convention, in a mass, pronounced judgment against the King and declared him guilty; more than one-half of the Convention, the Girondists at the head of them, voted his death. The hall does not contain fifty honorable men in whom character sustains conscience, and who had a right to carry their heads erect.5108 In no law they passed, good or bad, did the other seven hundred have in view the interests of their constituents. In all their laws, good or bad, they solely regarded their own interests. So long as the attacks of the "Mountain" and of the rabble affected the public only, they lauded them, decreed them and had them executed. If they finally rebelled against the "Mountain," and against the rabble, it was at the last moment, and solely to save their lives. Before, as after the 9th of Thermidor, before, as after the 1st of Prairial, the incentives of the conduct of these pusillanimous oppressors or involuntary liberators were baseness and egoism. Hence, "the contempt and horror universally poured out against them; only Jacobins could be still more odious!"5109 If further support is given to these faithless mandatories, it is because they are soon to be put out. On the premature report that the Convention is going to break up, people accost each other in the street, exclaiming, "We are rid of these brigands, they are going at last... People caper and dance about as if they could not repress their joy; they talk of nothing but the boy, (Louis XVIII. confined in the Temple), and the new elections. Everybody agrees on excluding the present deputies.... There is less discussion on the crimes which each has committed than on the insignificance of the entire assemblage, while the epithets of vicious, used up and corrupt have almost wholly given way to thieves and scoundrels."5110 Even in Paris, during the closing months of their rule, they hardly dare appear in public: "in the dirtiest and most careless costume which the tricolor scarf and gold fringe makes more apparent, they try to escape notice in the crowd5111 and, in spite of their modesty, do not always avoid insult and still less the maledictions of those who pass them."—In the provinces, at home, it would be worse for them; their lives would be in danger; in any event, they would be dragged through the gutter, and this they know. Save about "twenty of them," all who are not to succeed in entering the new Corps Legislatif, will intrigue for offices in Paris and become "state messengers, employees in bureaux, and ushers to ministers;" in default of other places they would accept those of "hall-sweeps." Any refuge for them is good against the reprobation of the public, which is already rising and submerging them under its tide.