s alone whom
her anger will lash, but the sovereign people, the people once so
flattered, whom she will pursue with her anathemas. "The people," she
will say, "can feel nothing but the cannibal joy of seeing blood flow,
in order that they may run no risk of shedding their own. That
predicted time has come when, if they ask for bread, dead bodies will
be given them; but their degraded nature takes pleasure in the
spectacle, and the satisfied instinct of cruelty makes the dearth
supportable until it becomes absolute." The Egeria of the Girondins
will comprehend that all is lost, that even her blood will be sterile,
and that France is condemned either to anarchy or a dictatorship.
"Liberty," she will exclaim, "was not made for this corrupt nation,
which leaves the bed of debauchery or the dunghill of poverty only to
brutalize itself in license, and howl as it {383} wallows in the blood
streaming from scaffolds." Like the damned souls in Dante, Madame
Roland will leave all hope behind, and when, a few days after Marie
Antoinette, she ascends the steps of the guillotine, instead of
thinking of heaven, like the Queen, she will address this sarcastic
speech to the plaster statue which has replaced that of Louis XV.: "O
Liberty! how they have betrayed thee!"

But let us not anticipate. The Girondins are still to have a glimmer
of joy. The Republic is about to be proclaimed.

[1] The bloody _knife_ of tyranny is lifted against us.

{384}

XXXVII.

THE PROCLAMATION OF THE REPUBLIC.

"One of the astonishing things in the French Revolution," says one of
the most eminent writers of the democratic school, Edgar Quinet, "is
the unexpectedness with which the great changes occur. The most
important events, the destruction of the monarchy and the advent of the
Republic, came about without any previous warning." The most ardent
republicans were royalists, not merely under the old regime, but after
1789, and even up to August 10, 1792. Marat wrote, in No. 374 of the
_Ami du Peuple_, February 17, 1791: "I have often been represented as a
mortal enemy of royalty, but I claim that the King has no better friend
than myself." And he added: "As to Louis XVI. personally, I know very
well that his defects are chargeable solely to his education, and that
by nature he is an excellent sort of man, whom one would have cited as
a worthy citizen if he had not had the misfortune to be born on the
throne; but, such as he is, he