class, who
curried favour with the crowd by clothing themselves in coarse garments,
clutching a pike, and donning the famous cap of red woollen, which had
been the emblem of the emancipation of a slave in ancient Rome. One
night at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre mounted the tribune, dressed with
his usual elaborate neatness, and still wearing powder in his hair. An
onlooker unceremoniously planted on the orator's head the red cap
demanded by revolutionary etiquette. Robespierre threw the sacred symbol
on the ground with a severe air, and then proceeded with a discourse of
much austerity. Not that he was averse to a certain seemly decoration,
or to the embodiment of revolutionary sentiment by means of a symbolism
that strikes our cooler imagination as rather puerile. He was as ready
as others to use the arts of the theatre for the liturgy of patriots.
One of the most touching of all the minor dramatic incidents of the
Revolution was the death of Barra. This was a child of thirteen who
enrolled himself as a drummer, and marched with the Blues to suppress
the rebel Whites in La Vendee. One day he advanced too close to the
enemy's post, intrepidly beating the charge. He was surrounded, but the
peasant soldiers were loth to strike, 'Cry _Long live the King!_' they
shouted, 'or else death!' 'Long live the Republic!' was the poor little
hero's answer, as a ball pierced his heart. Robespierre described the
incident to the Convention, and amid prodigious enthusiasm demanded that
the body of the young martyr of liberty should be transported to the
Pantheon with special pomp, and that David, the artist of the
Revolution, should be charged with the duty of devising and embellishing
the festival. As it happened, the arrangements were made for the
ceremony to take place on the Tenth of Thermidor--a day on which
Robespierre and all Paris were concerned about a celebration of bloodier
import. Thermidor, however, was still far off; and the red sun of
Jacobin enthusiasm seemed as if it would shine unclouded for ever.

Even at the Jacobins, however, popular as he was, Robespierre felt every
instant the necessity of walking cautiously. He was as far removed as
possible from that position of Dictator which some historians with a
wearisome iteration persist in ascribing to him, even at the moment when
they are enumerating the defeats which the party of Hebert was able to
inflict upon him in the very bosom of the Mother Club itself. They make