the Spartan enemy, and on turning round to see if his Corcyrean allies
were following, saw them following indeed, but the crew of every ship
striving in enraged conflict with one another. Collot D'Herbois had come
back in hot haste from Lyons, where, along with Fouche, he had done his
best to carry out the decree of the Convention, that not one stone of
the city should be left on the top of another, and that even its very
name should cease from the lips of men. Carrier was recalled from
Nantes, where his feats of ingenious massacre had rivalled the exploits
of the cruellest and maddest of the Roman Emperors. The presence of
these men of blood gave new courage and resolution to the Hebertists.
Though the alliance was informal, yet as against Danton, Camille
Desmoulins, and the rest of the Indulgents, as well as against
Robespierre, they made common cause.

Camille Desmoulins attacked Hebert in successive numbers of a journal
that is perhaps the one truly literary monument of this stage of the
revolution. Hebert retaliated by impugning the patriotism of Desmoulins
in the Club, and the unfortunate wit, notwithstanding the efforts of
Robespierre on his behalf, was for a while turned out of the sacred
precincts. The power of the extreme faction was shown in relation to
other prominent members of the party whom they loved to stigmatise by
the deadly names of Indulgent and Moderantist. Even Danton himself was
attacked (December 1793), and the integrity of his patriotism brought
into question. Robespierre made an energetic defence of his great rival
in the hierarchy of revolution, and the defence saved Danton from the
mortal ignominy of expulsion from the communion of the orthodox. On the
other hand, Anacharsis Clootz, that guileless ally of the party of
delirium, was less fortunate. Robespierre assailed the cosmopolitan for
being a German baron, for having four thousand pounds a year, and for
striking his sans-culottism some notes higher than the regular pitch.
Even M. Louis Blanc calls this an iniquity, and sets it down as the
worst page in Robespierre's life. Others have described Robespierre as
struck at this time by the dire malady of kings--hatred of the Idea. It
seems, however, a hard saying that devotion to the Idea is to extinguish
common sense. Clootz, notwithstanding his simple and disinterested
character, and his possession of some rays of the modern illumination,
was one of the least sane of all the men who in the e