k upon the tyrant he
said, and to poignard him in the convention itself, if the members did
not show courage enough to enforce the law against him. With these words
he brandished an unsheathed poignard, as if about to make his purpose
good. Robespierre still struggled hard to obtain audience, but the
tribune was adjudged to Barrere; and the part taken against the fallen
dictator by that versatile and self-interested statesman, was the most
absolute sign that his overthrow was irrecoverable. Torrents of
invective were now uttered from every quarter of the hall, against him
whose single word was wont to hush it into silence.

This scene was dreadful; yet not without its use to those who may be
disposed to look at it as an extraordinary crisis, in which human
passions were brought so singularly into collision. While the vaults of
the hall echoed with exclamations from those who had hitherto been the
accomplices, the flatterers, the followers, at least the timid and
overawed assentors to the dethroned demagogue--he himself, breathless,
foaming, exhausted, like the hunter of classical antiquity when on the
point of being overpowered and torn to pieces by his own hounds, tried
in vain to raise those screech-owl notes, by which the convention had
formerly been terrified and put to silence. He appealed for a hearing
from the president of the assembly, to the various parties of which it
was composed. Rejected by the mountaineers, his former associates, who
now headed the clamour against him, he applied to the Girondists, few
and feeble as they were, and to the more numerous but equally helpless
deputies of the plain, with whom they sheltered. The former shook him
from them with disgust, the last with horror. It was in vain he reminded
individuals that he had spared their lives, while at his mercy. This
might have been applied to every member in the house; to every man in
France; for who was it during two years that had lived on other terms
than under Robespierre's permission? and deeply must he internally have
regretted the clemency, as he might term it, which had left so many with
ungashed throats to bay at him. But his agitated and repeated appeals
were repulsed by some with indignation, by others with sullen, or
embarrassed and timid silence.

A British historian might say, that even Robespierre ought to have been
heard in his defence; and that such calmness would have done honour to
the convention, and dignified their final