riendly, and of every affectionate entreaty, flew to
Paris.

It was in the evening of the last winter which beheld its snows
crimsoned with revolutionary carnage, when he presented himself,
undismayed, before that committee, whose horrible nature will be better
described by merely relating the names of its members, then sitting,
than by the most animated and elaborate delineations of all its deadly
deeds of rapine and of blood. At a table, covered with green cloth,
shabbily lighted, in one of the committee rooms of the national
assembly, were seated Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, Carnot, and David.
They were occupied in filling up the lists for the _permanent_
guillotine, erected very near them, in la Place de la Revolution, which
the executioners were then clearing of its gore, and preparing for the
next day's butchery. In this devoted capital more blood had, during that
day, streamed upon the scaffold, than on any one day during the
revolution.

The terrified inhabitants, in darkness, in remote recesses of their
desolate houses, were silently offering up a prayer to the great God of
Mercy to release them, in a way most suitable to his wisdom, from such
scenes of deep dismay, and remorseless slaughter.

Robespierre, as usual, was dressed with great neatness and gayety; the
_savage_ was generally _scented_, whilst his associates were habited, en
Jacobin, in the squalid, filthy fashion of that era of the revolution,
in the dress of blackguards.

Mr. G---- bowed, and addressed them very respectfully. "I am come,
citizens, before you," said this amiable son, "to implore the release of
my mother; she is pining in the prison of Rouen, without having
committed any offence; she is in years; and if her confinement
continues, her children whose fortunes have been placed at the disposal
of the national exigencies, will have to lament her death; grant the
prayer of her son, restore, I conjure you, by all the rights of nature,
restore her to her afflicted family." Robespierre looked obliquely at
him, and with his accustomed sharpness, interrupted him from proceeding
further, by exclaiming, "what right have _you_ to appear before us,
miscreant? you are an agent of Pitt and Cobourg (the then common phrase
of reproach) you shall be sent to the guillotine--Why are you not at the
frontiers?" Monsieur G----, unappalled, replied, "give me my mother, and
I will be there to morrow, I am ready instantly to spill my blood, if it
must be