t the failure of
the Constituent Assembly to found a stable and vigorous government, and
to put an end to the vengeances, the seditions, the outbreaks, that
filled the air with confusion and menace. It was in short a vigorous
pamphlet, written in the interest of Malouet and the constitutional
royalists. The Assembly listened, but not without some rude
interruptions. Robespierre hastened to the tribune. After condemning the
tone of Raynal's letter, he disclaimed any intention of calling down the
severity either of the Assembly or of public opinion upon a man who
still preserved a great name; he thought that a sufficient excuse for
the writer's apostasy might be found in his advanced age. The Assembly
agreed with Robespierre, and passed to the order of the day.[173]

[173] Hamel's _Robespierre_ i. 456-458.

Raynal lived to see his predictions fulfilled with a terrible bitterness
of fulfilment. In spite of the anger which he had roused in the breasts
of powerful personages, the aged man was not guillotined; he was not
even imprisoned. All his property was taken from him, and he died in
abject poverty in the spring of 1796. Let us hope that the misery of his
end was assuaged by the recollection that he had once been a powerful
pleader for noble causes.

CHAPTER VIII.

DIDEROT'S CLOSING YEARS.

At the end of a long series of notes and questions on points in anatomy
and physiology, which he had been collecting for many years, Diderot
wound up with a strange outburst:

"I shall not know until the end what I have lost or gained in this vast
gaming-house, where I shall have passed some threescore years, dice-box
in hand, _tesseras agitans_.

"What do I perceive? Forms. And what besides? Forms. Of the substance I
know nothing. We walk among shadows, ourselves shadows to ourselves and
to others.

"If I look at a rainbow traced on a cloud, I can perceive it; for him
who looks at it from another angle, there is nothing.

"A fancy common enough among the living is to dream that they are dead,
that they stand by the side of their own corpse, and follow their own
funeral. It is like a swimmer watching his garments stretched out on the
shore.

"Philosophy, that habitual and profound meditation which takes us away
from all that surrounds us, which annihilates our own personality, is
another apprenticeship for death."[174]

[174] _Elemens de Physiologie_, _Oeuv._, ix. 428.

This was now to be seen. Diderot,