f a butcher, and with his whole person bespattered with blood
and brains, "do you think that I have earned but twenty-four francs
to-day? I have killed forty aristocrats with my own hands!" The money
was soon exhausted, and still the crowd of assassins thronged the
committee. Indignant that their claims were not instantly discharged,
they presented their bloody weapons at the throats of their
instigators, and threatened them with immediate death if the money
were not furnished. Thus urged, the committee succeeded in paying one
half the sum, and gave bonds for the rest.

M. Roland was almost frantic in view of these horrors, which he had no
power to quell. The mob, headed by the Jacobins, had now the complete
ascendency, and he was minister but in name. He urged upon the
Assembly the adoption of immediate and energetic measures to arrest
these execrable deeds of lawless violence. Many of the Girondists in
the Assembly gave vehement but unavailing utterance to their
execration of the massacres. Others were intimidated by the weapon
which the Jacobins were now so effectually wielding; for they knew
that it might not be very difficult so to direct the fury of the mob
as to turn those sharp blades, now dripping with blood, from the
prisons into the hall of Assembly, and upon the throats of all
obnoxious to Jacobin power. The Girondists trembled in view of their
danger. They had aided in opening the sluice-ways of a torrent which
was now sweeping every thing before it. Madame Roland distinctly saw
and deeply felt the peril to which she and her friends were exposed.
She knew, and they all knew, that defeat was death. The great struggle
now in the Assembly was for the popular voice. The Girondists hoped,
though almost in despair, that it was not yet too late to show the
people the horrors of anarchy, and to rally around themselves the
multitude to sustain a well-established and law-revering republic. The
Jacobins determined to send their opponents to the scaffold, and by
the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side,
resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin
leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard
concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits.
They exhibited these allies to the Girondists as a bull-dog shows his
teeth.

In speeches, and placards, and proclamations they declared the
Girondists to be, in heart, the enemies of the Republi