they wished to save the life of the king;
that they would welcome the army of invasion, as affording them an
opportunity to reinstate Louis upon the throne. The Jacobins, it was
declared, were the only true friends of the people. The Girondists
were accused of being in league with the aristocrats. These suspicions
rose and floated over Paris like the mist of the ocean. They were
every where encountered, and yet presented no resistance to be
assailed. They were intimated in the Jacobin journals; they were
suggested, with daily increasing distinctness, at the _tribune_. And
in those multitudinous gatherings, where Marat stood in filth and rags
to harangue the miserable, and the vicious, and the starving, they
were proclaimed loudly, and with execrations. The Jacobins rejoiced
that they had now, by the force of circumstances, crowded their
adversaries into a position from which they could not easily extricate
themselves. Should the Girondists vote for the death of the king, they
would thus support the Jacobins in those sanguinary measures, so
popular with the mob, which had now become the right arm of Jacobin
power. The glory would also all redound to the Jacobins, for it would
not be difficult to convince the multitude that the Girondists merely
submitted to a measure which they were unable to resist. Should the
Girondists, on the other hand, true to their instinctive abhorrence of
these deeds of blood, dare to vote against the death of the king, they
would be ruined irretrievably. They would then stand unmasked before
the people as traitors to the Republic and the friends of royalty.
Like noxious beasts, they would be hunted through the streets and
massacred at their own firesides. The Girondists perceived distinctly
the vortex of destruction toward which they were so rapidly circling.
Many and anxious were their deliberations, night after night, in the
library of Madame Roland. In the midst of the fearful peril, it was
not easy to decide what either duty or apparent policy required.

The Jacobins now made a direct and infamous attempt to turn the rage
of the populace against Madame Roland. Achille Viard, one of those
unprincipled adventurers with which the stormy times had filled the
metropolis, was employed, as a spy, to feign attachment to the
Girondist party, and to seek the acquaintance, and insinuate himself
into the confidence of Madame Roland. By perversions and exaggerations
of her language, he was to fabricate