rom the
department of Oise, cries out to him that if he "dares to read it
he will assassinate him."[3420] The chamber "has become an arena of
gladiators."[3421] Sometimes the entire "Mountain" darts from its
benches on the left, while a similar human wave rolls down from those on
the right; both clash in the center of the room amidst furious screams
and shouts; in one of these hubbubs one of the "Mountain" having drawn a
pistol the Girondist Duperret draws his sword.[3422] After the middle
of December prominent members of the "Right," constantly persecuted,
threatened and outraged," reduced to "being out every night, are
compelled to carry arms in self-defense,"[3423] and, after the King's
execution, "almost all" bring them to the sessions of the Convention.
Any day, indeed, they may look for the final attack, and they are not
disposed to die unavenged: during the night of March 9, finding that
they are only forty-three, they agree to launch themselves in a body "at
the first hostile movement, against their adversaries and kill as many
as possible" before perishing.[3424]

It is a desperate resource, but the only one. For, besides the madmen
belonging to the Convention, they have against them the madmen in
the galleries, and these likewise are September murderers. The vilest
Jacobin rabble purposely takes its stand near them, at first in the old
Riding-school, and then in the new hall in the Tuileries. They see above
and in a circle around them drilled adversaries, eight or nine hundred
heads packed "in the great gallery at the bottom, under a deep and
silent vault," and, besides these, on the sides, a thousand or fifteen
hundred more, two immense tribunes completely filled.[3425] The
galleries of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, compared with
these, were calm. Nothing is more disgraceful to the Convention, writes
a foreign spectator,[3426] than the insolence of the audience. One of
the regulations prohibits, indeed, any mark of approval or disapproval,
"but it is violated every day, and nobody is ever punished for this
delinquency." The majority in vain expresses its indignation at this
"gang of hired ruffians," who beset and oppress it, while at the very
time that it utters its complaints, it endures and tolerates it.
"The struggle is frightful," says a deputy,[3427] "screams, murmurs,
stampings, shouts... The foulest insults were launched from the
galleries." "For a long time," says another, "no one can sp