ulin, entered by the
gate of l'Ecole Militaire, and not only did not fire, but tore many of
the unfortunate people from the hands of the National Guard, whose
exasperation amounted to delirium. In short, it might he asked, relative
to any want of exactness attributable to Bailly in that unfortunate
affair, whether it was just to impute it to him who, in his letters to
Voltaire on the origin of the sciences, wrote as follows in 1776:

"I am unfortunately short-sighted. I am often humiliated in the open
country. Whilst I with difficulty can distinguish a house at the
distance of a hundred paces, my friends relate to me what they see at
the distance of five or six hundred. I open my eyes, I fatigue myself
without seeing any thing, and I am sometimes inclined to think that they
amuse themselves at my expense."

You begin to see, Gentlemen, the advantage that a firm and able lawyer
might have drawn from the authentic facts that I have just been
relating. But Bailly knew the pretended jury before whom he had to
appear. This jury was not a collection of drunken cobblers, whatever
some passionate writers may have asserted; it was worse than that,
Gentlemen, notwithstanding the deservedly celebrated names that were
occasionally interspersed among them: it was--let us cut the subject
short--an odious, commission.

The very circumscribed list from which chance in 1793 and 1794 drew the
juries of the Revolutionary Tribunals, did not embrace, as the sacred
word _jury_ seems to imply, all one class of citizens. The authorities
formed it, after a prefatory and very minute inquiry, of their
adherents only. The unfortunate defendants were thus judged not by
impartial persons free from any preconceived system, but by political
enemies, which is as much as to say, by that which is the most cruel and
remorseless in the world.

Bailly would not be defended. After his appearance as a witness in the
trial of Marie Antoinette, the ex-Mayor only wrote and had printed for
circulation, a paper entitled _Bailly to his fellow-citizens_. It closes
with these affecting words:

"I have only gained by the Revolution that which my fellow-citizens have
gained: liberty and equality. I have lost by it some useful situations,
and my fortune is nearly destroyed. I could be happy with what remains
of it to me and a clear conscience; but to be happy in the repose of my
retreat, I require, my dear fellow-citizens, your esteem: I know well
that, sooner or