received? Who
is the tyrant who would give me asylum?--Ah! we may abandon a happy,
free, and triumphant country; but a country threatened, rent by
convulsions, oppressed; we do not flee from that, we save, or perish
with it! Heaven, which gave me a soul impassioned for liberty, and gave
me birth in a land trampled on by tyrants--Heaven, which placed my life
in the midst of the reign of factions and crimes, perhaps calls me to
trace with my blood the road to happiness, and the liberty of my fellow
men! Do you require from me any other sacrifice? If you would have my
good name, I surrender it to you; I only wish for reputation in order to
do good to my fellow-creatures. If to preserve it, it be necessary to
betray by a cowardly silence the cause of the truth and of the people,
take it, sully it,--I will no longer defend it. Now that I have defended
myself, I may attack you. I will not do it; I offer you peace. I forget
your injuries; I put up with your insults; but on one condition, that
is, you join me in opposing the factions which distract our country,
and, the most dangerous of all, that of La Fayette: this pseudo-hero of
the two worlds, who, after having been present at the revolution of the
New World, has only exerted himself here in arresting the progress of
liberty in the old hemisphere. You, Brissot, did not you agree with me
that this chief was the executioner and assassin of the people, that the
massacre of the Champ-de-Mars had caused the Revolution to retrograde
for twenty years? Is this man less redoubtable because he is at this
time at the head of the army? No. Hasten then! Let the sword of the laws
strike horizontally at the heads of great conspirators. The news which
has arrived to us from the army is of threatening import. Already it
sows division amongst the national guards and the troops of the line;
already the blood of citizens has flowed at Metz; already the best
patriots are incarcerated at Strasbourg. I tell you, you are accused of
all these evils: wipe out these suspicions by uniting with us, and let
us be reconciled; but let it be for the sake of saving our common
country."

BOOK XIV.

I.

Night was far advanced at the moment when Robespierre concluded his
eloquent discourse in the midst of the enthusiasm of the Jacobins. The
Jacobins and the Girondists then separated more exasperated than ever.
They hesitated before this important severance, which, by weakening the
patriotic party,