on of the Revolution. I know the anger, the just anger,
of the people, and that is why it listens to, and believes in, me. Those
cries of alarm and fury, that you take for words in the air, are the
most simple and sincere expression of the passions which devour my mind.
Yes, if I had had in my hand the arms of the people after the decree
against the garrison of Nancy, I would have decimated the deputies who
confirmed it. After the information of the events of the 5th and 6th
October, I would have immolated every judge on the pile; after the
massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, had I but had 2000 men, animated with the
same resentment as myself, I would have gone at their head to stab La
Fayette in the midst of his battalion of brigands, burnt the king in his
palace, and cut the throats of our atrocious representatives on their
very seats!' Robespierre listened to me with affright, turned pale, and
was for a long time silent. I left him. I had seen an honest man, but
not a man of the state."

Thus the wretch had excited horror in the fanatic: Robespierre had
obtained Marat's pity.

IV.

The first struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondists gave the
skilful Dumouriez a double _point d'appui_ for his policy. The enmity of
Roland, Claviere, and Servan no longer disturbed him in council. He
balanced their influence by his alliance with their enemies. But the
Jacobins demanded wages; he proffered them in war. Danton, as violent
but more politic than Marat, did not cease to repeat that the
revolutionists and the despots were irreconcileable, and that France had
no safety to expect except from its audacity and despair. War, according
to Danton, was the baptism or the martyrdom which liberty was to
undergo, like a new religion. It was necessary to replunge France into
the fire, in order to purify it from the stains and shame of its past.

Dumouriez, agreeing with La Fayette and the Feuillants, was also anxious
for war; but it was as a soldier, to acquire glory, and thus crush
faction. From the first day of his ministry he negotiated so as to
obtain from Austria a decisive answer. He had removed nearly all the
members of the diplomatic body; he had replaced them by energetic men.
His despatches had a martial accent, which sounded like the voice of an
armed people. He summoned the princes of the Rhine, the emperor, the
king of Russia, the king of Sardinia, and Spain, to recognise or oppose
the constitutional king of France. B