a_,
_Petion_, _Bonneville_, _Freron_, _Danton_, and _Camille_.' Danton and I
found safety in flight alone from our assassins. The patriots are timid
factions." "And," added _Freron_, "there are men to be found, who
venture to justify these cowardly murders--these informations--these
_lettres de cachet_--these seizures of papers--these confiscations of
presses. The red flag floats for a week from the balcony of the
Hotel-de-Ville, like as in times of old, the banners torn from the grasp
of the dying foeman floated from the arched roof of our temples." In
another part he says, "Marat's presses have been seized--the name of the
author should have sufficed to protect the typographer. The press is
sacred, as sacred as the cradle of the first-born, which even the
officers of the law have orders to respect. The silence of the tomb
reigns in the city, the public places are deserted, and the theatres
re-echo alone with servile applause of royalism, that triumphs alike on
the stage and in our streets. You were impatient, Bailly, and you
treacherous, La Fayette, to employ that terrible weapon, martial law, so
dangerous, so difficult to be wielded. No, no, nought can ever efface
the indelible stain of the blood of your brethren, that has spurted over
your scarfs and your uniforms. It has sunk even to your heart--it is a
slow poison that will consume ye all."

Whilst the revolutionary press thus infused the spirit of resentment
into the people, the clubs, reassured by the indolence of the Assembly,
and by the scrupulous legality of La Fayette, suffered but slightly the
effects of this body blow of the victory of the Champ-de-Mars. A schism
took place in the assembly of the Jacobins between the intolerant
members and its first founders, Barnave, Duport, and the two
Lameths. This schism took its rise in the great question of the
non-re-eligibility of the members of the National Assembly for the
Legislative Assembly which was so soon to succeed. The pure Jacobins,
together with Robespierre, wished that the National Assembly should
abdicate, _en masse_, and voluntarily sentence themselves to a political
ostracism, in order to make room for men of newer ideas and more imbued
with the spirit of the time. The moderate and constitutional Jacobins
looked upon this abdication as equally fatal to the monarch, as it dealt
a mortal blow to their ambition, for they wished to seize on the
direction of the power they had just created; they deemed t