? when you produce them it be time enough to punish the guilty.'
Oh you who use such language, why were you not in the Roman senate when
Cicero denounced Catiline? You would have asked him for the legal proof.
I can picture his astonishment to myself: whilst he sought for proofs
Rome would have been sacked, and you and Catiline have reigned over a
heap of ruins. Legal proofs! And have you calculated the blood they will
cost you to obtain? Now let us forestall our enemies, by adopting
rigorous measures; let us rid the nation of this swarm of insects,
greedy of its blood,--by whom it is pursued and tormented. But what
should these measures be? In the first place seize on the property of
the absentees. This is but a petty measure you will say. What matter its
importance or its insignificancy, so that it be just. As for the
officers who have deserted, the _Code penal_ prescribes their
fate--death and infamy. The French princes are even more culpable; and
the summons to return to their country, which it is proposed to address
to them, is neither sufficient for your honour nor your safety. Their
attempts are openly made; either they must tremble before you, or you
must tremble before them; you must choose. Men talk of the profound
grief this will cause the king: Brutus immolated his guilty offspring at
the shrine of his country, but the heart of Louis XVI. shall not be put
to so severe a trial. If these princes, alike bad brothers and citizens,
refuse to obey, let him turn to the hearts of the French nation, and
they will amply repay his losses." (Loud applause.)

Pastoret, who spoke after Vergniaud, quoted the saying of Montesquieu,
"_There is a time when it is necessary to cast a veil over the statue of
Liberty, as we conceal the statues of the Gods_." To be ever on the
watch, and to fear nothing, should be the maxim of every free people. He
concluded by proposing repressive, but moderate and gradual measures,
against the absentees.

XVII.

Isnard declared that the measures proposed until then were satisfactory
to prudence, but not to justice, and the vengeance which an outraged
nation owed to itself; and he thus continued:--

"If I am allowed to speak the truth, I shall say, that if we do not
punish all these heads of the rebellion, it is not that we do not know,
at the bottom of our hearts, that they are guilty, but because they are
princes; and, although we have destroyed the nobility and distinctions
of blood, the