e him. I esteem Robespierre
for this, and show him that I do; and then too, though he is not very
attentive at the evening meetings, he comes occasionally and asks me to
give him a dinner. I was much struck with the affright with which he was
agitated on the day of the king's flight to Varennes. He said the same
evening at Petion's that the Royal Family had not taken such a step
without preparing in Paris a Saint Bartholomew for the patriots, and
that he expected to die before he was twenty-four hours older. Petion,
Buzot, Roland, on the contrary, said that this flight of the king's was
his abdication, that it was necessary to profit by it in order to
prepare men's minds for the republic. Robespierre, sneering and biting
his nails, as usual, asked what a republic was."

It was on this day that the plan of a journal, called the _Republican_,
was arranged between Brissot, Condorcet, Dumont of Geneva, and
Duchatelet. We thus see that the idea of a republic was born in the
cradle of the Girondists before it emanated from Robespierre, and that
the 10th of August was no chance, but a plot.

At the same epoch, Madame Roland had given way, in order to save
Robespierre's life, to one of those impulses which reveal a courageous
friendship, and leave their traces even in the memory of the ungrateful.
After the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, accused of having conspired
with the originators of the petition of forfeiture, and threatened with
vengeance by the National Guard, Robespierre was obliged to conceal
himself. Madame Roland, accompanied by her husband, went at 11 o'clock
at night to his retreat in the Marais, to offer him a safer asylum in
their own house. He had already quitted his domicile. Madame Roland then
went to their common friend Buzot, and entreated him to go to the
Feuillants, where he still retained influence, and with all speed to
exculpate Robespierre before any act of accusation was issued against
him.

Buzot hesitated for a moment, then replied,--"I will do all in my power
to save this unfortunate young man, although I am far from partaking the
opinion of many respecting him. He thinks too much of himself to love
liberty; but he serves it, and that is enough for me. I shall be there
to defend him." Thus, three of Robespierre's subsequent victims combined
that night, and unknown to him, for the safety of the man by whom they
were eventually to die. Destiny is a mystery whence spring the most
remarkable coinci