ighty-three departments. Those who rule
you, as they would a child, have agreed to surrender Paris to ten
thousand pikes, to whom the bar of the Assembly will be thrown open the
day the national guard is disarmed; the men destined to bear them arrive
every day, and Paris receives an accession of twelve or fifteen hundred
bandits every twenty-four hours, and beg, until the day of pillage
arrives, which they await as ravens await their prey.--I have not told
all;--generals are prepared for this hideous army. The friends of
Jourdan, impatient to behold the man whom the amnesty had not delivered
sufficiently soon, have broken open his prison at Avignon. Already, he
has been received in triumph in several cities of the south, like the
Swiss of the Chateauvieux, and will arrive at Paris to-morrow; Sunday he
will be present at the _fete_ with his companions--with the two
Mainvielle--with Pegtavin;--with all those cold-blooded scoundrels who
have killed in one night sixty-eight defenceless persons, and violated
females before they murdered them. Catiline!--Cethegus!--march forward,
the soldiers of Sylla are in the city, and the consul himself undertakes
to disarm the Romans. The measure is full,--it overflows!"

Petion strove miserably to justify himself in a letter in which his
weakness and connivance revealed themselves beneath the multiplicity of
excuses. At the same time Robespierre, mounting the tribune of the
Jacobins, exclaimed, "You do not trace to their source the obstacles
that oppose the expansion of the sentiments of the people. Against whom
think you that you have to strive? against the aristocracy?--No. Against
the court?--No. Against a general who has long entertained great designs
against the people. It is not the national guard that views these
preparations with alarm; it is the genius of La Fayette that conspires
in the staff; it is the genius of La Fayette that conspires in the
directory of the department; it is the genius of La Fayette that
perverts the minds of so many good citizens in the capital who would but
for him be with us.

"La Fayette is the most dangerous of the enemies of liberty, because he
wears the mask of patriotism; it is he who, after having wrought all the
evil in his power in the Constituent Assembly, has affected to withdraw
to his estates, and then comes to strive for this post of mayor of
Paris, not to obtain it, but to refuse it, in order to affect
disinterestedness; it is he who has