ce and that the substitutes for the deputies to the
Convention should be assembled at Bourges in case the Convention itself
should be attacked and destroyed. This last proposal was highly
characteristic of the Girondins, heroic as orators, but as members of a
political party always timid of action.

The Committee of Public Safety, already tuned to its higher duties and
viewing the faction fight of the assembly with some slight degree of
detachment, steered a middle and politic course. Barere proposed a
compromise, which the Girondins weakly accepted. But its enemies
continued strenuous action, formed a new insurrectional committee, and
set Hebert's infamous sheet, the _Pere Duchesne_, {181} howling for
their blood. This newspaper deserves a few lines.

Hebert, a man of the middle class, after a stormy youth drifted into
revolutionary journalism. With much verve, and a true Voltairian
spirit, he at first took up a moderate attitude, but being a time
server soon discovered that his interest lay in another direction.
From the middle of 1792 he rose rapidly to great popularity by his loud
defence of extreme courses. The _Pere Duchesne_, copies of which are
at this day among the greatest of bibliographical curiosities, was
written for the people and in a jargon out-Heroding their own, a
compound of oaths and obscenities. The _Pere Duchesne_ was nearly
always in a state of _grande joie_ or of _grande colere_, and at the
epoch we have reached his anger is being continuously poured out, the
filthiest stream of invective conceivable, against the Girondins.

With Marat and Hebert fanning the flames, the insurrectional committee
drew up a new list of 32 suspect deputies. The Committee of Public
Safety, appealed to by the Girondins, ordered the arrest of Hebert. On
the following day, the 25th of May, the Commune demanded his release.
Isnard, one of the {182} Gironde, that day acting as president of the
Convention, answered the deputation of the Commune with unbridled
anger, and concluded by declaring that if Paris dared to lay one finger
on a member of the Convention, the city would be destroyed. There was
in this an unfortunate echo of the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto.

On the 26th Robespierre, at the Jacobin Club, gave his formal assent to
the proposal that an insurrection should be organized against the
Gironde. Two days later Hebert was released, and the Commune and the
committees of the sections began organizing