sts, he had left Paris and, apparently
retiring from politics, had gone back to his little country town of
Arcis-sur-Aube. There a month later Robespierre sought him out, and
invited him to joint action for pulling down Hebert. With Robespierre
this meant no more than that Danton could help him, not that he would
ever help Danton, and doubtless the latter realized it; but the bold
course always drew him, and he accepted. Danton returned to Paris on
the 21st of November.

Robespierre had been moved to this step by an alarming development of
Hebertism. Anti-clericalism, hatred of the priest,--and among other
things the priest stood behind the {203} Vendeen,--Voltairianism,
materialism, all these elements had come to a head; and the clique who
worked the Commune had determined that the triumph of the Revolution
demanded the downfall of Catholicism, which was, as it seemed,
equivalent to religion. A wave of atheism swept through Paris. To be
atheistic became the mark of a good citizen. Gobel, the archbishop,
and many priests, accepted it, and renounced the Church. Then a
further step was taken. On the 10th of November the Cathedral of Notre
Dame was dedicated to Reason, a handsome young woman from the opera
personifying the goddess. Two weeks later, just as Danton reached
Paris, the Commune closed all the churches of the city for the purpose
of dedicating them to the cult of Reason.

Robespierre, like most of the men of the Revolution, was an enemy of
the Church; but he was not an atheist. On the contrary he accepted in
a very literal, dogmatic and zealous way the doctrines of Rousseau, his
prophet not only in politics but in religion. To Robespierre the
Hebertist cult of Reason was as gross blasphemy as it was to the most
ardent Catholic, and the Jacobin leader had nerved himself for a
struggle to destroy that cult. That was why he had appealed to Danton,
{204} though he knew that if Danton joined him in the fight it would
not be for conscience, for a religious motive, but solely to destroy
Hebert and perhaps to regain control of the Committee of Public Safety.
This last possibility Robespierre risked.

The two allies immediately opened their campaign against Hebert. In
the Convention Danton, with rather hollow rhetoric, declaimed in favour
of popular festivals at which incense should be offered to the Supreme
Being. Robespierre at the Jacobins, allowing his venom to master his
logic, declared: "Atheism i