headway against suspicions,
not even the most positive evidence. On September 4, 1792, talking
confidentially with Petion, and hard pressed with the questions that he
put to him, he ends by saying, "Very well, I think that Brissot is on
Brunswick's side."[31131]--Naturally, finally, he, like Marat, imagines
the darkest fictions, but they are less improvised, less grossly
absurd, more slowly worked out and more industriously interwoven in his
calculating inquisitorial brain.

"Evidently," he says to Garat, "the Girondists are conspiring."[31132]

"And where?" demands Garat.

"Everywhere," Robespierre replies, "in Paris, throughout France, over
all Europe. Gensonne, at Paris, is plotting in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
going about among the shopkeepers and persuading them that we patriots
mean to pillage their shops. The Gironde (department) has for a long
time been plotting its separation from France so as to join England; the
chiefs of its deputation are at the head of the plot, and mean to carry
it out at any cost. Gensonne makes no secret of it; he tells all among
them who will listen to him that they are not representatives of the
nation, but plenipotentiaries of the Gironde. Brissot is plotting in his
journal, which is simply a tocsin of civil war; we know of his going
to England, and why he went; we know all about his intimacy with that
Lebrun, minister of foreign affairs, a Liegois and creature of the
Austrian house. Brissot's best friend is Claviere, and Claviere
has plotted wherever he could breathe. Rabaut, treacherous like the
Protestant and philosopher that he is, was not clever enough to conceal
his correspondence with that courtier and traitor Montesquiou; six
months ago they were working together to open Savoy and France to the
Piedmontese. Servan was made general of the Pyrenean army only to give
the keys of France to the Spaniards."

"Is there no doubt of this in your mind?" asks Garat.

"None, whatever."[31133]

Such assurance, equal to that of Marat, is terrible and worse in its
effect, for Robespierre's list of conspirators is longer than that of
Marat. Political and social, in Marat's mind, the list comprehends only
aristocrats and the rich; theological and moral in Robespierre's mind,
it comprehends all atheists and dishonest persons, that is to say,
nearly the whole of his party. In this narrow mind, given up to
abstractions and habitually classifying men under two opposite headings,
whoever i