ised
to do so readily enough. Back at his inn, scarce believing that he had
got away alive, still sweating with terror at the very thought of his
near escape, he packed his valise, and, by virtue of his commission,
obtained post-horses at once.

On the morrow from Angers, safe beyond the reach of Carrier, he wrote
again to Robespierre, and this time also to his father.

"In Nantes," he wrote, "I found the old regime in its worst form." He
knew the jargon of Liberty, the tune that set the patriots a-dancing.
"Carrier's insolent secretaries emulate the intolerable haughtiness of
a ci-devant minister's lackeys. Carrier himself lives surrounded by
luxury, pampered by women 'and parasites, keeping a harem and a court.
He tramples justice in the mud. He has had all those who filled the
prisons flung untried into the Loire. The city of Nantes," he concluded,
"needs saving. The Vendean revolt must be suppressed, and Carrier the
slayer of Liberty recalled."

The letter had its effect, and Carrier was recalled to Paris, but not
in disgrace. Failing health was urged as the solicitous reason for his
retirement from the arduous duties of governing Nantes.

In the Convention his return made little stir, and even when early in
the following July he learnt that Bourbotte, his successor at Nantes,
had ordered the arrest of Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and his
other friends of the committee, on the score of the drownings and the
appropriation of national property confiscated from emigres, he remained
calm, satisfied that his own position was unassailable.

But the members of the Committee of Nantes were sent to Paris for trial,
and their arrival there took place on that most memorable date in the
annals of the Revolution, the 10th Thermidor (July 29, 1794, O.S.), the
day on which Robespierre fell and the floodgates of vengeance upon the
terrorists were flung open.

You have seen in the case of Marc Antoine Jullien how quick Carrier
could be to take a cue. In a coach he followed the tumbril that bore
Robespierre to execution, radiant of countenance and shouting with the
loudest, "Death to the traitor!" On the morrow from the rostrum of
the Convention, he passionately represented himself as a victim of
the fallen tyrant, cleverly turning to his own credit the Marc Antoine
affair, reminding the Convention how he had himself been denounced
to Robespierre. He was greeted with applause in that atmosphere of
Thermidorean reaction.