ge, another. The cry for direct action
always woke echo in the popular breast, sick over the delays of the
Versailles lawgivers, and nourishing the hope of seizing pelf and
power, rescuing their kinsfolk from the prisons, and beating down the
Kingship and aristocracy to relinquish privileges and abate the
hardships of the Common Man!

Plain, embittered envy stalked abroad, too--envy of the aristocrats'
grand homes and unparalleled luxury, their fine equipages and
clothing, costly foods and wines, their trains of lackeys and menials,
the beauty and joie-de-vivre of their sons and daughters! The
mechanic, the storekeeper, the unskilled laborer, the ranks of
unemployed, and the submerged tenth obliged to live by their wits or
starve, were as fuel to the spark of the orators' lightning.

'Twas unlike a well-ordered land wherein each one receives the
well-merited reward of toil. Justice was not in the body politic.
Tyranny, extravagance and bankruptcy on the part of the ruling class
had wiped out the margin of plenty. Black ruin seemed to impend for
all. It was a case of starve--or unite against the rulers and
oppressors of society. Danton, the thunderer of mighty speech,
dominated these gatherings, aided and abetted by the eagle-like
Desmoulins and the crafty Robespierre.

"With the People's government," his swelling periods resounded, "there
shall be no common man, no aristocrat--no rich nor poor--but all
brothers--brothers--brothers!" Imagine if you can the fire-drama of
his recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs--his picture of
their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats' pleasures--and then
consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful
fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the
elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found
immediate object of its ire.

CHAPTER X

THE ATTACK ON DANTON

But the royalists were not idle. Their spies attended the meetings.
Their swordsmen provoked street encounters with popular leaders.

They had always coped with popular ferments by picking off the
individual leaders, and they did not doubt their ability to do the
same thing now. As Danton spoke, an influential Royalist, pretending
to handclap his sentiments, privately signaled to a number of these
"spadassins" or killers.

On his way home from the meeting Danton was attacked in the lonely
street. He backed up to a house porch, quickly dr