lock, when we came away, not being certain if they would come out
again.

"Bourdon de l'Oise, on entering the Assembly, shook hands with four
or five Deputies. He was observed to gape while good news was
announcing."

Tallien was already popular among the Jacobins of Paris; and his
connexion with a beautiful woman, who might enable him to keep a domestic
establishment, and to display any wealth he had acquired, without
endangering his reputation, was a circumstance not to be overlooked; for
Robespierre well knew the efficacy of female intrigue, and dinners,* in
gaining partizans among the subordinate members of the Convention.

* Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the
Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a
superior style of living in any particular member. His dress, his
lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach.
--This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of
men the Convention is composed of;--men who, never having been
accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the
gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris
with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible
means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six.

Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she
had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry
him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison.

An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to
have acted on the presumption that it could not. He beset Tallien with
spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer
of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which
he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her
grounds for doing. A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant;
and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of
the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the
prisons. He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and
it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.--Thus
situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the
Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must
allow him the merit of being the first w