r pleasure, because it affords me an
opportunity, not only to certify to the representatives of the free
citizens of France my personal attachment to the cause of liberty,
but to assure them at the same time, in the most positive way, that
the government and people of America take the highest interest in
the liberty, success, and prosperity of the French republic."

Robespierre had lately fallen. His bloody rule was at an end. For some
time he had been hated by the Convention, to which body reason and
conscience were bringing their convictions. On the twenty-eighth of July
the Convention resolved to crush him. Billaud Varennes, in a speech
replete with invective, denounced him as a tyrant; and when Robespierre
attempted to speak, his voice was drowned with cries of "Down with the
tyrant! down with the tyrant!" A decree of outlawry was then passed, and
he and some of his friends were ordered to immediate execution. With
their fall the Reign of Terror ended. The nation breathed freer, and the
curtain fell upon one of the bloodiest tragedies in the history of the
race.

It was at this auspicious moment that Monroe appeared. The sentiments of
his letter were so much in consonance with the feelings of the hour,
that it is said the president of the Convention embraced Monroe
affectionately when they met. It was decreed that the American and
French flags should be entwined and hung up in the hall of the
Convention, as an emblem of the union of the two republics; and Monroe,
not to be outdone in acts of courtesy, presented the banner of his
country to the Convention in the name of his people.

Congress adjourned on the ninth of June to the first Monday in the
succeeding November. The session had been a stormy one. Questions of
national policy had arisen, which called forth some of the most animated
and eloquent discussions ever held upon the floor of the house of
representatives; and when the adjournment took place, questions were
pending, the solution of which caused many an anxious hour to the
president and the friends of the republic.

As soon as Washington could make proper arrangements, he set out on a
flying visit to Mount Vernon. Many persons had predicted that the yellow
fever would reappear in Philadelphia during that summer; and, to guard
his family against the dangers of its presence, he removed them to a
pleasant house at Germantown. On the eighteenth of June he left for the
Potomac; and