rming the rich only to rouse against the
lawful authority powerful and implacable foes. Once private property
was threatened, the whole population, the more ardently attached to its
possessions the less of these it owned, would turn suddenly against the
Republic. To terrify vested interests is to conspire against the State.
These men who, under pretence of securing universal happiness and the
reign of justice, proposed a system of equality and community of goods
as a worthy object of good citizens' endeavours, were traitors and
malefactors more dangerous than the Federalists.

But the most startling revelation he owed to Robespierre's wisdom was
that of the crimes and infamies of atheism. Gamelin had never denied the
existence of God; he was a deist and believed in a Providence that
watches over mankind; but, admitting that he could form only a very
vague conception of the Supreme Being and deeply attached to the
principle of freedom of conscience, he was quite ready to allow that
right-thinking men might follow the example of Lamettrie, Boulanger, the
Baron d'Holbach, Lalande, Helvetius, the _citoyen_ Dupuis, and deny
God's existence, on condition they formulated a natural morality and
found in themselves the sources of justice and the rules of a virtuous
life. He had even felt himself in sympathy with the atheists, when he
had seen them vilified and persecuted. Maximilien had opened his mind
and unsealed his eyes. The great man by his virtuous eloquence had
taught him the true character of atheism, its nature, its objects, its
effects; he had shown him how this doctrine, conceived in the
drawing-rooms and boudoirs of the aristocracy, was the most perfidious
invention the enemies of the people had ever devised to demoralize and
enslave it; how it was a criminal act to uproot from the heart of the
unfortunate the consoling thought of a Providence to reward and
compensate and give them over without rein or bit to the passions that
degrade men and make vile slaves of them; how, in fine, the monarchical
Epicureanism of a Helvetius led to immorality, cruelty, and every
wickedness. Now that he had learnt these lessons from the lips of a
great man and a great citizen, he execrated the atheists--especially
when they were of an open-hearted, joyous temper, like his old friend
Brotteaux.

* * * * *

In the days that followed Evariste had to give judgment one after the
other on a _ci-devant_ conv