d they exchanged a kiss on the mouth through the bars.

XX

Evariste Gamelin, as he sat, one day that a long, tedious case was
before the Tribunal, on the jury-bench in the stifling court, closed his
eyes and thought:

"Evil-doers, by forcing Marat to hide in holes and corners, had turned
him into a bird of night, the bird of Minerva, whose glance pierced the
dark recesses where conspirators lurked. Now it is a blue eye, cold and
calm, that discovers the enemies of the State and denounces traitors
with a subtlety unknown even to the Friend of the People, now asleep for
ever in the garden of the Cordeliers. The new saviour of the country, as
zealous and more keen-sighted than the first, sees what no man before
had seen and with a lifted finger spreads terror broadcast. He discerns
the fine, imperceptible shades of difference that divide evil from good,
vice from virtue, which but for him would have been confounded, to the
hurt of the fatherland and freedom, he marks out before him the thin,
inflexible line outside which lies, to the right hand and to the left,
only error, crime, and wickedness. The Incorruptible teaches how men
serve the foreigner equally by excess of zeal and by supineness, by
persecuting the religious in the name of reason no less than by fighting
in the name of religion against the laws of the Republic. Every whit as
much as the villains who immolated Le Peltier and Marat, do they serve
the foreigner who decree them divine honours, to compromise their
memory. Agent of the foreigner whosoever repudiates the ideas of order,
wisdom, opportunity; agent of the foreigner whosoever outrages morals,
scandalizes virtue, and, in the foolishness of his heart, denies God.
Yes, fanatic priests deserve to die; but there is an anti-revolutionary
way of combating fanaticism; abjurers, too, may be guilty of a crime. By
moderation men destroy the Republic; by violence they do the same.

"August and terrible the functions of a judge,--functions defined by the
wisest of mankind! It is not aristocrats alone, federalists, scoundrels
of the Orleans faction, open enemies of the fatherland, that we must
strike down. The conspirator, the agent of the foreigner is a Proteus,
he assumes all shapes, he puts on the guise of a patriot, a
revolutionary, an enemy of Kings; he affects the boldness of a heart
that beats only for freedom; his voice swells, and the foes of the
Republic tremble. His name is Danton; his violence