ore
executions; more torrents of tainted blood must be shed. Three days
after the festival celebrating the new alliance and the reconciliation
of heaven and earth, the Convention promulgates the Law of Prairial
which suppresses, with a sort of ferocious good-nature, all the
traditional forms of Law, whatever has been devised since the time of
the Roman jurisconsults for the safeguarding of innocence under
suspicion. No more sifting of evidence, no more questioning of the
accused, no more witnesses, no more counsel for the defence; love of the
fatherland supplies everything that is needful. The prisoner, who bears
locked up in his bosom his guilt or innocence, passes without a word
allowed before the patriot jury, and it is in this brief moment they
must unravel his case, often complicated and obscure. How is justice
possible? How distinguish in an instant between the honest man and the
villain, the patriot and the enemy of the fatherland...?

Disconcerted for the moment, Gamelin quickly learned his new duties and
accommodated himself to his new functions. He recognized that this
curtailment of formalities was genuinely characteristic of the new
justice, at once salutary and terrifying, the administrators of which
were no longer ermined pedants leisurely weighing the _pros_ and
_contras_ in their Gothic balances, but good sansculottes judging by
inspiration and seeing the whole truth in a flash. When guarantees and
precautions would have undone everything, the impulses of an upright
heart saved the situation. We must follow the promptings of Nature, the
good mother who never deceives; the heart must teach us to do judgment,
and Gamelin made invocation to the manes of Jean-Jacques:

"Man of virtue, inspire me with the love of men, the ardent desire to
regenerate humankind!"

His colleagues, for the most part, felt with him. They were, first and
foremost, simple people; and when the forms of law were simplified,
they felt more comfortable. Justice thus abbreviated satisfied them; the
pace was quickened, and no obstacles were left to fret them. They
limited themselves to an inquiry into the opinions of the accused, not
conceiving it possible that anyone could think differently from
themselves except in pure perversity. Believing themselves the exclusive
possessors of truth, wisdom, the quintessence of good, they attributed
to their opponents nothing but error and evil. They felt themselves
all-powerful; they envisaged Go