by the _Vengeur_, triumphant in death; plunging down
carrying _vive la Republique_ along with her into eternity, in Howe's
victory of the First of June. Alas, alas! a myth, founded, like the
world itself, on _Nothing_!

Of massacring, altar-robbing, Hebertism, is there beginning to be a
sickening? Danton, Camille Desmoulins are weary of it; the Hebertists
themselves are smitten; nineteen of them travel their last road in the
tumbrils. "We should not strike save where it is useful to the
Republic," says Danton; quarrels with Robespierre; Danton, Camille,
others of the friends of mercy are arrested. At the trial, he shivers
the witnesses to ruin thunderously; nevertheless, sentence is passed. On
the scaffold he says, "Danton, no weakness! Thou wilt show my head to
the people--it is worth showing." So passes this Danton; a very man;
fiery-real, from the great fire-bosom of nature herself.

Foul Hebert and the Hebertists, great Danton and the Dantonists, are
gone, swift, ever swifter, goes the axe of Samson; Death pauses not. But
on Prairial 20, the world is in holiday clothes in the Jardin National.
Incorruptible Robespierre, President of the Convention, has decreed the
existence of the Supreme Being; will himself be priest and prophet; in
sky-blue coat and black breeches! Nowise, however, checking the
guillotine, going ever faster.

On July 26, when the Incorruptible addresses the Convention, there is
dissonance. Such mutiny is like fire sputtering in the ship's
powder-room. The Convention then must be purged, with aid of Henriot.
But next day, amid cries of _Tyranny! Dictatorship_! the Convention
decrees that Robespierre "is accused"; with Couthon and St. Just;
decreed "out of law"; Paris, after brief tumult, sides with the
Convention. So on July 28, 1794, the tumbrils go with this motley batch
of outlaws. This is the end of the Reign of Terror. The nation resolves
itself into a committee of mercy.

Thenceforth, writ of accusation and legal proof being decreed necessary,
Fouquier's trade is gone; the prisons deliver up suspects. For here was
the end of the revolution system. The keystone being struck out, the
whole arch-work of Sansculottism began to crack, till the abyss had
swallowed it all.

And still there is no bread, and no constitution; Paris rises once
again, flowing towards the Tuileries; checked in one day with two blank
cannon-shots, by Pichegru, conqueror of Holland. Abbe Sieyes provides
yet another con