around it, _to_ what events it has
given birth, what men have shaken it with their clamour, what men
have made it sacred with their truths--how recount this? After
Mirabeau,--Vergniaud, Camille Desmoulins, Saint-Just, that stern young
man, Danton, that tremendous tribune, Robespierre, that incarnation of
the great and terrible year! From it were heard those ferocious
interruptions. "Aha!" cries an orator of the Convention, "do you
propose to cut short my speech?" "Yes," answers a voice, "and your neck
to-morrow." And those superb apostrophes. "Minister of Justice," said
General Foy to an iniquitous Keeper of the Seals, "I condemn you, on
leaving this room, to contemplate the statue of L'Hopital."--There,
every cause has been pleaded, as we have said before, bad causes as
well as good; the good only have been finally won; there, in the
presence of resistance, of denials, of obstacles, those who long for
the future, like those who long for the past, have lost all patience;
there, it has happened to truth to become violent, and to falsehood to
rage; there, all extremes have appeared. On that tribune the guillotine
had its orator, Marat; and the Inquisition its Montalembert. Terrorism
in the name of public safety, terrorism in the name of Rome; gall in
the mouths of both, agony in the audience. When one was speaking, you
fancied you saw the gleam of the knife; when the other was speaking,
you fancied you heard the crackling of the stake. There factions have
fought, all with determination, a few with glory. There, the royal
power violated the right of the people in the person of Manuel, become
illustrious in history by this very violation; there appeared,
disdaining the past, whose servants they were, two melancholy old men:
Royer-Collard, disdainful probity, Chateaubriand, the satirical genius;
there, Thiers, skill, wrestled with Guizot, strength; there men have
mingled, have grappled, have fought, have brandished evidence like a
sword. There, for more than a quarter of a century, hatred, rage,
superstition, egotism, imposture, shrieking, hissing, barking,
writhing, screaming always the same calumnies, shaking always the same
clenched fist, spitting, since Christ, the same saliva, have whirled
like a cloud-storm about thy serene face, O Truth!

IV

THE ORATORS

All this was alive, ardent, fruitful, tumultuous, grand. And when
everything had been pleaded, argued, investigated, searched, gone to
the bottom of, sa