d over again his speech of the
day. 'It is my testament of death,' he said, amid the passionate
protestations of his devoted followers. He had been talking for the last
three years of his willingness to drink the hemlock, and to offer his
breast to the poniards of tyrants. That was a fashion of the speech of
the time, and in earlier days it had been more than a fashion of speech,
for Brunswick would have given them short shrift. But now, when he
talked of his last testament, Robespierre did not intend it to be so if
he could prevent it. When he went to rest that night, he had a tolerably
calm hope that he should win the next day's battle in the Convention,
when he was aware that Saint Just would attack the Committees openly and
directly. If he would have allowed his band to invade the Pavillon de
Flore, and carry off or slay the Committees who sat up through the
night, the battle would have been won when he awoke. His friends are
justified in saying that his strong respect for legality was the cause
of his ruin.

Men in all ages have had a superstitious fondness for connecting awful
events in their lives with portents and signs among the outer elements.
It was noticed that the heat during the terrible days of Thermidor was
more intense than had been known within the memory of man. The
thermometer never fell below sixty-five degrees in the coolest part of
the night, and in the daytime men and women and beasts of burden fell
down dead in the streets. By five o'clock in the morning of the Ninth
Thermidor, the galleries of the Convention were filled by a boisterous
and excited throng. At ten o'clock the proceedings began as usual with
the reading of correspondence from the departments and from the armies.
Robespierre, who had been escorted from his lodgings by the usual body
of admirers, instead of taking his ordinary seat, remained standing by
the side of the tribune. It is a familiar fact that moments of appalling
suspense are precisely those in which we are most ready involuntarily to
note a trifle; everybody observed that Robespierre wore the coat of
violet-blue silk and the white nankeens in which a few weeks previously
he had done honour to the Supreme Being.

The galleries seemed as enthusiastic as ever. The men of the Plain and
the Marsh had lost the abject mien with which they usually cowered
before Robespierre's glance; they wore a courageous air of judicial
reserve. The leaders of the Mountain wandered restlessl