haring his fate, and Augustin
Robespierre and Le Bas were led off to the prisons along with their
leader and idol.

It was now a little after four o'clock. The Convention, with the
self-possession that so often amazes us in its proceedings, went on with
formal business for another hour. At five they broke up. For life, as
the poets tell, is a daily stage-play; men declaim their high heroic
parts, then doff the buskin or the sock, wash away the paint from their
cheeks, and gravely sit down to meat. The Conventionals, as they ate
their dinners, were unconscious, apparently, that the great crisis of
the drama was still to come. The next twelve hours were to witness the
climax. Robespierre had been crushed by the Convention; it remained to
be seen whether the Convention would not now be crushed by the Commune
of Paris.

Robespierre was first conducted to the prisons of the Luxembourg. The
gaoler, on some plea of informality, refused to receive him. The
terrible prisoner was next taken to the Mairie, where he remained among
joyful friends from eight in the evening until eleven. Meanwhile the old
insurrectionary methods of the nights of June and of August in '92, of
May and of June in '93, were again followed. The beating of the _rappel_
and the _generale_ was heard in all the sections; the tocsin sounded its
dreadful note, reminding all who should hear it that insurrection is
the most sacred and the most indispensable of duties. Hanriot, the
commandant of the forces, had been arrested in the evening, but he was
speedily released by the agents of the Commune. The Council issued
manifestoes and decrees from the Common Hall every moment. The barriers
were closed. Cannon were posted opposite the doors of the hall of the
Convention. The quays were thronged. Emissaries sped to and fro between
the Jacobin Club and the Common Hall, and between these two centres and
each of the forty-eight sections. It is one of the inscrutable mysteries
of this delirious night, that Hanriot did not at once use the force at
his command to break up the Convention. There is no obvious reason why
he should not have done so. The members of the Convention had
re-assembled after their dinner, towards seven o'clock. The hall which
had resounded with the shrieks and yells of the furious gladiators of
the factions all day, now lent a lugubrious echo to gloomy reports which
one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune.
Towards nine o'clo