e
of their number, though warmly attached to the dictator, had been
intrusted by the committee with the delicate task of drawing up that
report. It was a step towards reconciliation; but the entrance of Collot
d'Herbois, frantic with the insults he had received, broke off all hope
of accommodation betwixt the friends of Danton and those of Robespierre.
D'Herbois exhausted himself in threats against Saint Just, Couthon, and
their master, Robespierre, and they parted on terms of mortal and avowed
enmity. Every exertion now was used by the associated conspirators
against the power of Robespierre, to collect and combine against him the
whole forces of the convention, to alarm the deputies of the plain with
fears for themselves, and to awaken the rage of the mountaineers,
against whose throat the dictator now waved the sword, which their short
sighted policy had placed in his hands. Lists of proscribed deputies
were handed around, said to have been copied from the tablets of the
dictator; genuine or false, they obtained universal credit and currency;
and these whose names stood on the fatal scrolls, engaged themselves for
protection in the league against their enemy. The opinion that his fall
could not be delayed now became general.

This sentiment was so commonly entertained in Paris on the 9th
Thermidor, or 27th July, that a herd of about eighty victims, who were
in the act of being dragged to the guillotine, were nearly saved by
means of it. The people, in a generous burst of compassion, began to
gather in crowds, and interrupted the melancholy procession, as if the
power which presided over these hideous exhibitions had already been
deprived of energy. But the hour was not come. The vile Henriot,
commandant of the national guards, came up with fresh forces also on
the day destined to be the last of his own life, proved the means of
carrying to execution this crowd of unhappy and doubtless innocent
persons.

On this eventful day, Robespierre arrived in the convention, and beheld
the mountain in close array and completely manned, while, as in the case
of Catiline, the bench on which he himself was accustomed to sit, seemed
purposely deserted. Saint Just, Couthon, Le Bas (his brother-in-law,)
and the younger Robespierre, were the only deputies of name who stood
prepared to support him. But could he make an effectual struggle, he
might depend upon the aid of the servile Barrere, a sort of Belial in
the convention, the mean