est, yet not the least able, amongst those
fallen spirits, who, with great adroitness and ingenuity, as well as wit
and eloquence, caught opportunities as they arose, and was eminently
dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the
safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so
dangerous, to attach themselves to Barrere, as a leader who professed to
guide them to safety if not to honour; and it was the existence of this
vacillating and uncertain body, whose ultimate motions could never be
calculated upon, which rendered it impossible to presage with assurance
the event of any debate in the convention during this dangerous period.

Saint Just arose, in the name of the committee of public safety, to
make, after his own manner, not theirs, a report on the discourse of
Robespierre on the previous evening. He had begun a harangue in the tone
of his patron, declaring that, were the tribune which he occupied the
Tarpeian rock itself, he would not the less, placed as he stood there,
discharge the duties of a patriot. "I am about," he said, "to lift the
veil."--"I tear it asunder," said Tallien, interrupting him. "The public
interest is sacrificed by individuals, who come hither exclusively in
their own name, and conduct themselves as superior to the whole
convention." He forced Saint Just from the tribune, and a violent debate
ensued.

Billaud Varennes called the attention of the assembly to the sitting of
the Jacobin club on the preceding evening. He declared the military
force of Paris was placed under the command of Henriot, a traitor and a
parricide, who was ready to march the soldiers whom he commanded,
against the convention. He denounced Robespierre himself as a second
Catiline, artful as well as ambitious, whose system it had been to nurse
jealousies and inflame dissentions in the convention, so as to disunite
parties, and even individuals from each other, attack them in detail,
and thus destroy those antagonists separately, upon whose combined and
united strength he dared not have looked.

The convention echoed with applause every violent expression of the
orator, and when Robespierre sprung to the tribune, his voice was
drowned by a general shout of "down with the tyrant!" Tallien moved the
denunciation of Robespierre, with the arrest of Henriot, his
staff-officers, and of others connected with the meditated violence on
the convention. He had undertaken to lead the attac