vorced from
Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to
Tallien.

This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the
disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin
of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a
wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time
will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate
guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be
remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her
faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance--

"A cut-purse of the empire and the rule;
"____ a King of shreds and patches."

Providence, Aug. 14, 1794.

The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps
have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the
Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*--

* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly
evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined
on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the
prison of St. Lazare.--A single word from any member might at this
crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word
no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.

--Tallien and Billaud were rendered desperate by their situation, and it
is likely that, when they ventured to attack Robespierre, they did not
themselves expect to be successful--it was the consternation of the
latter which encouraged them to persist, and the Assembly to support
them:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
"Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

And to have been lucky enough to seize on this crisis, is, doubtless, the
whole merit of the convention. There has, it is true, been many
allusions to the dagger of Brutus, and several Deputies are said to have
conceived very heroic projects for the destruction of the tyrant; but as
he was dead before these projects were brought to light, we cannot justly
ascribe any effect to them.

The remains of the Brissotin faction, still at liberty, from whom some
exertions might have been expected, were cautiously inactive; and those
who had been most in the habit of appreciating themselves for their
valour, were now conspicu