blood of
the National representatives; he has dared to speak at the Jacobins of
five or six heads of the Convention; our corpses were to be the steps
for him to mount the throne!" The paralytic made a gesture of bitter
disdain. "I _mount_ the throne!" said he.

Thuriot proclaimed the decree; the acclamations that re-echoed were
furious, intoxicated with the joy of triumph. "Long live liberty! Long
live the Republic! Down with the tyrants; to the bar with the accused."
The officers, still bewildered with such an abrupt and sudden change,
had not dared to lay a hand upon the fallen dictator; rage broke forth
in the ranks of the Assembly. Robespierre and his brother, Saint-Just,
Lebas, descended slowly to the place lately reserved for their enemies.
Couthon had just placed himself there. The decree of arrest dispersed
them in different prisons; they had set out when the Assembly suspended
its sitting for an instant. "Let us go out together," said Robespierre.
The crowd, like the Assembly, gazed on them without acclamations and
without manifesting any sympathy for them; their army was re-forming
elsewhere.

The Commune of Paris and the club of the Jacobins had not laid down
their arms. An officer was sent to the Hotel de Ville to announce the
decree, which dismissed Henriot and summoned the Mayor to appear at the
bar. He naively demanded a receipt for his message. "On a day like this
we don't give receipts," replied the Mayor. "Tell Robespierre to have no
fear, for we are here."

The Commune, in fact, was active, while the Committees of the
Convention, stupefied at their own victories, were letting precious time
slip past. Already Henriot, half drunk, galloping along the streets,
stirred up the people, crying out that their faithful representatives
were being massacred, delivering over to insults Merlin de Thionville,
and sending to death the convoy of victims for the day. These the
inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine set about delivering, from
compassion and from a vague instinct that the arrest of Robespierre
necessarily brought about a cessation of executions. The General Council
had sent to the jailers of the prisons an order to refuse to aid in the
incarceration of the accused. Robespierre and his friends were
successively brought to the Mairie. They found themselves again free at
the head of an insurrection precipitately got up, but directed by
desperate men, who felt their lives in danger if power escaped from