town in order to throw himself into the wild vortex
of revolutionary politics, every word he ever uttered had but one
aim--Himself.

He saw his colleagues and comrades of the old Jacobin Clubs ruthlessly
destroyed around him: friends he had none, and all left him indifferent;
and now he had hundreds of enemies in every assembly and club in Paris,
and these too one by one were being swept up in that wild whirlpool
which they themselves had created.

Impassive, serene, always ready with a calm answer, when passion
raged most hotly around him, Robespierre, the most ambitious, most
self-seeking demagogue of his time, had acquired the reputation of being
incorruptible and self-less, an enthusiastic servant of the Republic.

The sea-green Incorruptible!

And thus whilst others talked and argued, waxed hot over schemes for
processions and pageantry, or loudly denounced the whole matter as the
work of a traitor, he, of the sea-green coat, sat quietly polishing his
nails.

But he had already weighed all these discussions in the balance of his
mind, placed them in the crucible of his ambition, and turned them into
something that would benefit him and strengthen his position.

Aye! the feast should be brilliant enough! gay or horrible, mad or
fearful, but through it all the people of France must be made to feel
that there was a guiding hand which ruled the destinies of all, a head
which framed the new laws, which consolidated the new religion and
established its new goddess: the Goddess of Reason.

Robespierre, her prophet!

Chapter II: A Retrospect

The room was close and dark, filled with the smoke from a defective
chimney.

A tiny boudoir, once the dainty sanctum of imperious Marie Antoinette; a
faint and ghostly odour, like unto the perfume of spectres, seemed still
to cling to the stained walls, and to the torn Gobelin tapestries.

Everywhere lay the impress of a heavy and destroying hand: that of the
great and glorious Revolution.

In the mud-soiled corners of the room a few chairs, with brocaded
cushions rudely torn, leant broken and desolate against the walls. A
small footstool, once gilt-legged and satin-covered, had been overturned
and roughly kicked to one side, and there it lay on its back, like some
little animal that had been hurt, stretching its broken limbs upwards,
pathetic to behold.

From the delicately wrought Buhl table the silver inlay had been harshly
stripped out of its bed of she