Normandy, of which this is the surviving episode,
Buzot and his companions escaped by sea to the Gironde. Having been
outlawed, on July 28, they were liable to suffer death without a
trial, and had to hide in out-houses and caverns. Nearly all were
taken. Barbaroux, who had brought the Marseillais, shot himself at the
moment of capture, but had life enough to be carried to the scaffold.
Buzot and Petion outlived their downfall for a year. Towards the end
of the Reign of Terror, snarling dogs attracted notice to a remote
spot in the south-west. There the two Girondins were found, and
recognised, though their faces had been eaten away. Before he went out
to die, Buzot placed in safety the letters of Madame Roland. Seventy
years later they came to light at a sale, and the suspected secret of
her life told in her _Memoirs_, but suppressed by the early editors,
was revealed to the world. She had been executed on November 10, 1793,
four days after the Duke of Orleans, and the cheerful dignity of her
last moments has reconciled many who were disgusted with her
declamatory emphasis, her passion, and her inhumanity. Her husband was
safe in his place of concealment near Rouen; but when he heard, he ran
himself through with a sword-cane. The main group had died a few days
earlier. Of 180 Girondin deputies, 140 were imprisoned or dispersed,
and 24 of these managed to escape; 73 were arrested at Paris, October
3, but were not brought to trial; 21, among whom were many
celebrities, went before the revolutionary tribunal, October 24, and a
week later they were put to death. Their trial was irregular, even if
their fate was not undeserved. With Vergniaud, Brissot, and their
companions the practice began of sending numbers to the guillotine at
once. There were 98 in the five months that followed.

During the agony of his party, Condorcet found shelter in a
lodging-house at Paris. There, under the Reign of Terror, he wrote
the little book on Human Progress, which contains his legacy to
mankind. He derived the leading idea from his friend Turgot, and
transmitted it to Comte. There may be, perhaps, a score or two dozen
decisive and characteristic views that govern the world, and that
every man should master in order to understand his age, and this is
one of them. When the book was finished, the author's part was played,
and he had nothing more to live for. As his retreat was known to one,
at least, of the Montagnards, he feared to compromi