espierre, and were in open revolt
against his will. His opponents there would oppose him in the
Assembly. But the mass of the deputies, belonging not to the Mountain
but to the Plain, were always on his side. They had no immediate cause
for fear, and they had something to hope for. Seventy of their number
had been under arrest ever since October, as being implicated in the
fall of the Girondins. Robespierre had constantly refused to let them
be sent to trial, and they owed him their lives. They were still in
prison, still in his power. To save them, their friends in the
Assembly were bound to refuse nothing that he asked for. They would
not scruple to deliver over to him a few more ruffians as they had
delivered over the others in the spring. That was the basis of his
calculation. The Mountain would be divided; the honest men of the
Plain would give him the majority, and would purge the earth of
another hatch of miscreants. On his last night at home he said to the
friends with whom he lived, "We have nothing to fear, the Plain is
with us."

Whilst Robespierre, repulsed by the committees which had so long
obeyed him, sat down to compose the speech on which his victory and
his existence depended, his enemies were maturing their plans. Fouche
informed his sister at Nantes of what was in preparation. On the 21st
of July he is expecting that they will triumph immediately. On the
23rd he writes: "Only a few days more, and honest men will have their
turn.--Perhaps this very day the traitors will be unmasked." It is
unlike so sagacious a man to have written these outspoken letters, for
they were intercepted and sent to Paris for the information of
Robespierre. But it shows how accurately Fouche timed his calculation,
that when they arrived Robespierre was dead.

The importance of the neutral men of the Plain was as obvious to one
side as to the other, and the Confederates attempted to negotiate with
them. Their overtures were rejected; and when they were renewed, they
were rejected a second time. The Plain were disabled by consideration
for their friends, hostages in the grasp of Robespierre, and by the
prospect of advantage for religion from his recent policy. They loaded
him with adulation, and said that when he marched in the procession,
with his blue coat and nosegay, he reminded them of Orpheus. They even
thought it desirable that he should live to clear off a few more of
the most detestable men in France, the very men w