. But for a while the moderates held their ground,
even appeared to gain a {162} little. Addresses kept reaching the
assembly from the departments protesting against the domination of
Paris. Small detachments of loyal national guards arrived in the city;
and in November, on an election being held for the mayoralty of Paris,
although very few voters went to the polls, the Jacobins failed to
carry their candidate. It was to be their last defeat before the 9th
of Thermidor.

It was at this moment that took place the famous iron chest incident.
A safe was discovered and broken open during the perquisitions made in
the palace of the Tuileries. Roland placed in the custody of the house
a packet of papers found in this safe, and among these papers were
accounts showing the sums paid to Mirabeau, and to other members of the
assembly, by the Court. There resulted much abuse of Mirabeau, whose
body was removed from the Pantheon where it had been ceremoniously
interred, and also much political pressure on deputies who either were
or feared to be incriminated.

A number of the young Girondins were now meeting constantly at Madame
Roland's, and their detestation of the Mountain was heightened and
idealized by the enthusiasms of their charming hostess. Louvet,
brilliant, {163} ambitious, hot-headed, threw himself into the
conflict, and, on the 29th of October, launched a tremendous philippic
against Robespierre. As oratory it was successful, but it failed in
political effect. After their ill success against Marat, the Girondins
stood no chance of success against Robespierre unless their words led
to immediate action, unless their party was solid and organized, unless
they had some means of obtaining a practical result. In all this they
failed. Robespierre obtained a delay to prepare his reply, and then a
careful speech and packed galleries triumphed over Louvet's ill-judged
attack.

The Mountain had survived the first storms. It was soon able to use
the question of the King as a means of distracting attention from the
massacres, and of giving the party a ground on which it might hope to
meet the Gironde on more even terms. For any attempt at moderation on
the part of the Girondins could be met with the charge of veiled
royalism, of anti-patriotism, and such a charge at that moment was the
most damning that a party or an individual could incur.

The Convention, having agreed that it would consider the question of
Lou