s aristocratic. The idea of a Supreme Being
who guards injured innocence and who punishes triumphant crime is
democratic. . . . If God did not exist we should have to invent Him."

It was just at this moment, when Hebertism and terrorism appeared
interchangeable terms, and when the two most powerful men of the
assembly had simultaneously turned against Hebertism, that Desmoulins
stepped forward as the champion of the cause of mercy, to pull down
Hebert, and with Hebert the guillotine. Early in December he brought
out a newspaper once more, _Le Vieux Cordelier_, and in that boldly
attacked the gang of thieves and {205} murderers who were working the
politics of the city of Paris. Public opinion awakened; voices were
raised here and there; presently petitions began to flow in to the
Convention. The tide was unloosened. How far would it go?

Robespierre, crafty, cunning, shifty, at first cautiously used
Desmoulins for his purposes. But when Danton himself, the
arch-terrorist, bravely accepted the doctrine of clemency, Robespierre
began to draw back. At the end of December the return of Collot
d'Herbois from his massacres at Lyons stiffened Robespierre, and
rallied the Committee of Public Safety more firmly to the policy of
terror. For some weeks a desperate campaign of words was fought out
inch by inch, Danton and Desmoulins lashing out desperately as the net
closed slowly in on them; and it was not till the 20th of February 1794
that they received the death stroke. It was dealt by St. Just.

St. Just, a doctrinaire and puritan nearly as fanatical as his chief,
possessed what Robespierre lacked,--decision, boldness, and a keen
political sense. On his return from a mission to the armies he had
found in Paris the situation already described, and decided immediately
to strike hard, at once, and at all the {206} opponents of his party.
The first measures were aimed at Hebert and the Commune, for St. Just
judged that they were ripe for the guillotine. A decree was pushed
through the Convention whereby it was ordered that the property of all
individuals sent to the scaffold under the _Loi des suspects_ should be
distributed to the poor _sans-culottes_. This infamous enactment was
intended to cut from under the feet of the Commune any popular support
it still retained.

At St. Just's provocation the attacked party closed its ranks,--the
Commune, the ministers, the Cordeliers, Hebert, Hanriot. Proclamations
were