m. 'This,' he cried
passionately, 'will be my final argument,' and looking about him to make
sure he was alone he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it."

The result, it is alleged, was that Tallien provoked the episode of the
9th Thermidor (July 22, 1794). The few faltering sentences which
Robespierre wished to utter were never spoken. He was "choked by the
blood of Danton," and hurried off to the guillotine which awaited him on
the morrow.

History, which in this instance is not legendary, relates that on the
death of the tyrant a wild shout of exultation was raised by the joyous
people who had for so long wandered in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. To whom, they asked, did they owe their liberty? What was more
natural than to assume that it was to the brave Tallien and to the
loving woman who armed him to strike a blow for the freedom of France?
Tallien and his mistress became, therefore, the idols of the French
people. The Chancellor Pasquier relates their appearance at a theatre:

The enthusiasm and the applause were indescribable. The occupants
of the boxes, the people in the pit, men and women alike, stood up
on their chairs to look at him. It seemed as though they would
never weary of gazing at him. He was young, rather good-looking,
and his manner was calm and serene. Madame Tallien was at his side
and shared his triumph. In her case also everything had been
forgiven and forgotten. Similar scenes were enacted all through the
autumn of that year. Never was any service, however great, rewarded
by gratitude so lively and so touching.

It would be impossible within the limits of the present article to
summarise the arguments by which M. Gastine seeks to destroy this myth.
Allusion may, however, be made to two points of special importance. The
first is that neither Tallien nor the lovely Spaniard languishing in
the dungeon of La Force had much to do with the episode of the 9th
Thermidor. "Tallien was a mere super, a mere puppet that had to be
galvanised into action up to the very last." The man who really
organised the movement and persuaded his coadjutors that they were
engaged in a life and death struggle with Robespierre was he who, as
every reader of revolutionary history knows, was busily engaged in
pulling the strings behind the scenes during the whole of this chaotic
period. It was the man whose iron nerve and subtle brain enabled him, in
spite of a sec