but he was awed by the
vigour and determination of the Mountain. At one moment he held high
and firm language, complained that the Convention was not free, and
protested against the validity of any vote passed under coercion. At
another moment he proposed to conciliate the Parisians by abolishing
that commission of twelve which he had himself proposed only a few days
before; and himself drew up a paper condemning the very measures which
had been adopted at his own instance, and eulogising the public spirit
of the insurgents. To do him justice, it was not without some symptoms
of shame that he read his document from the tribune, where he had so
often expressed very different sentiments. It is said that, at some
passages, he was even seen to blush. It may have been so; he was still
in his novitiate of infamy.

Some days later he proposed that hostages for the personal safety of the
accused deputies should be sent to the departments, and offered to be
himself one of those hostages. Nor do we in the least doubt that the
offer was sincere. He would, we firmly believe, have thought himself far
safer at Bordeaux or Marseilles than at Paris. His proposition, however,
was not carried into effect; and he remained in the power of the
victorious Mountain.

This was the great crisis of his life. Hitherto he had done nothing
inexpiable, nothing which marked him out as a much worse man than most
of his colleagues in the Convention. His voice had generally been on
the side of moderate measures. Had he bravely cast in his lot with the
Girondists, and suffered with them, he would, like them, have had a not
dishonourable place in history. Had he, like the great body of deputies
who meant well, but who had not the courage to expose themselves
to martyrdom, crouched quietly under the dominion of the triumphant
minority, and suffered every motion of Robespierre and Billaud to
pass unopposed, he would have incurred no peculiar ignominy. But it is
probable that this course was not open to him. He had been too prominent
among the adversaries of the Mountain to be admitted to quarter without
making some atonement. It was necessary that, if he hoped to find pardon
from his new lords, he should not be merely a silent and passive
slave. What passed in private between him and them cannot be accurately
related; but the result was soon apparent. The Committee of Public
Safety was renewed. Several of the fiercest of the dominant faction,
Couthon for