ion finally boiled over; and the Girondins,
so to speak, took up this battle-pledge of Danton's and decreed Marat
accused. It was the eleventh of the same month of April, on some
effervescence rising, such as often rose; and President had covered
himself, mere Bedlam now ruling; and Mountain and Gironde were rushing
on one another with clenched right-hands, and even with pistols in them;
when, behold, the Girondin Duperret drew a sword! Shriek of horror
rose, instantly quenching all other effervescence, at sight of the
clear murderous steel; whereupon Duperret returned it to the leather
again;--confessing that he did indeed draw it, being instigated by a
kind of sacred madness, "sainte fureur," and pistols held at him; but
that if he parricidally had chanced to scratch the outmost skin of
National Representation with it, he too carried pistols, and would have
blown his brains out on the spot. (Hist. Parl. xv. 397.)

But now in such posture of affairs, virtuous Petion rose, next morning,
to lament these effervescences, this endless Anarchy invading the
Legislative Sanctuary itself; and here, being growled at and howled at
by the Mountain, his patience, long tried, did, as we say, boil over;
and he spake vehemently, in high key, with foam on his lips; 'whence,'
says Marat, 'I concluded he had got 'la rage,' the rabidity, or
dog-madness. Rabidity smites others rabid: so there rises new
foam-lipped demand to have Anarchists extinguished; and specially
to have Marat put under Accusation. Send a Representative to the
Revolutionary Tribunal? Violate the inviolability of a Representative?
Have a care, O Friends! This poor Marat has faults enough; but against
Liberty or Equality, what fault? That he has loved and fought for it,
not wisely but too well. In dungeons and cellars, in pinching poverty,
under anathema of men; even so, in such fight, has he grown so dingy,
bleared; even so has his head become a Stylites one! Him you will
fling to your Sword of Sharpness; while Cobourg and Pitt advance on us,
fire-spitting?

The Mountain is loud, the Gironde is loud and deaf; all lips are foamy.
With 'Permanent-Session of twenty-four hours,' with vote by rollcall,
and a dead-lift effort, the Gironde carries it: Marat is ordered to
the Revolutionary Tribunal, to answer for that February Paragraph of
Forestallers at the door-lintel, with other offences; and, after a
little hesitation, he obeys. (Moniteur, du 16 Avril 1793, et seqq.)

T