ct" was to be punishable with death. So the Jacobins suspected the
Girondists, and accused them of being enemies of France. They introduced
measures which pandered to the bloodthirst of the mob, and for which the
Girondists were compelled either to vote or to draw upon themselves its
vengeance. Madame Roland urged and entreated the Girondists to make one
last struggle for law, liberty, and order, by moving to bring to justice
the ringleaders in the massacre, including the Jacobin chiefs, who
instigated it. This issue was made in the assembly, but it was voted
down before the tiger-roar of the mob which raged in the hall. The
Jacobins resolved to destroy Madame Roland, whose courage had prompted
this attack upon them, and for which she had become the object of their
intensest hate. They suborned an adventurer named Viard to accuse her of
being privy to a correspondence with the English Government for the
purpose of saving the life of the king. She was summoned before the
assembly to confront her accuser. She appeared in the midst of her
enemies, armed with innocence, resplendent with beauty, defended by her
own genius. Her very presence extorted applause from reluctant lips. She
looked upon her accuser, and he faltered. By a few womanly words she
tore his calumny into shreds, and left amid plaudits. Justice thus
returned once more to illumine that place by a fleeting gleam, and then
with this woman left it forever.

The Jacobins pressed the trial of the king. The mob demanded him as a
victim. The Girondists voted with the Jacobins that he was guilty; but
they voted to leave the sentence to the determination of the French
people, and when they were defeated in this they voted for his death. I
am unable to find any thing in the memorials of Madame Roland which
shows that she had any sympathy with this. What is written tends rather
to show that she was in the very apathy and lassitude of horror. From
the time when her courageous effort to work justice upon the abettors
and perpetrators of the massacre failed, her history ceases to be
political and becomes personal.

The revolutionary tribunal was reorganized, consisting of twenty judges,
a jury, and a public accuser. Merlin of Douai, a consummate jurist,
proposed a statute, in every line of which suspicion, treachery, and
hate found an arsenal of revenge. It provided that: "Immediately after
the publication of this present decree, all suspected persons who are
found in the