and defeat. What a to-do to discover if this
particular soldier was innocent or guilty! When La Vendee was recovering
heart, when Toulon was surrendering to the enemy, when the army of the
Rhine was recoiling before the victors of Mayence, when the Army of the
North, cowering in Caesar's Camp, might be taken at a blow by the
Imperialists, the English, the Dutch, now masters of Valenciennes, the
one important thing was to teach the Generals of the Republic to conquer
or to die. To see yonder feeble-witted muddle-pated veteran losing
himself under cross-examination among his maps as he had done before in
the plains of Northern France, Gamelin longed to yell "death! death!"
with the rest, and fled from the Hall of Audience to escape the
temptation.

* * * * *

At the meeting of the Section, the newly appointed juryman received the
congratulations of the President Olivier, who made him swear on the old
high altar of the Barnabites, now altar of the fatherland, to stifle in
his heart, in the sacred name of humanity, every human weakness.

Gamelin, with uplifted right hand, invoked as witness of his oath the
august shade of Marat, martyr of Liberty, whose bust had lately been set
up against a pillar of the erstwhile church, facing that of Le Peltier.

There was some applause, interrupted by cries of protest. The meeting
was a stormy one; at the entrance of the nave stood a group of members
of the Section, armed with pikes and shouting clamorously:

"It is anti-republican," declared the President, "to carry arms at a
meeting of free citizens,"--and he ordered the muskets and pikes to be
deposited there and then in the erstwhile sacristy.

A hunchback, with blazing eyes and lips drawn back so as to show the
teeth, the _citoyen_ Beauvisage, of the Committee of Vigilance, mounted
to the pulpit, now become the speakers' tribune and surmounted by a red
cap of liberty.

"The Generals are betraying us," he vociferated, "and surrendering our
armies to the enemy. The Imperialists are pushing forward their cavalry
around Peronne and Saint-Quentin. Toulon has been given up to the
English, who are landing fourteen thousand men there. The foes of the
Republic are busy with plots in the very bosom of the Convention. In the
capital conspiracies without number are afoot to deliver _the Austrian_.
At this very moment while I speak there runs a rumour that the Capet
brat has escaped from the Temple and is b