ected unopposed, after several ballots, by some
thirty suffrages. No one voted nowadays; the Sections were deserted;
rich and poor alike only sought to shirk the performance of public
duties. The most momentous events had ceased to rouse either enthusiasm
or curiosity; the newspapers were left unread. Out of the seven hundred
thousand inhabitants of the capital Evariste doubted if as many as three
or four thousand still preserved the old Republican spirit.

The same day the Twenty-one came up for trial. Innocent or guilty of the
calamities and crimes of the Republic, vain, incautious, ambitious and
impetuous, at once moderate and violent, feeble in their fear as in
their clemency, quick to declare war, slow to carry it out, haled before
the Tribunal to answer for the example they had given, they were not the
less the first and the most brilliant children of the Revolution, whose
delight and glory they had been. The judge who will question them with
artful bias; the pallid accuser yonder who, where he sits behind his
little table, is planning their death and dishonour; the jurors who will
presently try to stifle their defence; the public in the galleries which
overwhelms them with howls of insult and abuse,--all, judge, jury,
people, have applauded their eloquence in other days, extolled their
talents and their virtues. But judge, jury, people have short memories
now.

Once Evariste had made Vergniaud his god, Brissot his oracle. But he
had forgotten; if any vestige of his old wonder still lingered in his
memory, it was to think that these monsters had seduced the noblest
citizens.

Returning to his lodging after the sitting, Gamelin heard heart-breaking
cries as he entered the house. It was little Josephine; her mother was
whipping her for playing in the Place with good-for-nothing boys and
dirtying the fine white frock she had worn for the obsequies of the
_citoyen_ Trubert.

XVI

After three months during which he had made a daily holocaust of
victims, illustrious or insignificant, to the fatherland, Evariste had a
case that interested him personally; there was one prisoner he made it
his special business to track down to death.

Ever since he had sat on the juror's bench, he had been eagerly
watching, among the crowd of culprits who appeared before him, for
Elodie's seducer; of this man he had elaborated in his busy fancy a
portrait, some details of which were accurate. He pictured him as young,
hands