all of _The Just!_ For, dreadful thought, but only too
true! Fouquier himself was weaving plots, and it was to ruin Maximilien
that he had sacrificed with solemn ceremony fifty-seven victims haled to
death in the red sheet of parricides. France was giving way to pity--and
pity was a crime! Then we should have saved her in spite of herself, and
when she cried for mercy, stopped our ears and struck! Alas! the fates
had decided otherwise; the fatherland was for cursing its saviours.
Well, let it curse, if only it may be saved!

"It is not enough to immolate obscure victims, aristocrats, financiers,
publicists, poets, a Lavoisier, a Roucher, an Andre Chenier. We must
strike these all-puissant malefactors who, with hands full of gold and
dripping with blood, are plotting the ruin of _the Mountain_--the
Fouchers, Talliens, Roveres, Carriers, Bourdons. We must deliver the
State from all its enemies. If Hebert had triumphed, the Convention was
overthrown, the Republic hastening to the abyss; if Desmoulins and
Danton had triumphed, the Convention had lost its virtue, ready to
surrender the Republic to the aristocrats, the money-jobbers and the
Generals. If men like Tallien and Foucher, monsters gorged with blood
and rapine, triumph, France is overwhelmed in a welter of crime and
infamy ... Robespierre, awake; when criminals, drunken with fury and
affright, plan your death and the death of freedom! Couthon, Saint-Just,
make haste; why tarry ye to denounce the plots?

"Why! the old-time state, the Royal monster, assured its empire by
imprisoning every year four hundred thousand persons, by hanging fifteen
thousand, by breaking three thousand on the wheel--and the Republic
still hesitates to sacrifice a few hundred heads for its security and
domination! Let us drown in blood and save the fatherland...."

He was buried in these thoughts when Elodie hurried up to him,
pale-faced and distraught:

"Evariste, what have you to say to me? Why not come to the _Amour
peintre_ to the blue chamber? Why have you made me come here?"

"To bid you an eternal farewell."

He had lost his wits, she faltered, she could not understand....

He stopped her with a very slight movement of the hand:

"Elodie, I cannot any more accept your love."

She begged him to walk on further; people could see them, overhear them,
where they were.

He moved on a score of yards, and resumed, very quietly:

"I have made sacrifices to my country of my life and