ong these Magistrates, artisans are the exception. The Commune
assembled here is such as the Jacobin purge has made it,--judges and
jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal, artists like Beauvallet and
Gamelin, householders living on their means and college professors, cosy
citizens, well-to-do tradesmen, powdered heads, fat paunches, and gold
watch-chains, very few sabots, striped trousers, carmagnole smocks and
red caps.

These bourgeois councillors are numerous and determined, but, when all
is said, they are pretty well all Paris possesses of true Republicans.
They stand on guard in the city mansion-house, as on a rock of liberty,
but an ocean of indifference washes round their refuge.

However, good news arrives. All the prisons where the proscribed had
been confined open their doors and disgorge their prey. Augustin
Robespierre, coming from La Force, is the first to enter the Hotel de
Ville and is welcomed with acclamation.

At eight o'clock it is announced that Maximilien, after a protracted
resistance, is on his way to the Commune. He is eagerly expected; he is
coming; he is here; a roar of triumph shakes the vault of the old
Municipal Palace.

He enters, supported by twenty arms. It is he, the little man there,
slim, spruce, in blue coat and yellow breeches. He takes his seat; he
speaks.

At his arrival the Council orders the facade of the Hotel de Ville to be
illuminated there and then. It is there the Republic resides. He speaks
in a thin voice, in picked phrases. He speaks lucidly, copiously. His
hearers who have staked their lives on his head, see the naked truth,
see it to their horror. He is a man of words, a man of committees, a
wind-bag incapable of prompt action, incompetent to lead a Revolution.

They draw him into the Hall of Deliberation. Now they are all there,
these illustrious outlaws,--Lebas, Saint-Just, Couthon. Robespierre has
the word. It is midnight and past, he is still speaking. Meantime
Gamelin in the Council Hall, his bent brow pressed against a window,
looks out with a haggard eye and sees the lamps flare and smoke in the
gloom. Hanriot's cannon are parked before the Hotel de Ville. In the
black Place de Greve surges an anxious crowd, in uncertainty and
suspense. At half past twelve torches are seen turning the corner of the
Rue de la Vannerie, escorting a delegate of the Convention, clad in the
insignia of office, who unfolds a paper and reads by the ruddy light the
decree of the Con