ambitious allegorical designs with such titles as the Tigrocracy of
Robespierre; it was all hydras, serpents, horrid monsters let loose on
France by the tyrant. Other pictures represented the Horrible Conspiracy
of Robespierre, Robespierre's Arrest, The Death of Robespierre.

That day, after the midday dinner, Philippe Desmahis walked into the
_Amour peintre_, his portfolio under his arm, and brought the _citoyen_
Jean Blaise a plate he had just finished, a stippled engraving of the
Suicide of Robespierre. The artist's picaresque burin had made
Robespierre as hideous as possible. The French people were not yet
satiated with all the memorials which enshrined the horror and
opprobrium felt for the man who was made scapegoat of all the crimes of
the Revolution. For all that, the printseller, who knew his public,
informed Desmahis that henceforward he was going to give him military
subjects to engrave.

"We shall all be wanting victories and conquests,--swords, waving
plumes, triumphant generals. Glory is to be the word. I feel it in me;
my heart beats high to hear the exploits of our valiant armies. And when
I have a feeling, it is seldom all the world doesn't have the same
feeling at the same time. What we want is warriors and women, Mars and
Venus."

"_Citoyen_ Blaise, I have still two or three drawings of Gamelin's by
me, which you gave me to engrave. Is it urgent?"

"Not a bit."

"By-the-bye, about Gamelin; yesterday, strolling in the Boulevard du
Temple, I saw at a dealer's, who keeps a second-hand stall opposite the
House of Beaumarchais, all that poor devil's canvases, amongst the rest
his _Orestes and Electra_. The head of Orestes, who's like Gamelin, is
really fine, I assure you.... The head and arm are superb.... The man
told me he found no difficulty in getting rid of these canvases to
artists who want to paint over them.... Poor Gamelin! He might have been
a genius of the first order, perhaps, if he hadn't taken to politics."

"He had the soul of a criminal!" replied the _citoyen_ Blaise. "I
unmasked him, on this very spot, when his sanguinary instincts were
still held in check. He never forgave me.... Oh! he was a choice
blackguard."

"Poor fellow! he was sincere enough. It was the fanatics were his
ruin."

"You don't defend him, I presume, Desmahis!... There's no defending
him."

"No, _citoyen_ Blaise, there's no defending him."

The _citoyen_ Blaise tapped the gallant Desmahis' shoulder amicab