caricaturists was no longer competent to record the actual march of
events.

"An instrument of death better adapted to conciliate the requirements of
humanity and the demands of the law could not be imagined," says a Paris
journal of 1793. "The ceremonial of the execution might also be
perfected, and delivered of all that pertains to the ancient regime.
This cart in which the condemned is transported, and which was granted
to Capet; these hands tied behind the back, which obliges the condemned
to assume a constrained and servile position; this black gown in which
the confessor is still permitted to array himself notwithstanding the
decree which forbids the ecclesiastic costume, all this apparatus fails
to proclaim the manners and customs of a nation enlightened, humane, and
free."

Everything was reversed, reorganized and regulated by decree, from the
conduct of those persons suspected of treason against the Republic
because they ate only the crust of their bread, in the restaurants (18th
of February, 1794), to the recognition of the Supreme Being and of the
immortality of the soul (8th of May). A more practicable piece of
legislation was that which divided the commune of Paris into twelve
arrondissements or municipalites (21st of February, 1795), it having
been recognized that the city united under the power of one maire had
been too powerful a force for seditious purposes, and that, divided into
forty-eight sections, it had furnished too many centres of insurrection,
which, communicating secretly with each other, had been able to elude
the vigilance of the supreme authorities.

It was in this year 1795, "year III of the Republic," that was abolished
the democratic constitution of 1793, which had not yet been put into
execution, and established the Directory, of five members, one to be
retired every year and replaced by a new member, all to be named by the
legislative power and responsible to it. The latter was also divided,
the council of the Five Hundred (_Cinq-Cents_) being charged with the
duty of proposing the law, and that of the _Anciens_ with that of
examining it and executing it. By this division of power it was hoped to
avoid a dictatorship and to constitute a liberal republic. The two
legislative councils were composed two-thirds of members of the
Convention and one-third of newly-elected delegates; the new government
established itself in the palace of the Luxembourg. Carnot, the most
illustrious of the