: "The blood of Danton chokes you!" His arrest
was demanded, and supported on all sides. It was now half-past five, and
the sitting was suspended till seven. Robespierre was transferred to the
Luxembourg. The commune, after having ordered the gaolers not to receive
him, sent municipal officers with detachments to bring him away.
Robespierre was liberated, and conducted in triumph to the Hotel de
Ville. On arriving, he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. "Long
live Robespierre! Down with the traitors!" resounded on all sides. But
the Convention marched upon the Hotel de Ville.

The conspirators, finding they were lost, sought to escape the violence
of their enemies by committing violence on themselves. Robespierre
shattered his jaw with a pistol shot. He was deposited for some time at
the Committee of Public Safety before he was transferred to the
Conciergerie; and here, stretched on a table, his face disfigured and
bloody, exposed to the looks, the invectives, the curses of all, he
beheld the various parties exulting in his fall, and charging upon him
all the crimes that had been committed.

On Thermidor 10, about five in the evening, he ascended the death-cart,
placed between Henriot and Couthon, mutilated like himself. His head was
enveloped in linen, saturated with blood; his face was livid, his eyes
were almost visionless. An immense crowd thronged round the cart,
manifesting the most boisterous and exulting joy. He ascended the
scaffold last. When his head fell, shouts of applause arose in the air,
and lasted for some minutes.

Thermidor 9 was the first day of the revolution it which those fell who
attacked. This indication alone manifested that the ascendant
revolutionary movement had reached its term. From that day the contrary
movement necessarily began.

From Thermidor 9, 1794, to the summer of 1795, the radical Mountain, in
its turn, underwent the destiny it had imposed on others--for in times
when the passions are called into play parties know not how to come to
terms, and seek only to conquer. From that period the middle class
resumed the management of the revolution, and the experiment of pure
democracy had failed.

* * * * *

THOMAS CARLYLE

History of the French Revolution

Carlyle's "History of the French Revolution" appeared in 1837,
some three years after the author had established himself in
London. Never has the individuality of