Clermont-Tonnerres, the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it
might extend to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets, the
Petions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that
his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.

His observations on the massacre of the preceding day are such as cannot
be passed over. "Yesterday," said he, "was a day upon the events of
which it is perhaps necessary to leave a _veil_. I know that the people
with their vengeance _mingled a sort of justice_: they did not take for
victims _all_ who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it
to _them who had for a long time been spared by the sword of the law_,
and who they _believed_, from the peril of circumstances, should be
sacrificed without delay. But I know that it is easy to _villains and
traitors_ to misrepresent this _effervescence_, and that it must be
checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that the
_executive power_ could not foresee or prevent this excess; I know that
it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or
consider themselves as abolished."

In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing but throwing a veil
over it,--which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to
extinguish all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for it; in
fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader has just seen in what is
quoted from this letter) feels so much indignation at "vague
denunciations," when made against himself, and from which he then feared
nothing more than the subversion of his power, is not ashamed to
consider the charge of a conspiracy to massacre the Parisians, brought
against his master upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather
upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of the monstrous
proceedings against him. He is not ashamed to call the murder of the
unhappy priests in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation
whatsoever, a "_vengeance_ mingled with a _sort of justice_"; he
observes that they "had been a long time spared by the sword of the
law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this
"_effervescence_" in other colors _villains and traitors_: he did not
than foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the
necessity of assuming the pretended character of this new sort of
"_villany and treason_", in the hope of obliterating the memory of their
former real _villanies and tr