Zanoni — Chapter 28

CHAPTER 7. IX.

Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;

Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.

But by perception of the secret powers Of mineral springs in Nature’s inmost cell, Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers, And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers.

Wiffen’s “Translation of Tasso,” cant.

xiv.

xliii.

“You are safe here, young Englishman!

” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to a seat.

“Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!

” “Far happier had it been if we had never met!

Yet even in these last hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings I have known.

Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me.

Here, before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!

” “Hast thou suffered?

Poor neophyte!

” said Zanoni, pityingly.

“Yes; I see it on thy brow.

But wherefore wouldst thou blame me?

Did I not warn thee against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear?

Did

I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me?

Was it not thine own daring and resolute choice to brave the initiation!

Of thine own free will didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!

” “But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy knowledge?

I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!

” “Thou errest!

--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction or the other, would have forced their way!

Man!

thou askest me the enigma of thy fate and my own!

Look round all being, is there not mystery everywhere?

Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain beneath the earth?

In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!

” “Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an imposter?

--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?

” “It matters not what I am,” returned Zanoni; “it matters only whether I can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the wholesome air of this common life.

Something, however, will I tell thee, not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts malign.

” Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,-- “In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to earth, ‘crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.

’ [‘L’aurea testa Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.

’ Tasso, “Ger.

Lib.

” iv.

l.

) “No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time;

and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful spells invoked,-- ‘Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.

’ (To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.

) “But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse, know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,--of a magic that could summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend?

And do you not remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the champions of the Holy Land?

HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed not unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the Platonist, in Tasso, cant.

xiv.

stanzas xli.

to xlvii.

(“Ger.

Lib.

”) They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.

), but the perception of the secret powers of the fountain and the herb,--the Arcana of the unknown nature and the various motions of the stars.

His, the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,--beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews.

Did the Christian Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to lay aside these sublime studies, ‘Le solite arte e l’ uso mio’?

No!

but to cherish and direct them to worthy ends.

And in this grand conception of the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles your ignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and the nightmares of a sick man’s dreams.

” Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:-- “In ages far remote,--of a civilisation far different from that which now merges the individual in the state,--there existed men of ardent minds, and an intense desire of knowledge.

In the mighty and solemn kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly channels to work off the fever of their minds.

Set in the antique mould of casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force its way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who received its study as a heritage from sire to son.

Hence, even in your imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of men.

It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to analyse the formation of matter,--the essentials of the prevailing soul;

to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths of Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of magic.

In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a brighter and steadier lore.

They fancied an affinity existing among all the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction that might conduct them upward to the loftiest.

(Agreeably, it would seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is as an animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one part and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve.

And hence the universal magnetism of Nature.

But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant.

The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged to the same creature,--that the effect produced upon one extremity would be felt in an instant by the other.

) Centuries passed, and lives were wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled and marked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditary privilege to track their path.

“At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not, young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed.

It could be given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and intellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites of the common clay.

Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend, theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount of Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the planets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence of God.

And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye of the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might be made apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all space might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid here, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to star,--if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest luxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and adore!

For, as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it, ‘There is a principle of the soul superior to all external nature, and through this principle we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energy of the Sublime Celestials.

When the soul is elevated to natures above itself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by a religious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which it blends and mingles.

’ (From Iamblichus, “On the Mysteries,” c. 7, sect.

7. ) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of the earth unharmed,--think you that this life could teach them other desire than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the better for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Death exist no longer, be transferred?

Away with your gloomy fantasies of sorcerer and demon!

--the soul can aspire only to the light; and even the error of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness, the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered only can purge away!

” This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,-- “But why, then, to me--” “Why,” added Zanoni,--“why to thee have been only the penance and the terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom?

Vain man!

look to the commonest elements of the common learning.

Can every tyro at his mere wish and will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid, become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, ‘I will equal Homer;’ yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve, at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the madness of a mob could overthrow?

When, in that far time to which I have referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the career he was to run.

The internal and the outward nature were made clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day.

He was not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT.

And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery!

Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate.

” Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial beauty.

“And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?

” “Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth.

” “Imposter, thou betrayest thyself!

If they could conquer Death, why live they not yet?

” (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before answered the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest.

) “Child of a day!

” answered Zanoni, mournfully, “have I not told thee the error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this matter cloaks it?

Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to reject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day after day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from the stem?

Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to die?

Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully to earth!

Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet.

Attaining to the last secret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around me with its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy.

The freshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb in which I cannot discover a new charm,--an undetected wonder.

“As with my youth, so with Mejnour’s age: he will tell you that life to him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore.

We are the types of the two essences of what is imperishable,--‘ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE, that contemplates!

’ And now, that thou mayest be contented that the secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of men;

so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,--that for the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not.

And I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I, darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they?

Oh, tell me,--speak!

My wife,--my child?

Silent!

--oh, thou knowest now that I am no sorcerer, no enemy.

I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,--I cannot achieve what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give thee the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the daily world, and place peace between thy conscience and thyself.

” “Wilt thou promise?

” “By their sweet lives, I promise!

” Glyndon looked and believed.

He whispered the address to the house whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.

“Bless thee for this,” exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, “and thou shalt be blessed!

What!

couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe?

Who in thy daily world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription, and felt not the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear?

Everywhere around thee where men aspire and labour, though they see it not,--in the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in the camp of the warrior,--everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable Horror.

But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom VISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to the Infinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child!

But answer me this: when, seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue, the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side; when its voice hath whispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back to those scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement from which, as it leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is ever absent,--hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine own horror; hast thou never said, ‘Come what may, to Virtue I will cling?

’” “Alas!

” answered Glyndon, “only of late have I dared to do so.

” “And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its power more faint?

” “It is true.

” “Rejoice, then!

--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of the ordeal.

Resolve is the first success.

Rejoice, for the exorcism is sure!

Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims of the Inexorable Horror.

Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there is no excellence in this,--faith in something wiser, happier, diviner, than we see on earth!

--the artist calls it the Ideal,--the priest, Faith.

The Ideal and Faith are one and the same.

Return, O wanderer, return!

Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the Old.

Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror!

and calm, on the childlike heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning star but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!

” As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy;

that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers, his mother had watched and prayed.

There it was,--visible, palpable, solitary, unaltered.

In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the shelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had first sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the corner.

Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in the distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb where father and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, the symbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in his ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day.

Far fled all the visions of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth, boyhood, childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he thought he fell upon his knees to pray.

He woke,--he woke in delicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever.

He looked round,--Zanoni was gone.

On the table lay these lines, the ink yet wet:-- “I will find ways and means for thy escape.

At nightfall, as the clock strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before this house;

the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou mayst rest in safety till the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past.

Think no more of the sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee.

It betrayed, and would have destroyed.

Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,--long years yet spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it.

For thy future, be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism.

” The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found their truth.

CHAPTER 7. X.

Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?

Propert.

(Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?

) Zanoni to Mejnour.

“She is in one of their prisons,--their inexorable prisons.

It is Robespierre’s order,--I have tracked the cause to Glyndon.

This, then, made that terrible connection between their fates which I could not unravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himself in the same cloud that concealed her.

In prison,--in prison!

--it is the gate of the grave!

Her trial, and the inevitable execution that follows such trial, is the third day from this.

The tyrant has fixed all his schemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor.

While the deaths of the unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his foes.

There is but one hope left,--that the Power which now dooms the doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall.

But two days left,--two days!

In all my wealth of time I see but two days; all beyond,--darkness, solitude.

I may save her yet.

The tyrant shall fall the day before that which he has set apart for slaughter!

For the first time I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps up from my despair, armed and eager for the contest.

” A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was just arrested by the order of Robespierre.

He was known to be in the service of Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant had hitherto trembled to attack.

This incident had therefore produced a greater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the Reign of Terror might be supposed to create.

Amongst the crowd were many friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding the tiger dragging victim after victim to its den.

Hoarse, foreboding murmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seized their prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those in the rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the captive and his captors.

The young man struggled hard for escape, and, by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp.

The crowd made way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted through their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard at hand,--the savage Henriot and his troop were bearing down upon the mob.

The crowd gave way in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one of the partisans of the Dictator.

At that moment a voice whispered the prisoner, “Thou hast a letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy last hope.

Give it to me!

I will bear it to Tallien.

” The prisoner turned in amaze, read something that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger who thus accosted him.

The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to escape the hoofs of the horses: in that moment the opportunity was found,--the stranger had disappeared.

At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled.

Common danger made common fellowship.

All factions laid aside their feuds for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marching over all factions to his gory throne.

There was bold Lecointre, the declared enemy; there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all extremes, the hero of the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet d’Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes of Robespierre alone sheltered his own.

The council was agitated and irresolute.

The awe which the uniform success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held the greater part under its control.

Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared, and who alone could give head and substance and direction to so many contradictory passions, was too sullied by the memory of his own cruelties not to feel embarrassed by his position as the champion of mercy.

“It is true,” he said, after an animating harangue from Lecointre, “that the Usurper menaces us all.

But he is still so beloved by his mobs,--still so supported by his Jacobins: better delay open hostilities till the hour is more ripe.

To attempt and not succeed is to give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine.

Every day his power must decline.

Procrastination is our best ally--” While yet speaking, and while yet producing the effect of water on the fire, it was announced that a stranger demanded to see him instantly on business that brooked no delay.

“I am not at leisure,” said the orator, impatiently.

The servant placed a note on the table.

Tallien opened it, and found these words in pencil, “From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai.

” He turned pale, started up, and hastened to the anteroom, where he beheld a face entirely strange to him.

“Hope of France!

” said the visitor to him, and the very sound of his voice went straight to the heart,--“your servant is arrested in the streets.

I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be.

I

bring to you this letter from Teresa de Fontenai.

” Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,-- “Am I forever to implore you in vain?

Again and again I say, ‘Lose not an hour if you value my life and your own.

’ My trial and death are fixed the third day from this,--the 10th Thermidor.

Strike while it is yet time,--strike the monster!

--you have two days yet.

If you fail,--if you procrastinate,--see me for the last time as I pass your windows to the guillotine!

” “Her trial will give proof against you,” said the stranger.

“Her death is the herald of your own.

Fear not the populace,--the populace would have rescued your servant.

Fear not Robespierre,--he gives himself to your hands.

To-morrow he comes to the Convention,--to-morrow you must cast the last throw for his head or your own.

” “To-morrow he comes to the Convention!

And who are you that know so well what is concealed from me?

” “A man like you, who would save the woman he loves.

” Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.

Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man.

“I have heard tidings,--no matter what,” he cried,--“that have changed my purpose.

On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine.

I revoke my counsel for delay.

Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we must confront and crush him.

From the Mountain shall frown against him the grim shade of Danton,--from the Plain shall rise, in their bloody cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet.

Frappons!

” “Frappons!

” cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daring of his colleague,--“frappons!

il n’y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.

” It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirs of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), a stranger to all the previous events of that stormy time was seen in various parts of the city,--in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of the various factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers, he talked aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming fall; and, as he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the bonds of their fear,--he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.

But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was lifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, “Arrest the traitor.

” In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace had deserted the man of blood.

Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which he sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said, “I seize thee, in the name of the Republic.

” “Citizen Aristides,” answered the stranger, in a whisper, “go to the lodgings of Robespierre,--he is from home; and in the left pocket of the vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; when thou hast read that, return.

I will await thee; and if thou wouldst then seize me, I will go without a struggle.

Look round on those lowering brows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces.

” The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will.

He went forth muttering; he returned,--the stranger was still there.

“Mille tonnerres,” he said to him, “I thank thee; the poltroon had my name in his list for the guillotine.

” With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and shouted, “Death to the Tyrant!

” CHAPTER 7. XI.

Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son fameux discours.

--Thiers, “Hist.

de la Revolution.

” (The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his celebrated discourse.

) The morning rose,--the 8th of Thermidor (July 26).

Robespierre has gone to the Convention.

He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gone with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single out his prey.

All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St. Just has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame his wrath.

His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.

“Citizens!

” screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre “others have placed before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful truths.

“And they attribute to me,--to me alone!

--whatever of harsh or evil is committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre who ordains it.

Is there a new tax?

--it is Robespierre who ruins you.

They call me tyrant!

--and why?

Because I have acquired some influence; but how?

--in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth is to be without force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French people?

Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents, touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the guilty conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus could forge the thunderbolts of Heaven.

What am I whom they accuse?

A slave of liberty,--a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy of crime!

All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in others are crimes in me.

It is enough to know me to be calumniated.

It is in my very zeal that they discover my guilt.

Take from me my conscience, and I should be the most miserable of men!

” He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applause as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was a dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience.

The touching sentiment woke no echo.

The orator cast his eyes around.

Ho!

he will soon arouse that apathy.

He proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more.

He denounces,--he accuses.

Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it forth on all.

At home, abroad, finances, war,--on all!

Shriller and sharper rose his voice,-- “A conspiracy exists against the public liberty.

It owes its strength to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it has accomplices in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety...

What is the remedy to this evil?

To punish the traitors; to purify this committee;

to crush all factions by the weight of the National Authority; to raise upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice.

Such are the principles of that Reform.

Must I be ambitious to profess them?

--then the principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us!

For what can you object to a man who is in the right, and has at least this knowledge,--he knows how to die for his native land!

I am made to combat crime, and not to govern it.

The time, alas!

is not yet arrived when men of worth can serve with impunity their country.

So long as the knaves rule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed.

” For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled the Death-speech.

In silence it began, in silence closed.