Some time before mistress of Sartine, who married the young Saint-Amaranthe, she had remained faithful to him. For him she had accomplished her own destruction. They were together, seated in the same cart, two unfortunate creatures, made sisters in death, from dying in the same love.

A horribly calumnious rumor was spread among the crowd, that Saint-Just wanted to have the young Saint Amaranthe, and that, influenced by jealousy and rage, he had denounced her.

That Robespierre should have abandoned the Saint Amaranthes, who were supposed to be his disciples, caused great astonishment.

All the grades of horror and ridicule seemed united in this affair. The Committee of Safety who had arranged the thing, in an atrocious drama, mingling the true and false, had surpassed at the same time both comedy and tragedy, distancing all the great masters. The steadfast and irreproachable one, surprised in the performance of so bold and secret a step, shown naked between two masks, was too sweet food for malignity, not to be believed and swallowed, without abating one word. Philosopher at the cabi

net-maker's, the Messiah of the old people in the street Saint Jacques, and patron of gambling in the Palais Royal! Make these three parts walk in front, under the pallid face of unpitiful censure! Shakspeare was humiliated, Molière conquered; Talma and Garrick were as nothing along side of it.

At the same time when they reflected on his cowardly selfishness in throwing aside and abandoning all his connections! on the infinite prudence of this Messiah, this saviour, who only saved himself, leaving his apostles to Judas, with Mary Magdalene, to be crucified in his place! Oh! the fury of contempt overwhelmed all souls!

Yesterday, dictator, pope, and God! To-day, the unfortunate Robespierre is covered with ignominy.

Such was the bitter fury and rapid impression of calumny on minds well prepared for it. All his life he had used vague, and too often, false accusations. It seemed as if the calumny, so often cast by him, should be returned at the last day by this black wave of bloody mire.

In the morning, newspaper venders, with

frightful clamors, cried the holy guillotine, the fiftyfour in red mantles, the assassins of Robespierre, and the mysteries of the Mother of God. A cloud of little pamphlets, millions of stinging flies, born in the hour of the storm, flew about under these titles. The newspaper venders, Maratists and Hebertists, always regretting their patrons, spread, with infernal cries, the monstrous publicity of the report, already printed by decree, to the number of fifty thousand.

They were not left quiet; but nothing was done. The combat of the great powers was carried on over their heads. Robespierre's commune boldly arrested them; but the Committee of Safety instantly released them. They only became more savage, more furious in their cries. From the Assembly to the Jacobins' hall, and as far as the Duplay House opposite the Assumption, all the street St. Honoré echoed with their cries: the windows even shook. The great anger of Père Duchesne seemed to return triumphant in their thousand unruly and distorted mouths.

CHAPTER XXX.

INDIFFERENCE TO LIFE. THE RAPID COURSE
OF LOVE IN THE PRISONS.

(1793-94.)

SUCH immense prodigality of the sorrows of death produced its ordinary effect: an astonishing indifference to life.

The Reign of Terror was generally a lottery. It struck by chance, very often on one side, thus failing in its object. This great sacrifice of efforts and blood, this terrible accumulation of hatred, was a pure loss. The inutility of what was done was confusedly and instinctively felt; thus great discouragement, rapid and sad demoralization, a sort of moral cholera, was the consequence.

When the moral nerve is broken, two contrary effects are the consequence. Some determine on living at any price, sinking deep into the mire; others, from ennui and disgust, hasten death, or, at least, do not fly from it. This first commenced

at Lyons; the too frequent executions had exhausted the spectators; one of them, on returning, said: "What can I do to be guillotined?" Five prisoners in Paris escaped from the gendarmes; they only wanted to go once again to the Vaudeville. One returned to the tribunal, and said: “I cannot find the others; can you tell me where our gendarmes are? Give me some information."

Such signs indicated too clearly that the Reign of Terror had exhausted itself. The struggle against nature could no longer be sustained. Nature, all-powerful and indomitable nature, which nowhere expands more fully than under the influence of the tomb, reappears victoriously, under a thousand unexpected forms. War, terror, and death, all that seemed to be against it, gave it new triumphs. Women were never so strong. They complicated and disturbed everything. The atrocity of the law rendered almost legitimate the weakness of pardoning. They boldly said, whilst consoling the prisoner: "If I am not nurse to-day, it will be too late to-morrow." In the morning, pretty, young, heedless creatures were met driving the cabriolet at full speed; they were humane women, who solicited