A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW  
Nearly two years have elapsed since the events recorded in our first volume. In order that our readers may clearly understand those which are to follow we must take a rapid bird's-eye view of the two terrible though inevitable years of 1794 and 1795.
As Vergniaud, and after him Pichegru, had prophesied, the Revolution had devoured her own children. Let us watch the terrible harpy at her work.
On the 5th of April, 1795, the Cordeliers were executed. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Bazire, Chabot, Lacroix, Hérault de Sechelles, and the poet-martyr Fabre d'Eglantine, author of the most popular of our popular songs, "Il pleut, il pleut, bergère," died together on the same scaffold whither Robespierre, Saint-Just, Merlin (of Douai), Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, Fouché (of Nantes) and Vadier sent them.
Then came the Jacobins turn. Vadier, Tallien, Billaud and Fréron accused Robespierre of having usurped the dictatorship; and Robespierre, his jaw shattered by a pistol-ball, Saint-Just, with lofty countenance, Couthon, both of whose legs had been crushed, Lebas—in short their friends to the number of twenty-two—were executed on the day following the tumultuous one which is known in history as the fatal day of the 9th Thermidor.
On the 10th Thermidor the Revolution was still alive, because the Revolution was immortal, and no rise or fall[Pg 231] of parties could kill it. The Revolution still lived, though the Republic was dead. With Robespierre and Saint-Just the Republic was beheaded. On the evening of their execution, the boys were shouting at the doors of the theatres, "Carriages? Who wants a carriage? Want a carriage, bourgeois?" On the next day and the day after that eighty-two Jacobins followed Robespierre, Saint-Just and their friends to the Place de la Revolution.
Pichegru, who was then commander-in-chief of the Army of the North, learned of this bloody reaction. He saw that the hour for blood had passed and the time for filth had come, with Vadier, Tallien, Billaud and Fréron. He sent privately to Mulheim, and Fauche-Borel, the prince's messenger, hastened to him.
Pichegru divined correctly that the ascending period of the Revolution was past. The reactionary or descending period had arrived; blood was still to be shed, but it was the blood of reprisals.
On the 17th of May the hall of the Jacobins—the cradle of the Revolution, the strength of the Republic—was finally closed by a decree. Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, the colleague of the executioner's knife, who was no more guilty than it, since he simply obeyed the orders of the Revolutionary Tribunal as the knife obeyed his own—Fouquier-Tinville was executed, together with fifteen judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal. In order to make the reaction complete the execution took place on the Place de Grève. M. Guillotin's ingenious invention resumed its former place, but the gallows had disappeared—equality in death was decreed.
On the 1st Prairial, Paris discovered that it was starving. Famine drove the inhabitants of the faubourgs to the Convention. Haggard, in tatters, and famished, they invaded the chamber, and the deputy Féraud was killed in trying to defend the president, Boissy d'Anglas. Seeing the confusion which this event brought about in the Convention, Boissy d'Anglas put on his hat. Then they[Pg 232] showed him Féraud's head on the end of a pike, whereupon he took off his hat, bowed reverently, and put it on again. But during that performance, Boissy d'Anglas, who ............