Chapter I: A Few Pages From Clide De Winton’s Note‐Book (6)

The essential definition of material substance, as such, is therefore the following: _Material substance is a being fit to cause and receive merely local motion._ This definition is fuller than the one adopted by the ancients, who defined matter to be “a movable being”—_Ens mobile._ Of course, when they spoke of a “movable” being, the ancients referred to “local” movement; but, as there are movements of some other kinds, none of which can be produced or received by matter, we prefer to keep the epithet “local” as prominent as possible in our definition, and we add the adverb “merely” as a further limitation required by the nature of the subject. The old definition mentions nothing but the mobility of matter. This is owing to the fact that the ancients had no notion of universal attraction, and considered the activity of material substance as dependent on movement, according to their axiom: _Nihil movet nisi motum._ But as we know, on the one hand, that the specific differences of things must be derived from their formal rather than from their material constitution, and, on the other, as the constituent form of the material element is an efficient principle of local motion, we include in the definition of matter its aptitude both to produce and to receive local motion “as the _complete_ specific difference” which distinguishes material substance from any other being whatever.

It seems to us that our definition of matter wants neither clearness nor precision. Indeed, we would be unable to make it clearer or more accurate; and as for its soundness, let our readers, who have hitherto followed our reasonings, judge for themselves.

In the opinion of most modern philosophers, the essence of matter consists of _extension_ and _resistance_. From what has preceded it is evident that this opinion is utterly false. Extension is not a property of matter as such, but only of physical compounds containing a multitude of distinct material points; and, even in this case, it is not the matter, but the volume, or the place circumscribed by the extreme terms of the body, that can be styled “extended,” as we have shown in our last article. As to resistance, it suffices to remark that no accidental act belongs to the essence of substance; hence resistance, which is an accidental act, cannot enter into the definition of matter. Some will say that, if not resistance, at least _the power of resisting_, belongs to the essence of matter. But not even this is true. The material element has the power of attracting or of repelling; but such a power cannot be considered as formally _resisting_. Resistance is a particular case of repulsion, when the agent by its repulsive exertion gradually lessens and exhausts the velocity of an approaching mass of matter; but resistance may also be a particular case of attraction, inasmuch as the agent by its attractive exertion gradually lessens and exhausts the velocity of a mass of matter receding from it. Hence all material substance has a motive power, either attractive or repulsive; but neither of them can be described as a resisting power; for attractivity does not resist the movement of an approaching body, nor does repulsivity resist the movement of a receding body. It is scarcely necessary to add that the notion of a resisting power essential to matter is a remnant of the old prejudice consisting in the belief that, when two bodies come in contact, the matter of the one precludes, by its materiality, bulk, and inertia, the further advance of the other. Nothing is more common, with the followers of the ancient theories, than the assumption that the matter of bodies _by its quantity and by its occupation of space_ resists the passage of any other matter. We have shown elsewhere that resistance is action, and therefore is not owing to the inert matter standing in the way of the approaching body, but to the active power of which the inert matter is the centre.

To complete our elucidation of the essential definition of matter, something remains to be said about the inertia of material substance. We shall see that inertia is not a constituent, but only a result of the constitution, of matter; whence it follows that no mention of inertia is needed in the essential definition of material substance. In fact, the notion of this substance includes nothing but the essential act and the essential term, that is, the principle of activity and the principle of passivity, both concerned with local motion only. To have a principle of activity and a principle of passivity is in the nature of all created substances, and constitutes their _generic_ entity; hence the mention of these two principles in our definition serves to point out the _genus_ of material substance; whilst the intrinsic ordination of the same principles to _local_ motion serves to point out the essential _difference_ which separates matter from any other substance.

_Inertia._—Many confound the inertia of matter with its passivity, and consider inertia as one of the essential constituents of matter. It is not difficult, however, to show that inertia and passivity are two distinct properties. Those who reduce the principles of real being to an _act_ and a _term_, without taking notice of its essential _complement_,(157) reduce in fact the intrinsic properties of real being to activity and passivity, the one proceeding from the act, and the other from the potential term; and thus the inertia of matter, for which they cannot account by any distinct principle, is considered by them as an attribute of matter identical with, or at least involved in, its real passivity. The truth is that, as the act and the potency, which constitute the essence of a material being, are the formal source of its actuality, so also the activity connatural to that act, and the passivity connatural to that potency, are the formal source of the inertia by which the same being is characterized. This will be easily understood by a glance at the nature of inertia.

That inertia is not passivity is clear enough; for passivity is the potentiality of receiving an impression from without, whereas inertia is the incapability of receiving an impression from within; passivity is that on account of which matter receives the determination to move, whereas inertia is that on account of which matter cannot change that determination, but is obliged to obey it, by moving with the received velocity in the given direction. The determination to move is received only while the agent acts, that is, as long as the passivity is being actuated, and no longer; whereas the movement itself, which follows such a determination, continues, owing to inertia, without need of continuing the action, so that, if all further action were to cease, the moving matter, owing to its inertia, would persevere in its movement for ever.

Moreover, whence does the passivity and whence does the inertia of matter proceed? Matter is passive, because its substantial term, whose reality entirely depends on actuation, is still actuable or potential with regard to accidental acts. Passivity is therefore nothing but the further actuability of the substantial term; whilst, on the contrary, matter is inert, because its substantial act and its substantial term are so related to one another that the motive power possessed by the former can never terminate its action to the latter; for this is the only reason why a material element cannot modify the determinations which it receives from without. Hence inertia is nothing but the result of the special relation intervening between the principle of activity and the principle of passivity in the constitution of material substance; or, in other terms, inertia is a corollary of the essential correlation of form and matter, and, therefore, is to be traced, not, as passivity, to the essential term of the substance, but to its essential complement. This shows that, in the phrase _matter is inert_, the word “matter” stands for the material substance itself, and not for _the_ matter, or potential term, which is under the substantial form, and whose character is passivity.

The question we have here discussed may seem of very little importance; yet we had to give its solution, not only because the confusion of distinct notions is a source of difficulties and sophisms, but also because the given solution confirms the necessity of admitting the essential complement as the third principle of real being, and because in spiritual substances there is passivity, though not inertia; which shows how indispensable is our duty of distinguishing between the two.

From the preceding remarks we infer also that inertia belongs to the essence of material substance, not, however, as a constituent principle, but only as something implied in the nature of its constituent principles. As it is impossible to alter the nature of such principles without destroying the essence of matter, so also it is impossible for matter to cease to be inert so long as its essence remains unchanged. In a word, _non‐inert matter_ is a metaphysical impossibility.

Lastly, we may add that inertia does not admit of degrees; and therefore all material elements are equally inert. In fact, when we say that matter is inert, we mean, as has been explained, that material substance is entirely and absolutely incapable of imparting motion to itself. Now, absolute incapacity is perfect incapacity, and does not admit of degrees. Hence we may find in different bodies more or less of inert matter, but not more or less of inertia. This is true also of the passivity of matter; that is, we may find in different bodies more or less of passive matter, but not more or less of passivity; for passivity, as consisting in an absolute liability to accidental actuation, cannot admit of degrees.

_A few conclusions._—It may be useful, and may prove satisfactory to our readers, to cast a glance over the ground we have trodden and the results so far reached. The sum and substance of the doctrine which we have endeavored to establish is contained in the following propositions:

I. Matter is not continuous, nor divisible _in infinitum_, nor has it any intrinsic quantity connected in any manner with its essential constitution.

II. All bodies are ultimately made up of primitive elements, physically simple and unextended, which being reached, the physical division of bodies cannot go further.

III. The primordial molecules, or so‐called “atoms,” of all substances are so many systems of simple elements dynamically bound with one another by mutual action.

IV. The continuous extension, or geometric quantity, usually predicated of bodies, is the extension of the place comprised within the extreme limits of each body. It is, in other terms, the extension of the volume, not of the matter. Nevertheless, such an extension may be called “material,” not only because the terms of its dimensions are material, but also because in most bodies the elements and the molecules are so close that their action on our senses produces the appearance of material continuity.

V. The extension of bodies is real, though their material continuity is merely apparent; hence only the volumes of bodies, and not their masses, can be properly styled _extended_.

VI. The true _absolute_ mass of a body is the number of primitive elements it contains.

VII. The primitive elements are of two kinds, some of them always and everywhere attractive, others always and everywhere repulsive. The matter, however, is the same in both kinds, and bears the same relation to its form, whether this be of an attractive or of a repulsive nature.

VIII. There are no other powers in the primitive elements than that of attracting and that of repelling.

IX. All primitive elements have a sphere of activity, throughout which they constantly act according to the Newtonian law—that is, in the inverse ratio of the squared distances, even when the distance is molecular; and no distance, however great, can be designated where the action of an element will not have a finite intensity.

X. The active power of primitive elements cannot be exerted in the immediate contact of matter with matter, distance being an essential condition of all locomotive actions.

XI. The elementary power acts immediately on all distant matter throughout its sphere, independently of any material medium of transmission or communication. Movement, however, cannot be propagated without a material medium.

XII. The term _from which_ the action of any given element is directed, and the term _in which_ the same element receives the motion caused by other elements, is one and the same, viz., the real centre of its sphere of activity; and it is called _the matter_. The act from which such a centre receives its first existence is called _the substantial form_; and it has a spherical character, inasmuch as it constitutes a virtual indefinite sphere.

XIII. The essence of a primitive element of matter is by no means a mystery. The essential definition of such an element is “a substance fit to cause and to receive mere local motion.”

XIV. Inertia is an essential property of material substance, no less than activity and passivity. Inertia admits of no degrees.

XV. The so‐called “force of inertia” is neither the inertia itself nor any special motive power; but it merely expresses a certain exercise of the elementary powers dependent on the inertia of the matter acted on; for bodies, on account of their inertia, cannot leave their place before they have received in all their parts a suitable velocity. Hence while such a velocity is being communicated to a body, the body which is acted on cannot yield its place to the impinging body; and consequently, during the struggle of two bodies, the one which impinges loses a quantity of movement equal to that which it imparts to the mass impinged upon. The loss of movement in the impinging body is therefore caused, not by the inertia of the body impinged upon, but by its elementary powers as exercised by it during the reception of the momentum.

The foregoing conclusions, as every attentive reader must have noticed, have been drawn from nothing but known facts and received principles; we may therefore consider them as fully established. The more so as we have taken care to examine both sides of each question, and have given not only such direct proofs of each conclusion as would suffice to convince all unprejudiced minds, but also every objection that we have been able to find against our own views, and have thus found the opportunity of confirming, by our answers to the same, the truth of the doctrine propounded. There may be other objections which did not occur to our mind; yet it is likely that their solution will need no new considerations besides those already developed in the preceding pages. Should any other difficulty occur to the reader which cannot be answered by those considerations, we would earnestly entreat him to propound it to us, that we may try its strength. We are always glad to hear a new objection against what we hold to be true. For objections either can or cannot be solved. If they can, their solution will throw a new light on the doctrine we defend; and if they cannot, their insolubility will show us some weak point, or at least some impropriety of our language, and will thus cause us to correct our expressions or modify our opinions. Whatever helps us to regard things under some new point of view is calculated to enlarge our conceptions, to make our language clearer and more precise, and to strengthen our philosophical convictions. Those alone need to be afraid of objections who draw their conclusions from arbitrary hypotheses, instead of established truths.

We conclude the present article with a short answer to a question, which has often been raised by timorous people, concerning what may be styled the cardinal point of our doctrine on matter‐viz., the _simplicity_ of material elements. The question is the following: If we admit that the elements of matter are physically simple, is there not a serious danger of setting at naught the essential difference between the spiritual and the material substance, and are we not drifting thus into materialism?

We reply that no such danger needs to be apprehended. For it is not true that physical simplicity constitutes the essential difference between spirit and matter. Every primitive being is physically simple; and yet it does not follow that all primitive beings belong to the same species. On the other hand, spirit and matter, notwithstanding their physical simplicity, evidently belong to different species. The element of matter is inert—that is, though acting all around itself, it cannot exercise its activity within itself; whereas the spiritual substance exercises its activity within as well as without itself, and continually modifies its own interior state by its vital operations. Again, the element of matter is ubicated in space, and marks a local point, from which it directs its action in a sphere; whereas the spiritual substance neither marks a local point in space nor acts in a sphere, but determines both the direction and the intensity of its action as it pleases. Moreover, the element of matter has nothing but locomotive power; whereas the spiritual substance possesses not only the locomotive, but also, and principally, the thinking and the willing powers, by which it vastly transcends all material being. This suffices to show that spirit and matter, though physically simple, have an entirely different metaphysical constitution—that is, a different substantial act, a different substantial term, and a different substantial complement. Hence the simplicity of the material element does not set at naught the essential difference between matter and spirit.

Those whose metaphysical notions about material substance still hang upon the physics of the ancients will be loath to admit that our unextended element can be physically simple; for they have been taught to believe that wherever there is matter and form, there is _physical_ composition. But such a notion is evidently wrong; for where in the element are the _physical_ components, without which physical composition is impossible? Can we say that the matter and the substantial form are _physical_ components? Certainly not; for the form without the matter cannot exist, nor can the matter exist without the form. Both are absolutely required for the constitution of the _primitive_ physical being. How, then, can they be conceived as physical beings, if no physical being can be conceived before their meeting in one essence and in a common existence? A physical compound is a compound whose components have a distinct and independent existence in nature; for physical beings alone can be physical components, and nothing which has not a distinct and independent existence in nature can be called a physical being, except by an abuse of terms. The physical being is a complete being—that is, an act materially completed by its intrinsic term, and formally completed by its individual actuality. All beings that are incomplete, and whose existence depends on other cognate beings, are no more than _metaphysical_ realities. Hence the substantial form of the element, which has no separate existence, is not a physical, but only a metaphysical, being; and in the same manner, the matter to which that form gives the first existence is not a physical, but only a metaphysical, reality. Whence it follows that the composition of matter and substantial form is not a physical, but only a metaphysical, composition; and, further, that the primitive element is indeed a metaphysical, but not a physical, compound.

On this subject we shall have more to say when explaining the peripatetic theory of substantial generations, which assumes that the substantial form can be changed without changing the matter. It is on this assumption that the physical distinction between matter and form has been maintained. We shall prove in the most irrefragable manner that the assumption is based on an equivocation about the meaning of the epithet “substantial” as applied to natural forms, and that no form which is truly and strictly substantial—that is, which gives the first being to its matter—can leave its matter and be subrogated by another substantial form.

To Be Continued.

Robespierre. Concluded.

We know how the son of S. Louis passed his last hours on earth; let us see how the men who sentenced him—against their consciences—prepared for that solemn passage. One, named Valazé, on hearing the sentence, stabbed himself, and fell dead in the court; he was dragged back with the others to prison. The remaining twenty‐one passed their death‐vigil in riotous singing and drinking and making merry; in improvising a comedy where Robespierre and the devil conversed in hell; the dead Valazé meanwhile lying in his blood in the same room. Vergniaud, who so hesitated to vote “death” for the king, is now bent on escaping the block by poisoning himself; but he has only poison enough for one, so he throws away the dose, too generous to desert his companions in their last journey. They will all go together; so, after a night of bacchanalian shouting and carousing, they all set forth in the fatal tumbrel; even dead Valazé is flung in to have his head cut off, that the guillotine may not be done out of its prey. They jolt on, singing the _Marseillaise_ and crying Vive la République. One by one the heads fall, the chorus grows weaker, and at last ceases to be heard. The Girondists are gone. Robespierre is King of the Revolution now, and reigns supreme over its destinies. Now let him prove what truth there is in the plea put forth by his apologists that he was only cruel from necessity, from the pressure put upon him by his fellow‐demagogues. His accession to undivided responsibility was, on the contrary, the signal for greater slaughter, and we see the number of victims swelling in proportion to the growth of his individual power. Look at the lists of the _Moniteur_. In July, 1793, there were thirteen persons condemned by the revolutionary tribunal of Paris, and in July of the following year the number sent by it to the guillotine was eight hundred and thirty‐five!

But this system of legal assassination was beginning to recoil on the head of its inventor. The murder of the Girondists was an impolitic act that Robespierre soon repented of. He had made a precedent in attacking the representatives of the nation, hitherto inviolate; and now that the longing for vengeance was satisfied, he was clear‐sighted enough to perceive what the cost was likely to be. He had sacrificed his rivals, but he had imperilled his own head. From this day forward he seemed haunted by the shadow of coming retribution. He had poured out the blood of those who stood beside him, and now he was slipping in it; his footing was no longer secure; the words “assassination,” “victim of the poignard of revenge,” etc., etc., were continually on his lips, and there is evidence that his life was poisoned by the constant dread of being murdered by some of the friends of his victims. Those who had hitherto aided and abetted his atrocities now began to look with suspicion and terror on him; even Danton tried to back out of the partnership, and to talk of “the joys of private life” in a way that suggested he had had enough of the glories of public life. He had just married a young and beautiful woman, whose influence was said to have already exercised a humanizing effect on his ferocious nature. She had brought him independence, too, so there was every inducement to him to quit the shambles, and leave Robespierre there alone in his glory. He withdrew from the Public Safety Committee, and ceased almost altogether to attend the meetings of the Convention. Robespierre understood this significant change. He saw his accomplices were deserting him, and he trembled. The Revolution, Saturn‐like, was devouring her own children; why should not the hunters be devoured by their own dogs? Every one was falling away from the tyrant. Camille Desmoulins and Hébert, lately his devoted friends, were gathering up a rival faction dubbed Ultra‐Revolutionists, and, aided by Hébert’s abominable newspaper, _Père Duchêsne_, they and their followers set to work to hunt down the popular idol. Robespierre was known to harbor a sneaking prejudice in favor of some sort of religion, and once even openly declared his opinion that some such institution was necessary for governing with effect. The Ultras used this admission as a means of insulting him, and at the same time weakening his prestige. They got hold of an unfortunate, half‐witted man named Gobel, an apostate priest, dressed him up as an archbishop, and, surrounded by a crowd of mock priests and prelates, they led him, riding on an ass, to the Convention; here he made a burlesque and blasphemous abjuration of his former state and belief, and solemnly pronounced the _Credo_ of atheism, and the worship of the goddess Reason. The law‐givers, thereupon, amidst the frantic enthusiasm of the crowd, decreed that “God and all superstition were abolished,” and the worship of Reason substituted in their place. A monstrous ceremony was at once organized to celebrate the new religion: an actress was carried to the cathedral of Notre Dame, dressed—or undressed—as the goddess of this adoption, enthroned on the consecrated altar of the living God, while the populace passed before her in adoration. The walls of the sacred temple re‐echoed to the hymn of liberty, the _Marseillaise_, and were profaned with horrors that no Christian pen may retrace. Similar scenes were enacted in the other churches. Venerable old S. Eustache was turned into a fair; tables were spread with sausages, pork‐puddings, herrings, and bottles; children were forced to sing songs and give toasts, and to drink to the half‐naked goddess; and when the little ones—the precious little ones of Jesus—got drunk, there was huge merriment amongst the spectators.

The shrine of S. Geneviève was torn down and desecrated. The tombs of the kings of France at S. Denis were broken open, and the ashes scattered abroad with every species of insult. The _Moniteur_ thus describes the spectacle the streets of Paris presented during the Festival of Reason: “Most of the people were drunk with the brandy they had swallowed out of Chalices—eating mackerel on the Patens!... They stopped at the doors of dramshops, held out Ciboriums, and the landlord, stoop in hand, had to fill them thrice.” Other things are recorded of this demoniacal saturnalia which had best be left unsaid—if happily they be yet unknown to Catholic hearts.

The provinces followed suit. Lyons sacked her churches, and drove a mitred ass through her streets, trailing the sacred volumes at his tail. The Loire was polluted with drowned bodies of priests. At Nantes ninety priests are embarked at dead of night under hatches; in the middle of the stream the boat is scuttled, and goes down with her human cargo. These are the _noyades_. Then follow others of more than a hundred at a time. Oh! these priests, these men of the Gospel of Christ, at any cost they must be got rid of! The guillotine is too slow; let us have fire and water to the rescue! So there are the fusillades; men, women, priests, and nuns fall under the showers of grapeshot as fast as they can be gathered and ranged in line—mothers with infants at their breasts, children clinging to one another—five hundred at a batch they go. The mother Revolution herself is turning sick of it. Robespierre alone shows no signs of squeamishness; but, whether from sagacity or some latent moral—perhaps even religious—instinct, he repudiated the sacrilegious excesses which inaugurated and followed the installation of the new goddess. He saw, too, that it was an arrow pointed at himself. He denounced Hébert at the Jacobin Club, ridiculed his new‐fangled divinity, and declared that if “God did not exist, a wise law‐giver would have invented him.” Hébert winced; Camille Desmoulins started the _Vieux Cordelier_, and began to broach the doctrine of clemency and the savage stupidity of useless blood‐ shedding. Never since the Revolution began had such theories been hinted at. The country was growing nauseated with wholesale butcheries; the daring words of the _Vieux Cordelier_ were heard with wonder and welcomed with deep though silent applause. Robespierre might have tolerated the humane doctrines of the newspaper, if it had abstained from personal aggression; but Desmoulins used his weapon of sarcasm unsparingly against the tyrant, on one occasion twitting him, half facetiously, with his aristocratic origin, as proved by the discarded _de_ formerly prefixed to his name. Robespierre grew pale—paler than his usual sea‐green hue—on reading this, and Desmoulins’ doom was sealed. Hébert went first; he, with nineteen of the faction, perished in one hour on the scaffold, in March, 1794. Ten days later Camille and Danton fell. It is yet a mystery why Danton was thus quickly sacrificed; he was apparently on good terms with Robespierre, and had pointed no witticisms at him like the editor of the _Vieux Cordelier_. The tyrant himself gives no explanation in his long‐ winded speeches on the hard necessity which compelled him “to sacrifice private friendship to the good of the country,” and so on. But whatever the motive may have been, the act drew upon its perpetrator the aversion and contempt of those who till then had been his staunchest followers and supporters. Every one was terrified for his own head. Danton’s fall seemed to bring the axe to every man’s door. Robespierre was now alone, more terribly alone than the lost traveller in the desert. His fellows shunned him, or shuddered when he passed. He lived in perpetual fear of being assassinated, though it is doubtful whether any attempt was ever made on his life. Several were trumped up with a view to uplifting his tottering popularity; but though the accused persons were guillotined with great pomp and _éclat_, the proofs of their intended crime were extremely doubtful. A last expedient yet remained.

Robespierre would re‐establish the existence of God, and thus be a prophet as well as a king. He decreed, accordingly, a great meeting which should atone for Hébert’s Feast of Reason and annihilate its brief triumph. It was to take place in the Tuileries gardens. Robespierre, while working the axe so assiduously, never bespattered himself with the blood of his instrument. In a time when _sans‐culottism_ made dirt and Bohemian gear the fashion, he remained a dandy, powdered and frizzled in the midst of legislators who prided themselves on dirty hands and begrimed linen. For this gala‐day of his new religion he ordered a fine sky‐blue silk coat, white‐silk waistcoat embroidered with silver, white stockings, and gold shoe‐buckles. Thus equipped, the Prophet of the Mountain sallied forth to patronize the Omnipotent and decree the existence of a Supreme Being. He ascended the rostrum with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, made a fulsome discourse in a vein of sentimental deism, and then proceeded to unveil the effigy of atheism, a hideous caricature, made of paste‐board, besmeared with turpentine and other inflammable stuffs, to which he applied a lighted torch. The flame leaped up, and Atheism, amidst shouts and cracklings, burned itself to dust; then from the ashes rose up another effigy, the statue of Wisdom, supposed to symbolize the new religion, but sorrily smutted and begrimed by the subsiding smoke of Atheism. No wonder Billaud should exclaim, “Get thee gone! Thou art a bore, thyself and thy _Etre Suprême_.”

O merciful God! may heaven and earth praise thee, and all the creatures therein, for thou art verily a God of love, long suffering and patient!

And now that Robespierre has duly installed his _Etre Suprême_, and decreed, moreover, “that consoling principle, the immortality of the soul,” and obliterated from the graves of murdered citizens the hitherto obligatory inscription, “Death is an eternal sleep,” what is there left for him to do? Nothing, apparently, but to go on killing. The revolutionary tribunal must be made to work with greater speed, and so it is split into four fractions, each with its president, and empowered to try and condemn as fast as it can. Even the Mountain quaked when this proposition was uttered at its base; but the law was carried, and henceforth the guillotine quadruples its business. Fouquier‐Tinville sets up one of “improved velocity,” and boasts of being able to make room for a batch of one hundred and fifty at one time. He wants to establish one in the Tuileries itself, but Collot protests that this would “demoralize the instrument.” It did not matter, apparently, how much the instrument demoralized the people. These sit at their windows watching for the tumbrels to pass, criticising the occupants, joking and enjoying themselves. Women fight for seats near the scaffold, where day after day they sit knitting, counting off the heads, as they fall, by the prick of a pin in a bit of card‐board. These are the “furies of the guillotine.”

But to make the new law, called _22me Prairial_, more fully available, it was necessary to provide extra work for the executioners. Fouquier‐ Tinville was equal to the occasion. He got up an accusation against the occupants of the prisons for “conspiring against the Convention.” Let us cast a glance into these prisons, where, at this crisis, twelve thousand human beings lie literally _rotting_ to death. The memoirs of the time agree in describing the twelve houses of arrest (the original prisons had long since been increased to that number) as dens of noisome horror never equalled in any other clime or period. Noble dames, maidens of tender years, were huddled pell‐mell with the worst and most wretched of their sex; nobles and shoe‐blacks, priests and ruffians, nuns and actresses, crowded by day and night into the condemned cells, where every night the turnkey came and read his list for the morrow’s “batch.” Then followed scenes such as no pen or painter’s brush could adequately describe. “Men rush towards the grate; listen if their name be in it; ... one deep‐drawn breath when it is not. We live still one day! And yet some score or scores of names were in. Quick these; they clasp their loved ones to their heart one last time. With brief adieu, wet‐eyed or dry‐eyed, they mount and are away. This night to the _Conciergerie_; through the palace, misnamed of Justice, to the guillotine to‐morrow.” These were the persons whom Tinville’s ready wit accused of getting up a plot to overthrow the Convention! But what did it signify whether the story was an impossibility as well as a lie? The four tribunals must have work, the guillotine must have food. In three days—the 7th, 9th, and 10th of July—one hundred and seventy‐one prisoners were executed on the charge of conspiring from the depth of their squalid dungeons to overturn the state. So much did the newly‐discovered _Etre Suprême_ do towards softening the rule of Robespierre.

But, oh! are we not sick of the ghastly tale? It is now hurrying to a close.

Barère, one of the fiercest of the revolutionary gang who had so far escaped the guillotine, gave a bachelor’s dinner at a suburban villa on a warm day in July, Robespierre being among the guests. The weather was intensely hot, and the company, unshackled by stiff conventionalities, threw off their coats, and sauntered out to sip their coffee under the trees in easy _déshabillé_. Carnot wanted his pocket‐handkerchief, and went indoors to fetch it. While looking for his own coat he espied Robespierre’s fantastic sky‐blue garment, and, prompted by a sudden thought, put his hand into the pockets, wondering if any secret might be lurking there. What were his feelings on discovering a list of forty names told off for the guillotine, his own amongst the number! He carried off the paper, showed it discreetly to his friends, and they agreed that Robespierre must be made away with. Two days later he appears at the Convention, and is met by dark faces that scowl when he ascends the tribune, and show no docile acquiescence when he speaks. Terror for their own lives has at last stirred these dull, brutalized accomplices to raise their voice and protest against the tyrant. He is impeached by common acclamation. He defends himself in a passionate harangue, accusing Mr. Pitt and King George of having bribed the Convention to arrest him, after sowing calumnies against him in the minds of the people. The charges against him were numerous and heavy; he answered them all with vehemence and a certain wild, disjointed eloquence, and wound up by the following denunciation: “No, _death is not an eternal sleep_! The nation will not submit to a desperate and desolating doctrine that covers nature itself with a funereal shroud; that deprives virtue of hope, and misfortune of consolation, and insults even death itself. No; we will efface from our tombs your sacrilegious epitaph, and replace it with the consoling truth, ‘Death is the beginning of immortality!’ ” The speech produced an effect on the Assembly, but it did not secure a real success. The next day Saint‐ Just mounted the tribune to defend Robespierre; but he had hardly begun his discourse when cries of “Down with the tyrant!” forced him to give it up. Robespierre stood at his place, utterly abandoned by the members of the Assembly, where twenty‐four hours ago he ruled with despotic and unrivalled sway. Not a voice was raised in his behalf. He strove to obtain a hearing, but his words were drowned in shouts of “Away with him! down with him!” He stood dumb and petrified at the sound of those words, bowed his head, and slowly descended the steps of the tribune; suddenly he looked up and cried, “Let me die, then, at once!” The younger Robespierre advances and takes his brother’s arm, asking to share the same fate with him. This generous movement excites the Convention to still greater rage; it yells and bellows, gesticulating like so many madmen. The president puts on his hat, and calls for order; a temporary lull ensues. Robespierre again tries to make himself heard, but his voice is again drowned in shouts and hisses; he rushes up and down the steps and about the hall, clenching his fist and breathing menaces that now fall powerless and are met with taunts of triumphant hate. At last, over‐mastered by his own emotions, he drops into a chair. The arrest of the two brothers is voted unanimously. The elder one endeavors to resist, but is seized and carried forcibly down to the bar. In the midst of this stormy ebullition, one of the deputies, seeing Robespierre unable to speak from the violence of his rage and terror, cried out: “It is Danton’s blood that is choking him!” Stung by the taunt, Robespierre found breath and courage to retort, “Danton! Is it Danton that you regret? Cowards! why did you not defend him!” These spirited words were the last he ever uttered in public. He and his brother were now removed in custody to a hall close by the Convention, and with them Saint‐Just, Couthon, and Lebas. It had been an arduous day’s work for the Convention, and it is not surprising that the deputies “clamored for an adjournment, that they might repose themselves and dine”; for whether men live or die, legislators must dine. They were thoughtful enough to remember that the five in custody would also like to dine, even for the last time; so the guilty deputies had a good dinner provided for them, and immediately after were transferred to separate prisons: Robespierre to the Luxembourg, his brother to St. Lazare, Couthon to Port Royal (dubbed Port _Libre_ since it had been turned into a prison!), Lebas to Le Force, and Saint‐Just _aux Ecossais_. Henriot, who commanded the troops devoted to Robespierre, was seized in the act of attempting an attack on the Convention, bound, and locked up in one of the courts. Two bold friends of his rallied the soldiers, stormed the Convention, released him, and placed him again at the head of his men. Meantime, the jailer of the Luxembourg had refused to admit Robespierre, and the bailiffs had to take him to the _Mairie_, where he was received with acclamations of respect as the “father of the people.” Henriot and his band by midnight had set him and the other four deputies free, and they were installed at the Hôtel de Ville, with a large body of soldiers drawn round the edifice to protect them. But the Convention, on its side, had not been idle. Barras was placed in command of all the troops that could be mustered, and in company with twelve energetic leaders, at the head of the _gendarmerie_ and the artillery, marched on the Hôtel de Ville, dispersed Henriot’s troops, and penetrated into the building, where they found the five deputies and captured them. The younger Robespierre flung himself out of a window in a frantic effort to escape the more tragic death that was now a certainty; he was picked up horribly mutilated, but with life enough yet to realize the horrors of his position. Lebas, on hearing the _gendarmes_ battering on the door of the room, blew his brains out with a pistol. Saint‐Just was seized with a knife in his hand, which he was going to plunge into his heart; he gave it up without a word, and allowed himself to be bound. Couthon, who was nearly blind and half‐paralyzed, being powerless to offer the slightest resistance, was flung into a wheelbarrow that chanced to be in the court‐yard. Robespierre himself, the centre of this group of suicides and murderers, attempted to cheat the guillotine as Lebas had done; but either his cowardly hand trembled and betrayed his will or was seized as he pulled the trigger, for the bullet went through the cheek instead of through the forehead. The jaw was frightfully fractured, and hung loose from the face, held on only by the flesh. Some spectator had the humanity to help the unfortunate man to tie it up with a handkerchief, and in this miserable plight he and his companions were conveyed at about two o’clock in the morning to the Committee of Public Safety. The official report of the day gives the following graphic description of what then occurred: “Robespierre was brought in on a plank ... by several artillery‐men and armed citizens. He was placed on the table of the ante‐chamber which adjoins that where the Committee holds its sittings. A deal box, which contained some samples of the ammunition‐bread sent to the army _du Nord_, was put under his head by way of pillow. He was for nearly an hour in a state of insensibility which made us think that he was no more; but after an hour he opened his eyes. Blood was running in abundance from the wound he had in the left lower jaw; the jaw was broken, and a ball had gone through the cheek. His shirt was bloody. He was without hat or neckcloth. He had on a sky‐blue coat,(158) nankeen breeches, white stockings hanging down at his heels.... At six in the morning a surgeon who happened to be in the court‐yard of the Tuileries was called in to dress the wound. By way of precaution he first put a key in Robespierre’s mouth. He found the left jaw broken. He pulled out two or three teeth, bandaged up the wound, and got a basin of water, which he placed at his side.” All this time no word was spoken by the wounded man; not even a sigh escaped him when the teeth were being extracted, yet the agony he endured must have been terrific. There he lay, a spectacle to gods and men, in his sky‐blue coat, a tiger caught in his own lair, barked at and cursed and triumphed over by a band of wolves. Who could pity him—he who had never known pity for man or woman? For more than twenty hours he lay there in this mental and bodily torture. Once he made a sign which was understood to express thirst. The burning fever of his wound had parched him till he gasped for breath: but no one was so merciful as to get him a glass of water. Vinegar and gall they gave him in abundance. Many cursed him as the murderer of their kith and kin, and bade him drink his own blood, if he was thirsty.

All this while the tocsin is ringing out the glad news to Paris. Crowds rush out on the house‐tops, and wave signals to the prisoners in the _Conciergerie_ that the hour of deliverance is at hand. The prisoners cannot understand; they think the tocsin is the signal for a new September massacre. The word flies from cell to cell, and all fall on their knees and prepare for instant death.

Others, too, are making ready for death, but not thus. The tumbrels jolt up to the Convention, and collect for the last time their “batch”; this time there are but twenty‐three victims. Amongst them, by an exquisite touch of retributive justice, is Simon the Cordwainer, going to die with Robespierre! And now they are ready, and the tumbrels move on. The corpse of Lebas is flung in with Robespierre, as that of Valazé was with Brissot; the other three were so disfigured with blood and the traces of the death‐ scuffle in the town‐hall that they are hardly to be recognized. The entire city is out, shouting itself hoarse with joy. The roofs of the houses are alive with human eyes, all watching for the figure of Robespierre. When it appears, the soldiers point to it with their swords—show the tyrant, bound and gagged, to the people. The sight causes a frantic thrill of exultation that finds utterance in a yell of something too unholy for joy, too fierce for laughter. A woman breaks through the crowd, dashes aside the bayonets of the escort, and leaps to the side of the tumbrel. “Ah! thou demon,” she cries, waving her hand above her head, “the death of thee is better than wine to my heart Wretch, get thee down to hell with the curses of all wives and mothers!”

Surely this is hell already begun. The wretched man opens his eyes, glued together with blood; a shade of deadlier hue passes over his livid, sea‐ green face; he shudders, but utters no sound. The tumbrel reaches the Place de la Revolution. The furies of the guillotine rush round it, and execute a dance of fiendish joy, the crowd making room for them and applauding. Now the cart stops, and the condemned alight. In the first are the two Robespierres, Couthon, Henriot, and Lebas. Maximilien Robespierre is the only one who has strength left in him to ascend the scaffold without help. He stood on the fatal step whither a few days ago his nod sufficed to send the noblest heads in France; within a few yards of the spot where only six weeks ago he had decreed the existence of the Omnipotent, at whose judgment‐bar he was now going to appear. Seldom indeed does that silent, inscrutable Judge allow us to behold the judgments of his justice accomplished here below, and amidst circumstances so palpably impressive, and to our human eyes so fearfully appropriate, as was this death‐scene of Robespierre’s. He showed no sign of terror or remorse, but, dumb and self‐contained to the last, yielded himself to Samson’s hands. Only when the bandage was wrenched brutally from the broken jaw, letting it drop from the face, he uttered a piercing cry that rang above the yells of the multitude. It was the last sound his voice emitted in this world. Samson did his work, and Robespierre was no more.

One long, loud shout of gladness went up to heaven, and carried the tidings to the ends of France on wings quicker than words. It penetrated the iron doors of the prisons, like the sweet beams of the golden dawn, and bade men hope and rejoice, for the Reign of Terror was at an end and the gates of their dungeons unlocked.

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