Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/194

174 reverses which had just happened, and which had his advice been taken would have been prevented. "Dillon," he added, "is neither royalist, nor aristocrat, nor republican," and he had drawn out a plan of campaign which filled generals with admiration. The very next day (July 11th, 1793), Dillon was rearrested, charged with a plot for liberating the Dauphin and proclaiming him king. Desmoulins in the Convention denounced this as a ridiculous fable, but was refused a hearing. Dillon was kept in solitary confinement at the Madelonnettes, and repeatedly interrogated. He vainly asked to see his friends or to be confronted with his accusers. In a letter to Desmoulins he protested his innocence, and complained of incarceration in a heated cell without air. Desmoulins replied in a letter, which he published as a pamphlet of thirty-eight pages, sharply attacking the Committee of Public Safety. It was pretended that the note-book of an English spy had been picked up at Lille, and Dillon was mentioned in it as in Pitt's pay. Dillon denounced it as a forgery, which it evidently was. Desmoulins, on admission into the Jacobin Club in November 1793, had, however, to repudiate Dillon, and to confess he had been mistaken in him, as in Mirabeau. Robespierre warned him to be more cautious thenceforth in his friendships.

Dillon, meanwhile, had been transferred to the Luxembourg, where he had comparative liberty.