Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/264

248 In this "Come and help us to eat a pullet," there is that human touch necessary to remind us that even in those apocalyptic times, men, who were in the very heart of the cyclone, went about their business and their pleasures pretty much as we all do in ordinary times.

account of the execution of Danton adds nothing to the details we have already known; but there are some statements about Robespierre which I have not seen anywhere before. They strike me as not like the truth—as mere invention:

"It has been stated that, not content with having seen the victims pass his house, Robespierre had followed them to the place of execution, that he had contemplated them with ferocious satisfaction in the different phases of their agony; lastly, that the insatiable tiger, rendered more bloodthirsty by the sight, appeared to be licking his jaws and gargling his throat with the blood flowing in torrents from the scaffold into the Place de la Révolution. But if his joy was complete at the very moment when Danton's head fell, he is said by some mechanical instinct to have put his hand to his neck, as if to make sure that his own head was on his shoulders. He was making no