Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/219

Rh now you regret it?

[not answering, my colleagues! I say to you as Brutus said to Cicero: "We fear death too much, and exile, and poverty. Nimium timemus mortem et exilium et paupertatem." Is life so dear that we should prolong it without honor? There is not one of us who has not reached the very summit of the mountain of life. We have before us the descent, which is full of precipices, unavoidable even by the most obscure. The descent has no pleasant landscapes to offer, no resting places which were not a thousand times more delectable to that same Solomon who declared, in all his glory and in the midst of his seven hundred wives: "I find that the dead are happier than the living, and that the happiest of men is he who was never born.He sits down.]

! That speech of yours will cost us our headsHe kisses ''. Some one comes to tell  that it is his turn. He rises and faces the Court.'']

[to , your name, age, occupation, and place of residence?

[in a voice of thunder place of residence? Soon the great void. My name? In the Panthéon''The People are tense. They talk and appear to approve him; then suddenly they become silent, as the Judge speaks.'']

know the law. Answer categorically.

name is Georges-Jacques Danton. I am thirty-three years old, and a native of