Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/222

216 will cover them with the opprobrium they so richly deserve!

, Danton, you are lacking in respect toward the representatives of the nation, toward the court and the sovereign people who have a right to demand an account of your actions. Marat was accused as you are accused. He did not become violent. He did not answer facts with athletic exhibitions and florid rhetoric. He tried to justify himself, and he succeeded. I can offer you no more brilliant example.

shall then condescend to justify myself, and follow Saint-Just's plan. When I look through this list of horrors, my whole self shudders. I, sold to Mirabeau, Orléans, Dumouriez! I always fought them! I frustrated Mirabeau's plans when I considered them dangerous to the cause of Liberty. I defended Marat against him. The only time I saw Dumouriez was to ask him for an accounting of the millions that he had squandered. I suspected his plans, and in order to spoil them, I flattered him. Ought I to have ruined him, when the safety of the Republic lay in his hands? Yes, I did send Fabre to him; yes, I did promise to make him commander-in-chief; but at the same time I told Billaud-Varenne to keep a strict watch over him. Am I to be blamed because I lied to a traitor? I have committed many another crime for the nation. You can't save a nation with petty virtues. I would have shouldered any crime at all, if need were, to save you—all of you, judges, people, even you vile impostors who are now accusing me! I conspire with royalty? Ah, yes, indeed, I