Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/192

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS not objects of tyranny's gratitude since you were not objects of its hatred and terror?

What shall I say of your cowardly and constant abandonment of the public cause in the midst of crises, when you always took the part of retreat?

Mirabeau dead, you conspired with the Lameths and supported them. You remained neutral during the Legislative Assembly, and you held your peace during the sore struggle of the Jacobins against Brissot and the Girondist faction. At first you supported their opinion upon the war. Pressed afterward by the reproaches of the best citizens, you declared that you would observe the two parties, and you retired into silence. Allied with Brissot in the affair of the Champs de Mars you thereafter shared his tranquillity and his liberty-killing principles; then, given over entirely to this victorious party, you said of those who held aloof from it, that since they were alone in their opinion upon the war, and since they wished to ruin themselves, your friends and you must abandon them to their fate. But when you saw the storm of the tenth of August gathering, again you betook yourself to Arcis-sur-Aube. However, urged by shame and reproaches, and when you knew that the fall of tyranny was well prepared and inevitable, you returned to Paris on the 9th of August. You hid yourself during that terrible night. Your section, which had nominated you its president, long awaited you; they dragged you out of a