Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/193

 ST. JUST shameful repose. You presided for an hour; you quitted the chair at the moment the tocsin sounded; at the same instant the satellites of tyranny entered and thrust the bayonet through the heart of him who had replaced you. You, you slept!

You detached yourself from the Mountain amid the dangers which it ran. You publicly claimed it as a merit not to have denounced Gensonné, Gaudet, and Brissot; you incessantly held out to them the olive branch, a pledge of your alliance with them against the people and strict republicans. The Girondists made a mock war against you; in order to force you to declare yourself it demanded a reckoning of you ; it accused you of ambition. Your far-sighted hypocrisy conciliated all, and contrived to maintain itself in the midst of parties, always ready to dissimulate before the strongest without offending the weakest. During stormy debates, your absence and your silence were commented on with indignation; you, you spoke of the country, of the delights of solitude and idleness, but you could quit your apathy to defend Dumouriez, Westermann, his boasted creature, and his accomplices, the generals.

You knew how to allay the wrath of the patriots; you represented our misfortunes as the result of the feebleness of our armies, and you turned attention from the treachery of the generals to occupy yourself with new levies of men. You were associated in the crimes of Lacroix, a long denounced conspirator of impure soul,