Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/276

 sympathy; and are like to burst down and raise the People, and deliver him! He complains loudly that he is classed with Chabots, with swindling Stockjobbers; that his Indictment is a list of platitudes and horrors. 'Danton hidden on the 10th of August?' reverberates he, with the roar of a lion in the toils: 'where are the men that had to press Danton to show himself, that day? Where are these high-gifted souls of whom he borrowed energy? Let them appear, these Accusers of mine: I have all the clearness of my self-possession when I demand them. I will unmask the three shallow scoundrels,' les trois plats coquins, Saint-Just, Couthon, Lebas, 'who fawn on Robespierre, and lead him towards his destruction. Let them produce themselves here; I will plunge them into Nothingness, out of which they ought never to have risen.' The agitated President agitates his bell; enjoins calmness, in a vehement manner: 'What is it to thee how I defend myself?' cries the other: ' the right of dooming me is thine always. The voice of a man speaking for his honour and his life may well drown the jingling of thy bell!' Thus Danton, higher and higher; till the lion-voice of him 'dies away in his throat': speech will not utter what is in that man. The Galleries murmur ominously; the first day's Session is over.

O Tinville, President Herman, what will ye do? They have two days more of it, by strictest Revolutionary Law. The Galleries already murmur. If this Danton were to burst your mesh-work!—Very curious indeed to consider. It turns on a hair: and what a hoitytoity were there. Justice and Culprit changing places; and the whole History of France running changed! For in France there is this Danton only that could still try to govern France. He only, the wild amorphous Titan;—and perhaps that other olive-complexioned individual, the Artillery-Officer at Toulon, whom we left pushing his fortune in the South?

On the evening of the second day, matters looking not better but worse and worse, Fouquier and Herman, distraction in their aspect, rush over to Salut Public. What is to be