After what had presented itself to my view the preceding days, and after what I had written at the dictation of Citizen Brissot, I found this submission too prompt. There was at the bottom of it all an abandonment of the rights of the people, and a cowardice which disgusted me.
I left the club, and returned pensively to the house.
A half an hour or so after, might be heard a great disturbance towards the Place Louis XV.
It was the paid guard, who were re-entering Paris by the Rue St. Honoré, to have an occasion to make a demonstration against the Jacobins.
One had hardly the time to form palisades.
The paid guard collected themselves before the Convent, demanding powder to blow the gate and demolish the den of the Republicans. They were laughed at; they were applauded; they were hissed. The street was full of people, looking at one another, ready to come to blows.
It was plain to be seen that one of those misunderstandings had taken place which places the gun to one’s shoulder without one’s knowing upon whom to fire.
All at once, I could perceive, in the Rue Luxembourg, a man gliding down the street, with an evident desire to pass unnoticed.
I pulled my master’s coat, and whispered to him, “The Citizen Robespierre.”
It was indeed none other but he, who had been sent to the Assembly, and who had arrived there just in time to have the door shut on his nose.