This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a wife who might represent one of Mahomet's Houris. Yet, surely, "the time will come, though it come ne'er so slowly," when Heaven shall separate guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be remembered only as monuments of eternal justice. For the lady, her faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance—
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"A cut-purse of the empire and the rule; "____ a King of shreds and patches." |
Providence, Aug. 14, 1794.
The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*—
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.—A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.—A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.—A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.—A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.
* The base and selfish timidity of the Convention is strongly evinced by their suffering fifty innocent people to be guillotined on the very ninth of Thermidor, for a pretended conspiracy in the prison of St. Lazare.—A single word from any member might at this crisis have suspended the execution of the sentence, but that word no one had the courage or the humanity to utter.