Pétion and Buzot wandered many days and nights in the forest. At length their remains were found, half devoured by wolves. Whether they perished of cold and starvation, or sought relief from their misery in voluntary death, is not known.
The illustrious Condorcet, alike renowned for his philosophical genius and his eloquent advocacy of popular rights, had been declared an outlaw. For several months he had been concealed in the house of Madame Verney, a noble woman, who periled her own life that she might save that of her friend. At last Condorcet, learning from the papers that death was denounced against all who concealed a proscribed individual, resolved, at every hazard, to leave the roof of his benefactress. For some time he wandered through the fields in disguise, until he was arrested and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having swallowed poison, which for some time he carried about with him.
"It would be difficult in that or any other age to find two men of more active or, indeed, enthusiastic benevolence than Condorcet and La Fayette. Besides this, Condorcet was one of the most profound thinkers of his time, and will be remembered as long as genius is honored among us. La Fayette was no doubt inferior to Condorcet in point of ability, but he was the intimate friend of Washington, on whose conduct he modeled his own, and by whose side he had fought for the liberties of America; his integrity was, and still is, unsullied, and his character had a chivalrous and noble turn which Burke, in his better days, would have been the first to admire. Both, however, were natives of that hated country whose liberties they vainly attempted to achieve. On this account Burke declared Condorcet to be guilty of 'impious sophistry,' to be a 'fanatic atheist and furious democratic republican,' and to be capable of the 'lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies.' As to La Fayette, when an attempt was made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in the House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the unfortunate captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon. So dead had he become on this subject, even to the common instincts of our nature, that in his place in parliament he could find no better way of speaking of this injured and high-souled man than by calling him a ruffian. 'I would not,' says Burke, 'debase[412] my humanity by supporting an application in behalf of so horrid a ruffian.'"[413]
DEATH OF CONDORCET.
Madame Roland was led to the guillotine, evincing heroism which the world has never seen surpassed. Her husband, in anguish, unable to survive her, and hunted by those thirsting for his blood, anticipated the guillotine by plunging a stiletto into his own heart.
Danton and Robespierre were both opposed to such cruel executions, and especially to the establishment in France of that system of atheism which degraded man into merely the reptile of an hour. When Robespierre was informed of the atrocities which attended the execution of Bailly, in shame and grief he shut himself up in his room, saying, with prophetic foresight, to his host Duplay, "It is thus that they will martyrize ourselves."
Hebert[414] and the atheists were now dominant in the Commune of Paris, and Danton and Robespierre organized a party to crush them. Hebert soon saw indications of this movement, and began to tremble. He complained in the Jacobin Club that Robespierre and Danton were plotting against him. Robespierre was present on the occasion, and, with his accustomed audacity, immediately ascended the tribune and hurled his anathemas upon the heads of these blood-crimsoned fanatics.
"There are men," said he, "who, under the pretext of destroying superstition, would fain make a sort of religion of atheism itself. Every man has a right to think as he pleases; whoever would make a crime of this is a madman. But the legislator who should adopt the system of atheism would be a hundred times more insane. The National Convention abhors such a system. It is a political body, not a maker of creeds. Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant guilt is quite popular. The people, the unfortunate, applaud me. If God did not exist, it would behoove man to invent him."