Chenard, Narbonne, and Vallière came to sing stanzas in honor of the Mountain. The section of Mont-Blanc brought the bust of Lepelletier, and a woman placed a red cap on the head of the president, who embraced her; "the citoyennes of the section du Mail" strewed flowers "before the legislators;" the "pupils of the country," escorted by music, came to thank the Convention for having "paved the way for the prosperity of the century;" the women of the section of the Gardes-Françaises brought roses; the women of the section of the Champs-Élysées presented a crown of oak-leaves; the women of the section of the Temple came to the bar and took an oath "to wed only true Republicans;" the section of Molière presented a medal of Franklin which, by a formal decree, was suspended from the wreath of the statue of Liberty; the Foundlings, who had been declared the Children of the Republic, filed by, dressed in the national uniform; young girls of the ninety-third section came arrayed in long white gowns, and the next day the "Moniteur" contained this line: "The president receives a bouquet from the innocent hands of a fair young girl." The orators saluted the crowds and sometimes flattered them, saying to the multitude; "Thou art infallible; thou art irreproachable; thou art sublime." The lower classes are childlike; they are fond of sugar-plums. Sometimes a riot would invade the Assembly, entering in a fury and departing pacified, like the Rhone flowing through Lake Leman, which is muddy enough on its entrance, but flows out as blue as the sky.
If it continued turbulent, Henriot would now and then order his furnaces for heating the bullets to be brought up to the entrance of the Tuileries.
IX.
While this assembly was throwing off the shackles of revolution, it was also promoting civilization. It was a furnace, to be sure, but it was likewise a forge. In this caldron where terror was bubbling, progress also fermented. From that chaos of shadows and tempestuous whirlwind of clouds spread immense rays of light parallel with the eternal laws,—rays that have since rested on the horizon, forever visible in the sky of the nations, and which are called justice, tolerance, goodness, reason, truth, and love. The Convention proclaimed this grand axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where that of another begins;" thus summing up in two lines the essence of social science. It proclaimed the sanctity of the poor, as well as of the infirm in the persons of the blind, and of the mutes, whose guardianship had been assumed by the State; it honored maternity in the person of the girl-mother, whom it comforted and lifted up, childhood in the orphans adopted by the State, and innocence in the accused, who was indemnified by the government after his acquittal. It branded the traffic in blacks and abolished slavery. It proclaimed civil consolidation. It decreed gratuitous instruction. It organized national education by the establishment of the normal school in Paris, the central school in the cities, and the primary school in the communes. It founded conservatories and museums. It systematized the Code as well as the weights and measures, and the method of calculation by decimals. It established the finances of France upon a firm basis, and brought about an era of public credit after the long monarchical bankruptcy. It established communication by telegraph, it provided almshouses for old age and the improved hospitals for sickness; it gave the Polytechnic School to the cause of education, the Bureau of Longitude to science, and the Institute to the domain of human intellect. It was at once cosmopolitan and national. Of the eleven thousand two hundred and ten decrees issued by the Convention, the proportion of philanthropic as compared with the political was as two to one. It proclaimed universal morality to be the basis of society, and universal conscience the basis of the law. And it must be remembered that all these reforms—the abolition of slavery, the proclamation of universal brotherhood, the protection of humanity, the elevation of the human conscience, the law of labor changed into a privilege, thus transforming the burden into a comfort, the consolidation of the national wealth, the enlightenment and protection of children, the dissemination of knowledge and science, a light set upon all the mountain-tops, help proffered to the suffering, and the promulgation of all principle—were accomplished by the Convention, with the Vendée gnawing like hydra at its entrails, and the kings of the world leaping like tigers upon its shoulders.
