[42] But in the evening, at the
Jacobin Club, Robespierre, after a long and vague discourse on public
dangers, conspiracies, and traitors, suddenly utters the decisive
words:
"The most important of my reflections was about to escape me[43]. .
. The proposition made this morning will only facilitate the
replacement of the purified members of this Convention by the envoys
of Pitt and Cobourg."
Dreadful words in the mouth of a man of principles! They are at once
understood by the leaders, great and small, also by the selected
fifteen hundred Jacobins then filling the hall. "No! no! shouts the
entire club." The delegates are carried away:
"I demand," exclaims one of them, "that the dissolution of the
Convention be postponed until the end of the war." -
At last, the precious motion, so long desired and anticipated, is
made: the calumnies of the Girondins now fall the ground; it is
demonstrated that the Convention does not desire to perpetuate itself
and that it has no ambition; if it remains in power it is because it
is kept there; the delegates of the people compel it to stay.
And better still, they are going to mark out its course of action.
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