If Legendre, the admirer, disciple and
confidential friend of Danton, dares at one time interfere in relation
to the decree which sends his friend to the scaffold, asking that he
may first be heard, it is only to retract immediately; that very
evening, at the Jacobin club, for greater security, "he wallows in the
mud;"[9] he declares "that he submits to the judgment of the
revolutionary Tribunal," and swears to denounce "whoever shall oppose
any obstacle to the execution of the decree."[10] Has not Robespierre
taught him a lesson, and in his most pedantic manner? What is more
beautiful, says the great moralist, more sublime, than an Assembly
which purges itself?[11] - Thus, not only is the net which has already
dragged out so many palpitating victims still intact, but it is
enlarged and set again, only, the fish are now caught on the "Left" as
well as on the "Right," and preferably on the topmost benches of the
"Mountain."[12] And better still, through the law of Prairial 22, its
meshes are reduced in size and its width increased; with such
admirable contraption, the fishpond could not fail to be exhausted. A
little before the 9th of Thermidor, David, who was one of
Robespierre's devoted adherents, himself exclaimed: "Will twenty of us
be left on the Mountain?" About the same time, Legendic, Thuriot,
L?onard Bourdon, Tallien, Bourdon de l'Oise, and others, each has a
spy all day long at his heels.
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