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NINETY-THREE.
149

and descent, and bear, terraced on these slopes, all the seasons from ice to flowers. Each zone of these slopes produces men suited to its climate, from those who live in the sun to those who live in lightning.


VII.

People showed each other the corner of the passage on the left where Robespierre whispered in the ear of Garat, Clavière's friend, this terrible epigram: "Clavière has conspired wherever he has respired." In this same nook, convenient for asides and whispered anger, Fabre and d'Eglantine had quarrelled with Romme, and reproached him for disfiguring his calendar by changing Fervidor to Thermidor.

People pointed out the corner where the seven representatives of the Haute-Garonne sat, elbow to elbow; the first called to pronounce their verdict on Louis XVI., they replied one after another: Mailhe, "death"; Delmas, "death"; Projean, "death"; Calés, "death"; Ayral, "death"; Julien, "death"; Dasaby, "death."

An eternal reverberation which has filled all history, and which, since human justice exists, has always given the echo of the grave to the wall of the tribunal. People pointed out, among this riotous crowd of faces, all those men who had been the cause of the hubbub of tragic votes:—Paganel, who said,—

"Death. A king is of no use until he is dead." Millaud, who said,—

"If death did not exist to-day, it would be necessary to invent it." The old Raffron du Trouillet, who said,—

"Death, come quickly!" Goupilleau, who exclaimed,—

"The scaffold immediately. Slowness aggravates death." Sieyés, who exclaimed with funereal conciseness,—

"Death." Thuriot, who rejected the appeal to the people proposed by Buzot,—

"What! primary assemblies! what! forty-four thousand tribunals! Trial without end. The head of Louis XVI. would have time to turn white before it would fall." Augustin-Bon Robespierre, who exclaimed after his brother,—