rabble, had, by consent of the Convention, established Paganism, or
the worship of Reason, as the national religion. Robespierre never
gave his approval to this outrage, and took the earliest opportunity
of restoring the worship of the Supreme. It is said, that of all the
missions with which he believed himself to be charged, the highest,
the holiest in his eyes, was the regeneration of the religious
sentiment of the people: to unite heaven and earth by this bond of a
faith which the Republic had broken, was for him the end, the
consummation of the Revolution. In one of his paroxysms, he delivered
an address to the Convention, which induced them to pass a law,
acknowledging the existence of God, and ordaining a public festival to
inaugurate the new religion. This fête took place on the 8th of June
1794. Robespierre headed the procession to the Champ de Mars; and he
seemed on the occasion to have at length reached the grand realisation
of all his hopes and desires. From this _coup de théâtre_ he returned
home, magnified in the estimation of the people, but ruined in the
eyes of the Convention. His conduct had been too much that of one
whose next step was to the restoration of the throne, with himself as
its occupant. By Fouché, Tallien, Collot-d'Herbois, and some others,
he was now thwarted in all his schemes. His wish was to close the
Reign of Terror and allow the new moral world to begin; for his late
access of devotional feeling had, in reality, disposed him to adopt
benign and clement measures. But to arrest carnage was now beyond his
power; he had invoked a demon which would not be laid. Assailed by
calumny, he made the Convention resound with his speeches; spoke of
fresh proscriptions to put down intrigue; and spread universal alarm
among the members. In spite of the most magniloquent orations, he saw
that his power was nearly gone. Sick at heart, he began to absent
himself from committees, which still continued to send to the scaffold
numbers whose obscure rank should have saved them from suspicion or