This volteface has, of course, to appear spontaneous and the hand of
the titular rulers remain invisible: the Convention, as usual with
usurpers, is to simulate reserve and disinterestedness. -
Consequently, the following morning, August 11, on the opening of
the session, it simply declares that "its mission is fulfilled:"[41]
on the motion of Lacroix, a confederate of Danton's, it passes a law
that a new census of the population and of electors shall be made with
as little delay as possible, in order to convoke the primary
assemblies at once; it welcomes with joy the delegates who bring to it
the Constitutional Ark; the entire Assembly rises in the presence of
this sacred receptacle, and allows the delegates to exhort it and
instruct it concerning its duties.[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