dull mediocrity won mercy at their hands. The miserable Du Barri was
dragged from her obscure retreat to share the fate of a Malesherbes, a
Bailly, a Lavoisier. Robespierre was no more protected by his cold
incorruptibility, than was Barnave by his eloquence, Hebert by his
sensuality, Danton by his practical good sense. Nothing availed to save
from the all-devouring guillotine. Those who did survive seem almost to
have survived by chance, delivered by some caprice of fortune or by the
criminal levity of "les tricoteuses," vile women who degraded the very
dregs of their sex.

For such atrocities no apology need be attempted, but their cause may be
explained, the factors which produced such popular fury may be understood.
As he stands on the terrace of Versailles or wanders through the vast
apartments of the chateau, the traveller sees in imagination the dramatic
panorama of the long-dead past. The courtyard is filled with half-demented
women, clamouring that the Father of his People should feed his starving
children. The Well-Beloved jests cynically as, amid torrents of rain,
Pompadour is borne to her grave. Maintenon, gloomily pious, urges with
sinister whispers the commission of a great crime, bidding the king save
his vice-laden soul. Montespan laughs happily in her brief days of
triumph. And dominating the scene is the imposing figure of the Grand
Monarque. Louis haunts his great creation; Louis in his prime, the admired
and feared of Europe, the incarnation of kingship; Louis surrounded by
his gay and brilliant court, all eager to echo his historic boast, to sink
in their master the last traces of their identity.

Then a veil falls. But some can lift it, to behold a far different, a far
more stirring vision, and to such the deeper causes of the Terror are
revealed. For they behold a vast multitude, stained with care, haggard,
forlorn, striving, dying, toiling even to their death, that the passing