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The next day there was trouble when the Convention met. Tallien got the platform and denounced Robespierre in a Cassius voice as a traitor–the arch-enemy of the people–a plotter for self. To emphasize his remarks he brandished a glittering dagger. Other orations followed in like vein. All orders that Robespierre had given out were abrogated by acclamation. Two days and Robespierre was made to take a dose of the medicine he had so often prescribed for others. He was beheaded by Samson, his own servant, July Fifteenth, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four.

Immediately all “suspects” imprisoned on his instigation were released.

Madame Fontenay and the widow Beauharnais were free. Soon after this Madame Fontenay became Madame Tallien. Josephine got her children back from the country, but her property was gone and she was in sore straits. But she had friends, yet none so loyal and helpful as Citizen Tallien and his wife. Their home was hers. And it was there she met a man by the name of Barras, and there too she met a man who was a friend of Barras; by name, Bonaparte–Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte was twenty-six. He was five feet two inches high and weighed one hundred twenty pounds. He was beardless and looked like a boy, and at that time his face was illumined by an eruption.

Out of employment and waiting for something to turn up, he yet had a very self-satisfied manner.

His peculiar way of listening to conversation–absorbing everything and giving nothing out–made one uncomfortable. Josephine, seven years his senior, did not like the youth. She had had a wider experience and been better brought up than he, and she let him know it, but he did not seem especially abashed.

* * * * *

Exactly what the French Revolution was, no one has yet told us. Read “Carlyle” backward or forward and it is grand: it puts your head in a whirl of heroic intoxication, but it does not explain the Revolution.

Suspicion, hate, tyranny, fear, mawkish sentimentality, mad desire, were in the air. One leader was deposed because he did nothing, and his successor was carried to the guillotine because he did too much. Convention after convention was dissolved and re-formed.

On the Fourth of October, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, there was a howl and a roar and a shriek from forty thousand citizens of Paris.

No one knew just what they wanted–the forty thousand did not explain. Perhaps it was nothing–only the leaders who wanted power. They demanded that the Convention should be dissolved: certain men must be put out and others put in.

The Convention convened and all the members felt to see if their heads were in proper place–tomorrow they might not be. The room was crowded to suffocation. Spectators filled the windows, perched on the gallery-railing, climbed and clung on the projecting parts of columns.

High up on one of these columns sat the young man Bonaparte, silent, unmoved, still waiting for something to turn up.

The Convention must protect itself, and the call was for Barras. Barras had once successfully parleyed with insurrection–he must do so again. Barras turned bluish-white, for he knew that to deal with this mob successfully a man must be blind and deaf to pity. He struggled to his feet–he looked about helplessly–the Convention silently waited to catch the words of its savior.

High up on a column Barras spied the lithe form of the artillery major, whom he had seen, with face of bronze, deal out grape and canister at Toulon. Barras raised his hand and pointing to the young officer cried, “There, there is the man who can save you!”

The Convention nominated the little man by acclamation as commander of the city’s forces. He slid down from his perch, took half an hour to ascertain whether the soldiers were on the side of the mob or against it–for it was usually a toss-up–and decided to accept the command. Next day the mob surrounded the Tuileries in the name of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. The Terrorists entreated the soldiers to throw down their arms, then they reviled and cajoled and cursed and sang, and the women as usual were in the vanguard. Paris recognized the divine right of insurrection. Who dare shoot into such a throng!