What faction, since the beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many detected traitors?  You, the people,—­our principles—­are that faction—­a faction to which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of the day is banded!

The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality.  Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles, the league is formed.  My life?  Oh! my life I abandon without a regret!  I have seen the past; and I foresee the future.  What friend of this country would wish to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it,—­when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression?  Wherefore should I continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred interests of humanity?  In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that I have sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends of humanity; and I rejoice that these conspirators against my country have now, by their reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between themselves and all true men.

Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all times, have been overwhelmed by calumny.  But their traducers died also.  The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions.  O Frenchmen!  O my countrymen!  Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues!  No, Chaumette, no!  Death is not “an eternal sleep!” Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death!  Inscribe rather thereon these words:  “Death is the commencement of immortality!” I leave to the oppressors of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth—­“Thou shalt die!”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 6:  School and College Speaker, Mitchell.]

[Footnote 7:  School and College Speaker, Mitchell.]

CHAPTER XV

THE TRUTH ABOUT GESTURE

    When Whitefield acted an old blind man advancing by slow steps
    toward the edge of the precipice, Lord Chesterfield started up
    and cried:  “Good God, he is gone!”

    —­NATHAN SHEPPARD, Before an Audience.