"I have absented myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have created.

Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will blast the traitors with a look!" He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon.

At that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive to threaten tortured the death-giver.
"Thou art smeared," ran the lines, "with the best blood of France.

Read thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the doomsman.

If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read! This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall pierce thy heart.