CHAPTER 7.II.
La haine, dans ces lieux, n'a qu'un glaive assassin.
Elle marche dans l'ombre.
La Harpe, "Jeanne de Naples," Act iv.sc.

1.
(Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.

She moves in the shade.) While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in hostility to the universal death-dealer.

There was, indeed, an actual conspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered than himself with innocent blood.

But that conspiracy would have been idle of itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of "leaders").
The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast.