This correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins' death, was written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the spoiled child of Danton.

It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre; it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext to crush.

It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the Death-compeller.

What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the Incorruptible?
Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen Dupleix.

Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion, some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed, who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it seem, was the idol of the sex! Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre's apartments were not spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed.