THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
with whom one could not be united save by the knot which binds conspirators. Lacroix was always more than suspected, hypocritical and perfidious: he has never spoken with good faith within these precincts; he had the audacity to praise Miranda and to propose the renewing of the Convention; his conduct with Dumouriez was the same as yours. Lacroix has often testified his hatred for the Jacobins. Whence came the pomp with which he was surrounded? But why recall so many horrors when your evident complicity with Orleans and Dumouriez in Belgium suffices for justice to smite you.
Unworthy citizen, you have plotted; false friend, you spoke evil two days ago of Desmoulins, an instrument whom you have lost, and you attributed shameful vices to him. Wicked man, you have compared public opinion to a woman of loose life; you have said that honor was absurd, that glory and posterity were a folly. These maxims were to conciliate you with the aristocracy; they were those of Catiline. If Fabre is innocent, if Orleans, if Dumouriez were innocent, then doubtless you are innocent. I have said too much: you shall answer to justice.[1]
- ↑ Danton had been arrested the day before St. Just delivered this speech, which was intended as a justification for getting rid of him. He was executed six days later, April 5, 1794, prophesying that Robespierre himself would soon fall. On the twenty-eighth of the following July Robespierre and St. Just with others perished on the guillotine.
160
