mune had made him the special mark of their malignity. His persistency in exhorting the municipal officers to render their accounts, in charging them and Danton with peculations, in informing the Convention of the crimes and excesses daily committed by the pilfering of shops, the street-robberies, the expulsion of public functionaries, and the decrees of the Assembly set at naught by the Municipality, had made him at that time the most unpopular man in Paris.
His urgent entreaties that his own accounts should be passed remained unheeded. He himself was taxed with dishonesty in his administration. The most absurd rumours were greedily swallowed: as of his having deposited a large sum of money in a London bank. Much as he wished it, he could not retire to his vineyards, for that would have been regarded as tantamount to a confession of guilt on his part; and yet the examination of the Compte-Rendu Général, or general exposition of his administration, was purposely delayed to keep him a fixture in Paris with a Damocles sword suspended above his head. It was a heart-breaking situation.
The ex-Minister's health, never good, was giving way under these trials. The misdeeds he could not prevent, and seemed to sanction as being Minister, had given him a kind of jaundice; he could retain nothing on his stomach: so that to all Madame Roland's other cares anxiety about him was added. Matters were not mended by their retirement into privacy. The modest retirement of the Rue de la Harpe was stigmatised by Marat as the boudoir of la Femme Roland, where, under the spells of its Circe, the Gironde was forging the plots that were to destroy the Republic. The Clubs, more tumultuous than ever, rang again with invectives
