Buzot and Pétion escaped. But two days afterwards their bodies were found in a corn-field, half-eaten by wolves.
So perished the founders of the Republic, the preachers of the anti-monarchical crusade, and the men whose orator had put their principle into a nut-shell when he said, "You think to found the Revolution by Terror; I was fain to see her established through Love." So perished she who was the soul of the Gironde, its highest inspiration, its undying glory—who, sooner than make a truce with murder, led her party to martyrdom; for were not those the true martyrs of liberty who refused to turn despots for her sake? They died like martyrs, too, scorning death for that which transcends death, passing away with that smile on their lips, that rapture in their hearts, which those who sacrifice themselves for a great idea bequeath as the most precious of legacies. We may say that none of those who had sent the Girondins to the scaffold ascended it in their turn with the same spiritual exaltation.
Yes; they all followed, those who had sent or who had suffered them to be sent there. It was the inevitable fatality of their action. The National Convention was the corner-stone of the new State, the visible expression of the Sovereignty of the people, and to violate it was to proclaim the Revolution en permanence, to wrest the government from the legally-constituted authorities of the Republic, and leave it at the mercy of every fresh shock of insurrection.
Vergniaud, seeing the irreconcilable breach of parties, had uttered the sublime cry, "Fling us into the abyss," and they were flung. But the abyss did not close. Nay, it widened and widened, though batch
