from Vitré to Laval. Nantes will surrender, Brest will surrender. Redon opens the way the entire length of the Vilaine, Fougères gives them the road to Normandy, Vitré gives them the road to Paris. In two weeks they will have an array of brigands, with three hundred thousand men, and all Brittany will belong to the King of France."
"That is to say, to the King of England," said Danton.
"No, to the King of France."
And Robespierre added,—
"The King of France is worse. A foreigner can be driven out in fifteen days, but it takes eighteen hundred years to root out a monarchy."
Danton, who had sat down again, put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, deep in thought.
"You see the danger," said Robespierre, "Vitré gives the road to Paris to the English."
Danton raised his head and brought his two great clenched hands down on the map, as though it were an anvil. "Robespierre, didn't Verdun open the way to Paris for the Prussians?"
"Well?"
"Well, we will drive out the English as we drove out the Prussians."
And Danton rose from his seat again.
Robespierre laid his cold hand on Danton's feverish fingers. "Danton, Champagne was not for the Prussians, and Brittany is for the English. To recapture Verdun was foreign war; to recapture Vitré is civil war."
And Robespierre muttered in a cold, deep voice,—
"A serious difference."
He added,—
"Sit down again, Danton, and look at the map instead of pounding it with your fist."
But Danton clung to his own opinion.
"That is carrying it too far!" he exclaimed, "to look for the catastrophe in the west, when it is coming in the east. Robespierre, I agree with you that England is rising on the ocean; but Spain is rising from the Pyrenees; but Italy is rising from the Alps, and Germany is rising across the Rhine. And the great Russian Bear is at the bottom of it. Robespierre, the danger is in a circle, and we are within it. Coalition without, treason within.
