VERGNIAUD
you represent; it might even gain some celebrity for the name of that people and make you worthy to live in the memory of men: it will be to imitate the brave Spartans who sacrificed themselves at Thermopylæ; those venerable men who, leaving the Roman senate, went to await, at the thresholds of their homes, the death which marched in the van of the savage conqueror. No, you will not need to offer up prayers that avengers may spring from your ashes. Ah! The day when your blood shall redden the earth, tyranny, its pride, its protectors, its palaces, its satellites, will vanish away for ever before the national omnipotence. And if the sorrow of not having made your country happy embitters your last moments you will at least take with you the consolation that your death will hasten the ruin of the people's oppressors and that your devotion will have saved liberty.[1]
- ↑ A little over a year later Vergnlaud, with twenty-one of his Girondist companions, went to the guillotine.
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