sonnerait notre mort^ *were to be our death-knell

L 202. ceux qui vont mourir te saturaient encorl an allusion to the gladiators' greeting to the Emperor in the Roman amphithéâtre, 'Ave Caesar, morituri te salutamus.'

salûraienti for salueraient, The drcumflex marks the elision of the e,

L 206. Que je sois le premier qui monte. Hère monte is the subjunctive, after le premier, The subjunctive also foUows a relative after superlatives, and such words as le seul.

L 209. tendre la gorge, perhaps with a référence tp Cicero, the orator, who stretched out his throat to the murderers when overtaken by them.

1. 210. Marseillais, a body of about a thousand young men which was raised and armed at the instigation of BaTbaxQ>uk ^»à. ^^«. ^-nt

rondins, and brought to Paris, where it assisted in overthrowîng the monarchy on the loth of August. Compare 11. 335 — 340.

1. 218. Les meurtres de septembre, The suspected royalists and enemies of the Révolution were arrested in large numbers, when Paris was alarmed by the advance of the Prussians. On September and and the following days, a band of assassins murdered the occupants of the prisons, afler a pretended trial. Thèse assassins were rewarded by the Commune of Paris. Marat actively instigated the murders, and Danton allowed them to be perpetrated.

1. 216. La Commune^ the revolutionary Municipality of Paris, in which the Jacobins were powerful.

1. 221. Le club des Jacobins, At the meeting of the States-General, some of the Breton deputies formed what was called the Breton Club, for political discussion. This club expanded, and finally met in the chapel of a disused couvent of Jacobin monks, from which it took its name. It became the centre of the extrême republican party, and had branches ail over France. For similar reasons other political clubs were called the Feuillants and the Cordeliers,

1. 222. Et ses pétitions âr^c, The Jacobin club utilized the mob of Paris to support their pétitions and overawe the Convention. In fact on the 3ist of May, 1793, the vote by which the Girondins were overthrown was passed by the intruding mob voting with the Jacobins, wbo were only a minority in the Convention. See 11. 639 — 642,