Robespierre. Cf. note, p

1. 25. les fastes de ce parti naissant. Lat. fasti, the calendar or annals ; originally, dies fastus, a day on which it is allowed to speak, hence on which judgement could be deUvered, a court-day. In the plural fasti, literally, court-days, then a Ust of the days on which the judges sat ; finally, a List of ail the days of the year, with their chief events, hence, a calendar or almanac.

1. 31. la Révolution entravée, i.e. checked, Uterally, blocked as by a log laid across the road, from Lat. trabs.

1. 35. dans un quartier assez rapproché, &c. The Rolands Uved in the Hôtel Britannique, rue Guénégaud.

1. 37. Harmodius. An Athenian who conspired with his friend Aristogiton against Hipparchus and Hippias (b.c. 514).

Hipparchus had ofEended Harmodius by pubUcly rejecting his sister, who, as a Vestal virgin, was to take part in a procession. Harmodius and Aristogiton then determined to avenge the insuit by forming a conspiracy for the overthrow of the Pisistratidae. They were successful, though they perished in the attempt.

Popular imagination honoured them by giving them a place in the Islands of the Blessed, by the side of Achilles and Tydides.

Page 22. 1. 20. pactiser, to treat, to corne to terms with, from pacte, Lat. pactum, verb paciscor, to bind ; hence, to make a bargain, covenant, to agrée.

Page 23. 1. 14. éventer, to divulge (of a secret) ; literally, to give or expose to the wind. We speak of ' getting wind ' of a thing. Cf. ' to vent,' and ' to give vent to.'

l. 33. une Saint - Barthélémy de patriotes, A massacre of patriots, resembling the massacre of the Protestants under Charles IX during the night of August 24, 1572.

1. 34. qu'il s'attendait à mourir. What is the différence between attendre quelque chose and s'attendre à quelque chose ?

1. 35. Pétion, Buzot, Roland, disaient au contraire que cette fuite du roi ét.ait son abdication, The King's flight had taken place in June, 1791. The anger aroused by this event was largely due to the idea that the King was thereby hoping to establish an alliance with foreigners. It is the tuming-point in the history of the Révolution.

Page 24 1. 1. Le Républicain, Ajournai of which only two numbers appeared. Dumont, a Genevese, and du Châtelet, a military man, were the ostensible publishers, but Condorcet and Brissot, &c., intended to contribute to it.

1. 11. la journée du Champ-de-Mars, A pétition demanding the dethronement and trial of the King had been drawn up and laid for signature upon the Altar of the Nation, erected in the Champde-Mars, in July, 1790. Bailly and Lafayette had declared that no crowd would be allowed to assemble on the field, nevertheless a large number of people coUected, and, owing to a misunderstanding, a riot ensued, to queU which Lafayette ordered his men to fire on the mob. The event is known as the Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, though not many people actually perished.

The pétition had been drawn up chiefly by Danton with the help of the Cordeliers, but Robespierre was supposed to hâve had a hand in it.

1. 16. le Marais, A quarter of Paris circumscribed by the rue Vieille du Temple, the boulevard Beaumarchais, and the rue St- Antoine.

I. 20. aux Feuillants, A political club deriving its name from the couvent of the Feuillants, where the meetings were held. It was founded the day after the Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars by Duport, Bamave, and the Lameths, together with a majority of the deputies of the Left, ail of whom had broken away from the Jacobin Club.

1. 28. trois victimes futures de Robespierre, i.e. Madame Roland, her husband, and Buzot.

1. 35. la Conciergerie. A famous prison occupjring the lower part of the Palais de Justice, adjoining the Seine. Most of the poUtical prisoners of the First Révolution were confined hère before their exécution. The cells in which Marie -Antoinette and Robespierre were confined are still shown.

Page 25. 1. 7. en commerce de lettres. We possess the foUowing collections of the letters of Madame Roland : — Lettres aux demoiselles Cannet, éd. Dauban, 1867 ; Le mnriage de madame Roland, trois années de correspondance amoureuse (1777-1780), éd. Join-Lambert, 1896 ; Lettres à Bosc, in the fourth part of U Appel à Vimpartiale postérité, 1795 ; Lettres à Bancal des Issarts, 1835 (Introduction by Sainte-Beuve) ; Lettres de madame Roland, éd. Claude Perroud, Paris, 1900 (contains ail the extant letters written by her after her marriage).

1. 13. Au mois de décembre ils étaient de nouveau installés à Paris. Cf. passage in Mémoires, éd. Barrière, p. 259 : ' La mission de Roland le retint sept mois à Paris : nous quittâmes cette cité à la mi-septembre, après que Roland eut obtenu pour Lyon tout ce que cette ville pouvait désirer, et nous passâmes l'automne à la campagne, occupés de nos vendanges . . . Nous examinâmes si nous prendrions le parti de rester à la campagne, ou s'il ne serait pas mieux d'aller passer l'hiver à Paris, pour y faire valoir les droits de Roland à une retraite après quarante années d'emploi, et y suivre en même temps son travail encyclopédique, toujours plus facile à rédiger au foyer des lumières, parmi les savants et les artistes, qu'au fond du désert.'

1. 19. la loi qui interdisait la réélection des m,emhres de V Assemblée constituante. Robespierre had moved in the Constituent Assembly, April 7, 1791, that for four years after its dissolution none of its members should become ministers, and that no member of the Constituent Assembly should be elected to the forthooming Législative Assembly.

1. 21. Brissot entrait à la place de Buzot. Buzot was ineUgible to the Législative Assembly for the same reason as Robespierre. For Brissot as pubUcist and homme d^état cf. note, p. 135.

1. 27. Ils se jetèrent dans les cadres . . . préparés, they took the shape of the moulds prepared for them, i.e. they played the rôles assigned to them by . . .

1. 27. Laclos, Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803), one of the most active members of the Orleanist faction. Editor of the Journal des amis de la Constitution. Involved in the disgrâce of the Duc d'Orléans, he was imprisoned, but afterwards set at liberty and taken into govemment service.

MADAME KOLAND

^-tl 28. Danton. Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), Procureur to the Parlement at Paris, he finally bought the office of an avocat aux conseils du Roi.

In the élections of 1789 Danton played an important part in the district of the CordeUers where he estabhshed the Club of the same name, ultimately the head-quarters of the extrême Revolutionists of the south side of Paris and of the whole of France. Being disappointed with the course of events in the Constituent Assembly, he for a time attached himself to the Duc d'Orléans, in the hope that a charge of dynasty might resuit in the establishment of a parliamentary govemment.

When the Législative Assembly met, Danton used ail his influence to throw discrédit on the Girondins. It was he who inspired Camille DesmouUns' witty pamphlet, Jean-Pierre Brissot démasqué. He took an active part in the insurrection of August 10 and, in conséquence, was elected Minister of Justice. The greatest blot on his administration was his refusai to stop the massacres in the prisons.

As a statesman he is superior to the Girondins, whom he despised for having brought about a war simply to promote their own petty and personal interests.

1. 30. une de ces réputations sourdes. A factitious réputation created for a man by other people for purposes of their own.

1. 39. toui le monde le mettait en avant, everybody pushed him.

Page 26. 1. 24. M. de Lessart. Valdec de Lessart had àlready been Minister of the Interior, but was now transferred to the Foreign Office, a post which he was singularly incompétent to fill.

Count Bertrand de MoUeville was a most ardent Royalist.

1. 27. Louis, Comte de Narbonne-Lara, reputed a member of an ancient Spanish family, though possibly a son of Louis XV. At any rate the Court f avoured him by rapid promotion in the army. He became notorious by his intimacy with Madame de Staël, to whose good offices he certainly owed his appointment as Minister for War. He hoped by advocating the war to win for the king the popularity at which the Girondins were aiming. But Narbonne ne ver succeeded in obtaining a majority in the Cabinet of which he was a member, and after a séries of incompréhensible intrigues, in which the Queen certainly played a part, he was summarily dismissed on March 9, 1792. KUs dismissal led to the impeachm^nt of de Lessart, the fall of the ministry, and the élévation of the Girondins to power.

1. 28. Madame de Staël. Daughter of Necker and M"« Courchod, 6ibbon's early passion, and wife of the Swedish ambassador.

Ever since her marriage to the Baron de Staël-Holstein in 1787, she had played a brilliant rôle in Paris. The party known as the Feuillants were her chief adhérents. Madame de Staël's idea was that the Feuillants should emulate the revolutionary ideaa of the Girondins, and having by this means attained popularity, should endeavour to use it on behalf of a constitutional monarchy. But the Court distrusted Madame Staël and her circle, and the Bang very reluctantly yielded to her influence when he admitted the Comte de Narbonne into the Ministry. Her influence in the world of letters is, in this connexion, of minor importance.

1. 30. Condorcet, Marquis de, celebrated philosopher and politician ; distinguished member of the National Assembly and the Convention. He opposed the exécution of the King, and was proscribed after the fall of the Girondins, but escaped the guillotine by taking poison. His wife (translator of Adam Smith's Works) survived him (cf. note on the influence of the salon, p. 137).

1. 37. Le point de contact du parti girondin avec le parti constitutionnel, &c. Cf. Michelet, Les Femmes de la Révolution, p. 192: ' La Gironde tomba ainsi presque entière aux filets de la société de Paris. On ne demandait pas aux Girondins de se faire royahstes, on se faisait Girondin. Ce parti devenait peu à peu l'asile du royahsme, le masque protecteur sous lequel la contre-révolution put se maintenir à Paris, en présence de la révolution même.'

Page 28. 1. 6. la mort de V empereur Léopdd. The Emperor Leopold of Austria, brother of Marie-Antoinette, died suddenly on March 1, 1792. His death was a serions blow to the cause of the monarchy in France, for he had always urged the necessity of conciUating the people by granting them their Uberties, and the danger of involang foreign help. He had done his utmost to restrain the other powers, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, and in spite of the treaty of alUance which was signed on February 7, 1792, between Austria and Prussia, he still hoped to avert a catastrophe. His death precipitated it. War was declared by France on April 20.

1. 12. L'assassinat de Gustave III. Gustavus III of Sweden (1771-1792) was assassinated by Captain Ankerstrôm of the Guards at a masked bail during the night of March 17, 1792, in conséquence of a conspiracy hatched by some of the principal nobles of Sweden, who considered that their rights and privilèges had been tampered with by the King.

His death was an advantage for the Republican party, for it added to the isolation of Austria, and this increased the chances of bringing the war to a successful conclusion (Gustavus III had

152 MADAME EOLAND

been one of the most ardent champions of Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette).

The only difficulty now left for Dumouriez to face was to secure the neutraUty of England and Pnissia.

1. 19. le œnciliabide, i.e. a meeting generally held secretly for illegitimate purposes.

1. 20. séide. ' Agent des crimes d'un autre ' Séjan était le séide de Tibère.