Comité révolutionnaire. See La Légistative, note
13. Il tire un pied de sa poche, he drew from his pocket a foot-rule.
14. Guillotine, an instrument for decapitating criminals, introduced into France at the Révolution. A similar instrument was in occasional use in Scotland (the " maiden " ), in England, Germany, Italy, and the south of France. It had
completely fallen into disuse for over a century when Dr. Guillotine (1738-1814), a member of the "Constituante," proposed to revive its use. It M^as first employed on the Place de Grève 25th of April, 1792, for the exécution of a highwayman, Pelletier. It consists of a heavily loaded sharp blade falling in a groove between two upright beams. The criminal is bound to a plank and the severed head falls into a basket partly filled with sawdust to absorb the blood.
The story that Dr. Guillotine perished by the instrument he introduced into France is incorrect. He survived the Révolution and did not die until 18 14.
15. Toutes les femmes delà chambrée. Ail the women of the audience. The word chambrée {chambré) among other meanings has that of the number of spectators at a théâtre and the receipts of a représentation.
16. Fédéralisme. During the agitation accompanying the élection of members of the Convention, the Girondins were the object of various accusations, among others that they wished to abandon Paris and hold the Convention elsewhere, and that they vt'ished to sacrifice the national unity and form of the eighty-three departments, an equal number of states united by a simple federative bond.
17. Qu 'elle ne pouvait abuser de la parole, that she could not take unfair advantage of her right to speak. Avoir la parole, to hâve leave to speak, to hâve the floor ; demander la p.y io rise to speak, to take the floor, to ask to speak.
18. Passer sous le couteau, to be beheaded (by the guillotine). •
19. Elle reste ifnpassible comme la vierge de Tauride après le sacrifice. Iphigenia the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytsemnestra. When the Greek fleet during the Trojan war wanted to sail from Aulis it was detained by calm, and the seer Calchas declared that the only way to propitiate Artemi*
was by sacrificing Iphigenia. When she was on the point of being sacrificed, Artemis substituted a stag and carried her in a cloud to Tauris, where she became the priestess of the goddess.
20. Vous la venez (T entendre. Thèse lines are from Pierre Comeille's " Horace," lines 1535-36 (V. 2). Young Horace has killed his sister Camille for her treasonable utterances against Rome, and refuses to justify himself . His f ather cries :
Dëfendez-vous, Horace, and the son answers in the words of the text, adding : Ce que vous en croyez me doit être xme loi.
21. Demain, à midi f aurai vécu, pour parler le langage ro' main. In Latin the verb vivere, to live, was used in the past tenses with the sensé of to be dead ; vixit, he is done with life, he is dead.
22. Le crime fait la honte et non pas V échafaud. This line is found in Thomas Comeille's " Le Comte d' Essex," iv., 3. The line has become proverbial, and its origin is traced back by some to St. Augustine, who says in an epistle (204) : Jam enim nescio quoties disputando et scribendo mostravimus non eos posse habere martyrum mortem, quia christianorum non habent vitam, cum martyrem non faciat poena, sed causa.
23. Au Plessis. The collège du Plessis, founded in 1322, was transformed in 1794 into a prison called Maison de l' Égalité. It was under the superintendence of Fouquier-Tinville, who was afterward confined hère himself. It sometimes contained as many as nineteen hundred prisoners, who were treated with great cruelty, and most of whom perished on the scaffold, The édifice is now a part of the collège Louis-le Grand ; see Lavallée, Histoire de Paris, ii., p. 318.
