December was a month of turmoil and raging dissensions. Faction fought faction, party abused party, and all was confusion and clamour. In the great Hall of the Convention, speaker succeeded speaker, Deputy after Deputy rose, and thundered, rose, and declaimed, rose, and vituperated. Nothing was done, and in every department of the State there reigned a chaos indescribable. "Moderation and delay," clamoured the Girondins, smooth, narrow Roland at their head, mouthpiece, as rumour had it, of that beautiful philosopher, his wife. "To work and have done with it," shouted the men of the Mountain, driving their words home with sharp accusations of lack of patriotism and a desire to favour Monarchy. On the 11th of the month, the Hall had echoed to the Nation’s indictment of Louis Capet, sometime King of France. On the 26th, Louis, still King in his own eyes, made answer to the Nation’s accusation by the mouth of his advocate, the young Désèze. For three hours that brave man spoke, manfully striving against the inevitable, and, having finished a most eloquent speech, threw his whole energies into obtaining what was the best hope of the King’s friends—delay, delay, delay, and yet again delay. The matter dragged on and on. Every mouthing Deputy had his epoch-making remarks to make, and would make them, though distracted Departments waited until the Citizen Deputies should have finished judging their King, and have time to spare for the business of doing the work they had taken out of his hands; whilst outside, a carefully stage-managed crowd howled all day for bread, and for the Traitor Veto’s head, which they somehow imagined, or were led to imagine, would do as well. The Mountain languished a little without its leader, who was absent on a mission to the Low Countries, and, Danton’s tremendous personality removed, it tended to froth of accusation and counter-accusation, by which matters were not at all advanced. At the head of his Jacobins sat Robespierre, as yet coldly inscrutable, but amongst the Cordeliers there was none to replace Danton. In the early days of January, the Netherlands gave him back again, and the Mountain met in conclave—its two parties blended by the only man who could so blend them. The long Committee-room was dark, and though it was not late, the lamps had been lighted for some time. Under one of them a man sat writing. His straight, unnaturally sleek hair was brushed carefully back from a forehead of spectral pallor. His narrow lips pressed each other closely, and he wrote with an absorbed concentration which was somehow not agreeable to witness.