Unfortunately for this ingenious explanation of the embarrassing fact of a merciful man standing silent before merciless doings, there are at least two facts that show its absurdity. First, there is the affair of Catherine Theot. Catherine Theot was a crazy old woman of a type that is commoner in protestant than in catholic countries. She believed herself to have special gifts in the interpretation of the holy writings, and a few other people as crazy as herself chose to accept her pretensions. One revelation vouchsafed to her was to the effect that Robespierre was a Messiah and the new redeemer of the human race. The Committee of General Security resolved to indict this absurd sect. Vadier,--one of the roughest of the men whom the insurrections of Paris had brought to the front--reported on the charges to the Convention (27 Prairial, June 15), and he took the opportunity to make Robespierre look profoundly ridiculous. The unfortunate Messiah sat on his bench, gnawing his lips with bitter rage, while, amid the sneers and laughter of the Convention, the officers brought to the bar the foolish creatures who had called him the Son of God. His thin pride and prudish self-respect were unutterably affronted, and he quite understood that the ridicule of the mysticism of Theot was an indirect pleasantry upon his own Supreme Being. He flew to the Committee of Public Safety, angrily reproached them for permitting the prosecution, summoned Fouquier-Tinville, and peremptorily ordered him to let the matter drop. In vain did the public prosecutor point out that there was a decree of the Convention ordering him to proceed. Robespierre was inexorable. The Committee of General Security were baffled, and the prosecution ended. 'Lutteur impuissant et fatigue,' says M. Hamel, the most thoroughgoing defender of Robespierre, upon this, 'il va se retirer, moralement du moins.' Impotent and wearied! But he had just won a most signal victory for good sense and humanity. Why was it the only one? If Robespierre was able to save Theot, why could he not save Cecile Renault?