He had been governor of Fontainebleau, openly and patently a conspirator on the side of the Tuilleries; he was not acquitted of this. It was admitted that he had “planned civil war;” he was released by that heroic but fatal fault of the Girondins, the fault that later sent them to the guillotine, and that now inspired their tribunal—they would not bend an inch to compromise with necessity; rather than do so they would deliberately aggravate the worst conditions by inclining against the passions of the moment. They seemed to say, “You clamour for mere reprisals; we will show, on the contrary, that we are just, and we will even irritate you with mercy.” Yet they knew that Montmorin deserved death. After that decision, and when Osselin the judge took with great courage the prisoner’s arm in his own and led him away, a voice in the court cried out, “You acquit him now, and in a fortnight his friends will march into Paris.” The massacres were certain from that moment; the thing had been said which made the small band of murderers start out, which made Paris look on immovable, and which kept the National Guard silent, refusing to stop the carnage. “We will go to the frontier, but we will not leave enemies behind us. If the law will not execute them, the people will.” The damnable spirit which runs in colonies and wild places had invaded civilised Europe, and the lynching was determined. When the Assembly had yielded to the Commune, when it was certain that the insurrectionary Commune would have its own way, and when it was known that Longwy had fallen, that Verdun was surrounded, there took place one of those scenes that stand out like pictures in the mind, and that interpret the characters of history for us better than any accumulation of detail. In the garden of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at its end, and away from the house, and under the low foliage, the six ministers were met in an informal gathering—rapid, half-silent, a council not predetermined, suited to the time; a few hurried words, whose description has come down to us by no minute, but by the accident of Fabre’s presence. Fabre d’Eglantine, the uncertain poet, Danton’s protégé, and dangerous, ill-balanced friend,[116] stood watching at a little distance.