The discussions broke out again in November. On the 10th, the victory of Jemappes was heard in Paris. This book, dealing only with a man, cannot detail those famous charges; it was a victory won by men singing the new songs; it is the inspiration of “La victoire en chantant.” But the security it gave only went further to destroy what was left of union. Danton found himself more and more alone. He who had been named on a committee with Thomas Paine, with Condorcet, with Pétion, on the very day after his election to the presidency of the Jacobins,[131] who had in his own temporary success seemed to realise his policy of union, found himself after a month once more pushed back towards the Mountain. The growing sense of security had destroyed the chances of union. He remained silent. One would say that the time passed him by untouched, because the one thing he cared for had failed, and because the inevitable civil dissensions of the next spring covered his mind with clouds. France was irretrievably divided. The arraignment of the King, the discovery of the secret papers, all the movement of November leaves him, as it were, stranded, waiting his mission to Belgium. There belongs to this period only one considerable speech. It is the only thing in all his public acts in which you can discover beauty. You may find in this speech the pity and the tenderness which his intimates loved, the memory which they for sixty years defended, but which no document or letter remains to perpetuate. Cambon, careless of anything but his exchequer, had thought the new era come. That cold and inflexible head determined, seeing the steep fall towards bankruptcy that France was making, to save a hundred millions, but to save it at an expense. He proposed to separate the State from what was left of the Church, to break the vow of 1790. In almost the last speech before he went off to the armies, Danton opposed him and gave this passage—a passage better fitted to the defence of an older and stronger thing than the wretched constitutional priesthood:— “... It is treason against the nation to take away its dreams. For my part, I admit I have known but one God. The God of all the world and of justice. The man in the fields adds to this conception that of a man who works, whom he makes sacred because his youth, his manhood, and his old age owe to the priest then: little moments of happiness. When a man is poor and wretched, his soul grows tender, and he clings especially to whatever seems majestic: leave him his illusions—teach him if you will ... but do not let the poor fear that they may lose the one thing that binds them to earth, since wealth cannot bind them.”