It was at the close of that day that three short notes passed between Herman and the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville. Herman wrote, “In half an hour I shall stop Danton’s defence. You must spin out some of the rest in detail.” Tinville answered, “I have something more to say to Danton about Belgium;” and Herman replied, “Do not bring it in with regard to any of the others.” This little proof of villany, which has survived by so curious an accident (it is in the Archives to-day),[156] closed the proceedings of that hearing. The next day, the 15th of Germinal (4th April), Danton himself said little. It was given over mainly to the examination of Desmoulins; and as with Danton it had been rumours or opinions, so with Desmoulins only the vague sense of things he had written were brought in to serve as evidence in this tragic farce. Fouquier, the distant cousin of Camille, to whom he owed the post in which he was earning his bread by crime,[157] tried to put something of complaint against the nation and of hatred to the Republic into his reading of the Old Cordelier. Even in his thin unpleasant voice there was only heard the noble phrase of Tacitus, and—it is a singular example of what the tribunal had become—they dared not continue the quotation because every word roused the people in the court. But Camille, so great with the pen, had nothing of the majesty or the strength of Danton. His defence was a weak, disconnected excuse, and, like all men who are insufficient to themselves, he was inconsistent. Hérault made on that same day a far finer reply. Noble by birth, holding by his traditions and memories to that society which he himself had helped to destroy, and of which Talleyrand has said, “Those who have not known it have not lived;” accustomed from his very first youth to prominence in his profession and to the favour of the court, he remained to the last full of contempt for so much squalor, and he veiled his eyes with pride. “I understand nothing of this topsy-turvydom. I was a diplomat, and I made the neutrality of Switzerland, so saving 60,000 men to the Republic. As for the priest you talk about, who was guillotined in my absence at Troyes, I knew him well. He was a Canon, if I remember, and by no means a reactionary. You are probably joking about it. It is true he had not taken the oath, but he was a good man; he helped me, and I am not ashamed of my friendship. I will tell you something more. On the 14th of July two men were killed, one on either side of me.” He might have added, “I was the second man to scale the Towers.”