One of the accused “has wished to efface the idea of the divinity.” Another has “interfered with the worship of his fellow-citizens” (this was said to Chaumette, who must have thought it even at that moment something of a platitude). To a third the reproach is made of “changing the mode of worship without authority.” We are on the highroad to those last six weeks in which trial of any kind and definite accusation itself was absent. The details of one man’s opinion are become the numberless dogmas of a creed, and of a creed that kills unmercifully. And yet even as he asserted his creed its mechanical impotence appeared in violent contrast with the humanity that the Puritan was persecuting. For Lucille lighted her face radiantly when she was condemned, and said, “I shall see him in a few hours.” Three days more—the 17th of April—and the machinery was further centralised. St. Just demanded that the political prisoners should be taken from every part of France to be judged in Paris. The popular commissions—mere gatherings to denounce without proofs and without forms—were actively used all over the Republic. In Paris the commission was to be the feeler for the central machine. And such was the incapacity of the Dreamer, “who had not wits enough to cook an egg,” that this new feature in the machinery was not even organised: it was a government of mere rigid absolutism resting on bases that were rapidly becoming mere anarchy. But even as the system, such as it was, developed, as the central power grew more rigid, and the thing to be governed more decayed, Danton, who had been killed that it might exist, pursued it. It was due to his work that the wrestling on the frontier was showing a definite issue. The advance had begun. With his death the diplomacy of France had ceased. The phrase of Robespierre’s, which he had so successfully combated, had reappeared in vigour: the “nation would not treat with her enemies.” But the organisation of her armies, the levies, the rigid discipline, the arms were telling. That aspect of the national energy had grown more healthy as the central brain grew more diseased and vain. Robespierre was threatening Carnot vaguely in the Committee, but Carnot was at work and was saving France. St. Just himself, when he is upon the frontier, appears in a capacity worthy of admiration, for he has there to deal with a thing in action. His energy is as fierce as ever, but its object is victory over a national enemy, and not the triumph of a jejune idea. He had better have remained with the soldiers.