Now, as we have seen, that receipt (to any one who did not know the details of the transaction) might quite honestly appear a damning piece of evidence, and it is without question the document round which the great mass of accusations have been built. As to Madame Roland, I cannot imagine what flight of feminine inaccuracy made her put down a fortune of £60,000 to her enemy’s name. If a witness in any other circumstances than revolution should tell one that a young lawyer and politician had secretly and suddenly become possessed of this sum, he would be reputed mad. In such a time, however, anything seems possible to an enemy, and we must rely upon the simple fact that Danton can be definitely proved neither to have spent, invested, nor left a tenth of such a sum. It seems to me that this accusation of Madame Roland’s is on a par with that other extreme remark that she had known “the Dantons living on 16s. a week, which they borrowed regularly from their father-in-law,” and this “at the opening of the Revolution,” a time when we know him positively to have been defending cases involving half a million pounds in the issue of the trial, and when we know him to have had for clients some of the richest men in France. Now, the papers that prove Danton’s financial position are quite simple. He was cut off suddenly; they were all seized, and they all remain. Unless he spent huge sums in debauch (sums like those of Orleans), or unless he buried the money, he cannot have received much more than what openly appears. He entered his married life with a debt of £2500 secured on his office. He enjoyed a good practice for four years; he was reimbursed to somewhat less than the value of his office, and on his death the sum sequestrated by the State, and later refunded to his sons, tallies with this small fortune. IV NOTE ON DANTON’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER The arguments for and against Danton’s responsibility in this matter must necessarily be of a more general order than those which can be advanced for and against his character in regard to money matters. There are but one or two really definite facts upon either side, and, as the purport of these notes is to deal with actualities, I will treat of these known facts only. In the first place, it must be clearly understood that Danton did not shrink from, and was not unsympathetic with, the extreme measures of the Revolution. His position with regard to them is perfectly clear in history, and is simply this—his violence was persuaded that an exceptional time required, almost as a method of government, the most exceptional terrors.