We have on this date a vivid anecdote surviving. A Latin oration had to be delivered off-hand to the assembled college on the reception of a candidate to the order. The subject set for Danton when he entered the hall was “The Moral and Political Situation of the Country in their relations with the Administration of Justice.” A fine theme for 1787! Such a quaint scene the old regime delighted in, and its older members delighted also in catching here and there a phrase of quotation which they could understand. The genius and the memory of their candidate seem on this occasion to have furnished something new, to have given them less platitude than was expected. He mentioned reform; he spoke of the struggle in which the Parliament was engaged against the ministers—a struggle of which he wisely said, “They are fighting for the sacred centres of civic liberty, but present no positive reform by which that liberty may be brought into existence.” “Sacred centres” was, of course, _aris et focis_. The speech was necessarily in a large measure a series of _clichés_, a stringing together of the well-worn Latin mottoes. It even contained _salus populi suprema lex_, but its argument was Danton’s own. There is to be marked also this phrase, for it is the note of all his future work: “Let the government feel the gravity of the situation sufficiently to remedy it in the simple and in the natural way downwards from its own authority.” The young men understood and applauded; the old men were assured that, if they had not quite followed an unconventional harangue, it was due to the originality of the speaker. Presumably their souls were softened by _aris et focis_, and _salus populi suprema lex_. For the next two years his forensic reputation is continually rising. No longer the Common Law pleader, with pathetic and oratorical appeals for a shepherd against his lord, he had shown how large a part intellect had to do with his power of commanding attention. On the intricacies of his Chancery practice and the clearness and ability of his analysis we have an excellent witness in one of the most learned of the modern Parisian bar,[23] and three of his opinions, on the Amelinau, Dubonis, and De Montbarey cases, have come down to us, and have received the favourable criticism of an opponent. The last case (that of De Montbarey) shows us Danton defending the claims of an old house and at work in the rustiest of all the legal grooves. It had been on the stocks since 1657, and Danton, in attempting to give the quietus to this intolerable longevity, uses a phrase which shows us the feeling that spared one grave at least when the mob sacked St. Denis: “Jeanne d’Albret[24] is a name dear to all Frenchmen, for it recalls the memory of that other Jeanne d’Albret who was the mother of Henri IV.”