Such are the details of the story of the famous Friday in the district of the Cordeliers, events which put Danton’s name into some prominence, but which also showed him to the most educated of his time, and therefore to posterity, in something of a false light. He appears as the friend of Marat, a man for whom he felt no sympathy, to whom he was immeasurably superior, and whom he had supported only because Marat’s quarrel was a tactical opportunity against the Moderates. To have been from the outset admitted by the cultured would have been difficult to him—it would have needed tact, self-effacement, and silence. For he showed by nature just those rough gestures and loud, ill-chosen phrases which should be the sign of a foolish and dangerous man; of what underlay it, of his learning, his patriotism, and his common-sense he was to give plenty of proof; but so violent were the prejudices he had raised that only great length of time has effaced the false impression of his first appearance on the scene of politics. _We_ can see the statesman clearly, but his contemporaries never quite pierced the medium that had gathered round him; here and there a just and noble man, as was Condorcet, would admit his own misconception, but to the bulk of the gentlemen in power he was and remained the demagogue. Two years of careful action fail to clear him, because, being already one of those whose superficial qualities repel the close attention necessary to a just opinion, he had also the misfortune to enter the arena from the wrong door. Those who were most with him adored him, the great bulk of his district-voters signed a fervent declaration in his favour, and later his immediate friends are willing to die with him. But the class with which at heart he had most in common held aloof; he had succeeded twice in a pitched battle with them; they apologise for his acquaintance, vilify him in their letters, and if his name has emerged from all this error, if he has been given his statue in a time of social order and reconstruction, it is because this man, who never wrote, who left only a confused legend of his personality, saved his country when it was at war with the whole world, and such actions compel history to inquiry and restitution. On the 23rd, the day after the trouble, he was sworn in to the reluctant Commune, and there follow two long years[70] of patient attempt to gain the place for which he feels himself fitted, but years (on the whole) of disappointment, and in which his real position in Paris (I mean the prominence he held in the thoughts of men) contrasts curiously with the little part he played. * * * * *