With consequences more radical, but with either far more boldness or far less wit, Camille Desmoulins upwards of two centuries after courted the suppression, not indeed of a book, but of life. It was full four years since he had learnt that the parliament of Toulouse had hurried to the flames his “La Libre France,” when entering the Jacobin Club, just two days after the publication of the fifth number of his _Vieux Cordelier_, he heard the question being for the third time put, whether he should be expelled. His presence quelling in no measure the rising anger, Robespierre, desirous to stay the wrath of the Jacobins by sacrificing the work to save the author, spoke. “Camille,” said he with dryness, and that air of patronage which the simulation of a tempered passion carries, “is a spoilt child; he had a good disposition; bad company has led him astray.” “We must,” urged he, concluding, “deal vigorously with these numbers, which even Brissot would not have dared to acknowledge, but we must keep Desmoulins among us. I demand, for example’s sake, that these numbers be burnt before this society.” But with what surprise did the echo of this speech, proceeding clearly, and accompanied with indignant flash of eye, greet him—“Bravo, Robespierre; but I will answer with Rousseau, _To burn is not to answer_.” Strange retort! Had pride so dulled perception, or surprise with one stroke slain confidence in all? No wonder that not less the change of time than the terms, the very measuredness of the answering words bidding Camille learn that he was treated with indulgence, and disclosing that his mode of justification would be held to show that the worst import of his writings was designed, left in him a sense that his present non-expulsion, even the restoration of the title of “Cordelier,” had no security. The lull _was_ false, Desmoulins was lost. Concession to honest criticism was received with not more tact by Richelieu than by Desmoulins. It is true that in the Cardinal’s case the upshot, perilous as it seemed to one of the grand supports of dramatic literature, was merely ludicrous—but it may also be true that that was because the appeal was indeed through the intellect, but to the passive, not the active powers of man. The Cardinal was dramatist, and had carried politics into comedy by making the characters called France, Spain, or names of other States develop the fortunes of “Europe.” Anxious to get the countenance of the Academy, which his energies had lately organized, he sent the piece to them, that any errors in the rules of the style or poetry might be corrected. The Academy fulfilled their task, criticising so severely that scarcely a line was left unaltered. The Cardinal—but I may as well adopt the tale as Noël d’Argonne tells it.