He met Mdme. Fontenay and fell desperately in love with her. He saved her from prison and brought her back with him to Paris. He was in consequence ill received by the Committee of Public Safety, who immediately imprisoned the woman he loved, on the accusation of being an aristocrat. To avert suspicion, Tallien affected an even more vehement and sanguinary patriotism than he had previously shown, and on March 22, 1794, was elected President of the Convention. Robespierre denounced him to the Convention on June 12. He also erased the name of Tallien from the Jacobin Society; this was tantamount to a sentence of death. Tallien determined to strike first, and to save not only his own life, but that of his mistress; he therefore joined those who feared and hated the triumvirate of Robespierre, St. Just, and le Bas, and who wished to avenge Danton and save their own lives. Tallien became the leader of the party who six weeks later overthrew Robespierre. After this he occupied for a short time the place that the death of Maximilien Robespierre had left unoccupied. He married the woman he loved, closed the Club of the Jacobins, and put upon their trial le Bon, Fouquier-Tinville and other agents of terrorism. He retained predominant power in the State until July 1795, when he visited the army on the western frontier on a mission to General Hoche. Here he was once more guilty of summary executions and caused much unnecessary bloodshed. The advent of the Directorate in October of the same year practically finished his active political career. He was accused of venality and treason, and though he became a member of the Five Hundred, his speeches were received with indifference or insult. In May 1798 he left that assembly, and here his public life may be said to have terminated. He accompanied the expedition of Bonaparte to Egypt in the capacity of a _savant_! Bonaparte and he were friends at the time owing to the intimacy of their wives, and he had acted as witness when the general married Madame Beauharnais. In Egypt Tallien was appointed Administrator of the Interior, and he wrote a work called “Décade Egyptienne.” On his return to Europe a year after the departure of Napoleon, the ship upon which he sailed was taken by an English cruiser and he was carried to London. Here he was enthusiastically received by the Radical party. After the peace of Amiens he returned to France, but did not find a warm welcome. His wife had been notoriously unfaithful to him during his absence; he divorced her immediately. After vainly petitioning the First Consul for an appointment he received, by the influence of Talleyrand and Fouché, the unenviable situation of Consul in the unhealthy Spanish seaport of Alicante several months later. Here he remained for some years, nearly dying on one occasion of yellow fever, by which he lost the sight of an eye.