They went to death with the intrepidity usual at that epoch. There were many troops under arms, and their escort was numerous. The crowd, generally loud in its applause, was silent. Camille Desmoulins, when in the fatal cart, was still full of astonishment at his condemnation, which he could not comprehend. "This, then," said he, "is the reward reserved for the first apostle of liberty." Danton stood erect, and looked proudly and calmly around. At the foot of the scaffold he betrayed a momentary emotion. "Oh, my best beloved--my wife!" he cried, "I shall not see thee again." Then suddenly interrupting himself: "No weakness, Danton!" Thus perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation; the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror; and from one end of France to the other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent this violent reign,--the Dantonists to stop it; all perished, and the conquerors had the more victims to strike the more foes arose around them. In so sanguinary a career, there is no stopping until the tyrant is himself slain. The Decemvirs, after the definitive fall of the Girondists, had made _terror_ the order of the day; after the fall of the Hébertists, _justice_ and _probity_, because these were _impure men of faction_; after the fall of the Dantonists, _terror_ and _all virtues_, because these Dantonists were, according to their phraseology, _indulgents and immorals_. CHAPTER IX FROM THE DEATH OF DANTON, APRIL, 1794, TO THE 9TH THERMIDOR, (27TH JULY, 1794) During the four months following the fall of the Danton party, the committees exercised their authority without opposition or restraint. Death became the only means of governing, and the republic was given up to daily and systematic executions. It was then were invented the alleged conspiracies of the inmates of the prisons, crowded under the law _des suspects_, or emptied by that of the 22nd Prairial, which might be called the law _des condamnés;_ then the emissaries of the committee of public safety entirely replaced in the departments those of the Mountain; and Carrier, the protégé of Billaud, was seen in the west; Maigret, the protégé of Couthon, in the south; and Joseph Lebon, the protégé of Robespierre, in the north. The extermination _en masse_ of the enemies of the democratic dictatorship, which had already been effected at Lyons and Toulon by grape-shot, became still more horrible, by the noyades of Nantes, and the scaffolds of Arras, Paris, and Orange.