Meanwhile, the Convention was becoming a mere field of battle. On one particular night, the two sides clash—a poniard is drawn, a pistol is clapped to a breast, and murder is nearly done. It is felt that one party must be swept away, or nothing will be done. The moderate party, the Girondists, twenty-two in all, are to-night nearer the scaffold by a long journey than they were in the morning. Marat is declared a traitor by two hundred and twenty voices, against ninety-two. Marat defies the vote, throws himself into the arms of the people, and is borne home in triumph. The people rise in his favor. On the 24th of April (the Queen has been waiting death during three months) Marat is strong enough to appear and defy Parliament. He commands them to declare him innocent of treason. This defiance is carried to the thousands of armed men waiting the issue outside the House of Assembly. A cannon-like roar from the people declare their will—and he is pronounced innocent. The people place him on a plank, the throne of the people, and bear him through the streets, after crowning him with flowers. “It is you, the people,” he cries, “who crown themselves upon my head. I am the King of Poverty. May every head, which would rear itself above the level of the people soon fall, when I cry ‘_Kill!_’” A few days, and, in his arrogance, he says to his brother Conventionists, “I hold you as a little water in the palm of this hand; and as readily as I spill it, so I can spill the blood of all of you!” By this time, Philip Equality, for what he had been—a Duke—had become hated of the people. Strangely enough, he who had been so cowardly as a youth, now, when his life was threatened, became brave. When he was arrested, he was perfectly calm; when separated from the elder of his two sons, he was perfectly resigned. He had turned from his family to serve the people, and he now wore their chains. The people now demanded the deaths of all the leaders of the more moderate Conventionists. “_Death to the twenty-two!_” The people had slain a King—therefore they began to demand the lives of those who sought, as Republicans, to govern the stricken land. CHAPTER LVII. WHOLESALE MASSACRE. The twenty-two deputies were already condemned by the will of the ensanguined mob. On the eve of the last day in May (1793), of those twenty-two, only one, the leader, Vergniaud, slept in his own home. The others feared an assassination, and sought the aid of friends. A vote being carried against the moderates, the victors proposed to walk with the people through the city, which was illuminated. The Girondists, as a measure of precaution, joined in the procession. While the procession was progressing, that now organized band, the Revolutionary Committee, sent to arrest Madame Roland’s husband.