At that particular moment no policy could have been more antagonistic to the Parisian populace. They were “saving the country.” None but a traitor would oppose their efforts. Roland not only declared that they must cease their work; he called for an armed force drawn from all the departments and stationed about Paris to prevent the city from interfering with the free action of the Convention. The suspicion which before the 10th of August he had applied to the constitutional party he now turned upon the party which had produced that day; the measure he had proposed to prevent the treason of the Court, he now proposed as a guard against the excesses of the patriots. He ran a Bureau of Public Opinion, which scattered thousands of documents filled with the eloquent and vague teachings of the Gironde schools. He urged the pastors to stop singing the _Domine Salvum fac Regnum_, and to translate their services into French; he discoursed upon how and when the word _citizen_ should be used, advised a national costume, suggested that scenes from the classics be regularly reproduced in public to stir to patriotism, that fêtes celebrating every possible anniversary be instituted; but chiefly he defended himself against the charges of his antagonists, extolling his own impeccability and the exactness of his accounts. No sadder reading ever was printed than the campaign of words Roland carried on during the four months he struggled against the Mountain. Fearless, sincere, honest, disinterested as he was, he was still so pitifully inadequate to the situation, so ridiculously subjective in his methods, that irritation at his impotence is forgotten in the compassion it awakens.