André Chénier was at this time writing weekly letters for the _Journal de Paris_, in which he eloquently supported the principles of order and liberty. As M. de Lamartine has said, he was the Tyrtæus of good sense and moderation. He was indignant at {114} the threatened scandal, and, in concert with his collaborator on the _Journal de Paris_, Roucher, the poet of _Les Mois_, he criticised in most energetic terms the revolutionary manifestation then organizing. At the Jacobin Club, on April 4, Collot d'Herbois freed his mind against him. "This is not Chénier-Gracchus," said the comedian; "it is another person, quite another." He spoke of André as a "sterile prose writer," and pointed him out to popular vengeance. The two brothers were in opposing camps. While André Chénier stigmatized the fête of anarchy, his brother Joseph was diligently manufacturing scraps of poetry, inscriptions, and devices which were to figure in the programme. "What!" cried André, "must we invent extravagances capable of destroying any form of government, recompense rebellion against the laws, and crown foreign satellites for having shot French citizens in a riot? People say that the statues will be veiled in every place through which this procession is to pass. Oh! if this odious orgy takes place, it will be well to veil the whole city; but it is not the images of despots that should be wrapt in funeral crape, but the faces of honest men. How is it that you do not blush when a turbulent handful, who seem numerous because they are united and make a noise, oblige you to do their will, telling you that it is your own, and amusing your childish curiosity meanwhile with unworthy spectacles? In a city which respected itself such a fête would meet nothing but solitude and silence." The controversy {115} waxed furious. The walls were covered with posters for and against the fête. Roucher thus flagellated Collot d'Herbois: "This character out of a comic novel, who skipped from Polichinello's booth to the platform of the Jacobins, has sprung at me as if he were going to strike me with the oar the Swiss brought back from the galleys!"