beloved by the masses, who recognize in him the instinct which led them to storm the Bastille, the same scorn of consequence, the same marrow as their own. Robespierre is uncongenial to them. He is too frigid, he is too much the lawyer, to enlist their sympathies. But his doctrinaire fanaticism, his far from ignoble ambition, give him a terrible power which makes him forge his way onwards when Danton with his cheerful love of life has ceased to strive. Whilst Danton becomes every day more and more nauseated by politics, the concentrated energy of Robespierre's frigid temperament strikes ever closer towards the centralized control of power. Like his friend Saint-Just--the zealot of virtue, the blood-thirsty apostle of justice, the stubborn papist or calvinist--Robespierre can no longer see human beings, who for him are now hidden behind the theories, the laws, and the dogmas of the new religion. Not for him, as for Danton, the goal of a happy and free humanity. What he desires is that men shall be virtuous as the slaves of prescribed formulas. The collision between Danton and Robespierre upon the topmost summit of victory is in ultimate analysis the collision between freedom and law, between the elasticity of life and the rigidity of concepts. Danton is overthrown. He is too indolent, too heedless, too human in his defense. But even as he falls it is plain that he will drag his opponent after him adown the precipice. In the composition of this tragedy Rolland shows himself to be wholly the dramatist. Lyricism has disappeared; emotion has vanished amid the rush of events; the conflict arises from the liberation of human energy, from the clash of feelings and of personalities. In _Le 14 Juillet_ the masses had played the principal part, but in this new phase of the Revolution they have become mere spectators once more. Their will, which had been concentrated during a brief hour of enthusiasm, has been broken into fragments, so that they are blown before every breath of oratory. The ardors of the Revolution are dissipated in intrigues. It is not the heroic instinct of the people which now dominates the situation, but the authoritarian and yet indecisive spirit of the intellectuals. Whilst in _Le 14 Juillet Rolland_ exhibits to his nation the greatness of its powers; in _Danton_ he depicts the danger of its all too prompt relapse into passivity, the peril that ever follows hard upon the heels of victory. From this outlook, therefore, _Danton_ likewise is a call to action, an energizing elixir. Thus did Jaurès characterize it, Jaurès who himself resembled Danton in his power of oratory, introducing the work when it was staged at the Théâtre Civique on December 20, 1900--a performance forgotten in twenty-four hours, like all Rolland's early efforts. CHAPTER XV THE TRIUMPH OF REASON 1899