Soon after the execution of the King, Paris fell into the hands of the lowest classes. Their leaders ruled with terrible energy. Chabot's _dictum,--"Il n'y a pas de crimes en révolution_," and Stablekeeper Drouet's exclamation,--"_Soyons brigands pour le bonheur du peuple_," contain the political principles which guided them. Marat thundered away in his paper against Brissotins, Girondins, federalism, and moderantism. The minority members, thus unpleasantly noticed, went armed; many of them dared not sleep at home. Soon came the arrest of the _suspects_. The 31st of May, _cette insurrection toute morale_, as Robespierre called it, followed next. The Convention was stormed by the mob and purged of Brissotins and Girondins. The _Comité de Salut Public_ decreed forced loans and the _levée en masse_. Foreigners were expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe. The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The _reductio ad horribile_ of all the fine arguments in favor of popular infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the _reductio ad absurdum_ wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their stead. The would-be God, _soi-disant Dieu_, was banished from France. Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras, celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality; Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every square; altars _de la patrie_; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the streets; _bonnets rouges, banderolles, ça iras, carmagnoles, fraternisations, accolades_; the properties, as well as the text of the plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:--"To-day, pasteboard and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." _Tigre-singe_, Voltaire's epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of Terror in two words.