FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. Some abnormal form of curiosity has led you to consider the Nation's Assembly as a theater, where you sought to play upon the secret springs of the soul. You made use of everything: the ambition of certain people, the laziness of others; anxiety, envy, everything suited your ends. This impudent cleverness of yours has revealed you as the leader of an organized counter-revolution, either because your effrontery or your brazen humor were pleased to run counter to the established order--through your unhealthy disdain of reason--or rather your confessed aristocratic ideas, and your cupidity--nourished for a long time by money from Pitt for the ruin of the Republic. In 'ninety-two you were discovered conspiring with the enemy. Danton sent you to Dumouriez in order to carry on your criminal negotiations, which saved the Prussians, who were practically defeated. This now brings us to the other prisoners. I must leave you now, as they are anxious for me to tear away their masks. I shall come to you again before long, and show the center of this vast network of intrigues. [_The prisoners are agitated, and the spectators become more attentive._ DANTON _is seen speaking words of encouragement to his friends._] FABRE D'EGLANTINE [_impertinently, to_ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE]. The plot was not well thought out, and the intrigue confusing; too many characters; you can't tell where they come from, and you know only too well where they are going. Why talk so much about them? Your play is execrable, Fouquier. You had much better chop off my head at once: I have the tooth-ache. JUDGE [_to_ HÉRAULT DE SÉCHELLES]. Prisoner, your name and occupation? HÉRAULT. Formerly Hérault-Séchelles. Former Attorney-general at the Châtelet: I once sat in the present room. Former President of the Convention: in its name I inaugurated the Republican Constitution. Former member of the Committee of Public Safety; once the friend of Saint-Just and of Couthon, who are now murdering me. JUDGE. You are an aristocrat. Your fortune dates from your relations with the Court, and from the time you were presented to the Capet woman by the Polignac woman. You have been in constant communication with the émigrés; you were the friend of Proly the Austrian, the bastard son of the Prince of Kaunitz, who was sent to the guillotine last month. You have divulged the secrets of the Committee of Public Safety, and sent important papers to foreign courts; you sheltered under your roof, in direct violation of the law, the former war commissioner Catus, who was wanted on the charge of being an emigre and a conspirator. You were even so audacious as to follow him and defend him in the Lepelletier section where he was arrested. HÉRAULT. I deny one thing: I never divulged state secrets, and I defy you to prove the accusation. The rest is true, I am proud to confess. JUDGE. Have you any explanation to make?