Thus, hatched by the Girondins, does the terrible Commune of Paris come into being, that of August 10th, September 2nd 1792 and May 31st. 1793. The viper has hardly left its nest before it begins to hiss. A fortnight before the 10th of August[2644] it begins to uncoil, and the wise statesmen who have so diligently sheltered and fed it, stand aghast at its hideous, flattened head. Accordingly, they back away from it up to the last hour, and strive to prevent it from biting them. Pétion himself visits Robespierre on the 7th of August, in order to represent to him the perils of an insurrection, and to allow the Assembly time enough to discuss the question of dethronement. The same day Verginaud and Guadet propose to the King, through the medium of Thierry, his valet-de-chambre, that, until peace is assured, the government be carried on under a regency. Pétion, on the night of August 9-10, issues a pressing circular to the sections, urging them to remain tranquil.[2645] But it is too late. Fifty days of excitement and alarm have worked up the aberrations of morbid imaginations into a delirium.--On the second of August, a crowd of men and women rush to the bar of the Assembly, exclaiming, "Vengeance! Vengeance! our brethren are being poisoned!"[2646] The fact as ascertained is this: at Soissons, where the bread of the soldiery was prepared in a church, some fragments of broken glass were found in the oven, on the strength of which a rumor was started that 170 volunteers had died, and that 700 were lying in the hospital. A ferocious instinct makes men see their adversaries in their own image and thus justify them to take those measures which they imagine their enemies would have taken in their place.[2647]--The committee of Jacobin leaders states positively that the Court is about to attack, and, accordingly, has devised "not merely signs of this, but of the most unmistakable proof."[2648]--"It is the Trojan horse," exclaimed Panis; "We are lost if we do not succeed in disemboweling it.... The bomb explodes on the night of August 9-10... Fifteen thousand aristocrats stand ready to slaughter all patriots." Patriots, consequently, attribute to themselves the right to slaughter aristocrats.--Late in June, in the Minimes section, "a French guardsman had already determined to kill the King," if the King persisted in his veto. When the president of the section wanted to expulse the regicide, it was the latter who was retained and the president was expelled.[2649] On the 14th of July, the day of the Federation festival, another predecessor of Louvel and Fieschi, provided with a cutlass, had introduced himself into the battalion on duty at the palace, for the same purpose; during the ceremony the crowd warmed up, and, for a moment, the King owed his life to the firmness of his escort. On the 27th of July, in the garden of the Tuileries, d'Espréménil, the old Constituent[2650], beaten, slashed, and his clothes torn, pursued like a