Taking his word for it, he had nothing to do with the September events.[31154] "Previous to these events, he had ceased to attend the General Council of the Commune... He no longer went there." He was not charged with any duty, he had no influence there; he had not provoked the arrest and murder of the Girondists.[31155] All he did was to "speak frankly concerning certain members of the Committee of Twenty-one;" as "a magistrate" and "one of a municipal assembly." Should he not" explain himself freely on the authors of a dangerous plot?" Besides, the Commune "far from provoking the 2nd of September did all in its power to prevent it." After all, only one innocent person perished, "which is undoubtedly one too many. Citizens, mourn over this cruel mistake; we too have long mourned over it! But, as all things human come to an end, let your tears cease to flow." When the sovereign people resumes its delegated power and exercises its inalienable rights, we have only to bow our heads.--Moreover, it is just, wise and good "in all that it undertakes, all is virtue and truth; nothing can be excess, error or crime."[31156] It must intervene when its true representatives are hampered by the law "let it assemble in its sections and compel the arrest of faithless deputies."[31157] What is more legal than such a motion, which is the only part Robespierre took on the 31st of May. He is too scrupulous to commit or prescribe an illegal act. That will do for the Dantons, the Marats, men of relaxed morals or excited brains, who if need be, tramp in the gutters and roll up their shirt-sleeves; as to himself, he can do nothing that would ostensibly derange or soil the dress proper to an honest man and irreproachable citizen. In the Committee of Public Safety, he merely executes the decrees of the Convention, and the Convention is always free. He a dictator! He is merely one of seven hundred deputies, and his authority, if he has any, is simply the legitimate ascendancy of reason and virtue.[31158] He a murderer! If he has denounced conspirators, it is the Convention which summons these before the revolutionary Tribunal,[31159] and the revolutionary Tribunal pronounces judgment on them. He a terrorist! He merely seeks to simplify the established proceedings, so as to secure a speedier release of the innocent, the punishment of the guilty, and the final purgation that is to render liberty and morals the order of the day.[31160]--Before uttering all this he almost believes it, and, when he has uttered it he believes it fully.[31161] When nature and history combine, to produce a character, they succeed better than man's imagination. Neither Molière in his "Tartuffe," nor Shakespeare in his "Richard III.," dared bring on the stage a hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as an Abel.[31162] There he stands on a colossal stage, in the presence of a hundred thousand spectators, on the 8th of June,