Most of them took refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be over-looked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.[3202] During the four months following the 2nd of June, the hall of the Convention is half or three-quarters empty; the election of a president does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;[3203] only two hundred, one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their substitutes;[3204] not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree indicting the deputy, Dulaure;[3205] "no member rises for or against it; there is no vote;" the president, nevertheless, pronounces the act passed and the Marais lets things take their course."--"Marais frogs"[3206] is the appellation bestowed on them before the 2nd of June, when, amongst the dregs of the "Center," they "broke" with the "Mountain;" now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times as many as the "Montagnards;" but they purposely keep quiet; their old name "renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;[3207] while their tongues, paralyzed by habitual silence, remain as if glued to the roofs of their mouths. In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything, ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else, their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Siéyès, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Siéyès! I know him. He don't meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his book. I make his shoes and will answer for him."[3208]