"It is not enough to immolate obscure victims, aristocrats, financiers, publicists, poets, a Lavoisier, a Roucher, an Andre Chenier. We must strike these all-puissant malefactors who, with hands full of gold and dripping with blood, are plotting the ruin of _the Mountain_--the Fouchers, Talliens, Roveres, Carriers, Bourdons. We must deliver the State from all its enemies. If Hebert had triumphed, the Convention was overthrown, the Republic hastening to the abyss; if Desmoulins and Danton had triumphed, the Convention had lost its virtue, ready to surrender the Republic to the aristocrats, the money-jobbers and the Generals. If men like Tallien and Foucher, monsters gorged with blood and rapine, triumph, France is overwhelmed in a welter of crime and infamy ... Robespierre, awake; when criminals, drunken with fury and affright, plan your death and the death of freedom! Couthon, Saint-Just, make haste; why tarry ye to denounce the plots? "Why! the old-time state, the Royal monster, assured its empire by imprisoning every year four hundred thousand persons, by hanging fifteen thousand, by breaking three thousand on the wheel--and the Republic still hesitates to sacrifice a few hundred heads for its security and domination! Let us drown in blood and save the fatherland...." He was buried in these thoughts when Elodie hurried up to him, pale-faced and distraught: "Evariste, what have you to say to me? Why not come to the _Amour peintre_ to the blue chamber? Why have you made me come here?" "To bid you an eternal farewell." He had lost his wits, she faltered, she could not understand.... He stopped her with a very slight movement of the hand: "Elodie, I cannot any more accept your love." She begged him to walk on further; people could see them, overhear them, where they were. He moved on a score of yards, and resumed, very quietly: "I have made sacrifices to my country of my life and my honour. I shall die infamous; I shall have naught to leave you, unhappy girl, save an execrated memory.... We, love? Can anyone love me still?... Can I love?" She told him he was mad; that she loved him, that she would always love him. She was ardent, sincere; but she felt as well as he, she felt better than he, that he was right. But she fought against the evidence of her senses. He went on: