As religious freedom is the _Wahn_ of the Reformation drama, so it is in political freedom that the Eternal Illusion now incarnates itself. Let man be free, let man throughout the earth attain the unfettered use of all his faculties, and heaven's light will once more fill all the dark places of the world! This is the new avatar, this the glad tidings which announce the French Revolution and the Third Age. Of this ideal, the faith in which the French Girondins die is the most perfect expression. What is this faith for which Condorcet and his party perish, some by poison, some by the sword, some by the guillotine, some in battle, but all by violent deaths--Vergniaud, Roland, Barbaroux, Brissot, Barnave, Gensonné, Pétion, Buzot, Isnard? "Oh Liberty, what crimes are done in thy name!" was not a reproach, but, in the gladness of the martyr's death which consecrated all the life, it was the wonder, the disquiet of a moment yet sure of its peace in some deeper reconcilement. Behold how strong is their faith! Marie Antoinette has her faith, the injunction of her priest, "When in doubt or in affliction, think of Calvary." Yet the hair of the Queen whitens, her spirit despairs. The Girondinist queen climbing the scaffold, not less a lover of love and of life than Marie Antoinette--what nerves her? It is the star of the future and the memory of Vergniaud's phrase, "Posterity? What have we to do with posterity? Perish our memory, but let France be free!" How free are their souls, what nobility shines in the eyes of these men, light-stepping to their doom, immortally serene, these martyrs, witnesses to an ideal not less pure, not less lofty than those other two for which saint and reformer died! And their battle-march, which is also their hymn of death, Shelley has composed it, the choral chant, the vision of the future of the world, which closes _Hellas_. This faith, in which the Girondins live and die is the hope, the faith that slowly arises in Europe through the eighteenth century, in political freedom as the regenerator, as the salvation of the world. Voltaire announces the coming of the Third Age--"Blessed are the young, for their eyes shall behold it"--and upon the ruins of the Bastille Charles James Fox sees it arise. "By how much," he writes to a friend, "is not this the greatest event in the history of the world!" Its presence shakes the steadfast heart of Goethe like a reed. Wordsworth, Schiller, Chateaubriand pledge themselves its hierophants--for a time! The _Wahn_ of freedom, the eternal illusion, the dream of the human heart! First to France, then to Europe, then to all the earth--Freedom!