Tallien, Barras, Fouche, &c., overthrew Robespierre as he had overthrown Hebert, Danton, the Girondists, and many others. But when the acclamations of the crowd told them that the death of Robespierre was regarded as having put an end to the Terror they acted as though such had been their intention. They were the more obliged to do so in that the Plain--that is, the great majority of the Assembly--which had allowed itself to be decimated by Robespierre, now rebelled furiously against the system it had so long acclaimed even while it abhorred it. Nothing is more terrible than a body of men who have been afraid and are afraid no longer. The Plain revenged itself for being terrorised by the Mountain, and terrorised that body in turn. The servility of the colleagues of Robespierre in the Convention was by no means based upon any feeling of sympathy for him. The dictator filled them with an unspeakable alarm, but beneath the marks of admiration and enthusiasm which they lavished on him out of fear was concealed an intense hatred. We can gather as much by reading the reports of various deputies inserted in the Moniteur of August 11, 15, and 29, 1794, and notably that on ``the conspiracy of the triumvirs, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just.'' Never did slaves heap such invectives on a fallen master. We learn that ``these monsters had for some time been renewing the most horrible prescriptions of Marius and Sulla.'' Robespierre is represented as a most frightful scoundrel; we are assured that ``like Caligula, he would soon have asked the French people to worship his horse . . . He sought security in the execution of all who aroused his slightest suspicion.'' These reports forget to add that the power of Robespierre obtained no support, as did that of the Marius and Sulla to whom they allude, from a powerful army, but merely from the repeated adhesion of the members of the Convention. Without their extreme timidity the power of the dictator could not have lasted a single day. Robespierre was one of the most odious tyrants of history, but he is distinguished from all others in that he made himself a tyrant without soldiers. We may sum up his doctrines by saying that he was the most perfect incarnation, save perhaps Saint-Just, of the Jacobin faith, in all its narrow logic, its intense mysticism, and its inflexible rigidity. He has admirers even to-day. M. Hamel describes him as ``the martyr of Thermidor.'' There has been some talk of erecting a monument to him. I would willingly subscribe to such a purpose, feeling that it is useful to preserve proofs of the blindness of the crowd, and of the extraordinary docility of which an assembly is capable when the leader knows how to handle it. His statue would recall the passionate cries of admiration and enthusiasm with which the Convention acclaimed the most threatening measures of the dictator, on the very eve of the day when it was about to cast him down.