"Citizens, while the National Assembly decrees--and decrees and decrees and never lets up decreeing--as much good as bad, and more bad than good--the people is acting admirably as police; and, showing itself no less a friend of provisional rule than the Assembly, it has decreed that all pillagers shall be provisionally--hanged to the lamp-post. Crossing Voltaire Quay just now, I saw Lafayette preparing to review the batallions of the blue-bonnets, drawn up on the quay. Convinced of the need of uniting on one leader, I yielded to an attraction which drew me over to the famous white horse. 'Monsieur Lafayette,' I called to him, 'I have indeed said some evil of you during the year, and thought no less. Now is the time to convict me of false testimony in safeguarding public affairs!' 'I have always known you for a good citizen,' gallantly replied the General, holding out his hand to me; 'the common danger has united all parties. There is no longer in the Assembly but one single spirit!'--'One single spirit! That is very few for so numerous and illustrious an assembly,' quoth I to the General. 'But why does this single soul of the Assembly affect to speak in its decrees of the _carrying off_ of the King, when the Executive writes to the Assembly that no one is carrying him off at all, that he is going himself? I can pardon the lie of a servant who lies in the fear of losing his place if he tells the truth,' continued I, 'but the Assembly is not, to my knowledge, the servant of the Executive, whether present or in flight. The Assembly has three million pikes and bayonets at its service. Whence, then, comes the baseness, or the treason, which dictated to it such a vile falsehood!' '_The carrying off of the King!_ The Assembly will correct that mistake in wording,' the General answered me. And he added several times, 'The conduct of the King is indeed infamous.'" Camille Desmoulins stopped. He had seen Robespierre enter the hall, and prepared to descend from the tribunal, saying with cordial deference: "Here is my friend and master. I yield him the floor." Had it not been for the certainty of hearing Robespierre, the audience would undoubtedly have insisted on the completion of the lively oration just begun. But Robespierre was one of the most esteemed orators of the Jacobin Club, a high appreciation which he merited by his great talent, his tireless energy, the loftiness of his character, his integrity, the austerity of his morals, and his devotion to the revolutionary cause. Unhappily, that medal had a reverse: Robespierre carried his mistrust of men to an extreme; he showed himself always cold, harsh, and suspicious, to the point of committing acts of injustice towards citizens as devoted as himself to the public cause, but who had the pretension to serve it by means different from his.