"Ah! when, still unknown, I sat in the Assembly, I had already made the sacrifice of my life to truth, to the country. But to-day, when I owe so much to the recognition, to the love of my friends, I accept death as a blessing. It will prevent me from witnessing inevitable evils." Then, overcoming his passing emotion and returning to his natural inflexibility of bearing, he added in a voice short and firm: "I have just held trial over the Assembly; now let it hold trial over me!" The conclusion of this discourse produced an extraordinary effect upon the audience, and when Robespierre left the platform, the Jacobins rose with one spontaneous motion. Camille Desmoulins ran to the orator, and, his face moist with tears, said to Robespierre as he clasped him in a fraternal embrace: "We shall die with you!" One of the striking characteristics of Robespierre's policy was never to venture a motion when its success was problematical. Hence the apparent contradiction between the beginning and the end of the address he had just delivered. He had evidently intended to advise prompt and decisive measures against the royal power and against the Assembly; but, feeling the ground, and becoming assured that the measures he had to propose would meet with opposition among the Jacobins, Robespierre considered it wiser, more politic, to temporize, and to confine himself to casting suspicion upon the National Assembly. Almost as soon as Robespierre left the tribunal, there were seen to enter the hall first Danton, a man of energy and action, and then Lafayette. The presence of these two men, personifying respectively action and reaction, revolution and counter-revolution, drew forth from the meeting an obstreperous manifestation, part acclamation, part hisses. The exteriors of these two men offered a contrast in keeping with that of their opinions. The young Marquis of Lafayette, tall of stature, slim, urbane, presented the accepted type of the grand seigneur. He wore with grace his uniform of commander-in-chief of the National Guard. Booted and spurred, his sword at his side, his hat under his arm, he entered that darksome hall where on every face he could read the sentiments of hostility which he called forth; and yet he advanced with the same aristocratic ease with which he would have presented himself in the Oeil-de-Boeuf, or court circle, at Versailles. His intrepid front bespoke the man insensible to danger; his piercing yet ever indecisive and fugitive glance, revealed a habit of conduct stamped with capability and cunning, yet always veering with his ambitions, and as changeable and diverse as the events which gave them birth; finally, his smile, which was almost invariably affable, courteous and insinuating, seemed to be ever courting popularity.