out, and loved this lazy genius, who was sleeping at the top of the ladder; she whom all the crowd followed, left all to mount to him. Vergniaud allowed himself to be loved; he had surrounded his life with this love, and he continued to dream in it. Too clear-sighted not to see that both were on the borders of an abyss, into which they would fall. Another sorrow: he could not protect this accomplished woman who had given herself to him. She belonged, alas! to the public; her duty, and the necessity of supporting her parents, had led her to the theatre, and exposed her to the whims of so stormy a world. She who wanted to please but one, was obliged to please all, and to divide amongst this hardened and immoral crowd, greedy after new feelings, this treasure of her beauty, to which but one had a right. A humiliating and unhappy thought! and terrible enough, also, to make one tremble before the factions, when the immolation of woman would be, perhaps at any instant, a cruel play, a barbarous amusement for parties.

This was the vulnerable point of the great orator; here, was his one fear. There was neither cuirass nor cover here, nothing to defend his heart.

The times loved danger. It was just in the midst of the trial of Louis XVI., under the murderous looks of the parties who were marking each other out for death, that they discovered to the public the place where they could strike. Vergniaud received the greatest triumph, that of humanity, Mademoiselle Candeille herself, descending to the theatre, played her own piece, the Beautiful Farmer's Wife. This carried the raving public a hundred, a thousand leagues away from all these events, in a mild and peaceful world, where they forgot everything, even the danger of their country.

The experiment succeeded. The Beautiful Farmer's Wife had an immense success; the Jacobins themselves spared this charming woman, who threw over all the opium of love, and the waters of Lethe. The impression was not less favorable among the Girondists. The piece of Vergniaud's friend plainly revealed that her party was that of humanity and nature, still more than that of country, which would shelter the vanquished, though this party did not possess that inflexible austerity which the times seemed to demand.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FIRST WIFE OF DANTON. (1792-1793.)

THE collection of Colonel Maurin, which has unhappily been sold and dispersed, contained, among other precious things, a very beautiful bust of the first wife of Danton, taken, I believe, after death. The character of it was goodness, calmness, and strength. We are no longer astonished that she exercised so much dominion over the heart of her husband, and left so many fond remembrances.

How could it have been otherwise? She was the wife of his youth, poverty, and obscure commencement. Danton, then lawyer to the Council, with no suits, and possessing nothing but debts, was supported by his father-in-law, a vender of lemonade at the corner of the Pont Neuf, who, it is said, gave them some louis every month; he lived royally in the streets of Paris,

without care or anxiety, gaining little, and desiring nothing. When food was absolutely wanting, they went for some time to the woods, at Fonteney, near Vincennes, where the father-inlaw had a small house.

Danton's nature was rich in elements of vice, but he had very few costly ones; being neither a gambler nor a drunkard. It is true, that he loved women, and his own wife especially. Women were the sensible means by which the parties attached him, and sought to gain some control over him. Thus, the Orleans party tried to bewitch him by means of the mistress of the prince, the beautiful Madame de Buffon. Danton, by imagination, and the demands of his stormy temperament, was easily moulded. However, his need of real love and attachment inva riably brought him each evening to the conjugal bed, and to the good and dear wife of his youth, at the obscure fireside of the elder Danton. The unhappiness of the poor wife was great at being suddenly carried, in '92, to the Minister of Justice, at the terrible moment of the invasion and massacre of Paris. She fell sick, to the great sorrow of her husband.

We do not doubt that this was

the chief cause of Danton, in November or December, taking a last, humiliating and sorrowful step, in order to draw nearer to the Girondists, and to stop, if it were possible, on the borders of the abyss which would swallow him up.

The overwhelming rapidity of event upon event, caused by such a revolution, had broken the heart of Madame Danton. The terrible reputation of her husband, and his frightful boast of having made September, had killed her. She entered trembling the fatal abode of the Minister of Justice, and she came out of it dead, I should say death-stricken. It was a shadow which reentered the sad house, that formed an arcade and vault between the passage and the street (also sad) of the Cordeliers; it is now the street of the Ecole-de-Médecine.

The blow was a heavy one to Danton. He had arrived at the fatal point when, the man having accomplished by the concentration of his powers the chief work of his life, his unity diminishes, and his duality reappears. The control of the will being less under command, is renerved with strength, nature, and heart, all that is perfect with man. Thus arrives, in the ordinary course of