things, two distinct ages, divided by time. But then, we have said, that there was no more time; the Revolution had killed it among many other things.

The moment had arrived for Danton. His work, the public safety in '92, finished, he had, against his wishes in a relaxed moment, an insurrection of nature, which took possession of his heart, worked upon it, until pride and anger took him in their turn and roughly led him almost to death.

Men who scatter lives with such terrible abundance, who nourish the people with their words, their fiery speeches, and their heart's blood, have great need of the fireside. They want somewheres to recover and calm their beating hearts. And this can never be done but by a woman, and a good one as Madame Danton was. Judging by the portrait and bust, she was firm and calm, as well as sweet and beautiful; the tradition of Arcis, where she often went, adds that she was pious, naturally melancholy, and of a timid disposition.

She had the merit, in her calm and easy situation, of being willing to run the hazard, of recog

nizing and following this young man, an unknown genius, without reputation, or fortune. Virtuous, she had chosen him in spite of his vices, plainly shown in his dark and troubled countenance. She had joined herself to this obscure and wandering destiny, and which may be said to have been built on the storm. A sensible, but affectionate woman, she had seized this angel of darkness and light on its flight, and crossed the abyss, passing with it the highest bridge. Then, she had no more strength, and glided into the hand of God.

"A wife is a fortune," as the Orientals say. It was not only a wife which was leaving Danton, it was fortune and a kind destiny; it was youth and kindness, this gift with which fate endows man, when, as yet, he has done nothing to merit it. It was confidence and faith, the first act of belief performed by him. The wife of the Arabian prophet asked him why he had always mourned his first wife! "Because," said he, "she believed in me when no one else did."

I have no doubt that it was Madame Danton who made him promise, that if the king must be overthrown, to save his life, or at least that of the

queen, the pious Madame Elizabeth, and the two children. He had two children; one born (we see by the dates) in the sacred time which followed the taking of the Bastille; the other, in the year '91, the time when, Mirabeau being dead and the Constituent Assembly extinct, they delivered their future into the hands of Danton, when the new Assembly collected, and he became the new king of speech. This mother, after the birth of her two children, fell sick, and was nursed by Danton's mother. Each time that he entered, ruffled and wounded by things without, when he left at the door the armor of a politician and the steel mask, he found another wound, a terrible and bloody one, the certainty that very soon he would be torn to pieces himself, cut in two, and his heart guillotined. He had always loved this excellent woman; but his changeableness and passion, had sometimes led him from her. And when she is gone, see how the strength and depth of his love for her were felt. And he could do nothing. She sank, fled, and escaped from him, in proportion as his contracted arms held her more tightly. But the hardest of all to bear, was that he was not even allowed to see

her die and receive her last adieu. He could not remain; but was obliged to leave this death-bed. His contradictory situation was showing itself; it was impossible to connect the two Dantons. France and the world were watching him closely in this fatal trial. He could not speak, and he could not keep silence. If he could not find some means of rallying the right side, and, through them, the centre and mass of the Convention, he must fly from Paris, and go to Belgium, and not return until the course of events and destiny should have loosened or tightened the knot. But then, this sick wife, would she still live? would her love inspire her with sufficient strength to exist until then, in spite of nature, and keep her last sigh for the return of her husband? Every one foresaw what would happen, that he would be too late, and only return to find the house desolate, the children motherless, and this body, so passionately beloved, in the depths of the tomb. Danton thought but little of the soul, it was the body which he sought and wanted to see, which he forced from the earth, frightful and disfigured, at the end of seven days and seven nights, to dispute in frantic embraces with the worms.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SECOND WIFE OF DANTON.-LOVE IN '93.

THE fall of the Girondists was followed by great depression. The conquerors were almost as much troubled as the conquered. Marat was sick, Vergniaud did not condescend to fly. Danton sought in a second marriage a kind of alibi from political affairs.

Love had much to do with the death of both Vergniaud and Danton.

The great Girondist orator, a prisoner in the street of Clichy, in a quarter which was almost deserted, and nearly all gardens, less the prisoner of the Convention than of Mademoiselle Candeille, was moving between love and doubt. Would the love of this brilliant woman remain to him, in the total ruin? What he felt within himself was shown in the bitter letters, which he threw out against the Mountain. Fatality had caused