the chateau of the duchess, the Carthusian Dom Gerle, a colleague of Robespierre in the Constituent Assembly, the one who astonished them, by asking as an easy thing that Catholicism should be the religion of the state. At the same time, Dom Gerle wanted the Assembly to proclaim the truth of the prophecies of a crazy girl, Susan Labrousse. Dom Gerle kept up an intimacy with his old colleague; often going to see him, honoring him as his patron; and, without doubt, to please him, lived at a cabinet-maker's. He had obtained from him a certificate of civism.

A good republican, the Carthusian was not less a prophet. In the garret in the pays latin, the spirit had been breathed on him by an old idiot woman, who was called the Mother of God. Catherine Theot (for that was her name) was assisted in these mysteries by two young and charming women, a brunette and a blond, called the Singer and Dove.

They brought many cus

tomers to the garret. Royalists went there, magnetizers, fools, coxcombs, and rogues. We are ignorant how far a man as grave as Robespierre mingled in these mummeries. We only know that the old woman had three arm-chairs, white,

red, and blue; she was seated on the first, her son, Dom Gerle, in the second, on her left; but whose was the other, the chair of honor of the right of the Mother of God? Was it not for her eldest son, the Saviour who was coming? However ridiculous the thing may have been in itself, and whatever interest was had in showing it as such, there were two points which showed the attempt at a coarser association between Christian illumination, revolutionary mysticism, and the inauguration of a government of prophets.

"The first seal of the Gospel was the announcement of the Word; the second, the separation of worships; the third, the Revolution; the fourth, the death of kings; the fifth, the reunion of the peoples; the sixth, the combat of the exterminating angel; and the seventh, the universal happiness, watched over by the prophets." "On the day of resurrection, where will the Mother of God be? On her throne, in the Pantheon, between her two prophets."

The spy, Senart, who found means to be initiated, in order to betray and arrest them, found, he said, at the Mother's, a letter written in her name to Robespierre as her first prophet, to

the son of the Supreme Being, to the Redeemer and Messiah. The two Gascons, Barrère and Vadier, who, together, concocted the malicious report which the clubs threw out against the Convention, placed there (as ingredients in the caldron of the incantation) the most contradictory things; amongst others, a portrait of the little Capet, found at Saint Cloud. This gave a pretext to speak of the restoration of royalty, in the report of royalism. The Assembly, at first disconcerted, did not know what to believe, but they understood, little by little. Under the dark and mournful utterance of Vadier, they felt the comic power of wit. Jests in the mouth of a grave man cause a hearty laughter, to which there is no resistance. The effect was so great, that, under the knife of the guillotine, in the fire, and under punishments, the Assembly would have laughed the same. They writhed on the benches.

It was carried, with enthusiasm, that this report should be sent to the forty-four thousand communes of the Republic, to all the administrations and armies. The impression of perhaps a hundred thousand copies was made!

Nothing more directly contributed to the fall of Robespierre.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE TWO SAINT-AMARANTHES. (JUNE, 1794.)

THIS affair of the Mother of God was mixed up with another accusation, and one still less merited, of which Robespierre was the object.

It was gratuitously supposed that the Jacobins had sought proselytes even in the gamblinghouses, and disciples amongst the ladies who received the players. In reality, Robespierre the elder and Robespierre the younger were malignantly confounded, the latter only frequenting these houses.

Robespierre the younger was a lawyer, a vulgar yet easy speaker, a social man, and fond of pleasure, not feeling how much the high and ter rible reputation of his brother demanded circumspection. In his missions, when his name gave him a very great and difficult part to play, he was not watchful enough over himself.

His youth and kind heart had caused him eagerly to seize the hope that his brother would. soften the Revolution. He did not hide this hope, nor did he pay any regard to the obstacles and delays which prolonged this moment. In Provence, he showed his humanity by saving the Girondist communes. At Paris, he had the courage to save several persons, amongst others the director of the clergy funds (who was afterwards the father-in-law of Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire).

In the precipitation of his anti-terrorist zeal, he sometimes silenced and humiliated violent patriots who were hastening the Revolution. In the Jura, for instance, he royally imposed silence on the representative Bernard de Saintes. This exciting scene gave an unlimited confidence to the contra-revolutionists of the Jura. They carelessly said (as reported by one of their number, Nodier): "We have the protection of M. M. de Robespierre."

In Paris, Robespierre the younger frequented a suspected house in the Palais Royal, at the corner of the street Vivienne, opposite the steps of the old Hôtel Helvetius. The steps, as is well known, were the centre of the stock-jobbers,