Chapter 3: 3.vii

In Fight.

Our Republic, by paper Decree, may be “One and Indivisible;” but
what profits it while these things are? Federalists in the
Senate, renegadoes in the Army, traitors everywhere! France, all
in desperate recruitment since the Tenth of March, does not fly
to the frontier, but only flies hither and thither. This
defection of contemptuous diplomatic Dumouriez falls heavy on the
fine-spoken high-sniffing _Hommes d’état_, whom he consorted
with; forms a second epoch in their destinies.

Or perhaps more strictly we might say, the second Girondin epoch,
though little noticed then, began on the day when, in reference
to this defection, the Girondins broke with Danton. It was the
first day of April; Dumouriez had not yet plunged across the
morasses to Cobourg, but was evidently meaning to do it, and our
Commissioners were off to arrest him; when what does the Girondin
Lasource see good to do, but rise, and jesuitically question and
insinuate at great length, whether a main accomplice of Dumouriez
had not probably been—Danton? Gironde grins sardonic assent;
Mountain holds its breath. The figure of Danton, Levasseur says,
while this speech went on, was noteworthy. He sat erect, with a
kind of internal convulsion struggling to keep itself motionless;
his eye from time to time flashing wilder, his lip curling in
Titanic scorn.[639] Lasource, in a fine-spoken attorney-manner,
proceeds: there is this probability to his mind, and there is
that; probabilities which press painfully on him, which cast the
Patriotism of Danton under a painful shade; which painful shade
he, Lasource, will hope that Danton may find it not impossible to
dispel.

‘_Les Scélérats!_’ cries Danton, starting up, with clenched
right-hand, Lasource having done: and descends from the Mountain,
like a lava-flood; his answer not unready. Lasource’s
probabilities fly like idle dust; but leave a result behind them.
‘Ye were right, friends of the Mountain,’ begins Danton, ‘and I
was wrong: there is no peace possible with these men. Let it be
war then! They will not save the Republic with us: it shall be
saved without them; saved in spite of them.’ Really a burst of
rude Parliamentary eloquence this; which is still worth reading,
in the old _Moniteur!_ With fire-words the exasperated rude Titan
rives and smites these Girondins; at every hit the glad Mountain
utters chorus: Marat, like a musical _bis_, repeating the last
phrase.[640] Lasource’s probabilities are gone: but Danton’s
pledge of battle remains lying.

A third epoch, or scene in the Girondin Drama, or rather it is
but the completion of this second epoch, we reckon from the day
when the patience of virtuous Pétion finally boiled over; and the
Girondins, so to speak, took up this battle-pledge of Danton’s
and decreed Marat accused. It was the eleventh of the same month
of April, on some effervescence rising, such as often rose; and
President had covered himself, mere Bedlam now ruling; and
Mountain and Gironde were rushing on one another with clenched
right-hands, and even with pistols in them; when, behold, the
Girondin Duperret drew a sword! Shriek of horror rose, instantly
quenching all other effervescence, at sight of the clear
murderous steel; whereupon Duperret returned it to the leather
again;—confessing that he did indeed draw it, being instigated by
a kind of sacred madness, ‘_sainte fureur_,’ and pistols held at
him; but that if he parricidally had chanced to scratch the
outmost skin of National Representation with it, he too carried
pistols, and would have blown his brains out on the spot.[641]

But now in such posture of affairs, virtuous Pétion rose, next
morning, to lament these effervescences, this endless Anarchy
invading the Legislative Sanctuary itself; and here, being
growled at and howled at by the Mountain, his patience, long
tried, did, as we say, boil over; and he spake vehemently, in
high key, with foam on his lips; “whence,” says Marat, “I
concluded he had got “_la rage_,” the rabidity, or dog-madness.
Rabidity smites others rabid: so there rises new foam-lipped
demand to have Anarchists extinguished; and specially to have
Marat put under Accusation. Send a Representative to the
Revolutionary Tribunal? Violate the inviolability of a
Representative? Have a care, O Friends! This poor Marat has
faults enough; but against Liberty or Equality, what fault? That
he has loved and fought for it, not wisely but too well. In
dungeons and cellars, in pinching poverty, under anathema of men;
even so, in such fight, has he grown so dingy, bleared; even so
has his head become a Stylites one! Him you will fling to your
Sword of Sharpness; while Cobourg and Pitt advance on us,
fire-spitting?

The Mountain is loud, the Gironde is loud and deaf; all lips are
foamy. With “Permanent-Session of twenty-four hours,” with vote
by rollcall, and a dead-lift effort, the Gironde carries it:
Marat is ordered to the Revolutionary Tribunal, to answer for
that February Paragraph of Forestallers at the door-lintel, with
other offences; and, after a little hesitation, he obeys.[642]

Thus is Danton’s battle-pledge taken up: there is, as he said
there would be, “war without truce or treaty, _ni trève ni
composition_.” Wherefore, close now with one another, Formula and
Reality, in death-grips, and wrestle it out; both of you cannot
live, but only one!