HIS PRINCIPLES AND CHARACTER. 395 
tue gaining ground among the people ; and the innumerable victims 
which were everywhere presented to his view, made no other im- 
pression upon his feelings than as so many proofs of the rapid ad- 
vances made by virtue, accounting himself a being who was sent 
into the world to become the Jawgiver and teacher of nations. 
Hence his calmness, self-possession, and that mysterious quelque- 
chose in Robespiérre, with which Madame de Stael was so forcibly 
struck.” 
The enthusiasm which had thus taken possession of Robespiérre’s 
mind, regarding the sublimity of his projects and mission, was not 
modified by experience and knowledge of the world ; and though all 
his contemporaries were, in some measure, infected by these chime- 
rical delusions, they were nevertheless unable to comprehend their 
purport, and thus became his victims, instead of being, as they 
themselves imagined, his auxiliaries. Resolved to carry into prac- 
tice those projects which he had some time meditated, and lending a 
willing ear to the denunciations of intriguers, by whom he was 
constantly surrounded, he prosecuted all those who bore meritorious 
distinctions, or who had risen to eminence in the country, as being 
derogatory to equality. In the Nivorse of the year II, he destroyed 
the last bulwark of innocence, and became the head of the Gorgon 
to all classes of society. There was not a single individual, suspect- 
ed of any crime whatever, who was not arraigned before the bar of 
justice, as “an offender against the equality and sovereignty of the 
people”—a form of accusation used indiscriminately against all per- 
sons, whether pickpockets, prostitutes, burglars, or men of elevated 
rank of society : all were classed under the law of conspiracy against 
the people ; manifesting, at one view, the frightful and appalling 
extent to which the system was carried, and exciting the astonish- 
ment even of his own associates. 
This state of affairs was but ill calculated to last ; as soon, there- 
fore, as the system was understood by the nation, Robespiérre, in 
desiring to realize what, in fact, was impossible—a sort of tribunal 
over the consciences of men, whereby moral failings were to be pun- 
ished as if they had been political crimes—at length perceived that 
the bloody massacre in which his hands were imbrued, and the num- 
berless victims who were daily sacrificed under the rigour of his 
principles, had excited the disgust of society, which no longer con- 
cealed its abhorrence of his projects; and that the people, whose 
rights he was apparently engaged in defending, were inimical both 
to his person and views. This revelation excited his indignation, 
his suspicions henceforth having no limits, and his accusations being 
