276 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-XXI 



moment, in his talk with the English envoy, his ambition, 

 his overestimate of himself, his suspicion of everybody 

 and everything, his willingness to be cruel to any extent 

 in order to baffle possible enemies ; and then, next moment, 

 on the arrival of his young friends, boys and girls, the 

 sentimental, Rousseau side of his character. This transi 

 tion was very striking. The changes in the expression 

 of Irving s face were marvelous as wonderful as those 

 in his Louis XI ; but that was very nearly all. In every 

 thing else, Coquelin, as I had seen him in Sardou s 

 1 i Thermidor, was infinitely better. 



Besides this, the piece was, in general, grotesquely un- 

 historical. It exhibits Kobespierre s colleagues in the 

 Committee of Public Safety as noisy and dirty street 

 blackguards. Now, bad as they were, they were not at all 

 of that species, nor did their deliberations take place in 

 the manner depicted. Billaud-Varennes is represented 

 as a drunken vagabond sitting on a table at the com 

 mittee and declaiming. He was not this at all, nor was 

 Tallien, vile as he was, anything like the blackguard 

 shown in this piece. 



The final scene, in which Robespierre is brought under 

 accusation by the Convention, was vastly inferior to the 

 same thing in &quot; Thermidor &quot;; and, what was worse, in 

 stead of paraphrasing or translating the speeches of Bil 

 laud-Varennes, Tallien, and Robespierre, which he might 

 have found in the Moniteur, Sardou, or rather Irving, 

 makes the leading characters yell harangues very much 

 of the sort which would be made in a meeting of drunken 

 dock laborers to-day. Irving s part in this was not at 

 all well done. The unhistorical details now came thick 

 and fast, among them his putting his head down on 

 the table of the tribune as a sign of exhaustion, and 

 then, at the close, shooting himself in front of the tribunal. 

 If he did shoot himself, which is doubtful, it was neither 

 at that time nor in that place. 



But, worst of all, the character of Robespierre was 

 made far too melodramatic, and was utterly unworthy of 



