CHAPTER I.
ROBESPIERRE'S CHARACTER.
We will now jump over a space of nearly three months, and leaving the chateaux of royalist La Vendee, plunge for a short while into the heart of republican Paris.

In the Rue St.Honore lived a cabinet-maker, named Duplay, and in his house lodged Maximilian Robespierre, the leading spirit in the latter and more terrible days of the Revolution.

The time now spoken of was the beginning of October, 1793; and at no period did the popularity and power of that remarkable man stand higher.
The whole government was then vested in the Committee of Public Safety--a committee consisting of twelve persons, members of the Convention, all of course ultra-democrats, over the majority of whom Robespierre exercised a direct control.

No despot ever endured ruled with so absolute and stringent a dominion as that under which this body of men held the French nation.

The revolutionary tribunal was now established in all its horror and all its force.