I leave you to meditate on these ideas." XV.
Whilst this letter was being read, the president, a timorous man, who perceived the agency of Robespierre in the advice of Petion, had quietly removed from his head the repudiated _bonnet rouge_, and the members of the society, one after another, followed his example.

Robespierre alone, who had never adopted this bauble of the fashion, and with whom Petion had concerted his letter, mounted the tribune, and said, "I, in common with the major of Paris, respect every thing that bears the image of liberty; but we have a sign which recalls to us constantly our oath to live and die free, and here is this sign.

(He showed his cockade.) The citizens, who have adopted the _bonnet rouge_ through a laudable patriotism, will lose nothing by laying it aside.

The friends of the Revolution will continue to recognise each other by the sign of virtue and of reason.

These emblems are ours alone; all those may be imitated by traitors and aristocrats.