BOOK VIII.
I.
Whilst the king, isolated at the summit of the constitution, sought support, sometimes by hazardous negotiations with foreigners, sometimes by rash attempts at corruption in the capital, a body, some Girondists and other Jacobins, but as yet confounded under the common denomination of patriots, began to unite and form the nucleus of a great republican idea: they were Petion, Robespierre, Brissot, Buzot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, Carra, Louvet, Ducos, Fonfrede, Duperret, Sillery-Genlis, and many others, whose names have scarcely emerged from obscurity.

The home of a young woman, daughter of an engraver of the Quai des Orfevres, was the meeting place of this union.

It was there that the two great parties of the _Gironde_ and the _Montagne_ assembled, united, separated, and after having acquired power, and overturned the monarchy in company, tore the bosom of their country with their dissensions, and destroyed liberty whilst they destroyed each other.

It was neither ambition, nor fortune, nor celebrity which had successively attracted these men to this woman's residence, then without credit, name, or comforts: it was conformity of opinion; it was that devoted worship which chosen spirits like to render in secret as in public to a new truth which promises happiness to mankind; it was the invisible attraction of a common faith, that communion of the first neophytes in the religion of philosophy, where the necessity for souls to unite before they associate by deeds, is felt.

So long as the thoughts common to political men have not reached that point where they become fruitful, and are organised by contact, nothing is accomplished.