[The Origins of Contemporary France<br> Volume 3 (of 6) by Hippolyte A. Taine]@TWC D-Link book
The Origins of Contemporary France
Volume 3 (of 6)

CHAPTER V
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They are interrogated at the bar of the house, forbidden to leave Paris before their accounts are examined; their papers are overhauled; their most guarded expressions and most meritorious acts are held to be criminal; denunciations against them are provoked; their subordinates are incited to rebel against them;[2506] committees to watch them and calumniate them are appointed; the perspective of a scaffold is placed before them in every relation, acts or threats of accusation being passed against them, as well as against their agents, on the shallowest pretexts, accompanied with such miserable quibbling,[2507] and such an evident falsification of facts and texts that the Assembly, forced by the evidence, twice reverses its hasty decision, and declares those innocent whom it had condemned the evening before.[2508] Nothing is of any avail, neither their strict fulfillment of the law, their submission to the committees of the Assembly, nor their humble attitude before the Assembly itself; "they are careful now to treat it politely and avoid the galleys."[2509]--But this does not suffice.

They must become Jacobins; otherwise the high court of Orleans will be for them as for M.Delessart, the ante-room to the prison and the guillotine.

"Terror and dismay," says Vergniaud, pointing with his finger to the Tuileries, "have often issued in the name of despotism in ancient times from that famous palace; let them to-day go back to it in the name of law."[2510] Even with a Jacobin Minister, terror and dismay are permanent.

Roland, Clavieres, and Servan not only do not shield the King, but they give him up, and, under their patronage and with their connivance, he is more victimized, more harassed, and more vilified than ever before.

Their partisans in the Assembly take turns in slandering him, while Isnard proposes against him a most insolent address.[2511] Shouts of death are uttered in front of his palace.


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