Many took no side at all, and, during the session, often changed their seats, thinking that they might thus elude the spy by donning a mixed hue and keeping on good terms with everybody.

The most prudent never sat down; they kept off the benches, at the foot of the tribune, and, on matters getting to be serious, slipped quietly out of the hall." Most of them took refuge in their committee-rooms; each tries to be over-looked, to be obscure, to appear insignificant or absent.[3202] During the four months following the 2nd of June, the hall of the Convention is half or three-quarters empty; the election of a president does not bring out two hundred and fifty voters;[3203] only two hundred, one hundred, fifty votes, elect the Committees of Public Safety and General Security; about fifty votes elect the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal; less than ten votes elect their substitutes;[3204] not one vote is cast for the adoption of the decree indicting the deputy, Dulaure;[3205] "no member rises for or against it; there is no vote;" the president, nevertheless, pronounces the act passed and the Marais lets things take their course."-- "Marais frogs"[3206] is the appellation bestowed on them before the 2nd of June, when, amongst the dregs of the "Center," they "broke" with the "Mountain;" now, they still number four hundred and fifty, three times as many as the "Montagnards;" but they purposely keep quiet; their old name "renders them, so to say, soft; their ears ring with eternal menaces; their hearts shrivel up with terror;[3207] while their tongues, paralyzed by habitual silence, remain as if glued to the roofs of their mouths.

In vain do they keep in the back-ground, consent to everything, ask nothing for themselves but personal safety, and surrender all else, their votes, their wills and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread.

The greatest mute among them all, Sieyes, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Sieyes! I know him.

He don't meddle with politics.