CHAPTER VII.
Qui donc t'a donné la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la divinité n'existe pas? Quel avantage trouves-tu à persuader à l'homme qu'une force aveugle préside à ses destinées et frappe au hasard le crime et la vertu?[O 1] — Robespierre, Discours, Mai 7, 1794.
It was some time before midnight - when the stranger returned home. His apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called an epitome of Paris itself. The cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the law — often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on the characters of priest, minister, and king — retired amongst the rats, to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous — the ground-floor occupied by shops — the entresol by artists — the principal stories by nobles — and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the entresol, and brushed beside
- ↑ Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people that there is no God? What advantage find you in persuading man that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?
