seized the reins of government: the one which Denton pointed out to Madame Roland through Fabre D'Églantine, his month-piece. Institute a dictatorship, to be vested in the hands of the Executive Council, and exercised by its president: a measure foreshadowing the subsequent dictatorship of Robespierre, Saint Just, and Couthon. The proposition was received in mute disdain by Madame Roland, as were the many other advances made from time to time by this Hercules of the Tribunes.
She shrank from this man—whom she pictured as a "Sardanapalus, dagger in hand"—with uncontrollable loathing. Between these two natures there was radical antagonism of nature. The woman—type of the Republic such as poets have dreamed her—possessed all the virtues and talents that adorn life, possessed, above all, a profound humanity, shown throughout life, and which did not forsake her at the foot of the scaffold itself. The man—embodiment of the elemental force of the Revolution, and, like it, a compound of horrors and sublimities—if guilty of brutal and violent deeds, had yet that signal merit of thoroughly grasping the peril of the situation, and of being ready to sacrifice all personal considerations for the cause he had at heart.
If ever in her life Madame Roland was greatly at fault, she was so in her persistent repulse of Danton. Considering the tremendous issues at stake and the critical position of France, she would not only have shown far greater political sagacity, but have proved more humane in the long run, to have let the dead bury their dead, and to have averted the greater terrors to come by a truce with Dantan. The Gironde, with Danton for its ally, might have tri-
