and to accuse Brissot of complicity, although they themselves, with the exception of Marat, had been loud in their praises of the hero of Jemmapes. The Gironde retaliated furiously by incriminating Danton. A foolhardy proceeding on their part; for the Hercules of the Tribune, putting aside all further thoughts of union and pacification, made a speech of two hours' duration in which he came down upon them with his sledgehammer eloquence. The irreparable breach was now made, and animosities had reached such a pitch that the members of the Convention, with the shortsightedness of fury, annulled their own inviolability. Marat had given the signal by his cry: "Let us strike traitors wherever we may find them."
For the moment the Girondins achieved a ruinous triumph by the impeachment of Marat, who had issued a proclamation to the Departments declaring the Convention to be the seat of a "Cabal sold to the English Court," whereupon the Right and Centre, unanimous in their indignation, voted that he should be brought to trial. But while "the Friend of the People" was placed under merely nominal arrest, having every attention lavished upon him by the municipal officers, twenty-five out of the forty-eight sections of Paris had given in their adhesion to a petition demanding the expulsion from the Chamber of the twenty-two chief Girondins. On the 14th of April a deputation from the Commune, headed by Mayor Pache, came to have the petition read at the Convention. Great care had been taken that, with the exception of the offending members, the purity of the majority should be proclaimed. This was but a sinister mask of moderation fain to hide the imminent peril of such a measure. The generous-hearted Fonfrède, the youngest of the
