" And he threw
the lemon into the fireplace. But yet even then Robespierre was not
satisfied. He harbored malice against this fallen man. On the way to the
scaffold he ordered the cart, in which the Duke sat, to stop before the
Palais Royal, which had been confiscated, in order that the Duke might
contemplate his last sacrifice for his country. The Duke showed neither
fear nor emotion.
All the world knows the story of the Terror. The long processions of
carts carrying victims to the guillotine, these increasing in number
until after the Law of Prairial they averaged sixty or seventy a day in
Paris alone, while in the provinces there was no end. At Nantes, Carrier
could not work fast enough by a court, so he sank boat loads of
prisoners in the Loire. The hecatombs sacrificed at Lyons, and the "Red
Masses" of Orange, have all been described. The population of Toulon
sank from 29,000 to 7,000. All those, in fine, were seized and slain
who were suspected of having a mind tinged with caste, or of being
traitors to the Republic. And it was the Centre, or the majority of the
Convention, who did this, by tacitly permitting it to be done.
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