sort of disposition to protect such property as had not been
confiscated. They who on every occasion had discovered a sort of furious
thirst of blood and a greedy appetite for slaughter, who avowed and
gloried in the murders and massacres of the 14th of July, of the 5th and
6th of October, and of the 10th of August, now began to be squeamish and
fastidious with regard to those of the 2nd of September.

In their pretended scruples on the sequel of the slaughter of the 10th
of August, they imposed upon no living creature, and they obtained not
the smallest credit for humanity. They endeavored to establish a
distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of
murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without
endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared
for their enemies.

Roland was the chief and the most accredited of the faction. His morals
had furnished little matter of exception against him. Old, domestic, and
uxorious, he led a private life sufficiently blameless. He was therefore
set up as the _Cato_ of the republican party, which did not abound in
such characters.

This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in
which he promoted the interest of his party. He was a fatal present
made by the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his ministers
under the new Constitution. Amongst his colleagues were Clavière and
Servan. All the three have since that time either lost their heads by
the axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their own
revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own hands.

These ministers were regarded by the king as in a conspiracy to dethrone