Why did it wait ? Was he not master of France ?
And so Robespierre, the most pitiful coward of the
Revolution, at last dared the loud wrath of this
insane reign of Reason, rather than the silent curse
of God dethroned. Cautiously, at first, in the Ja-
cobin club, he asserted, in view of the ungoverna-
ble excesses of the people, that ' ' if there were no
God, a wise legislature would invent one " to re-
strain them. Finding this speech well received by
a majority, he next denounced the extreme atheists,
and finally appeared before the Convention with a
carefully prepared paper, deifying Liberty, Virtue
and Reason, and echoing all the putrid sentiment
of the Republic; and then, having sacrificed unto
the gods of Canaan, he proceeded to argue the ne-



Poetry and Prose of Marie R. Butler. j^^



cessity for a belief in a Supreme Being, not as an
undeniable truth, but as a theorem tending to the
solution of their political problem, which was already-
beginning to startle even their callous hearts by its
vast proportions and the awful momentum of its un-
manageable elements. He asserted nothing, but en-
'deavored to prove the advantage to be gained by
assuming the existence of Deity. "The behef, "
concluded Robespierre, " in a Supreme Being, and
the immortality of the soul, is a perpetual recall to
justice; it is, therefore, social and republican."

Had he exorcised the shadow, or did it still wait ?
And now the noble senators, who in the cathedral of
Notre Dame dethroned the Almighty amid the accla-
mations of the people, received this speech with the
same demonstrations, and the people voted addresses
to the Convention, thanking them for the restoration
of the Supreme Being.
