defend his cause. Does he, then, wish us to describe his private life? But, gentlemen, Sanson is too indulgent to follow such a course. Let Gorsas think of what he has done. Let him fear the moment when I may be compelled to make public certain acts of his. Let M. Gorsas know that one has no right to appear before a court of justice when one leads a doubtful life and professes antipatriotic sentiments. As to the astonishment expressed by him at our having undertaken to defend M. Sanson, we have only to answer that all men are born equal in rights; that we regard as the noblest task that of defending the oppressed, whoever they may be, against the oppressor; and that we care little for what calumny and vengeance may be devised against us for doing our duty.

'In one of your preceding sittings we deplored the dangerous consequences of liberty of the press. How is it, gentlemen, that we are already obliged to regret a boon which removes the limits assigned by an odious despotism to human knowledge? Why has the finest prerogative of a free people become an instrument of calumny in the hands of a few men? Let M. Gorsas devote his talents to the defence, and not to the impeachment, of honourable men; let him enlighten opinions and principles, and we shall be the first to admire him. But, gentlemen, it is time that the scandal to which he has given rise in and out of town should be stopped; it is time for you to punish a fearful libel. My client trusts that you will confirm your first decision. I therefore persist in my conclusions.'

The judgment was, in fact, confirmed; but Gorsas, who had obtained some mitigation of his sentence by promising an immediate apology, behaved in the most disgraceful manner. In a preceding issue he had already made some poor jokes on the action in which he had thought fit not to appear. Under the heading of

'Anecdote,' he wrote:

'Yesterday a very singular case came before the Commune; it was a dispute between Sanson, bourreau of the town of Paris, and a number of literary men. We are told that one of the principal points of the action is that Sanson objects to the appellation of bourreau, because it is said in several decisions of the council that he is to be termed executioner of criminal sentences. The executioner demanded, among other things, that the word bourreau should be left out of the Dictionary of the Academy.

'There never was a better occasion for the application of the words: Carnifex! quoque, nisi carnificis nomine, tu appellandus?

'We are also assured that the executioner's counsel said that a bourreau could only throw light on his case with the lantern of the Rue de la Vannerie.'

It will be remarked that Gorsas did not inform his readers that he was one of the journalists he mentions, and that he deceived them as to the object of the action brought by my grandfather. But this was not all. Two days after his second condemnation, he made an ironical and malicious insinuation, in spite of his promises.

Speaking of the unhappy affairs of the Marquis de Favras, which had just been brought to light, he said:

'The hearing of the witnesses on behalf of the accused is still continued, and it is believed that the public prosecutor will be let off for his conclusions, M. le Marquis de Favras for a good fright, and "my co-citizen," Sanson, bourreau of Paris, for his hopes.'

If I have related at some length this dispute with the press, it is because much importance was attached to its result in my family, and I may add, in our corporation. Two of the writers who libelled my grandfather, Gorsas and Camille Desmoulins, soon afterwards met their former victim on the scaffold. Whether they remembered this dispute with my grandfather, and were again disposed to say, Carnifex! quoque, nisi carnificis nomine, tu appellandus? I cannot say; but Gorsas was mistaken when, in the last paragraph I have quoted, he alluded to the unfortunate Favras. It is his execution which I now have to describe.

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CHAPTER XXII.

THE MARQUIS DE FAVRAS.

THREE great trials engrossed the public mind in 1790. They were those of Augeard, the farmer-general, charged with furnishing the Court with the funds with which the troops of the Champ de Mars had been bribed; of the Baron de Besenval, colonel-general of the Swiss Guards, who commanded at the Champ de Mars; and, lastly, of the Marquis de Favras, charged with having attempted to introduce into Paris a number of armed soldiers, with the object of getting rid of the chiefs of the principal administrations, of stealing the seals of the State, and of taking away the King and the royal family to Péronne.

MM. Augeard and De Besenval were acquitted; and this circumstance, which excited much irritation, rendered the position of the Marquis de Favras extremely perilous.

Thomas Mahy, Marquis de Favras, was born at Blois in 1745. He had two brothers, the Baron Mahy de Cormeré and M. de Chitenay. He entered the musketeers in 1760, took part in the campaign of 1761, and became lieutenant of the Swiss Guards of Monsieur,

brother of the King. He married in 1774, gave up his commission, and went to Vienna, where he obtained the recognition of his wife as the only and legitimate daughter of the prince of Anhalt-Schaunburg. Being of a very adventurous spirit, he went to Holland, and commanded a legion during the insurrection against the Statholder in 1787.

In 1789 he was a man of forty-five years of age, an excellent type of the accomplished gentilhomme, and full of enthusiasm and yearning for hazardous enterprises. After witnessing the revolutionary scene that took place at Versailles, he devised a plan for the liberation of the King; and he sought to carry it out with more zeal than prudence. If his plan was such as the spy Bertrand de Molleville reports in his memoirs, it was altogether impracticable. The main object of this plan was to assemble an army of 30,000 royalists, who were to be enrolled secretly. Such an enterprise demanded a great deal of money, and the greatest discretion. M. de Favras took much trouble to procure the funds, and communicated his plan to many persons, who, in return, bestowed on him more praise than money. Very soon, however, three recruits who were in his pay, Morel, Turcati, and Marquiès, denounced him, and in the night of December 25 the Marquis de Favras was arrested at his residence in the Place Royale, by order of the National Assembly.

On the following day an unknown hand denounced a far higher personage than the Marquis de Favras as the leader of the conspiracy. An anonymous paper was cir