To Robespierre it was unthinkable that after all the risk and the suffering, all the struggle and the eager anticipation, all the dreadful decisions already made, the responsibilities bravely assumed, the execution of the king and the queen, the proud challenge to the crowned heads of Europe, the shootings and guillotinings of men who after all were Frenchmen, and who if less obstinate could be brothers—that all this should issue in a world no better than the old, a Republic in which vice, hypocrisy, irreligion and egotism should be laughed at.
