Revolutionists had abandoned one sinking ship after another. After the Girondists fell, no one could safely admit any past connections with the Girondists; after Danton was executed, no one could openly say that he had befriended Danton. So, after Thermidor, men who had worked with Robespierre and agreed with him vociferously declared, to protect themselves, that they had always been his enemies, that they had secretly opposed his hypocritical projects, or that, in their patriotic innocence, they had been his dupes. Their account of men and events before Thermidor deserves no more belief than
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