From M. de Corday Charlotte absorbed the lofty Republican
doctrines to which anon she was to sacrifice her life; and she
rejoiced when the hour of awakening sounded and the children of
France rose up and snapped the fetters in which they had been
trammelled for centuries by an insolent minority of their fellow-
countrymen.
In the early violence of the revolution she thought she saw a
transient phase--horrible, but inevitable in the dread convulsion
of that awakening. Soon this would pass, and the sane, ideal
government of her dreams would follow--must follow, since among
the people's elected representatives was a goodly number of
unselfish, single-minded men of her father's class of life; men
of breeding and education, impelled by a lofty altruistic
patriotism; men who gradually came to form a party presently to
be known as the Girondins.
But the formation of one party argues the formation of at least
another. And this other in the National Assembly was that of the
Jacobins, less pure of motive, less restrained in deed, a party
in which stood pre-eminent such ruthless, uncompromising men as
Robespierre, Danton,--and Marat.
Where the Girondins stood for Republicanism, the Jacobins stood
for Anarchy.
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