Note 386 — Chapter XIV

"The Girondists felt without doubt, at the bottom of their hearts, a keen remorse for the means which they had employed to overturn the throne; and when those very means were directed against themselves, when they recognised their own weapons in the wounds which they received, they must have reflected without doubt on that rapid justice of revolutions, which concentrates on a few instants the events of several ages."—De Staël, vol. ii., p. 122.