The Memoirs of a Physician

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1894. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER LI. SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST. At noon, on September 21, before it was known in Paris that Dumouriez's sudden victory had saved France the night before, the doors of the Biding School were opened, and the seven hundred and forty-nine members of the new Convention might have been seen entering their hall slowly and solemnly, casting questioning looks at one another. Two hundred of these men had been members of the former Assembly; and often this Convention was called the Assembly, from force of habit. The National Convention was elected under the influence produced by the news of September. One might therefore expect it to be a reactionary assemblage. It was more than that, for several nobles were in it. An extremely democratic impulse led to a call for even servants to vote, and many of them nominated their masters. These new Deputies were mostly from the middle classes, -- doctors, lawyers, professors, sworn priests, literary men, journalists, and merchants. Their minds were uneasy and wavering. Five hundred of them, at least, were neither Girondists nor Montagnards, -- as the extreme Republicans were called, on account of the position of the benches they occupied in the Convention. Events would determine what place the new majority was to take in this Assembly. All were united, however, in a twofc id hatred, -- hatred of those cruel September days, and hatred of the Paris Deputies, almost entirely chosen from the Commune (that is, from the Municipal Council so ctuled) which was responsible for the awful tragedy of those days. It almost seemed as if the bloo<5 then shed was flowing across the legislative hall, and separating the hundred Mountaineers from the rest of ti»e Convention. The members of the Centre fairly leaned towards the Right, or cons...