Chapter II: The Rulers of the Country (2)

Whereupon, tearing off the Judge's badge, he sends him to prison.--Meanwhile, a fire, soon extinguished, breaks out in the army bakery; officers, townspeople, laborers, peasants and even children form a line (for passing water) and Duquesnoy appears to urge them on in his way: using his fists and his foot, he falls on whoever he meets, on an employee in the commissariat, on a convalescent officer, on two men in the line, and many others. He shouts to one of them, "You are a muscadin!" To another:

"I see by your eyes that you are an aristocrat!"

To another:

"You are a bloody beggar, an aristocrat, a rascal,"

and he strikes him in the stomach; he seizes a fourth by his collar and throws him down on the pavement.[3299] In addition to this, all are imprisoned. The fire being extinguished, an indiscreet fellow, who stood by looking on, recommends "the dispenser of blows" to wipe his forehead." "You can't see straight--who are you? Answer me, I am the representative." The other replies mildly: "Representative, nothing could be more respectable." Duquesnoy gives the unlucky courtier a blow under the nose: "You are disputing--go to prison," "which I did at once," adds the docile subject.--That same evening, "whereas, in the conflagration, none of the inhabitants in good circumstances offered their services in extinguishing the fire,[32100] and none but sans-culottes came thereto, from the garrison as well as from the commune," Duquesnoy orders "that a tax of 40,000 livres be imposed on the commune of Metz, levied on the fortunes of the rich and distributed among the poor, payable within ten days."[32101]--"Fais-moi f.... dedans tous ces b... là[32102]," "quatre j...f... à raccourcir;"[32103] At Arras, as at Metz, the lout is ever the ruffian and the butcher.

Others are either jolly fellows, or blackguards. A certain André Dumont, an old village attorney, now king of Picardie, or sultan, as occasion offers, "figures as a white Negro," sometimes jovial, but generally as a rude hardened cynic, treating female prisoners and petitioners as in a kermesse.[32104]--One morning a lady enters his ante-room, and waits amidst about twenty sans-culottes, to solicit the release of her husband. Dumont appears in a morning-gown, seats himself and listens to the petitioner.

"Sit down, citoyenne."

He takes her on his lap, thrusts his hand in her bosom and exclaims:

"Who would suppose that the bust of a marchioness would feel so soft to one of the people's representatives."

The sans-culottes shout with laughter. He sends the poor woman away and keeps her husband locked up. In the evening he may write to the Convention that he investigates things himself, and closely examines aristocrats.--If one is to maintain the revolutionary enthusiasm at a high level it is helpful to have a drop too much in one's head, and most of them take precautions in this direction. At Lyons,[32105] "the representatives sent to ensure the people's welfare, Albitte and Collot," call upon the Committee of Sequestrations to deliver at their house two hundred bottles of the best wine to be found, and five hundred bottles more of Bordeaux red wine, first quality, for table use.--In three months, at the table of the representatives who devastate la Vendée, nineteen hundred and seventy-four bottles of wine are emptied,[32106] taken from the houses of the emigrés belonging to the town; for, "when one has helped to preserve a commune one has a right to drink to the Republic." Representative Bourbotte presides at this bar; Rossignol touches his glass, an ex-jeweler and then a September massacreur, all his life a debauchee and brigand, and now a major-general; alongside of Rossignol, stand his adjutants, Grammont, an old actor, and Hazard, a former priest; along with them is Vacheron, a good républican, who ravishes women and shoots them when they refuse to succumb;[32107] in addition to these are some "brilliant" young ladies, undoubtedly brought from Paris, "the prettiest of whom share their nights between Rossignol and Bourbotte," whilst the others serve their subordinates: the entire band, male and female, is installed in a Hotel de Fontenay, where they begin by breaking the seals, so as t o confiscate "for their own benefit, furniture, jewelry, dresses, feminine trinkets and even porcelains."[32108] Meanwhile, at Chantonney, representative Bourdon de l'Oise drinks with General Tunck, becomes "frantic" when tipsy, and has patriotic administrators seized in their beds at midnight, whom he had embraced the evening before.--Nearly all of them, like the latter, get nasty after a few drinks,--Carrier at Nantes, Petit-Jean at Thiers, Duquesnoy at Arras, Cusset at Thionville, Monestier at Tarbes. At Thionville, Cusset drinks like a "Lapithe" and, when drunk, gives the orders of a "vizier," which orders are executed.[32109] At Tarbes, Monestier "after a heavy meal and much excited," warmly harangues the court, personally examines the prisoner, M. de Lasalle, an old officer, whom he has condemned to death, and signs the order to have him guillotined at once. M. de Lasalle is guillotined that very evening, at midnight, by torchlight. The following morning Monestier says to the president of the court: "Well, we gave poor Lasalle a famous fright last night, didn't we?" "How a famous fright? He is executed!" Monestier is astonished--he did not remember having issued the order.[32110]--With others, wine, besides sanguinary instincts, brings out the foulest instincts. At Nîmes; Borie, in the uniform of a representative, along with Courbis, the mayor, Géret, the justice and a number of prostitutes, dance the farandole around the guillotine. At Auch, one of the worst tyrants in the South, Dartigoyte, always heated with liquor "vomited every species of obscenity" in the faces of women that came to demand justice; "he compels, under penalty of imprisonment, mothers to take their daughters to the popular club," to listen to his filthy preaching; one evening, at the theatre, probably after an orgy, he shouts at all the women between the acts, lets loose upon them his smutty vocabulary, and, by way of demonstration, or as a practical conclusion, ends by stripping himself naked.[32111]--This time, the genuine brute appears. All the clothing woven during the past centuries and with which civilization had dressed him, the last drapery of humanity, falls to the ground. Nothing remains but the primitive animal, the ferocious, lewd gorilla supposed to be tamed, but which still subsists indefinitely and which a dictatorship, joined to drunkenness, revives in an uglier guise than in remotest times.

VIII. Delirium.

Approach of madness.--Loss of common-sense.--Fabre, Gaston,
Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees.--Baudot, Lebas,
Saint-Just, and the predecessors and successors in the army
of the Rhine.--Furious excitement.--Lebon at Arras, and
Carrier at Nantes.

If intoxication is needed to awaken the brute, a dictatorship suffices to arouse the madman. The mental equilibrium of most of these new sovereigns is disturbed; the distance between what the man once was and what he now is, is too great. Formerly he was a petty lawyer, village doctor, or schoolmaster, an unknown mover of a resolution in a local club, and only yesterday he was one voter in the Convention out of seven hundred and fifty. Look at him now, the arbiter, in one of the departments, of all fortunes and liberties, and master of five thousand lives. Like a pair of scales into which a disproportionate weight has been thrown, his reason totters on the side of pride. Some of them regard their competency unlimited, like their powers, and having just joined the army, claim the right of being appointed major-generals.[32112] "Declare officially," writes Fabre to the Committee of Public Safety,[32113] "that, in future, generals shall be simply the lieutenants of the delegates to the Convention." Awaiting the required declaration, they claim command and, in reality, exercise it. "I know of neither generals nor privates," says Gaston, a former justice of the peace, to the officers; "as to the Minister, he is like a bull in a china shop; I am in command here and must be obeyed." "What are generals good for?" adds his colleague Guiter; "the old women in our faubourgs know as much as they do. Plans, formal maneuvers, tents, camps, redoubts? All this is of no use! The only war suitable to Frenchmen after this will be a rush with side arms." To turn out of office, guillotine, disorganize, march blindly on, waste lives haphazard, force defeat, sometimes get killed themselves, is all they know, and they would lose all if the effects of their incapacity and arrogance were not redeemed by the devotion of the officers and the enthusiasm of the soldiers.--The same spectacle is visible at Charleroy where, through his absurd orders, Saint-Just does his best to compromise the army, leaving that place with the belief that he is a great man.[32114]--There is the same spectacle in Alsace, where Lacoste, Baudot, Ruamps, Soubrany, Muhaud, Saint-Just and Lebas, through their excessive rigor, do their best to break up the army and then boast of it. The revolutionary Tribunal is installed at headquarters, soldiers are urged to denounce their officers, the informer is promised money and secrecy, he and the accused are not allowed to confront each other, no investigation, no papers allowed, even to make exception to the verdict--a simple examination without any notes, the accused arrested at eight o'clock, condemned at nine o'clock, and shot at ten o'clock.[32115]

Naturally, under such a system, no one wants to command; already, before Saint Just's arrival, Meunier had consented to act as Major-General only ad interim; "every hour of the day" he demanded his removal; unable to secure this, he refused to issue any order. The representatives, to procure his successor, are obliged to descend down to a depot captain, Carlin, bold enough or stupid enough to allow himself to take a commission under their lead, which was a commission for the guillotine.--If such is their presumption in military matters, what must it be in civil affairs! On this side there is no external check, no Spanish or German army capable of at once taking them in flagrante delicto, and of profiting by their ambitious incapacity and mischievous interference. Whatever the social instrumentality may be--judiciary, administration, credit, commerce, manufactures, agriculture--they can dislocate and destroy it with impunity.--They never fail to do this, and, moreover, in their dispatches, they take credit to themselves for the ruin they cause. That, indeed, is their mission; otherwise, they would be regarded as bad Jacobins; they would soon become "suspects;" they rule only on condition of being infatuated and destructive; the overthrow of common-sense is with them an act of State grace, a necessity of the office, and, on this common ground of compulsory unreason, every species of physical delirium may be set established.

With those that we can follow closely, not only is their judgment perverted, but the entire nervous apparatus is affected; a permanent over-excitement and a morbid restlessness has begun.--Consider Joseph Lebon, son of a sergeant-at-arms, subsequently, a teacher with the Oratoriens of Beaune, next, curé of Neuville-Vitasse, repudiated as an interloper by the élite of his parishioners, not respected, without house or furniture, and almost without a flock.[32116] Two years after this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head is spinning. Lesser events would have made it turn; his is only a twenty-eight-year-old head, not very solid, without any inside ballast,[32117] already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and apostasy, by the sudden and complete volteface which puts him in conflict with his past educational habits and most cherished affections: it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this greatness.--In the costume of a representative, a Henry IV hat, tri-color plume, waving scarf, and saber dragging the ground, Lebon orders the bell to be rung and summons the villagers into the church, where, aloft in the pulpit in which he had formerly preached in a threadbare cassock, he displays his metamorphosis.

"Who would believe that I should have returned here with unlimited powers!"[32118]

And that, before his counterfeit majesty, each person would be humble, bowed down and silent! To a member of the municipality of Cambray who, questioned by him, looked straight at him and answered curtly, and who, to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer twice in the same terms, he says:

"Shut up! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the national representative."

He immediately commits him to prison.[32119]--One evening, at the theater, he enters a box in which the ladies, seated in front, keep their places. In a rage, he goes out, rushes on the stage and, brandishing his great saber, shouts and threatens the audience, taking immense strides across the boards and acting and looking so much like a wild beast that several of the ladies faint away:

"Look there!" he shouts, at those muscadines who do not condescend to move for a representative of twenty-five millions of men! Everybody used to make way for a prince--they will not budge for me, a representative, who am more than a king!"[32120]

The word is spoken. But this king is frightened, and he is one who thinks of nothing but conspiracy;[32121] in the street, in open daylight, the people who are passing him are plotting against him either by words or signs. Meeting in the main street of Arras a young girl and her mother talking Flemish,--that seems to him "suspect." "Where are you going?" he demands. "What's that to you?" replies the child, who does not know him. The girl, the mother and the father are sent to prison.[32122]--On the ramparts, another young girl, accompanied by her mother, is taking the air, and reading a book. "Give me that book," says the representative. The mother hands it to him; it is the "History of Clarissa Harlowe." The young girl, extending her hand to receive back the book, adds, undoubtedly with a smile: "That is not 'suspect.'" Lebon deals her a blow with his fist on her stomach which knocks her down; both women are searched and he personally leads them to the guard-room.--The slightest expression, a gesture, puts him beside himself; any motion that he does not comprehend makes him start, as with an electric shock. Just arrived at Cambray, he is informed that a woman who had sold a bottle of wine below the maximum, had been released after a procès-verbal. On reaching the Hotel-de-ville, he shouts out: "Let everybody here pass into the Consistory!" The municipal officer on duty opens a door leading into it. Lebon, however, not knowing who he is, takes alarm. "He froths at the mouth," says the municipal officer, "and cries out as if possessed by a demon. 'Stop, stop, scoundrel, you are running off!' He draws his saber and seizes me by the collar; I am dragged and borne along by him and his men. 'I have hold of him, I have hold of him!' he exclaims, and, indeed, he did hold me with his teeth, legs, and arms, like a madman. At last, 'scoundrel, monster, bastard,' says he, 'are you a marquis?' 'No,' I replied, 'I am a sans-culotte.' 'Ah, well people, you hear what he says,' he exclaims, 'he says that he is a sans-culotte, and that is the way he greets a denunciation on the maximum! I remove him. Let him be kicked in prison!'"[32123] It is certain that the King of Arras and Cambray is not far from a raging fever; with such symptoms an ordinary individual would be sent to an asylum.

Not so vain, less fond of parading his royalty, but more savage and placed in Nantes amidst greater dangers, Carrier, under the pressure of more somber ideas, is much more furious and constant in his madness. Sometimes his attacks reach hallucination. "I have seen him," says a witness, "so carried away in the tribune, in the heat of his harangue when trying to overrule public opinion, as to cut off the tops of the candles with his saber," as if they were so many aristocrats' heads.[32124] Another time, at table, after having declared that France could not feed its too numerous population, and that it was decided to cut down the excess, all nobles, magistrates, priests, merchants, etc., he becomes excited and exclaims, "Kill, kill!" as if he were already engaged in the work and ordering the operation.[32125] Even when fasting, and in an ordinary condition, he is scarcely more cooled down. When the administrators of the department come to consult with him,[32126] they gather around the door to see if he looks enraged, and is in a condition to hear them. He not only insults petitioners, but likewise the functionaries under him who make reports to him, or take his orders; his foul nature rises to his lips and overflows in the vilest terms:

"Go to hell and be damned. I have no time."[32127]

They consider themselves lucky if they get off with a volley of obscene oaths, for he generally draws his saber:

"The first bastard that mentions supplies, I will cut his head off."[32128]

And to the president of the military commission, who demands that verdicts be rendered before ordering executions:

"You, you old rascal, you old bastard, you want verdicts, do you! Go ahead! If the whole pen is not emptied in a couple of hours I will have you and your colleagues shot!"

His gestures, his look have such a powerful effect upon the mind that the other, who is also a "bruiser," dies of the shock a few days after.[32129] Not only does he draw his saber, but he uses it; among the petitioners, a boatman, whom he is about to strike, runs off as fast as he can; he draws General Moulins into the recess of a window and gives him a cut.[32130]--People "tremble" on accosting him, and yet more in contradicting him. The envoy of the Committee of Public Safety, Julien de la Drôme, on being brought before him, takes care to "stand some distance off, in a corner of the room," wisely trying to avoid the first spring; wiser still, he replies to Carrier's exclamations with the only available argument:

"If you put me out of the way to-day, you yourself will be guillotined within a week!"[32131]

On coming to a stand before a mad dog one must aim the knife straight at its throat; there is no other way to escape its fangs and slaver. Accordingly, with Carrier, as with a mad dog, the brain is mastered by the steady mechanical reverie, by persistent images of murder and death. He exclaims to President Tronjolly, apropos of the Vendean children:

"The guillotine, always the guillotine!"[32132]

In relation to the drownings:

"You judges must have verdicts; pitch them into the water, which is much more simple."

Addressing the popular club of Nantes, he says:

"The rich, the merchants, are all monopolizers, all anti-revolutionists; denounce them to me, and I will have all their heads under the national razor. Tell me who the fanatics are that shut their shops on Sunday and I will have them guillotined." "When will the heads of those rascally merchants fall?"--"I see beggars here in rags; you are as big fools at Ancenis as at Nantes. Don't you know that the money, the wealth of these old merchants, belongs to you, and is not the river there?" "My brave bastards, my good sansculottes your time is come! Denounce them to me! The evidence of two good sans-culottes is all I want to make the heads of those old merchants tumble!"--"We will make France a grave-yard rather than not regenerate it in our own way."[32133]--His steady howl ends in a cry of anguish:

"We shall all be guillotined, one after the other!"[32134]--

Such is the mental state to which the office of representative on mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others, less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the inevitable effect of their work and their mandate. Beyond every grave they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There is nothing left for the gravedigger but to dig mechanically day after day, and, in the meantime, make what he can out of his place; he can at least render himself insensible by having "a good time."

IX. Vice.

The development of vice.--Vanity and the need of gambling.--
Collot d'Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien.--The Robbers.--Tallien,
Javogues, Rovère, Fouché.--Two sources of cruelty.--Need of
demonstrating one's power.--Saint-Just in the Pas-de-Calais
department, and in Alsace.--Collot d'Herbois at Lyons.--
Pressure exercised by the Representatives on the tribunals.
--Pleasure caused by death and suffering.--Monestier, Fouché,
Collot d'Herbois, Lebon and Carrier.

Most of them follow this course, some instinctively and through lassitude, and others because the display they make adds to their authority. "Dragged along in Carriages with six horses, surrounded by guards, seated at sumptuous tables set for thirty persons, eating to the sound of music along with a Cortege of actors, courtesans and praetorians,"[32135] they impress the imagination with an idea of their omnipotence, and people bow all the lower because they make a grand show.--At Troyes, on the arrival of young Rousselin, cannon are discharged as if for the entry of a prince. The entire population of Nevers is called upon to honor the birth of Fouché's child; the civil and military authorities pay their respects to him, and the National Guards are under arms.[32136] At Lyons, "The imposing display of Collot d'Herbois resembles that of the Grand Turk. It requires three successive applications to obtain an audience; nobody approaches nearer than a distance of fifteen feet; two sentinels with muskets stand on each side of him, with their eyes fixed on the petitioners."[32137]--Less menacing, but not less imposing, is the pomp which surrounds the representatives at Bordeaux; to approach them, requires "a pass from the captain of the guards,"[32138] through several squads of sentinels. One of them, Ysabeau, who, after having guillotined to a considerable extent, has become almost tractable, allows adulation, and, like a Duc de Richelieu coming down from Versailles, tries to play the popular potentate, with all the luxuries which the situation affords. At the theaters, in his presence, they give a ballet in which shepherds form with garlands of flowers the words "Ysabeau, Liberty, Equality." He allows his portrait to pass from hand to hand, and condescendingly smiles on the artist who inscribes these words at the bottom of an engraving of the day: "An event which took place under Ysabeau, representative of the people." "When he passes in the street people take off their hats to him, cheer him, and shout 'Hurrah for Ysabeau! Hurrah for the savior of Bordeaux, our friend and father!' The children of aristocrats come and apostrophize him in this way, even at the doors of his carriage; for he has a Carriage, and several of them, with a coachman, horses, and the equipage of a former noble, gendarmes preceding him everywhere, even on excursions into the country," where his new courtiers call him "great man," and welcome him with "Asiatic magnificence." There is good cheer at his table, "superb white bread," called "representatives' bread," whilst the country folk of the neighborhood live on roots, and the inhabitants of Bordeaux can scarcely obtain more than four ounces of musty bread per day.--There is the same feasting with the representatives at Lyons, in the midst of similar distress. In the reports made by Collot we find a list of bottles of brandy at four francs each, along with partridges, capons, turkeys, chickens, pike, and crawfish, note also the white bread, the other kind, called "equality bread," assigned to simple mortals, offends this august palate. Add to this the requisitions made by Albitte and Fouché, seven hundred bottles of fine wine, in one lot, another of fifty pounds of coffee, one hundred and sixty ells of muslin, three dozen silk handkerchiefs for cravats, three dozen pairs of gloves, and four dozen pairs of stockings: they provide themselves with a good stock.[32139]--Among so many itinerant tyrants, the most audaciously sensual is, I believe, Tallien, the Septembriseur at Paris and guillotineur at Bordeaux, but still more rake and robber, caring mostly for his palate and stomach. Son of the cook of a grand seignior, he is doubtless swayed by family traditions: for his government is simply a larder where, like the head-butler in "Gil Blas," he can eat and turn the rest into money. At this moment, his principal favorite is Teresa Cabarrus, a woman of society, or one of the demi-monde, whom he took out of prison; he rides about the streets with her in an open carriage, "with a courier behind and a courier in front," sometimes wearing the red cap and holding a pike in her hand,[32140] thus exhibiting his goddess to the people. And this is the sentiment which does him the most credit; for, when the crisis comes, the imminent peril of his mistress arouses his courage against Robespierre, and this pretty woman, who is good-natured, begs him, not for murders, but for pardons.[32141]--Others, as gallant as he is, but with less taste, obtain recruits for their pleasures in a rude way, either as fast-livers on the wing, or because fear subjects the honor of women to their caprices, or because the public funds defray the expenses of their guard-room habits. At Blois, for this kind of expenditure, Guimberteau discharges his obligations by drafts on the proceeds of the revolutionary tax.[32142] Carrier, at Nantes, appropriates to himself the house and garden of a private person for "his seraglio"; the reader may judge whether, on desiring to be a third party in the household, the husband would make objections. At other times, in the hotel Henry IV., "with his friends and prostitutes brought under requisition, he has an orgy;" he allows himself the same indulgence on the galiot during the drownings; there at the end of a drunken frolic, he is regaled with merry songs, for example, "la gamelle":[32143] he needs his amusements.

Some, who are shrewd, think of the more substantial and look out for the future. Foremost among these is Tallien, the king of robbers, but prodigal, whose pockets, full of holes, are only filled to be at once emptied; Javogues, who makes the most of Montbrison; Rovère, who, for eighty thousand francs in assignats, has an estate adjudged to him worth five hundred thousand francs in coin; Fouché, who, in Nièvre, begins to amass the twelve or fourteen millions which he secures later on;[32144] and so many others, who were either ruined or impoverished previous to the outbreak of the Revolution, and who are rich when it ends: Barras with his domain of Gros Bois; André Dumont, with the Hotel de Plouy, its magnificent furniture, and an estate worth four hundred thousand livres; Merlin de Thionville, with his country-houses, equipages, and domain of Mont-Valérien, and other domains; Salicetti, Reubell, Rousselin, Chateauneuf-Randon, and the rest of the gluttonous and corrupted members of the Directory. Without mentioning the taxes and confiscations of which they render no account, they have, for their hoard, the ransoms offered underhandedly by "suspects" and their families; what is more convenient?[32145] And all the more, because the Committee of General Security, even when informed, let things take their course: to prosecute "Montagnards," would be "making the Revolution take a step backward." One is bound to humor useful servants who have such hard work, like that of the September killings, to do. Irregularities, as with these September people, must be overlooked; it is necessary to allow them a few perquisites and give them gratuities.[32146]

All this would not suffice to keep them at work if they had not been held by an even greater attraction.--To the common run of civilized men, the office of Septembriseur is at first disagreeable; but, after a little practice, especially with a tyrannical nature, which, under cover of the theory, or under the pretext of public safety, can satiate its despotic instincts, all repugnance subsides. There is keen delight in the exercise of absolute power; one is glad, every hour, to assert one's omnipotence and prove it by some act, the most conclusive of all acts being some act of destruction. The more complete, radical and prompt the destruction is, the more conscious one is of one's strength. However great the obstacle, one is not disposed to recede or stand still; one breaks away all the barriers which men call good sense, humanity, justice, and the satisfaction of breaking them down is great. To crush and to subdue becomes voluptuous pleasure, to which pride gives keener relish, affording a grateful incense of the holocaust which the despot consumes on his own altar; at this daily sacrifice, he is both idol and priest, offering up victims to himself that he may be conscious of his divinity.--Such is Saint-Just, all the more a despot because his title of representative on mission is supported by his rank on the Committee of Public Safety: to find natures strained to the same pitch as his, we must leave the modern world and go back to a Caligula, or to a caliph Hakem in Egypt in the tenth century.[32147] He also, like these two monsters, but with different formulae, regards himself as a God, or God's vicegerent on earth, invested with absolute power through Truth incarnated in him, the representative of a mysterious, limitless and supreme power, known as the People; to worthily represent this power, it is essential to have a soul of steel.[32148] Such is the soul of Saint-Just, and only that. All other sentiments merely serve to harden it; all the metallic agencies that compose it--sensuality, vanity, every vice, every species of ambition, all the frantic outbursts and melancholy vaporings of his youth--are violently commingled and fused together in the revolutionary mold, so that his soul may take the form and rigidity of trenchant steel. Suppose this an animated blade, feeling and willing in conformity with its temper and structure; it would delight in being brandished, and would need to strike; such is the need of Saint-Just. Taciturn, impassible, keeping people at a distance, as imperious as if the entire will of the people and the majesty of transcendent reason resided in his person, he seems to have reduced his passions to the desire of dashing everything to atoms, and to creating dismay. It may be said of him that, like the conquering Tartars, he measures his self-attributed grandeur by what he fells; no other has so extensively swept away fortunes, liberties and lives; no other has so terrifically heightened the effect of his deeds by laconic speech and the suddenness of the stroke. He orders the arrest and close confinement of all former nobles, men and women, in the four departments, in twenty-four hours; he orders the bourgeoisie of Strasbourg to pay over nine millions in twenty-four hours; ten thousand persons in Strasbourg must give up their shoes in twenty-four hours; random and immediate discharges of musketry on the officers of the Rhine army--such are the measures.[32149] So much the worse for the innocent; there is no time to discern who they are; "a blind man hunting for a pin in a dust-heap takes the whole heap."[32150]--And, whatever the order, even when it cannot be executed, so much the worse for him to whom it is given, for the captain who, directed by the representative to establish this or that battery in a certain time, works all night with all his forces, "with as many men as the place will hold."[32151] The battery not being ready at the hour named, Saint-Just sends the captain to the guillotine.--The sovereign having once given an order it cannot be countermanded; to take back his words would be weakening himself;[32152] in the service of omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great.--The same appetite is visible in Collot d'Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation. One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful "suspect" before the day is over. "Towards six o'clock,[32153] Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buffoons and executioners, eating and drinking to choice music, one of the judges of the Tribunal enters; after the usual formalities, he is led up to the Representative, and informs him that the young man had been arrested and examined, and the strictest inquiries made concerning him; he is found irreproachable and the Court decided to set him free. Collot, without looking at the judge, raises his voice and says to him:

"I ordered you to punish that young man and I want him out of the way before night. If the innocent are spared, too many of the guilty will escape. Go."

The music and gaiety begin again, and in an hour the young man is shot."--And so in most of the other pachalics; if any head mentally condemned by the pacha escapes or does not fall soon enough, the latter is indignant at the delays and forms of justice, also against the judges and juries, often selected by himself. Javogues writes an insulting letter to the commission of Feurs which has dared acquit two former nobles. Laignelot, Lecarpentier, Michaud, Monestier, Lebon, dismiss, recompose, or replace the commissions of Fontenoy, Saint-Malo, and Perpignan, and the tribunals of Pau, Nîmes, and Arras, whose judgments did not please them.[32154] Lebon, Bernard de Saintes, Dartigoyte and Fouché re-arrest prisoners on the same charge, solemnly acquitted by their own tribunals. Bô, Prieur de la Marne, and Lebon, send judges and juries to prison that do not always vote death.[32155] Barras and Fréron dispatch, from brigade to brigade, to the revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, the public prosecutor and president of the revolutionary Tribunal of Marseilles, for being indulgent to anti-revolutionaries, because, out of five hundred and twenty-eight prisoners, they guillotined only one hundred and sixty-two.[32156]--To contradict the infallible Representative! That of itself is an offense. He owes it to himself to punish those who are not docile, to re-arrest absolved delinquents, and to support cruelty with cruelty.

When for a long time someone has been imbibing a strong and nauseating drink, not only does the palate get accustomed, but it often acquires a taste for it; it soon wants to have it stronger; finally, it swallows it pure, completely raw, with no admixture or condiment to disguise its repulsiveness--Such, to certain imaginations, is the spectacle of human gore; after getting accustomed to it they take delight in seeing it. Lequinio, Laignelot and Lebon invite the executioner to dine with them;[32157] Monestier, "with his cut-throats, is going himself in search of prisoners in the dungeons, so that he may accompany them to the Tribunal and overwhelm them with charges, if they are disposed to defend themselves; after their condemnation, he attends in uniform" at their execution.[32158] Fouché, lorgnette in hand, looks out of his window upon a butchery of two hundred and ten Lyonnese. Collot, Laporte and Fouché feast together in a large company on the days when executions by shooting takes place, and, at each discharge, stand up and cheer lustily, waving their hats.[32159] At Toulon, Fréron, in person, orders and sees executed, the first grand massacre on the Champ de Mars.[32160]--On the Place d'Arras, M. de Vielfort, already tied and stretched out on the plank, awaits the fall of the knife. Lebon appears on the balcony of the theatre, makes a sign to the executioner to stop, opens the newspaper, and, in a loud voice, reads off the recent successes of the French armies; then, turning to the condemned man, exclaims: "Go, wretch, and take the news of our victories to your brethren."[32161] At Feurs, where the shootings take place at the house of M. du Rosier, in the great avenue of the park, his daughter, quite a young woman, advances in tears to Javogues, and asks for the release of her husband. "Oh, yes, my dear," replies Javogues, "you shall have him home to-morrow." In effect, the next day, her husband is shot, and buried in the avenue.[32162]--It is evident that they get to liking the business. Like their September predecessors, they find amusement in murdering: people around them allude gaily to "the red theater" and "the national razor." An aristocrat is said to be "putting his head at the national window," and "he has put his head through the cathole."[32163] They themselves have the style and humor of their trade. "To-morrow, at seven o'clock," writes Hugues, "let the sacred guillotine be erected!"--"The demoiselle guillotine," writes Lecarlier, "keeps steadily agoing."[32164]--"The relatives and friends of emigrés and of refractory priests," writes Lebon, "monopolize the guillotine.. .[32165] Day before yesterday, the sister of the former Comte de Bethune sneezed in the sack." Carrier loudly proclaims "the pleasure he has derived" from seeing priests executed: "I never laughed in my life as I did at the faces they made in dying."[32166] This is the extreme perversity of human nature, that of a Domitian who watches the features of the condemned, to see the effect of suffering, or, better still, that of the savage who holds his sides with laughter at the aspect of a man being impaled. And this delight of contemplating death throes, Carrier finds it in the sufferings of children. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the revolutionary Tribunal and the entreaties of President Phélippes-Tronjolly,[32167] he signs on the 29th of Frimaire, year II., a positive order to guillotine without trial twenty-seven persons, of whom seven are women, and, among these, four sisters, Mesdemoiselles de la Metayrie, one of these twenty-eight years old, another twenty-seven, the third twenty-six, and the fourth seventeen. Two days before, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the same tribunal and the entreaties of the same president, he signed a positive order to guillotine twenty-six artisans and farm-hands, among them two boys of fourteen, and two of thirteen years of age. He was driven "in a cab to the place of execution and he followed it up in detail. He could hear one of the children of thirteen, already bound to the board, but too small and having only the top of the head under the knife, ask the executioner, "Will it hurt me much?" What the triangular blade fell upon may be imagined! Carrier saw this with his own eyes, and whilst the executioner, horrified at himself, died a few days after in consequence of what he had done, Carrier put another in his place, began again and continued operations.

*****

[Footnote 3201: Thibaudeau: "Mémoires," I., 47, 70.--Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 183.--Vatel, "Charlotte Corday et les Girondins," II., 269. Out of the seventy-six presidents of the convention eighteen were guillotined, eight deported, twenty-two declared outlaws, six incarcerated, three who committed suicide, and four who became insane, in all sixty-one. All who served twice perished by a violent death.]

[Footnote 3202: Moniteur, XVIII., 38. (Speech by Amar, reporter, Oct. 3. '793.) "The apparently negative behavior of the minority in the convention, since the 2nd of June, is a new plot hatched by Barbaroux."]

[Footnote 3203: Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII., 44. Election of Collot d'Herbois as president by one hundred and fifty-one out of two hundred and forty-one votes, June 13, 1793.-Moniteur, XVII., 366. Election of Hérault-Sechelles as president by one hundred and sixty-five out of two hundred and thirty-six votes, Aug. 3, 1793.]

[Footnote 3204: "The Revolution," vol. III., ch. I.--Mortimer-Ternaux, VII., 435. (The three substitutes obtain, the first, nine votes, the second, six votes, and the third, five votes.)]

[Footnote 3205: Marcelin Boudet, "Les conventionnels d' Auvergne," 206.]

[Footnote 3206: Le Marais or the Swamp (moderate party in the French Revolution). SR.]

[Footnote 3207: Dussault: "Fragment pour servir a' l'histoire de la convention."]

[Footnote 3208: Sainte-Beuve "causeries du Lundi," V., 216. (According to the unpublished papers of Siéyès.)]

[Footnote 3209: Words of Michelet.]

[Footnote 3210: Moniteur, XX., 95, 135. (Sessions of Germinal II. in the Convention and at the Jacobin club.)]

[Footnote 3211: Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 17. (Sessions of Ventôse 26, year II. Speech of Robespierre.) "In what country has a powerful senate ever sought in its own bosom for the betrayers of the common cause and handed them over to the sword of the law? Who has ever furnished the world with this spectacle? You, my fellow citizens."]

[Footnote 3212: Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I. 44. Danton, at table in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, remarked: "The Révolution, like Saturn, eats its own children." As to Camille Desmoulins, "His melancholy already indicated a presentiment of his fate; the few words he allowed to escape him always turned on questions and observations concerning the nature of punishment, inflicted on those condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal and the best way of preparing oneself for that event and enduring it."]

[Footnote 3213: Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 363.357. (Police reports on the deputies, Messidor 4, and following days.)--Vilate: "coups secrètes de la Revolution du 9 et 10 Thermidor," a list designated by Barère.--Denunciation by Lecointre. (2nd ed. p.13.)]

[Footnote 3214: Thibaudeau, I., 47. "Just as in ordinary times one tries to elevate oneself, so does one strive in these times of calamity to lower oneself and be forgotten, or atone for one's inferiority by seeking to degrade oneself."]

[Footnote 3215: Madame Roland: "Mémoires," I., 23.]

[Footnote 3216: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. This set of papers contains five hundred and thirty-seven police reports, especially those of Nivôse, year II. The following is a sample Report of Nivôse 25, year II. "Being on a deputation to the convention, some colleagues took me to dine in the old Breteuil gardens, in a large room with a nice floor.... The bill-of-fare was called for, and I found that after having eaten a ritz soup, some meat, a bottle of wine and two potatoes, I had spent, as they told me, eight francs twelve sous, because I am not rich. 'Foutre!' I say to them how much do the rich pay here?... It is well to state that I saw some deputies come into this large hall, also former marquises, counts and knights of the poniard of the ancient regime... but I confess that I cannot remember the true names of these former nobles.... for the devil himself could not recognize those bastards, disguised like sans-culottes."]

[Footnote 3217: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 237, 308. (July 5 and 14, 1793.)--Moniteur, XIX., 716. (Ventôse 26, year II.) Danton secures the passage of a decree "that nothing but prose shall be heard at the bar." Nevertheless, after his execution, this sort of parade begins again. On the 12th of Messidor, "a citizen admitted to the bar reads a poem composed by him in honor of the success of our arms on the Sambre." (Moniteur, XVI., 101.)]

[Footnote 3218: Moniteur, XVIII. 369, 397, 399, 420, 455, 469, 471, 479, 488, 492, 500, etc.--Mercier, "Le Nouveau Paris," II., 96.--Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," 500, 505. (Articles by Prudhomme and Diurnal by Beaulieu.)]

[Footnote 3219: Moniteur, XVIII., 420, 399.--"Ah, le bel oiseau," was a song chosen for its symbolic and double meaning, one pastoral and the other licentious.]

[Footnote 3220: De Goncourt, "La Societé française pendant la Révolution," 418. (Article from" Pêre Duchesne ".)--Dauban, ibid., 506. (Article by Prud'homme.) "Liberty on a seat of verdure, receives the homage of republicans, male and female,... and then.... she turns and bestows a benevolent regard on her friends."]

[Footnote 3221: Moniteur, XVIII., 399. Session of Brumaire 20, on motion of Thuriot: "I move that the convention attends the temple of Reason to sing the hymn to Liberty."--"The motion of Thuriot is decreed."]

[Footnote 3222: Mercier, ibid., 99. (Similar scenes in the churches of St. Eustache and St. Gervais.)]

[Footnote 3223: Durand-Maillane, '"Mémoires," 182.--Gregoire, "Mémoires," II., 34. On the 7th of November, 1793, in the great scene of the abjurations, Grégoire alone resisted, declaring: "I remain a bishop; I invoke freedom of worship." "Outcries burst forth to stifle my voice the pitch of which I raised proportionately.... A demoniac scene occurred, worthy of Milton.... I declare that in making this speech I thought I was pronouncing sentence of death on myself." For several days, emissaries were sent to him, either deputies or bandits, to try and make him retract. On the 11th of November a placard posted throughout Paris declared him responsible for the continuance of fanaticism. "For about two years, I was almost the only one in Paris who wore the ecclesiastical costume."]

[Footnote 3224: Moniteur, XVIII., 480. (Session of Brumaire 30.) N...."I must make known the ceremony which took place here to-day. I move that the speeches and details of this day be inserted in full in the bulletin, and sent to all the departments." (Another deputy): "And do not neglect to state that the Right was never so well furnished." (Laughter and applause.)]

[Footnote 3225: Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 103. (Germinal 11.)--Moniteur, XX., 124. (Germinal 15.) Decree for cutting short the defense of Danton and his accused associates.]

[Footnote 3226: Moniteur, XX., 226. (Germinal 26. Report by Saint-Just and decree on the police.)--Ibid., XIX., 54. (Report by Robespierre, and decree on the principles of revolutionary government, Nivôse 5.)--Ibid., XX., 567, 589. Prairial 6, (Decree forbidding the imprisonment of any Englishman or Hanoverian), and XXI., 13. (Messidor 16.)]

[Footnote 3227: Moniteur, XX., 544. After the effort of L'Admiral against Collot d'Herbois, the latter appears in the tribune. "The loudest applause greets him from all sides of the house."--Ibid., XXI., 173. (Messidor 21.) On the report of Barère who praises the conduct of Joseph Lebon, criticizing nothing but "somewhat harsh formalities," a decree is passed to the order of the day, which is "adopted unanimously with great applause."]

[Footnote 3228: Moniteur, XX., 698, 715, 716, 719. (Prairial 22 and 24.) After the speeches of Robespierre and Couthon "Loud and renewed applause; the plaudits begin over again and are prolonged." Couthon, having declared that the Committee of Public Safety was ready to resign, "on all sides there were cries of No, No."--Ibid., XXI., 268. (Thermidor 2.) Eulogy of the revolutionary government by Barère and decree of the police "unanimously adopted amidst the loudest applause."]

[Footnote 3229: Moniteur, XXI., 329.]

[Footnote 3230: Lafayette, "Mémoires," IV., 330. "At last came the 9th of Thermidor. It was not due to people of common sense. Their terror was so great that an estimable deputy, to whom one of his colleagues put the question, no witness being present, 'how long must we endure this tyranny?' was upset by it to such a degree as to denounce him."]

[Footnote 3231: Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," V., 209. (Siéyès' unpublished papers.)--Moniteur, XVIII., 631, containing an example of both the terror and style of the most eminent men, among others of Fourcroy the celebrated chemist, then deputy, and later, Counselor of State and Minister of Public Instruction. He is accused in the Jacobin Club, Brumaire 18, year II., of not addressing the Convention often enough, to which he replies: "After twenty years' devotion to the practice of medicine I have succeeded in supporting my sans-culotte father and my sans-culottes sisters.... As to the charge made by a member that I have given most of my time to science. ... I have attended the Lycée des Arts but three times, and then only for the purpose of sans-culotteising it."]

[Footnote 3232: Michelet, (1798-1874), "Histoire de la Révolution," V., preface XXX (3rd ed.). "When I was young and looking for a job, I was referred to an esteemed Review, to a well-known philanthropist, devoted to education, to the people, and to the welfare of humanity. I found a very small man of a melancholic, mild and tame aspect. We were in front of the fire, on which he fixed his eyes without looking at me. He talked a long time, in a didactic, monotonous tone of voice. I felt ill at ease and sick at heart, and got away as soon as I could. It was this little man, I afterwards learned, who hunted down the Girondists, and had them guillotined, and which he accomplished at the age of twenty."--This man's name was Julien de la Drôme. I (Taine) saw him once when quite young. He is well known; first, through his correspondence, and next, by his mother's diary. ("Journal d'une bourgeoise pendant la Revolution," ed. Locroy.)--We have a sketch of David ("La Demagogie à Paris en 1793," by Dauban, a fac-simile at the beginning of the volume), representing Queen Marie Antoinette led to execution. Madame Julien was at a window along with David looking at the funeral convoy, whilst he made the drawing.--Madame Julien writes in her "Journal," September 3, 1792: "To attain this end we must will the means. No barbarous humanity! The people are aroused, the people are avenging the crimes of the past three years."--Her son, a sort of raw, sentimental Puritan, fond of bloodshed, was one of Robespierre's most active agents. He remembered what he had done, as is evident by Michelet's narrative, and cast his eyes down, well knowing that his present philanthropy could not annihilate past acts.]

[Footnote 3233: Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46. Register of the Acts of the Committee of Public Safety, vol. II., orders of August 3, 1793.]

[Footnote 3234: On the concentration and accumulation of business, cf. Archives Nationales, ibid., acts of Aug. 4, 5, 6, 1793; and AF. II., 23, acts of Brumaire I and 15, year II.--On the distribution and dispatch of business in the Committee and the hours devoted to it, see Acts of April 6, June 13, 17, 18, Aug. 3, 1793, and Germinal 27, year II.--After August 3, two sessions were held daily, from 8 o'clock in the morning to 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and from 7 to 10 o'clock in the evening; at 10 o'clock, the Executive Council met with the Committee of Public Safety, and papers were signed about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.--The files of AF. II., 23 to 42, contain an account of the doings of the Committee, the minutes of its meetings and of its correspondence. A perusal of these furnishes full details concerning the initiative and responsibility of the Committee. For example, (Nivôse 4, year II., letters to Freron and Barras, at Marseilles,) "The Committee commend the vigorous measures you have sanctioned in your orders at Marseilles.--Marseilles, through you, affords a great example. Accustomed, as you are, to wielding thunderbolts, you are best calculated for still governing it... How glorious, citizen colleagues, to be able like you, after long continued labors and immortal fame, how gratifying, under such auspices, to return to the bosom of the National Convention!"--(AF. II., 36, Pluviôse 7, year II., letter to the representatives on mission at Bordeaux, approving of the orders issued by them against merchants.) "concealed behind the obscurity of its complots, mercantilism cannot support the ardent, invigorating atmosphere of Liberty; Sybaritic indolence quails before Spartan virtue. "--(AF. II., 37, Pluviôse 20, letter to Prieur de la Marne, sent to Nantes to replace Carrier.) "Carrier, perhaps, has been badly surrounded;.... his ways are harsh, the means he employs are not well calculated to win respect for the national authority;... he is used up in that city. He is to leave and go elsewhere."--(AF. II., 36, Nivôse 21, letter to Fouché, Laporte, and Albitte, at Commune-affranchie, signed by Billaud-Varennes and composed by him.) "The convention, Nivôse I, has approved of the orders and other measures taken by you. We can add nothing to its approval. The Committee of Public Safety subjects all operations to the same principles, that is to say, it conforms to yours and acts with you."]

[Footnote 3235: Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VIII., 105. (Unpublished report by Vice-admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, May 28, 1794.)]

[Footnote 3236: Carnot, "Mémoires," I., 107.]

[Footnote 3237: Ibid., I., 450, 523, 527, "we often ate only a morsel of dry bread on the Committee's table."]

[Footnote 3238: Moniteur, XXI., 362. (Speech by Cambon, Session of Thermidor 11, year II.)]

[Footnote 3239: Beugnot, "Mémoires," II., 15. (Stated by Jean Bon himself in a conversation at Mayence in 1813.)]

[Footnote 3240: Gaudia, duc de Gaéte, "Mémoires," I., 16, 28. "I owed my life to Cambon personally, while, through his firmness, he preserved the whole Treasury department, continually attacked by the all-powerful Jacobin club."--On the 8th of Thermidor, Robespierre was "very severe on the administration of the Treasury, which he accused of an aristocratic and anti-revolutionary spirit.... Under this pretext, it was known that the orator meant to propose an act of accusation against the representative charged with its surveillance, as well as against the six commissioners, and bring them before the Revolutionary Tribunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful."--Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II... ". Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the State.. .. A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating, devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight.... Anti-revolution exists in the financial department.... Who are its head administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats and well-known knaves--the Cambons, the Mallarmés, the Ramels!"]

[Footnote 3241: Carnot, "Mémoires," I., 425.]