h will always redeem a multitude of infirmities.

Though the author of some of the most tremendous and far-sounding
phrases of an epoch that was only too rich in them, yet phrases had no
empire over him; he was their master, not their dupe. Of all the men who
succeeded Mirabeau as directors of the unchained forces, we feel that
Danton alone was in his true element. Action, which poisoned the blood
of such men as Robespierre, and drove such men as Vergniaud out of their
senses with exaltation, was to Danton his native sphere. When France was
for a moment discouraged, it was he who nerved her to new effort by the
electrifying cry, '_We must dare, and again dare, and without end
dare!_' If his rivals or his friends seemed too intent on trifles, too
apt to confound side issues with the central aim of the battle, Danton
was ever ready to urge them to take a juster measure:--'_When the
edifice is all ablaze, I take little heed of the knaves who are
pilfering the household goods; I rush to put out the flames._' When base
egoism was compromising a cause more priceless than the personality of
any man, it was Danton who made them ashamed by the soul-inspiring
exclamation, '_Let my name be blotted out and my memory perish, if only
France may be free._' The Girondins denounced the popular clubs of Paris
as hives of lawlessness and outrage. Danton warned them that it were
wiser to go to these seething societies and to guide them, than to waste
breath in futile denunciation. 'A nation in revolution,' he cried to
them, in a superb figure, 'is like the bronze boiling and foaming and
purifying itself in the cauldron. Not yet is the statue of Liberty cast.
Fiercely boils the metal; have an eye on the furnace, or the flame will
surely scorch you.' If there was murderous work below the hatches, that
was all the more reason why the steersman should keep his hand strong
and ready on the wheel, with an eye quick for each new drift in the
hurricane, and each new set in the raging currents. This is ever the
figure under which one conceives Danton--a Titanic shape doing battle
with the fury of the seas, yielding while flood upon flood sweeps wildly
over him, and then with unshaken foothold and undaunted front once more
surveying the waste of waters, and striving with dexterous energy to
force the straining vessel over the waters of the bar.

La Fayette had called the huge giant of popular force from its squalid
lurking-places, and now he tremble