ssembly the great domiciliary visit, by which the Commune
fills the prisons. It is he who, on the 2d of September, to paralyze the
resistance of honest people, causes the penalty of death to be
decreed against whoever, "directly or indirectly shall, in any manner
whatsoever, refuse to execute, or who shall interfere with the orders
issued, or with the measures of the executive power." It is he who, on
that day, informs the journalist Prudhomme of the pretended prison plot,
and who, the second day after, sends his secretary, Camille Desmoulins,
to falsify the report of the massacres,[3158] It is he who, on the
3rd of September, at the office of the Minister of Justice, before
the battalion officers and the heads of the service, before Lacroix,
president of the Assembly, and Petion, mayor of Paris, before Clavieres,
Servan, Monge, Lebrun, and the entire Executive Council, except Roland,
reduces at one stroke the head men of the government to the position of
passive accomplices, replying to a man of feeling, who rises to stay the
slaughter, "Sit down--it was necessary!"[3159] It is he who, the
same day, dispatches the circular, countersigned by him, by which the
Committee of Supervision announces the massacre, and invites "their
brethren of the departments" to follow the example of Paris.[3160] It
is he who, on the 10th of September, "not as Minister of Justice, but as
Minister of the People," is to congratulate and thank the
slaughterers of Versailles.[3161]--After the 10th of August, through
Billaud-Varennes, his former secretary, through Fabre d'Eglantine, his
Keeper of the Seals, through Tallien, secretary of the Commune and
his most trusty henchman, he is present at all deliberations in
the Hotel-de-ville, and, at the last hour, is careful to put on
the Committee of Supervision one of his own men, the head clerk,
Desforges.[3162]--Not only was the reaping-machine constructed under his
own eye, and with his assent, but, again, when it is put in motion, he
holds the handle, so as to guide the scythe.

He is right; if he did not sometimes put on the brake, it would go
to pieces through its own action. Introduced into the Committee as
professor of political blood-letting, Marat, stubbornly following out a
fixed idea, cuts down deep, much below the designated line; warrants of
arrest were already out against thirty deputies, Brissot's papers were
rummaged, Roland's house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in a
neighborin