did on the 10th of August? Very well, I can't make
speeches, but I don't put anybody to sleep. I say, I am the father of
a family--I have a wife and five children that I mean to leave here for
the section to look after, while I go and fight the enemy. But I have no
intention that while I am gone these villains here in prison, and other
villains who would come and let them out, should cut the throats of my
wife and children. I have three boys who I hope will some day be more
useful to their country than those rascals you want to save. Anyhow, all
that can be done is to let 'em out and give them arms, and we will
fight 'em on an equal footing. Whether I die here or on the frontiers,
scoundrels would kill me all the same, and I will sell my life dearly.
But, whether it is done by me or by someone else, the prison shall be
cleaned out of those cursed beggars, there, now!" At this a general cry
is heard: "He's right! No mercy! Let us go in!"

All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of
the jailer's register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter
must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies
things--There is another simplification still more formidable, which is
the condemnation and slaughter by categories. Any title suffices, Swiss,
priest, officer, or servant of the King, "the 'worms' on the civil
list"; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth
while to have a trial, the throats of the lot can be slit.--Reduced to
this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the new
sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an inevitable
adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his faculties.

His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him. No man, and especially
a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilization, can, with
impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner. In vain
does he work himself up against the condemned and heap insults on them
to augment his fury;[31101] I he is dimly conscious of committing a
great crime, and his soul, like that of Macbeth, "is full of scorpions."
Through a terrible tightening up, he hardens himself against the
inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes
exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to "gorge
himself on horrors,"[31102] by adding murder to murder. For murder,
especially as he practices it, that is to say,