only when drunk. Marat is nothing but a bawler. Legendre is
fit for nothing but to cut up his meat. The rest are good for little
else than voting by either sitting down or standing up, but they are
cold blooded and have broad shoulders." From amongst these energetic
nonentities we see ascending a young monster, with calm, handsome
features, Saint-Just. He is a kind of precocious Sylla, 25 years old
and a new-comer, who springs at once from the ranks and, by dint of
atrocities, obtains a prominent position.[3416] Six years before this he
began life by a domestic robbery; on a visit to his mother, he left
the house during the night, carrying off the plate and jewels, which he
squandered while living in a lodging house in the Rue Fromenteau, in the
center of Parisian prostitution;[3417] on the strength of this, and at
the demand of his friends, he is shut up in a house of correction
for six months. On returning to his lodgings he occupied himself with
writing an obscene poem in the style of La Pucelle and then, through a
fit of rage resembling a spasm, he plunged headlong into the Revolution.
He possessed a "blood calcified by study," a colossal pride, an unhinged
conscience, a pompous, gloomy imagination haunted with the bloody
recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence so warped and
twisted as to be comfortable only among excessive paradoxes, shameless
sophistry, and devastating lies.[3418] All these dangerous ingredients
which, mingled in the crucible of suppressed, concentrated ambition,
long and silently boiling within him, have led to a constant defiance,
a determined callousness, an automatic rigidity, and to the summary
politics of the Utopian dictator and exterminator.--It is plain that
such a minority will not obey parliamentary rules, and, rather than
yield to the majority that it will introduce into the debate boos and
hisses, insults, threats, and scuffles with daggers, pistols, sabers and
even the "blunder busses" of a veritable combat.

"Vile intriguers, calumniators, scoundrels, monsters, assassins,
blackguards, fools and hogs," such are the usual terms in which they
address each other, and these form the least of their outrages.[3419]
The president, at certain sessions, is obliged three times to put on his
hat and, at last, breaks his bell. They insult him, force him to leave
his seat and demand that "he be removed.' Bazire tries to snatch a
declaration presented by him "out of his hands." Bourdon, f