rt, and
Helvetius, he, like Bailly, was of that intermediate generation by which
philosophy was embodied with the Revolution. More ambitious than Bailly,
he had not his impassibility. Aristocrat by birth, he, like Mirabeau,
had passed over to the camp of the people. Hated by the court, he hated
it as do all renegades. He had become one of the people, in order to
convert the people into the army of philosophy. He wanted of the
republic no more than was sufficient to overturn its prejudices. Ideas
once become victorious,--he would willingly have confided it to the
control of a constitutional monarchy. He was rather a man for dispute
than a man of anarchy. Aristocrats always carry with them, into the
popular party, the desire of order and command. They would fain

"Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."

Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and
feel themselves impotent to command. Condorcet had edited the _Chronique
de Paris_ from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but
in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and
polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth
and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another
assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the
resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt
by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte
Chapelle, elected Condorcet to the chamber. The same club returned
Danton.

XXI.

Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the
Chatelet, had increased with it in influence. He had already that
celebrity which the multitude easily assigns to him whom it sees every
where, and always listens to. He was one of those men who seem born of
the stir of revolutions, and which float on its surface until it
swallows them up. All in him was like the mass--athletic, rude, coarse.
He pleased them because he resembled them. His eloquence was like the
loud clamour of the mob. His brief and decisive phrases had the martial
curtness of command. His irresistible gestures gave impulse to his
plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of
honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was
exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there
not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the
rapid movement whi