the drownings of Nantes.--From the beginning to the end, he
was in keeping with the Revolution, lucid on account of his blindness,
thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal
malady with the public malady, to the early manifestation of his
complete madness in the midst of the incomplete or tardy madness of the
rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the
first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not climb or
only stumbled up.

II. Danton.

Danton.--Richness of his faculties.--Disparity between his
condition and instincts.--The Barbarian.--His work.--His
weakness.

There is nothing of the madman about Danton; on the contrary, not only
is his intellect sound, but he possesses political aptitudes to an
eminent degree, and to such an extent that, in this particular, none of
his associates or adversaries compare with him, while, among the men
of the Revolution, only Mirabeau equals or surpasses him. He is an
original, spontaneous genius and not, like most of his contemporaries, a
disputatious, quill-driving theorist,[3143] that is to say, a fanatical
pedant, an artificial being composed of his books, a mill-horse with
blinkers, and turning around in a circle without an issue. His free
judgment is not hampered by abstract prejudices: he does not carry about
with him a social contract, like Rousseau, nor, like Sieyes, a social
art and cabinet principles or combinations;[3144] he has kept aloof from
these instinctively and, perhaps, through contempt for them; he had no
need of them; he would not have known what to do with them. Systems are
crutches for the impotent, while he is able-bodied; formulas serve as
spectacles for the short-sighted, while his eyes are good. "He had
read and meditated very little," says a learned and philosophical
witness;[3145] "his knowledge was scanty and he took no pride in
investigation; but he observed and saw .. His native capacity, which
was very great and not absorbed by other things, was naturally closed to
vague, complex and false notions, and naturally open to every notion
of experience the truth of which was made manifest." Consequently, "his
perceptions of men and things, sudden, clear, impartial and true, were
instinct with solid, practical discretion." To form a clear idea of
the divergent or concordant dispositions, fickle or earnest, actual or
possible, of different parties and of twenty-six mil