nwardly chuckling, the same as the peasant in a blouse on
getting ahead of his well-duped landlord, or as the Frank, whom the
ancient historian describes as leering on pocketing Roman gold the
better to make war against Rome.--The graft on this plebeian seedling
has not taken; in our modern garden this remains as in the ancient
forest; its vigorous sap preserves its primitive raciness and produces
none of the fine fruits of our civilization, a moral sense, honor and
conscience. Danton has no respect for himself nor for others; the nice,
delicate limitations that circumscribe human personality, seem to him as
legal conventionality and mere drawing-room courtesy. Like a Clovis,
he tramples on this, and like a Clovis, equal in faculties, in similar
expedients, and with a worse horde at his back, he throws himself
athwart society, to stagger along, destroy and reconstruct it to his own
advantage.

At the start, he comprehended the peculiar character and normal
procedure of the Revolution, that is to say, the useful agency of
popular brutality: in 1788 he had already figured in insurrections. He
comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite result
of the Revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the violent
minority. Immediately after the 14th of July," 1789, he organized in his
quarter of the city[3163] a small independent republic, aggressive and
predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and
a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available
madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler
and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille
Desmoulins, Freron, Hebert, Chaumette, Clootz, Theroigne, Marat,--while,
in this more than Jacobin State, the model in anticipation of that he
is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterwards reign, the
permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator
of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings. Here, usurpation
is the rule there is no recognition of legal authority; they brave the
King, the ministers, the judges, the Assembly, the municipality, the
mayor, the commandant of the National Guard. Nature and principle raise
them above the law; the district takes Marat under its protection, posts
two sentinels at his door to protect him from prosecutions, and uses
arms against the armed force sent with a warrant to arrest him.[3164]
yet more, in the na