reatest scoundrels.--It is better to be a poor fisherman than govern
men."[3179]

But he has aspired to govern them; he constructed a new machine for
the purpose, and, deaf to its squeals, it worked in conformity with
the structure and the impulse he gave to it. It towers before him, this
sinister machine, with its vast wheel and iron cogs grinding all France,
their multiplied teeth pressing out each individual life, its steel
blade constantly rising and falling, and, as it plays faster and faster,
daily exacting a larger and larger supply of human material, while those
who furnish this supply are held to be as insensible and as senseless
as itself. This Danton cannot, will not be.--He gets out of the way,
diverts himself, gambles,[3180] forgets; he supposes that the titular
decapitators will probably consent to take no notice of him; in any
event they do not pursue him; "they would not dare do it." "No one
must lay hands on me, I am the ark." At the worst, he prefers "to be
guillotined rather than guillotine."--Having said or thought this, he is
ripe for the scaffold.

III. Robespierre.

Robespierre.--Mediocrity of his faculties.--The Pedant.
--Absence of ideas.--Study of phrases.--Wounded self-esteem.
--His infatuation.--He plays victim.--His gloomy fancies.--His
resemblance to Marat.--Difference between him and Marat.
--The sincere hypocrite.--The festival in honor of the Supreme
Being, and the law of Prairial 22.--The external and
internal characters of Robespierre and the Revolution.

Even with the firm determination to remain decapitator-in-chief, Danton
could never be a perfect representative of the Revolution. It is
an armed but philosophical robbery; its creed includes robbery and
assassination, but only as a knife in its sheath; the showy, polished
sheath is for public display, and not the sharp and bloody blade.
Danton, like Marat, lets the blade be too plainly visible. At the mere
sight of Marat, filthy and slovenly, with his livid, frog-like face,
with his round, gleaming and fixed eyeballs, and his bold, maniacal
stare and steady monotonous rage, common-sense rebels; no-one selects
a homicidal maniac as a guide. At the mere sight of Danton, with his
porter's vocabulary, his voice like an alarm bell of insurrection, his
cyclopean features and air of an exterminator, humanity takes alarm; one
does not surrender oneself to a political butcher without repugnance.
T