by the
opportunity, he has launched it against his designated victim.[31141] He
is now himself starting off in quest of living prey; he casts the net of
his rhetoric[31142] around it; he fetches it bound to the open jaws; he
thrusts aside with an uncompromising air the arms of friends, wives and
mothers, the outstretched hands of suppliants begging for lives;[31143]
he suddenly throttles the struggling victims[31144] and, for fear that
they might escape, he strangles them in time. Near the end, this is no
longer enough; the brute must have grander quarries, and, accordingly, a
pack of hounds, beaters-up, and, willingly or not, it is Robespierre who
equips, directs and urges them on, at Orange, at Paris,[31145] ordering
them to empty the prison's, and be expeditious in doing their work.--In
this profession of slaughtering, destructive instincts, long repressed
by civilization, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first "that
of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage appearance
of the wildcat, and close to the ferocious exterior of the tiger. In the
Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the Convention he froths
at the mouth."[31146] The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor
changes into the personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and
grinds his teeth;[31147] Sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to
shed tears.[31148] But his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his
affected sensibility. The festering grudges, corrosive envies and bitter
scheming which have accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall
bladder is full, and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He
never tires of re-executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists,
Chaumette, Hebert and especially Danton,[31149] probably because Danton
was the active agent in the Revolution of which he was simply the
incapable pedagogue; he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm
corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus,
inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets
out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking
in the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;"
sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively
to and fro."[31150] "His bilious complexion becomes livid," his eyelids
quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said a Montagnard,
"you would have voted as we di