is not a
revolutionary of long standing, an impenitent regicide, a fanatic in
essence and a despot through principle; but the fumes of omnipotence
have not intoxicated them all to the same degree.--Three or four of
them, Robert Lindet, Jean Bon St. Andre, Prieur de la Cote-d'Or and
Carnot, confine themselves to useful and secondary duties; this suffices
to keep them partially safe. As specialists, charged with an important
service, their first object is to do this well, and hence they
subordinate the rest to this, even theoretical exigencies and the
outcries of the clubs.

Lindet's prime object is to feed the departments that are without wheat,
and the towns that are soon to be short of bread.

Prieur's business is to see that biscuits, brandy, clothes, shoes,
gunpowder and arms are manufactured.[3235]

Jean Bon, that vessels are equipped and crews drilled.

Carnot, to draw up campaign plans and direct the march of armies: the
dispatch of so many bags of grain during the coming fortnight to this
or that town, or warehouse in this or that district; the making up of so
many weekly rations, to be deported during the month to certain
places on the frontier; the transformation of so many fishermen into
artillerymen or marines, and to set afloat so many vessels in three
months; to expedite certain Corps of Cavalry, infantry and artillery, so
as to arrive by such and such roads at this or that pass--

These are precise combinations which purge the brain of dogmatic
phrases, which force revolutionary jargon into the background and keep a
man sensible and practical; and all the more because three of them, Jean
Bon, former captain of a merchantman, Prieur and Carnot, engineering
officers, are professional men and go to the front to put their
shoulders to the wheel on the spot. Jean Bon, always visiting the
coasts, goes on board a vessel of the fleet leaving Brest to save the
great American convoy; Carnot, at Watignies, orders Jourdan to make
a decisive move, and, shouldering his musket, marches along with the
attacking column.[3236] Naturally, they have no leisure for speechmaking
in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention: Carnot lives in
his own office and in the committee-room; he does not allow himself time
enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of bread and a glass of
lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a day;[3237] Lindet, more
overtasked than any body else, because hunger will not wait,