ating is required on any given theme in honor
of the party which stuffs his brain. Below these comes the Committee of
General Security, Vadier, Amar, Vouland, Guffroy, Panis, David, Jagot
and the rest, those who undertook, reported on, and acted in behalf of
universal proscription. All these bear the imprint of their service;
they could be recognized by "their pallid hue, hollow and bloodshot
eyes,"[3248] habits of omnipotence stamped "on their brows, and on
their deportment, something indescribably haughty and disdainful. The
Committee of General Security reminded one of the former lieutenants of
police, and the Committee of Public Safety, of the former ministers of
state." In the Convention, "it is considered an honor to talk with them,
and a privilege to shake hands with them; one seems to read one's duty
on their brows." On the days on which their orders are to be converted
into laws "the members of the Committee and the reporter of the bill,
keep people waiting, the same as the heads and representatives of the
former sovereign power; on their way to the Assembly hall, they are
preceded by a group of courtiers who seem to announce the masters of the
world."[3249]--In fact, they reign--but observe on what conditions.

"Make no complaints," said Barere,[3250] to the composer of an opera,
the performance of which had just been suspended: "as times go, you must
not attract public attention. Do we not all stand at the foot of the
guillotine, all, beginning with myself?" Again, twenty years later, in a
private conversation, on being interrogated as to the veritable object,
the secret motive of the Committee of Public Safety, he replied:

"As we were animated by but one sentiment,[3251] my dear sir, that
of self-preservation, we had but one desire, that of maintaining an
existence which each of us believed to be menaced. You had your neighbor
guillotined to prevent your neighbor from guillotining you."[3252]

The same apprehension exists in stouter souls, although there may have
been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order.

"How many times," says Carnot,[3253] "we undertook some work that
required time, with the conviction that we should not be allowed to
complete it!"--"It was uncertain[3254] whether, the next time the clock
struck the hour, we should not be standing before the revolutionary
Tribunal on our way to the scaffold without, perhaps, having had time to
bid adieu to our families.... We pursued our d