does not
even deign to disguise them with a shadow of probability; as to
the Girondists, and as to Danton, Fabre d'Eglantine and his other
adversaries, whoever they may be, old or new, any rope to hang them with
suffices for him; any rough, knotted, badly-twisted cord he can lay his
hands on, no matter what, provided it strangles, is good enough; there
is no need of a finer one for confirmed conspirators; with the gossip
of the club and an Inquisition catechism, he can frame his bill of
indictment.--Accordingly, his intellect grasps nothing and yields him
nothing; he is a sententious and overexcited declaimer, an artificial
spirit always on the stretch, full of affectations,[3270] his talent
reducing itself down to the rare flashes of a somber imagination, a
pupil of Robespierre, as Robespierre himself is a pupil of Rousseau, the
exaggerated scholar of a plodding scholar, always rabidly ultra,
furious through calculation, deliberately violating both language and
ideas,[3271] confining himself to theatrical and funereal paradoxes, a
sort of "grand vizier"[3272] with the airs of an exalted moralist and
the bearing of the sentimental shepherd.[3273] Were one of a mocking
humor one might shrug one's shoulders; but, in the present state of
the Convention, there is no room for anything but fear. Launched in
imperious tones, his phrases fall upon their ears in monotonous strokes,
on bowed heads, and, after five or six blows from this leaden hammer,
the stoutest are stretched out stupefied on the ground; discussion is
out of the question; when Saint-Just, in the name of the Convention,
affirms anything, it must be believed; his dissertation is a peremptory
injunction and not an effort of reason; it commands obedience; it is
not open to examination; it is not a report which he draws from his coat
pocket, but a bludgeon.

The other reporter, Barere, is of quite another stamp, a "patent-right"
haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, "free and easy," fond of a joke,
even on the Committee of Public Safety,[3274] unconcerned in the midst
of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the reign of
Terror as "the simplest and most innocent thing in the world."[3275] No
man was ever less trammeled by a conscience; in truth, he has several,
that of two days ago, that of the previous day, that of the present day,
that of the morrow, of the following day, and still others, as many as
you like, all equally pliant and supple, at the serv