on, he is the
pasha.

But he is a pasha with a chain around his neck, and at short
tether.--From and after December, 1793, he is directed "to conform to
the orders of the Committee of Public Safety and report to it every
ten days."[3284] The circumscription in which he commands is
rigorously "limited;" "he is reputed to be without power in the other
departments,"[3285] while he is not allowed to grow old on his post. "In
every magistrature the grandeur and extent of power is compensated by
the shortness of its duration. Over-prolonged missions would soon be
considered as birthrights."[3286] Therefore, at the end of two or three
months, often at the end of a month, the incumbent is recalled to Paris
or dispatched elsewhere, at short notice, on the day named, in a prompt,
absolute and sometimes threatening tone, not as a colleague one
humors, but as a subordinate who is suddenly and arbitrarily revoked
or displaced because he is deemed inadequate, or "used up." For greater
security, oftentimes a member of the Committee, Couthon, Collot,
Saint-Just, or some near relation of a member of the Committee, a Lebas
or young Robespierre, goes personally to the spot to give the needed
impulsion; sometimes, agents simply of the Committee, taken from outside
the Convention, and without any personal standing, quite young men,
Rousselin, Julien de la Drome, replace or watch the representative
with powers equal to his.--At the same time, from the top and from the
center, he is pushed on and directed: his local counselors are chosen
for him, and the directors of his conscience;[3287] they rate him
soundly on the choice of his agents or of his lodgings;[3288] they force
dismissals on him, appointments, arrests, executions; they spur him
on in the path of terror and suffering.--Around him are paid
emissaries,[3289] while others watch him gratis and constantly write to
the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, often to denounce
him, always to report on his conduct, to judge his measures and to
provoke the measures which he does not take.[3290]

Whatever he may have done or may do, he cannot turn his eyes toward
Paris without seeing danger ahead, a mortal danger which, on the
Committee, in the Convention, at the Jacobin Club, increases or will
increase against him, like a tempest.--Briez, who, in Valenciennes under
siege, showed courage, and whom the Convention had just applauded and
added to the Committee of Public Safety, hea