rs himself reproached for
being still alive: "He who was at Valenciennes when the enemy took it
will never reply to this question--are you dead?"[3291] He has nothing
to do now but to declare himself incompetent, decline the
honor mistakenly conferred on him by the Convention, and
disappear.--Dubois-Crance took Lyons, and, as pay for this immense
service, he is stricken off the roll of the Jacobin Club; because he did
not take it quick enough, he is accused of treachery; two days after the
capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety withdraw his powers; three
days after the capitulation, the Committee of Public Safety has him
arrested and sent to Paris under escort.[3292]--If such men after such
services are thus treated, what is to become of the others? After the
mission of young Julien, then Carrier at Nantes, Ysabeau and Tallien at
Bordeaux, feel their heads shake on their shoulders; after the mission
of Robespierre jr. in the East and South, Barras, Freron and Bernard de
Saintes believe themselves lost.[3293] Fouche, Rovere, Javogue, and how
many others, compromised by the faction, Hebertists or Dantonists, of
which they are, or were belonging. Sure of perishing if their patrons
on the Committee succumb; not sure of living if their patrons keep their
place; not knowing whether their heads will not be exchanged for
others; restricted to the narrowest, the most rigorous and most constant
orthodoxy; guilty and condemned should their orthodoxy of to-day become
the heterodoxy of to-morrow. All of them menaced, at first the hundred
and eighty autocrats who, before the concentration of the revolutionary
government, ruled for eight months boundlessly in the provinces;
next, and above all, the fifty hard-fisted "Montagnards," unscrupulous
fanatics or authoritarian high livers, who, at this moment, tread human
flesh under foot and spread out in arbitrariness like wild boars in a
forest, or wallow in scandal, like swine in a mud-pool.

There is no refuge for them, other than temporary, and temporary refuge
only in zealous and tried obedience, such as the Committee demands proof
of, that is to say, through rigor.--"The Committees so wanted it,"
says later on Maignet, the arsonist of Bedouin; "The Committees did
everything..... Circumstances controlled me. ... The patriotic agents
conjured me not to give way.... I did not fully carry out the most
imperative orders."[3294] Similarly, the great exterminator of Nantes,
Carrier, wh