stincts.--Duquesnoy at Metz.--Dumont at
Amiens.--Drunkards.--Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de
l'Oise, Dartigoyte.

"It seems," says a witness who was long acquainted with Maignet, "that
all he did for these five or six years was simply the delirious phase
of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing had
happened."[3297] And Maignet himself writes "I was not made for these
tempests." That goes for everyone but especially for the coarser
natures; subordination would have restrained them while dictatorial
power make the instincts of the brute and the mob appear.

Contemplate Duquesnoy, a sort of mastiff, always barking and biting,
when gorged he is even more furious. Delegate to the army of the
Moselle, and passing by Metz[3298] he summoned before him Altmayer, the
public prosecutor, although he had sat down to dinner. The latter waits
three hours and a half in the ante-chamber, is not admitted, returns,
and, at length received, is greeted with a thundering exclamation:

"Who are you?"

"The public prosecutor," he replies.

"You look like a bishop--you were once a cure or monk--you can't be
a revolutionary.... I have come to Metz with unlimited powers. Public
opinion here is not satisfactory. I am going to drill it. I am going to
set folks straight here. I mean to shoot, here in Metz, as well as in
Nancy, five or six hundred every fortnight."

The same at the house of General Bessieres, commandant of the town
encountering there M. Cledat, an old officer, the second in command, he
measures him from head to foot:

"You look like a muscadin. Where did you come from? You must be a bad
republican--you look as if you belonged to the ancient regime."

"My hair is gray," he responds, "but I am not the less a good
republican: you may ask the General and the whole town."

"Be off! Go to the devil, and be quick about it, or I will have you
arrested!"--

The same, in the street, where he lays hold of a man passing, on account
of his looks; the justice of the peace, Joly, certifies to the civism of
this person, and he "eyes" Joly:

"You too, you are an aristocrat! I see it in your eyes! I never make a
mistake."

Whereupon, tearing off the Judge's badge, he sends him to
prison.--Meanwhile, a fire, soon extinguished, breaks out in the army
bakery; officers, townspeople, laborers, peasants and even children form
a line (for passing water) and Duquesnoy appears to urge them on in his