y him, looked straight at him and answered curtly, and who,
to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer twice in
the same terms, he says:

"Shut up! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the national
representative."

He immediately commits him to prison.[32119]--One evening, at the
theater, he enters a box in which the ladies, seated in front,
keep their places. In a rage, he goes out, rushes on the stage and,
brandishing his great saber, shouts and threatens the audience, taking
immense strides across the boards and acting and looking so much like a
wild beast that several of the ladies faint away:

"Look there!" he shouts, at those muscadines who do not condescend to
move for a representative of twenty-five millions of men! Everybody used
to make way for a prince--they will not budge for me, a representative,
who am more than a king!"[32120]

The word is spoken. But this king is frightened, and he is one who
thinks of nothing but conspiracy;[32121] in the street, in open
daylight, the people who are passing him are plotting against him either
by words or signs. Meeting in the main street of Arras a young girl and
her mother talking Flemish,--that seems to him "suspect." "Where are you
going?" he demands. "What's that to you?" replies the child, who
does not know him. The girl, the mother and the father are sent to
prison.[32122]--On the ramparts, another young girl, accompanied by her
mother, is taking the air, and reading a book. "Give me that book," says
the representative. The mother hands it to him; it is the "History of
Clarissa Harlowe." The young girl, extending her hand to receive back
the book, adds, undoubtedly with a smile: "That is not 'suspect.'" Lebon
deals her a blow with his fist on her stomach which knocks her
down; both women are searched and he personally leads them to the
guard-room.--The slightest expression, a gesture, puts him beside
himself; any motion that he does not comprehend makes him start, as with
an electric shock. Just arrived at Cambray, he is informed that a woman
who had sold a bottle of wine below the maximum, had been released after
a proces-verbal. On reaching the Hotel-de-ville, he shouts out: "Let
everybody here pass into the Consistory!" The municipal officer on duty
opens a door leading into it. Lebon, however, not knowing who he is,
takes alarm. "He froths at the mouth," says the municipal officer, "and
cries out as if possessed by a demon. '