y. Without mentioning the taxes and confiscations of
which they render no account, they have, for their hoard, the ransoms
offered underhandedly by "suspects" and their families; what is more
convenient?[32145] And all the more, because the Committee of General
Security, even when informed, let things take their course: to prosecute
"Montagnards," would be "making the Revolution take a step backward."
One is bound to humor useful servants who have such hard work, like
that of the September killings, to do. Irregularities, as with these
September people, must be overlooked; it is necessary to allow them a
few perquisites and give them gratuities.[32146]

All this would not suffice to keep them at work if they had not been
held by an even greater attraction.--To the common run of civilized
men, the office of Septembriseur is at first disagreeable; but, after a
little practice, especially with a tyrannical nature, which, under cover
of the theory, or under the pretext of public safety, can satiate its
despotic instincts, all repugnance subsides. There is keen delight in
the exercise of absolute power; one is glad, every hour, to assert one's
omnipotence and prove it by some act, the most conclusive of all acts
being some act of destruction. The more complete, radical and prompt
the destruction is, the more conscious one is of one's strength. However
great the obstacle, one is not disposed to recede or stand still;
one breaks away all the barriers which men call good sense, humanity,
justice, and the satisfaction of breaking them down is great. To crush
and to subdue becomes voluptuous pleasure, to which pride gives keener
relish, affording a grateful incense of the holocaust which the despot
consumes on his own altar; at this daily sacrifice, he is both idol and
priest, offering up victims to himself that he may be conscious of his
divinity.--Such is Saint-Just, all the more a despot because his title
of representative on mission is supported by his rank on the Committee
of Public Safety: to find natures strained to the same pitch as his, we
must leave the modern world and go back to a Caligula, or to a caliph
Hakem in Egypt in the tenth century.[32147] He also, like these two
monsters, but with different formulae, regards himself as a God, or
God's vicegerent on earth, invested with absolute power through Truth
incarnated in him, the representative of a mysterious, limitless and
supreme power, known as the People; to worth