en it is indispensable to ask for
his signature on any legislative matter, the sole act to which he has
reduced his functions, they are compelled to go and force it from him in
the Cafe Hardy, where he usually passes his days." It must be borne
in mind that he is envious and spiteful, avenging himself for his
incapacity on those whose competency makes him sensible of his
incompetence; he denounces them as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in
having a warrant of arrest issued against his four chief clerks; on the
morning of Thermidor 9, with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news
to one of them, M. Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is
turned out and M. Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness,
the latter calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual
compliments." Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks
of the substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep
provisionally his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he
expresses his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint
him, but "for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to
come to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me
in the street." Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man
whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk.
M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to
descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as
strange, and, seeing M. Miot's embarrassment, he ends by saying: "If you
don't find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place of a
servant." This estimate of himself shows his proper value.

The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by
his acts,[3344] general in Paris of the entire armed force,
commander-in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former
servant or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by
his employer for robbery, shut up in Bicetre, by turns a runner and
announcer for a traveling show, barrier-clerk and September assassin,
has purged the Convention on the 2nd of June--in short, the famous
Henriot, and now simply a brute and a sot. In this latter capacity,
spared on the trial of the Hebertists, he is kept as a tool, for the
reason, doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse and manageable, more
compromised than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest
chance of becoming indepe