ndent, unemployed in the army,[3345] having
no prestige with true soldiers, a general for street parade and an
interloper and lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at
the Opera-Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews,
and, above all, his orgies make him perfectly content.--Every
evening, in full uniform, escorted by his aides-de-camp, he gallops to
Choisy-sur-Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel,
along with some of Robespierre's confederates or the local demagogues,
he revels. They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash
the glasses, plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring
dance-rooms and kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches
and chairs to pieces--in short, they have a good time.--The next
morning, having slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day,
veritable masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity
of a numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of
a mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique
compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent
mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they
contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated
brandy of the Revolution.--He is posted on foreign maneuvers, and
enlarges upon the true reasons for the famine: "A lot of bread has been
lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other rascals
who want to enslave justice and reason, and assassinate philosophy, must
be called to account for this. Headquarters, etc."[3346] He has
theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to all dissenters: "The
ministers and sectaries of every form of worship are requested not to
practice any further religious ceremonies outside their temples. Every
good sectarian will see the propriety of observing this order. The
interior of a temple is large enough for paying one's homage to the
Eternal, who requires no rites that are repulsive to every thinking man.
The wise agree that a pure heart is the sublimest homage that Divinity
can desire. Headquarters, etc."--He sighs for the universal idyllic
state, and invokes the suppression of the armed force:

"I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of
curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good
citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country,
justice shou