rinciple, but whom poverty and want of resources have driven
to every excess, a turncoat according to circumstances in order to get
a place, associated with the leaders in order to keep the place, and
yet not without sensibility, having, perhaps, acted criminally merely to
keep himself and his family alive."

In the municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot,
some of them being journeymen-spinners or thread twisters, and others
second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, "incapable," "without means," with a
few crack-brains among them: one, "his brain being crazed, absolutely
of no account, anarchist and Jacobin;" another, "very dangerous through
lack of judgment, a Jacobin, over-excited;" a third, "an instrument of
tyranny, a man of blood capable of every vice, having assumed the
name of Mutius Scoevola, of recognized depravity and unable to
write."--Similarly, in the Aube districts, we find some of the heads
feverish with the prevailing epidemic, for instance, at Nogent,
the national agent, Delaporte, "who has the words 'guillotine' and
'revolutionary tribunal' always on his lips, and who declares that if
he were the government he would imprison doctor, surgeon and lawyer,
who delights in finding people guilty and says that he is never content
except when he gets three pounds' weight of denunciations a day." But,
apart from these madcaps, most of the administrators or judges are
either people wholly unworthy of their offices, because they are
"inept," "too uneducated," "good for nothing," "too little familiar
with administrative forms," "too little accustomed to judicial action,"
"without information," "too busy with their own affairs," "unable to
read or write," or, because "they have no delicacy," are "violent,"
"agitators," "knaves," "without public esteem," and more or less
dishonest and despised.[3398]--As an example a fellow from Paris, who
was at first at Troyes, a baker's apprentice,[3399] and afterwards a
dancing-master; then he appeared at the Club, making headway, doubtless,
through his Parisian chatter, until he stood first and soon became a
member of the district. Appointed an officer in the sixth battalion of
Aube, he behaved in such a manner in Vendee that, on his return, "his
brethren in arms" broke up the banner presented to him, "declaring him
unworthy of such an honor, because he cowardly fled before the enemy."
Nevertheless, after a short plunge, he came back to the surface and,
thanks