"You judges must have verdicts; pitch them into the water, which is much more simple."Addressing the popular club of Nantes, he says:
"The rich, the merchants, are all monopolizers, all anti-revolutionists; denounce them to me, and I will have all their heads under the national razor. Tell me who the fanatics are that shut their shops on Sunday and I will have them guillotined." "When will the heads of those rascally merchants fall ? " - " I see beggars here in rags; you are as big fools at Ancenis as at Nantes. Don't you know that the money, the wealth of these old merchants, belongs to you, and is not the river there?" "My brave bastards, my good sansculottes your time is come! Denounce them to me! The evidence of two good sans-culottes is all I want to make the heads of those old merchants tumble! " - "We will make France a grave-yard rather than not regenerate it in our own way."[133] - His steady howl ends in a cry of anguish:
"We shall all be guillotined, one after the other!"[134] -Such is the mental state to which the office of representative on mission leads. Below Carrier, who is on the extreme verge, the others, less advanced, likewise turn pale at the lugubrious vision, which is the inevitable effect of their work and their mandate.
Beyond every grave they dig, they catch a glimpse of the grave already dug for them. There is nothing left for the gravedigger but to dig mechanically day after day, and, in the meantime, make what he can out of his place; he can at least render himself insensible by having "a good time."IX. Vice.
The development of vice. - Vanity and the need of gambling. - Collot d'Herbois, Ysabeau, Tallien. - The Robbers. - Tallien, Javogues, Rovère, Fouché. - Two sources of cruelty. - Need of demonstrating one's power. - Saint-Just in the Pas-de-Calais department, and in Alsace. - Collot d'Herbois at Lyons. - Pressure exercised by the Representatives on the tribunals. - Pleasure caused by death and suffering. - Monestier, Fouché, Collot d'Herbois, Lebon and Carrier.