They are its lieutenants of police, and
once a week they come and take part in its labors, as formerly the
Sartines, and the Lenoirs assisted the Comptroller-general. A man who
this secret committee deems a "suspect," is suddenly seized, no matter
who, whether representative, minister, or general, and finds himself
the next morning behind the bars in one of the ten new Bastilles. --
There, the other hand seizes him by the throat; this is the
revolutionary tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary
commissions of the ancient r?gime, only far more terrible. Aided by
its police gang, the Committee of Public Safety itself selects the
sixteen judges and sixty jurymen[122] from among the most servile, the
most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:[123] Fouquier-
Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal, Fleuriot-Lescot, and,
lower down on the scale, apostate priests, renegade nobles,
disappointed artists, infatuated studio-apprentices, journeymen
scarcely able to write their names, shoemakers, joiners, carpenters,
tailors, barbers, former lackeys, an idiot like Ganney, a deaf man
like Leroy-Dix-Ao?t; their names and professions indicate all that is
necessary to be told: these men are licensed and paid murderers.
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