Danton is willing to play the part of the fire, and he humors vices;
he has no scruples, and lets people scratch and take. - He has stolen
as much to give as to keep, to maintain his role as much as to benefit
by it, squaring accounts by spending the money of the Court against
the Court, probably inwardly chuckling, the same as the peasant in a
blouse on getting ahead of his well-duped landlord, or as the Frank,
whom the ancient historian describes as leering on pocketing Roman
gold the better to make war against Rome. - The graft on this
plebeian seedling has not taken; in our modern garden this remains as
in the ancient forest; its vigorous sap preserves its primitive
raciness and produces none of the fine fruits of our civilization, a
moral sense, honor and conscience. Danton has no respect for himself
nor for others; the nice, delicate limitations that circumscribe human
personality, seem to him as legal conventionality and mere drawing-
room courtesy. Like a Clovis, he tramples on this, and like a Clovis,
equal in faculties, in similar expedients, and with a worse horde at
his back, he throws himself athwart society, to stagger along, destroy
and reconstruct it to his own advantage.
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