Compassion
is excited by all this when one has any feeling, and he had. Danton
had a heart; he bad the quick sensibilities of a man of flesh and
blood stirred by the primitive instincts, the good ones along with the
bad ones, instincts which culture had neither impaired nor deadened,
which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which
did not allow him to practice daily and blindly, systematic and
wholesale murder. Already in September, "cloaking his pity under his
bellowing,"[76] he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the
butchers. When the axe is about to fall on the Girondists, he is "ill
with grief" and despair. "I am unable to save them," he exclaimed, "
and big tears streamed down his cheeks." - On the other hand, his eyes
are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of fore-thought.
He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and
approaching suicide of the Revolution.
"The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie
which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat
itself up."[77] - "Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there
will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebiad of political
Trappists.
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