Thus, inwardly
corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of
order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in
the tribune "his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction;"
sudden tremors agitate "his shoulders and neck, shaking him
convulsively to and fro."[150] "His bilious complexion becomes livid,"
his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! "Ah," said
a Montagnard, "you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor,
had you seen his green eyeballs !" "Physically as well as morally," he
becomes a second Marat, suffering all the more because his delirium is
not steady, and because his policy, being a moral one, forces him to
exterminate on a grander scale.
But he is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious,[151]
keeping his thoughts to himself, made for a school-master or a
pleader, but not for taking the lead or for governing, always acting
hesitatingly, and ambitious to be rather the pope, than the dictator
of the Revolution.[152] Above all, he wants to remain a political
Grandison[153]; until the very end, he keeps his mask, not only in
public but also to himself and in his inmost conscience.
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