To expedite matters, he must get
their heads off quietly, and as "up to this time things have been
managed confidentially in the Committee of Public Safety," he, alone
with Couthon, two days after, without informing his colleagues,[168]
draws up, brings to the Convention, and has passed the terrible act of
Prairial which places everybody's life at his disposal. - In his
crafty, blundering haste, he has demanded too much; each one, on
reflection, becomes alarmed for himself; he is compelled to back out,
to protest that he is misunderstood, admit that representatives are
excepted, and, accordingly, to sheathe the knife he has already
applied to his adversaries throats. But he still holds it in his
grasp. He watches them, and, pretending to retreat, affects a
renunciation, crouched in his corner,[169] waiting until they
discredit themselves, so as to spring upon them a second time. He
has not to wait long, for the exterminating machine he set up on the
22nd of Prairial, is in their hands, and it has to work as he planned
it, namely, by making rapid turns and almost haphazard: the odium of a
blind sweeping massacre rests with them; he not only makes no
opposition to this, but, while pretending to abstain from it, he urges
it on.
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