[36] Naturally, they have no leisure for
speechmaking in the Jacobin club, or for intrigues in the Convention:
Carnot lives in his own office and in the committee-room; he does not
allow himself time enough to eat with his wife, dines on a crust of
bread and a glass of lemonade, and works sixteen and eighteen hours a
day;[37] Lindet, more overtasked than any body else, because hunger
will not wait, reads every report himself, and passes days and nights
at it;"[38] Jean Bon, in wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of
coarse bread and a glass of bad beer,[39] writes and dictates until
his strength fails him, and he has to lie down and sleep on a mattress
on the floor. - Naturally, again, when interfered with, and the tools
in their hands are broken, they are dissatisfied; they know well the
worth of a good instrument, and for the service, as they comprehend
it, good tools are essential, competent, faithful employees, regular
in attendance at their offices, and not at the club. When they have a
subordinate of this kind they defend him, often at the risk of their
lives, even to incurring the enmity of Robespierre. Cambon,[40] who,
on his financial committee, is also a sort of sovereign, retains at
the Treasury five or six hundred employees unable to procure their
certificate of civism, and whom the Jacobins incessantly denounce so
as to get their places.
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