- At the same
time, from the top and from the center, he is pushed on and directed:
his local counselors are chosen for him, and the directors of his
conscience;[87] they rate him soundly on the choice of his agents or
of his lodgings;[88] they force dismissals on him, appointments,
arrests, executions; they spur him on in the path of terror and
suffering. - Around him are paid emissaries,[89] while others watch
him gratis and constantly write to the Committees of Public Safety and
General Security, often to denounce him, always to report on his
conduct, to judge his measures and to provoke the measures which he
does not take.[90]
Whatever he may have done or may do, he cannot turn his eyes toward
Paris without seeing danger ahead, a mortal danger which, on the
Committee, in the Convention, at the Jacobin Club, increases or will
increase against him, like a tempest. - Briez, who, in Valenciennes
under siege, showed courage, and whom the Convention had just
applauded and added to the Committee of Public Safety, hears himself
reproached for being still alive: "He who was at Valenciennes when the
enemy took it will never reply to this question - are you dead?"[91]
He has nothing to do now but to declare himself incompetent, decline
the honor mistakenly conferred on him by the Convention, and
disappear.
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