If he belongs to the region, like
Lecarpentier, Barras, Lebon, Javogue, Couthon, Andr? Dumont and many
others, he is well acquainted with the families he proscribes; names
to him are not merely so many letters strung together, but they recall
personal souvenirs and evoke living forms. At all events, he is the
spectator, artisan and beneficiary of his own dictatorship; the
silver-plate and money he confiscates passes under his eye, through
his hands; he sees the "suspects" he incarcerates march before him; he
is in the court-room on the rendering of the sentence of death;
frequently, the guillotine he has supplied with heads works under his
windows; he sleeps in the mansion of an emigr? he makes requisitions
for the furniture, linen and wine belonging to the decapitated and the
imprisoned,[96] lies in their beds, drinks their wine and revels with
plenty of company at their expense, and in their place. In the same
way as a bandit chief who neither kills nor robs with his own hands,
but has murder and robbery committed in his presence, by which he
substantially profits, not by proxy, but personally, through the well-
directed blows ordered by him. - To this degree, and in such
proximity to physical action, omnipotence is a noxious atmosphere
which no state of health can resist.
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