Restored to the conditions which
poisoned man in barbarous times or countries, he is again attacked by
moral maladies from which he was thenceforth believed to be exempt; he
retrogrades even to the strange corruptions of the Orient and the
Middle Ages; forgotten leprosies, apparently extinct, with exotic
pestilences to which civilized lands seemed closed, reappear in his
soul with their issues and tumors.
VII. Brutal Instincts.
Eruption of brutal instincts. - Duquesnoy at Metz. - Dumont at
Amiens. - Drunkards. - Cusset, Bourbotte, Moustier, Bourdon de
l'Oise, Dartigoyte.
"It seems," says a witness who was long acquainted with Maignet, "that
all he did for these five or six years was simply the delirious phase
of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing
had happened."[97] And Maignet himself writes "I was not made for
these tempests." That goes for everyone but especially for the coarser
natures; subordination would have restrained them while dictatorial
power make the instincts of the brute and the mob appear.
Contemplate Duquesnoy, a sort of mastiff, always barking and biting,
when gorged he is even more furious. Delegate to the army of the
Moselle, and passing by Metz[98] he summoned before him Altmayer, the
public prosecutor, although he had sat down to dinner.
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