- Loss of common-sense. - Fabre, Gaston,
Guiter, in the army of the Eastern Pyrenees. - Baudot, Lebas, Saint-
Just, and the predecessors and successors in the army of the Rhine. -
Furious excitement. - Lebon at Arras, and Carrier at Nantes.
If intoxication is needed to awaken the brute, a dictatorship suffices
to arouse the madman. The mental equilibrium of most of these new
sovereigns is disturbed; the distance between what the man once was
and what he now is, is too great. Formerly he was a petty lawyer,
village doctor, or schoolmaster, an unknown mover of a resolution in a
local club, and only yesterday he was one voter in the Convention out
of seven hundred and fifty. Look at him now, the arbiter, in one of
the departments, of all fortunes and liberties, and master of five
thousand lives. Like a pair of scales into which a disproportionate
weight has been thrown, his reason totters on the side of pride. Some
of them regard their competency unlimited, like their powers, and
having just joined the army, claim the right of being appointed major-
generals.[112] "Declare officially," writes Fabre to the Committee of
Public Safety,[113] "that, in future, generals shall be simply the
lieutenants of the delegates to the Convention.
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