Moreover, in
the revolutionary committees, at the Commune, in the offices of the
Committee of General Safety, in the bureau of the Central Police, at
the headquarters of the armed force, at the revolutionary Tribunal,
the service to which they are compelled to do becomes daily more
onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors, to arrest
colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be such, in
their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty unfortunates
who form the daily food of the guillotine, to "amalgamate" them
haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort
octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under
the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to
contrive means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for
removing the too-visible stains of blood. Of what species do the
beings consist, who can accept such a task, and perform it day after
day, with the prospect of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier-Tinville
himself succumbs. One evening, on his way to the Committee of Public
Safety, "he feels unwell" on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: "I think I
see the ghosts of the dead following us, especially those of the
patriots I have had guillotined!"[17] And at another time: "I would
rather plow the ground than be public prosecutor.
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