In effect,
before guillotining Robespierre and his associates as orthodox, it
guillotined the Girondins, H?bert and Danton, as heretics. Now, "the
existence of popular idols and of head charlatans is irrevocably
ended."[2] Ever the same conventional symbol before the empty
sanctuary in the blood-stained temple, and ever the same loud-intoned
anthem; but faith is gone, and only the acolytes remain to drone out
the revolutionary litany, old train-bearers and swingers of incense,
the subaltern butchers who, through a sudden stroke, have become
pontiffs; in short, the valets of the church who have donned the
mitres and croziers of their masters after having assassinated them.
From month to month, under the pressure of public opinion, they detach
themselves from the worship at which they have officiated, for,
however blunted or perverted their consciences, they cannot avoid
admitting that Jacobinism, as they have practiced it, was the religion
of robbery and murder. Previous to Thermidor an official
phraseology[3] drowned with its doctrinal roar the living truth, while
each Conventional sacristan or beadle, confined to his own chapel, saw
clearly only the human sacrifices in which he himself had taken part.
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