How can they
renounce all this? - And all the more because this is all they have.
These jaded consciences are wholly indifferent to abstract principles,
to popular sovereignty, to the common weal, to public security; the
thin and brittle coating of sonorous phrases under which they formerly
tried to hide the selfishness and perversity of their lusts, scales
off and falls to the ground. They themselves confess that it is not
the Republic for which they are concerned, but for themselves above
everything else, and for themselves alone. So much the worse for the
Republic if its interest is opposed to their interest; as Si?y?s will
soon express it, the object is not to save the Revolution but the
revolutionaries. - Thus disabused, unscrupulous, knowing that they
are staking their all, and resolute, like their colleagues of August
10, September 2 and May31 and like the Committee of Public Safety,
they are determined to win, no matter at what cost or by what means.
For this time again, the Moderates do not want to comprehend that the
war has been declared, and that it is war to the knife. They do not
agree amongst themselves; they want to gain time, they hesitate and
take refuge in constitutional forms - they do not act.
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