They, too, maintain themselves by Terror; only, like so many
Tartuffes, they are not disposed to act openly as executioners. The
Directory, heir to the Convention, affects to repudiate its
inheritance: "Woe," says Boulay de la Meurthe, "to whoever would re-
establish scaffolds." There is to be no guillotine; its purveyors have
been too strongly denounced; they stand too near the red stream and
view with too great nervous horror those who fed it. It is better to
employ death at a distance, lingering and spontaneous, with no
effusion of human blood, "dry," less repulsive than the other sort,
but more painful and not less certain; this shall be imprisonment on
the marshes of Rochefort, and, better still, transportation to the
feverish coasts of Guyanna: there is no distinction between the mode
used by the Convention and that of the Directory, except the
distinction between to kill and to cause death.[84] Moreover, every
brutality that can be employed to repress the indignation of the
proscribed by fear is exhausted on the way. - The first convoy which
bears away, with thirteen others, Barth?l?my, who negotiated the
treaty of Basle, Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, Lafond-Lad?bat,
president of the council of the Five Hundred, Barb?-Marbois, president
of the council of the Ancients, was at first provided with
carriages.
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