The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4

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To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club deteriorates,
add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety
frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government
sinks, and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and
sanguinary do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and
left as a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its
own clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being
principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in
the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, Hébert, leaders of the
Cordeliers club and of the Commune. After these, the indulgent who
are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism,
Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many
others who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising,
wearied or eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to
Chabot, from Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang
of followers, and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to do a volte-
face; those who were able to show initiative, grovel, while those who
could show mercy, become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern
Jacobins, the roots of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to
extirpate even in an ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to
the last fiber, the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming
more and more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to
it. The confidants of Hébert, those who listen to Chaumette, the
comrades of Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers
of Camille, the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to
publicly repudiate their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of
the decree which sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his
calumniators, to overwhelm him on trial: this or that judge or
juryman, who is one of Danton's partisans, is obliged to stifle a
defense of him, and, knowing him to be innocent, pronounce him guilty;
one who had often dined with Desmoulins is not only to guillotine him,
but, in addition to this, to guillotine his young widow. 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. If I could, I would
resign." -- The government, as the system becomes aggravated, is
forced to descend lower still that it may find suitable instruments;
it finds them now only in the lowest depths: in Germinal, to renew the
Commune, in Floréal, to renew the ministries, in Prairial, to re-
compose the revolutionary Tribunal, month after month, purging and re-
constituting the committees of each quarter[18] of the city. In vain
does Robespierre, writing and re-writing his secret lists, try to find
men able to maintain the system; he always falls back on the same
names, those of unknown persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or
fools with four or five second-class despots or fanatics among them,
as malevolent and as narrow as himself. - The purifying crucible has
been used too often and for too long a time; it has overheated; what
was sound, or nearly so, in the elements of the primitive fluid has
been forcibly evaporated; the rest has fermented and become acid;
nothing remains in the bottom of the vessel but the lees of stupidity
and wickedness, their concentrated and corrosive dregs.

II. Subaltern Jacobins.

Quality of subaltern leaders. - How they rule in the section
assemblies. - How they seize and hold office.

Such are the subordinate sovereigns[19] who in Paris, during 14 months
dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives. - And
first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of
popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested. -

"A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,[20] well-informed or not,
claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other
citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he
thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these
measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the
assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are
accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of
the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the
mysteries of the section."

" Sometimes," says one of the leaders,[21] "we find only ten members
of the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are
enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the
section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he
is an schemer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In
this way we impose silence on those who are not in line with the
club." -

Since September, 1793, operation is all the easier because the
majority, is now composed of beasts of burden, ruled with an iron
hand.

"When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on
private interest,[22] the motion is always put by one of the members
of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those
fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act
as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has
allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an
assembly, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with
loud applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed
unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well-
informed and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection,
he would run the risk of imprisonment as a suspect,[23] after being
treated as an aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a
certificate of civism, ( a serious matter) if he had the misfortune to
need one, did his survival depend on this, either as employee or
pensioner." - In the Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are
masons, "excellent patriots," says one of the clubbists of the
quarter:[24] they always vote on our side; we make them do what we
want." Numbers of day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of
every class, thus earn their forty sous, and have no idea that
anything else might be demanded from them. On entering the hall, when
the meeting opens, they write down their names, after which they go
out "to take a drink," without thinking themselves obliged to listen
to the rigmarole of the orators; towards the end, they come back, make
all the noise that is required of them with their lungs, feet and
hands, and then go and "take back their card and get their money."[25]
- With paid applauders of this stamp, they soon get the better of any
opponents, or, rather, all opposition is suppressed beforehand. "The
best citizens keep silent" in the section assemblies, or "stay away;"
these are simply "gambling-shops" where "the most absurd, the most
unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are passed at every
moment.[26] Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the unlimited
sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and the
communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter or
locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct,
enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him.
Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political
extravagance, of which three, four, five and six thousand impressions
are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the
example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done
for form's sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of
suspicion, etc." -- The twelve leaders, proprietors and distributors
of civism, have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits,
each according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are
free to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest.
- The pasture is vast and it is at the disposal of the leaders. In
one of his orders of the day, Henriot says:[27]

"I am very glad to announce to my brethren in arms that all the
positions are at the disposal of the government. The actual
government, which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and
which merely desires the happiness of all, . . . . will search
everywhere, even into the attics for virtuous men, . . . . poor
and genuine sans-culottes." And there is enough to satisfy them
thirty-five thousand places of public employment in the capital
alone:[28] it is a rich mine; already, before the month of May, 1793,
"the Jacobin club boasted of having placed nine thousand agents in the
administration,"[29] and since the 2nd of June, "virtuous men, poor,
genuine sans-culottes," arrive in crowds from "their garrets," dens
and hired rooms, each to grab his share. -- They besiege and install
themselves by hundreds the ancient offices in the War, Navy and
Public-Works departments, in the Treasury and Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. Here they rule, constantly denouncing all the remaining,
able employees thus creating vacancies in order to fill them.[30] Then
there are twenty new administrative departments which they keep for
themselves: commissioners of the first confiscation of national
property, commissioners of national property arising from emigrants
and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted carriage-horses,
commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the collecting and
manufacturing of saltpeter, commissioners on monopolies, civil-
commissioners in each of the forty-eight sections, commissioners on
propagandas in the departments, Commissioners on provisions, and many
others. Fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department
of subsistence in Paris,[31] and all are salaried. Here, already, are
a number of desirable offices. - Some are for the lowest rabble, two
hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to "stump-speakers," employed to
direct opinion in the Palais-Royal, also among the Tuileries groups,
as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Hôtel-de-
Ville;[32] two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum, to
waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons and hotels, for watching
foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five
francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for
garrisoning the domiciles of "suspects"; thousands, with premiums,
pay, and full license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the
revolutionary army, and for the gunners, paid guard and gendarmes of
Henriot. - The principal posts, however, are those which subject
lives and freedom to the discretion of those who occupy them: for,
through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and
such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary
committees, the bureaus of the Committee of General Security and of
the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the
prime-movers and active incentives of the system of Terror, all picked
Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved
by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of
patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the party,
issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own henchmen.[33]

They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. "
Pride has reached its highest point:[34] ... One who, yesterday, had
no post and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent
because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him
commissioner, or given him some employment or other." Henceforth, he
behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries
things out with a high hand. - On the 20th of Vendémiaire, year II.,
"in the middle of the night," the committee of the Piques section
summons M. Bélanger, the architect. He is notified that his house is
wanted immediately for a new Bastille. - "But, said he, 'I own no
other, and it is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with
models of art, and is fit only for that purpose.' - 'Your house or you
go to prison!' - 'But I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.' -
'Either your house or you go to prison; as to indemnities, we have
vacant lodgings for your tenants, as well as for yourself, in (the
prisons of) La Force, or Sainte-Pélagie.' Twelve sentinels on the post
start off at once and take possession of the premises; the owner is
allowed six hours to move out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return;
the bureaus, to which he appeals, interpret his obedience as 'tacit
adhesion,' and, very soon, he himself is locked up."[35] -
Administrative tools that cut so sharply need the greatest care, and,
from time to time, they are carefully oiled:[36] on the 20th of July,
1793, two thousand francs are given to each of the forty-eight
committees, and eight thousand francs to General Henriot, "for
expenses in watching anti-revolutionary maneuvers;" on the 7th of
August, fifty thousand francs "to indemnify the less successful
members of the forty-eight committees;" three hundred thousand francs
to Gen. Henriot "for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph
of liberty;" fifty thousand francs to the mayor, "for detecting the
plots of the malevolent;" on the 10th of September, forty thousand
francs to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department,
"for measures of security; " on the 13th of September, three hundred
thousand francs to the mayor "for preventing the attempts of the
malevolent;" on the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to
the popular clubs, "because these are essential to the propagation of
sound principles." - Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary,
there are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the
office.[37] Henriot appoints his comrades on the staff of paid spies
and denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their
position to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they
multiply domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom
himself, or steal what suits them on the premises.[38] - In the
Commune, and on the revolutionary-committees, every extortion can be,
and is, practiced.

"I know," says Quevremont, "two citizens who have been put in prison,
without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month, let
out and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand
livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand. . . . Gambron, at La
Force, pays one thousand five hundred livres a month for a room not to
live amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two
thousand livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again,
dared not speak of it, except in a whisper."[39]

Woe to the imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public
affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker
and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or
tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to
put his head "at the red window." - And I omit ordinary rapine, the
vast field open to extortion through innumerable inventories,
sequestrations and adjudications, through the enormities of
contractors, through hastily executed purchases and deliveries,
through the waste of two or three millions given weekly by the
government to the Commune for supplies for the capital, through the
requisitions of grain which give fifteen hundred men of the
revolutionary army an opportunity to clean out all the neighboring
farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit by this after the
fashion of the chauffeurs.[40] - With such a staff, these anonymous
thefts cannot surprise us. Babeuf, the falsifier of public contracts,
is secretary for provisions to the Commune; Maillard, the Abbaye
Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his direction, in
the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and leaders of
public opinion; Chrétien, whose smoking-shop serves as the rendezvous
of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the
revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted saber;[41]
De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and,
in the name of the Piques Section, he reads addresses to the
Convention.

III.

A Minister of Foreign Affairs. - A General in command. - The Paris
Commune. - A Revolutionary Committee.

Let us examine some of these figures closely: the nearer they are to
the eye and foremost in position, the more the importance of the duty
brings into light the unworthiness of the potentate. - There is
already one of them, whom we have seen in passing, Buchot, twice
noticed by Robespierre under his own hand as "a man of probity,
energetic and capable of fulfilling the most important functions,"[42]
appointed by the Committee of Public Safety "Commissioner on External
Relations," that is to say, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and kept in
this important position for nearly six months. He is a school-master
from the Jura,[43] recently disembarked from his small town and whose
"ignorance, low habits and stupidity surpass anything that can be
imagined . . . The chief clerks have nothing to do with him; he
neither sees nor asks for them. He is never found in his office, and
when it is indispensable to ask for his signature on any legislative
matter, the sole act to which he has reduced his functions, they are
compelled to go and force it from him in the Café Hardy, where he
usually passes his days." It must be borne in mind that he is envious
and spiteful, avenging himself for his incapacity on those whose
competency makes him sensible of his incompetence; he denounces them
as Moderates, and, at last, succeeds in having a warrant of arrest
issued against his four chief clerks; on the morning of Thermidor 9,
with a wicked leer, he himself carries the news to one of them, M.
Miot. Unfortunately for him, after Thermidor, he is turned out and M.
Miot is put in his place. With diplomatic politeness, the latter
calls on his predecessor and "expresses to him the usual compliments."
Buchot, insensible to compliments, immediately thinks of the
substantial, and the first thing he asks for is to keep provisionally
his apartment in the ministry. On this being granted, he expresses
his thanks and tells M. Miot that it was very well to appoint him,
but "for myself, it is very disagreeable. I have been obliged to come
to Paris and quit my post in the provinces, and now they leave me in
the street." Thereupon, with astounding impudence, he asks the man
whom he wished to guillotine to give him a place as ministerial clerk.
M. Miot tries to make him understand that for a former minister to
descend so low would be improper. Buchot regards such delicacy as
strange, and, seeing M. Miot's embarrassment, he ends by saying: "If
you don't find me fit for a clerk, I shall be content with the place
of a servant." This estimate of himself shows his proper value.

The other, whom we have also met before, and who is already known by
his acts,[44] general in Paris of the entire armed force, commander-
in-chief of one hundred and ten thousand men, is that former servant
or under-clerk of the procureur Formey, who, dismissed by his employer
for robbery, shut up in Bicêtre, by turns a runner and announcer for a
traveling show, barrier-clerk and September assassin, has purged the
Convention on the 2nd of June - in short, the famous Henriot, and now
simply a brute and a sot. In this latter capacity, spared on the
trial of the Hébertists, he is kept as a tool, for the reason,
doubtless, that he is narrow, coarse and manageable, more compromised
than anybody else, good for any job, without the slightest chance of
becoming independent, unemployed in the army,45 having no prestige
with true soldiers, a general for street parade and an interloper and
lower than the lowest of the mob; his mansion, his box at the Opera-
Comique, his horses, his importance at festivals and reviews, and,
above all, his orgies make him perfectly content. - Every evening, in
full uniform, escorted by his aides-de-camp, he gallops to Choisy-sur-
Seine, where, in the domicile of a flatterer named Fauvel, along with
some of Robespierre's confederates or the local demagogues, he revels.
They toss off the wines of the Duc de Coigny, smash the glasses,
plates and bottles, betake themselves to neighboring dance-rooms and
kick up a row, bursting in doors, and breaking benches and chairs to
pieces - in short, they have a good time. - The next morning, having
slept himself sober, he dictates his orders for the day, veritable
masterpieces in which the silliness, imbecility and credulity of a
numskull, the sentimentality of the drunkard, the clap-trap of a
mountebank and the tirades of a cheap philosopher form an unique
compound, at once sickening and irritating, like the fiery, pungent
mixtures of cheap bars, which suit his audience better because they
contain the biting, mawkish ingredients that compose the adulterated
brandy of the Revolution. - He is posted on foreign maneuvers, and
enlarges upon the true reasons for the famine: "A lot of bread has
been lately found in the privies: the Pitts and Cobourgs and other
rascals who want to enslave justice and reason, and assassinate
philosophy, must be called to account for this. Headquarters,
etc."[46] He has theories on religions and preaches civic modesty to
all dissenters: "The ministers and sectaries of every form of worship
are requested not to practice any further religious ceremonies outside
their temples. Every good sectarian will see the propriety of
observing this order. The interior of a temple is large enough for
paying one's homage to the Eternal, who requires no rites that are
repulsive to every thinking man. The wise agree that a pure heart is
the sublimest homage that Divinity can desire. Headquarters, etc." -
He sighs for the universal idyllic state, and invokes the suppression
of the armed force:

"I beg my fellow-citizens, who are led to the criminal courts out of
curiosity, to act as their own police; this is a task which every good
citizen should fulfill wherever he happens to be. In a free country,
justice should not be secured by pikes and bayonets, but through
reason and philosophy. These must maintain a watchful eye over
society; these must purify it and proscribe thieves and evil-doers.
Each individual must bring his small philosophic portion with him and,
with these small portions, compose a rational totality that will turn
out to be of benefit and to the welfare of all. Oh, for the time when
functionaries shall be rare, when the wicked shall be overthrown, when
the law shall become the sole functionary in society! Headquarters,
etc. " -- Every morning, he preaches in the same pontifical strain.
Imagine the scene - Henriot's levee at head-quarters, and a writing
table, with, perhaps, a bottle of brandy on it; on one side of the
table, the rascal who, while buckling on his belt or drawing on his
boots, softens his husky voice, and, with his nervous twitchings,
flounders through his humanitarian homily; on the other side the mute,
uneasy secretary, who may probably be able to spell, but who dares not
materially change the grotesque phraseology of his master.

The Commune which employs the commanding-general is of about the same
alloy, for, in the municipal sword, the blade and hilt, forged
together in the Jacobin shop, are composed of the same base metal. -
Fifty-six, out of eighty-eight members, whose qualifications and
occupations are known, are decidedly illiterate, or nearly so, their
education being rudimentary, or none at all.[47] Some of them are
petty clerks, counter-jumpers and common scribblers, one among them
being a public writer; others are small shopkeepers, pastry-cooks,
mercers, hosiers, fruit-sellers and wine-dealers; yet others are
simple mechanics or even laborers, carpenters, joiners, cabinet-
makers, locksmiths, and especially three tailors, four hair-dressers,
two masons, two shoemakers, one cobbler, one gardener; one stone-
cutter, one paver, one office-runner, and one domestic. Among the
thirty-two who are instructed, one alone has any reputation, Paris,
professor at the University and the assistant of Abbé Delille. Only
one, Dumetz, an old engineer, steady, moderate and attending to the
supplies, seems a competent and useful workman. The rest, collected
from amongst the mass of unknown demagogues, are six art-apprentices
or bad painters, six business-agents or ex-lawyers, seven second or
third-rate merchants, one teacher, one surgeon, one unfrocked married
priest, all of whom, under the political direction of Mayor Fleuriot-
Lescot and Payen, the national agent, bring to the general council no
administrative ability, but the faculty for verbal argumentation,
along with the requisite amount of talk and scribbling indispensable
to a deliberative assembly. And it is curious to see them in session.
Toward the end of September, 1793,[48] one of the veterans of liberal
philosophy and political economy, belonging to the French Academy and
ruined by the Revolution, the old Abbé Morellet, needs a certificate
of civism, to enable him to obtain payment of the small pension of one
thousand francs, which the Constituent Assembly had voted him in
recompense for his writings; the Commune, desiring information about
this, selects three of its body to inquire into it. Morellet
naturally takes the preliminary steps. He first writes "a very
humble, very civic note," to the president of the General Council,
Lubin Jr., formerly an art-apprentice who had abandoned art for
politics, and is now living with his father a butcher, in the rue St.
Honoré; he calls on this authority, and passes through the stall,
picking his way amongst the slaughterhouse offal; admitted after some
delay, he finds his judge in bed, before whom he pleads his cause. He
then calls upon Bernard, an ex-priest, "built like an incendiary and
ill-looking," and respectfully bows to the lady of the house, "a
tolerably young woman, but very ugly and very dirty." Finally, he
carries his ten or a dozen volumes to the most important of the three
examiners, Vialard, " ex-ladies' hair-dresser; " the latter is almost
a colleague, "for," says he, " I have always liked technicians, having
presented to the Academy of Sciences a top which I invented myself."
Nobody, however, had seen the petitioner in the streets on the 10th of
August, nor on the 2nd of September, nor on the 31st of May; how can a
certificate of civism be granted after such evidences of lukewarmness?
Morellet, not disheartened, awaits the all-powerful hair-dresser at
the Hôtel-de-Ville, and accosts him frequently as he passes along.
He, "with greater haughtiness and distraction than the most
unapproachable Minister of War would show to an infantry lieutenant,"
scarcely listens to him and walks on; he goes in and takes his seat,
and Morellet, much against his will, has to be present at ten or
twelve of these meetings. What strange meetings, to which patriotic
deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing;
where the president, Lubin, "decorated with his scarf," shouts the
Marseilles Hymn five or six times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of
several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always "out of
time, displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander. .
. I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this
manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly
repeating the last line of the verse." - " How odd!" exclaims a common
woman alongside of Morellet, "how droll, passing all their time here,
singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?" - Not alone
for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers,
and especially the hair-dresser, come and propose measures for murder
"in infuriate language and with fiery gesticulation." Such are the
good speakers[49] and men for show. The others, who remain silent,
and hardly know to write, act and do the rough work. A certain
Chalaudon, member of the Commune,[50] is one of this kind, president
of the Revolutionary Committee of the section of "L'Homme armé," and
probably an excellent man-hunter; for "the government committees
assigned to him the duty of watching the right bank of the Seine, and,
with extraordinary powers conferred on him, he rules from his back
shop one half of Paris. Woe to those he has reason to complain of,
those who have withdrawn from, or not given him, their custom!
Sovereign of his quarter up to Thermidor 10, his denunciations are
death-warrants. Some of the streets, especially that of Grand
Chantier, he "depopulates." And this Marais exterminator is a
"cobbler," a colleague in leather, as well as in the Commune, of Simon
the shoemaker, the preceptor and murderer of the young Dauphin.