PHILIPPEAUX. I know, Westermann. It's because you attacked Rossignol, Ronsin, and all the blackguards, as I did, who dishonor the army. And the Jacobins are yelping after us. We shan't desert you. CAMILLE [_to_ DANTON]. We must do something. I offer my pen, and Westermann his sword. Guide us, Danton. You know how to handle the crowd, you understand the strategy of revolutions. Lead us; we have another Tenth of August ahead. DANTON. Later. PHILIPPEAUX. You've disappeared from the arena; they are forgetting you. Show yourself. What have you been doing these many weeks, hidden in the country? DANTON. I have been communing with mother earth, in order to draw new strength from it, like Anteus. PHILIPPEAUX. Rather you are looking for a pretext to retire from the fray. DANTON. I cannot lie: you speak the truth. CAMILLE. What's the trouble? DANTON. I am sick of humanity. I vomit men. HÉRAULT. You are not so sick of women, it seems? DANTON. The women at least are frank enough to be merely themselves and nothing more. They are what we all are: animals. They seek pleasure directly, and never lie to themselves and cover up their instincts with the cloak of reason. I hate the hypocrisy of the intelligence, the sanguinary idiocy of these idealists, these dictators of impotence, who call the natural needs corruption, and pretend to deny nature, in order to flatter their own monstrous egotism and their mad desire for destruction. Oh, if I could only be a brute, an honest out-and-out brute, with the frank desire to love others so long as they allow me a place in the sun! CAMILLE. Yes, we fairly reek with hypocrisy. DANTON. The most odious of hypocrisies: the hypocrisy of the dagger. The virtuous guillotine! PHILIPPEAUX. We have destroyed Capet, only in order that Talien, Fouchet, and Collot d'Herbois might repeat their persecutions and massacres as at Bordeaux and Lyon! CAMILLE. These maniacs have established a new religion--an obligatory and lay religion, giving the proconsuls a free hand to hang, slash, and burn--all in the name of virtue. DANTON. There is no danger in any state as great as that of the men with principles. They don't try to do good, but to be in the right; no suffering touches them. Their only morality, their only political ideal, is to impose their ideas on others. HÉRAULT [_reciting ironically_]: "A man of honor has a higher aim, His joy consists in giving joy to others!" LUCILE [_entering, and continuing the quotation_]: "The gen'rous man is not so hard to please. He jogs along and spurs his fractious beast Without inquiring if the poor young thing Enjoys himself or not--" HÉRAULT. Hm! You're well up in your authors! LUCILE. What of it? Every one knows _La Pucelle._ DANTON. You are right, my dear. It is the breviary of good women. HÉRAULT. Did you ever recite it to Robespierre? LUCILE. I'd never dare.