of the monstrous brute on which he is mounted. Slower than the other, this one is still more ravenous, for, with similar claws and teeth, it has a vaster appetite. At the end of three years Robespierre has overtaken Marat, at that distant end of the line, at the station where Marat had established himself from the very beginning, and the theoretician now adopts the policy, the aim, the means, the work, and almost the vocabulary of a maniac:[31139] armed dictatorship of the urban mob, systematic perturbation of the bribed rabble, war against the bourgeoisie, extermination of the rich, placing opposition writers, administrators and deputies outside the law. Both monsters get the same food; only, to the ration of his monster, Robespierre adds "vicious men" as its special and favorite prey. Henceforth, he may in vain abstain from action, take refuge in his rhetoric, stop his chaste ears, and raise his hypocritical eyes to heaven, he cannot avoid seeing or hearing under his immaculate feet the streaming gore, and the bones crashing in the open jaws of the insatiable monster which he has fashioned and on which he rides.[31140] These ever open and hungry jaws must be daily fed with an ampler supply of human flesh; not only is he bound to let it eat, but to furnish the food, often with his own hands, except that he must afterwards wash them, declaring, and even believing, that no spot of blood has ever soiled them. He is generally content to caress and flatter the brute, to excuse it, to let it go on. Nevertheless, more than once, tempted by the opportunity, he has launched it against his designated victim.[31141] He is now himself starting off in quest of living prey; he casts the net of his rhetoric[31142] around it; he fetches it bound to the open jaws; he thrusts aside with an uncompromising air the arms of friends, wives and mothers, the outstretched hands of suppliants begging for lives;[31143] he suddenly throttles the struggling victims[31144] and, for fear that they might escape, he strangles them in time. Near the end, this is no longer enough; the brute must have grander quarries, and, accordingly, a pack of hounds, beaters-up, and, willingly or not, it is Robespierre who equips, directs and urges them on, at Orange, at Paris,[31145] ordering them to empty the prison's, and be expeditious in doing their work.--In this profession of slaughtering, destructive instincts, long repressed by civilization, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first "that of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage appearance of the wildcat, and close to the ferocious exterior of the tiger. In the Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the Convention he froths at the mouth."[31146] The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor changes into the personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his teeth;[31147] Sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to