Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/146

140 duties, and only occasionally catches the drift of the following conversation.]

is right: we must make the effort. It is our business to direct the Revolution which we have started. This voice of mine has not yet lost its power over the crowd. It has sent fanatics to the guillotine. We were never so strong as today; let us follow up our success: the Luxembourg is no more difficult to take than the Bastille. We laid low nine centuries of monarchy, and we can easily deal with a handful of vagabonds, who derive their power from us, and who use it in order to run the Convention and France in their own way.

[walking about agitatedly rascals! If they only confined themselves to murder! But no, they had to implicate Fabre in the Compagnie des Indes business; invented that impossible yarn: Jews and German bankers bribing our friend in order to corrupt the Assembly! They know they are lying, but they cannot satisfy their consciences until they vilify their enemy before they kill him.

enemies are virtuous: and that is some consolation: to have our throats cut in the name of principles.

hates hypocrisy. Let us beat the pedants and thrash Basile!

have done my duty: let each do his. I dragged to light the brigands of the Western Army, the military staff of Saumur. I have a firm hold on their necks, and only the loss of my own head will force me to release it. I have no illusions: I know