A ferocious instinct makes men see their adversaries in their own image and thus justify them to take those measures which they imagine their enemies would have taken in their place.[2647]--The committee of Jacobin leaders states positively that the Court is about to attack, and, accordingly, has devised "not merely signs of this, but of the most unmistakable proof."[2648]--"It is the Trojan horse," exclaimed Panis; "We are lost if we do not succeed in disemboweling it....

The bomb explodes on the night of August 9-10...

Fifteen thousand aristocrats stand ready to slaughter all patriots." Patriots, consequently, attribute to themselves the right to slaughter aristocrats .-- Late in June, in the Minimes section, "a French guardsman had already determined to kill the King," if the King persisted in his veto.

When the president of the section wanted to expulse the regicide, it was the latter who was retained and the president was expelled.[2649] On the 14th of July, the day of the Federation festival, another predecessor of Louvel and Fieschi, provided with a cutlass, had introduced himself into the battalion on duty at the palace, for the same purpose; during the ceremony the crowd warmed up, and, for a moment, the King owed his life to the firmness of his escort.

On the 27th of July, in the garden of the Tuileries, d'Espremenil, the old Constituent[2650], beaten, slashed, and his clothes torn, pursued like a stag across the Palais Royal, falls bleedings on a mattress at the gates of the Treasury.[2651] On the 29th of July, whilst one of Lafayette's aides, M.Bureau de Pusy, is at the bar of the house, "they try to have a motion passed in the Palais Royal to parade his head on the end of a pike."[2652]--At this level of rage and fear, the brutal and the excited can wait no longer.