The royalists must be terrified!"[3157]--It is he who, on the 28th of August, obtains from the Assembly the great domiciliary visit, by which the Commune fills the prisons.

It is he who, on the 2d of September, to paralyze the resistance of honest people, causes the penalty of death to be decreed against whoever, "directly or indirectly shall, in any manner whatsoever, refuse to execute, or who shall interfere with the orders issued, or with the measures of the executive power." It is he who, on that day, informs the journalist Prudhomme of the pretended prison plot, and who, the second day after, sends his secretary, Camille Desmoulins, to falsify the report of the massacres,[3158] It is he who, on the 3rd of September, at the office of the Minister of Justice, before the battalion officers and the heads of the service, before Lacroix, president of the Assembly, and Petion, mayor of Paris, before Clavieres, Servan, Monge, Lebrun, and the entire Executive Council, except Roland, reduces at one stroke the head men of the government to the position of passive accomplices, replying to a man of feeling, who rises to stay the slaughter, "Sit down--it was necessary!"[3159] It is he who, the same day, dispatches the circular, countersigned by him, by which the Committee of Supervision announces the massacre, and invites "their brethren of the departments" to follow the example of Paris.[3160] It is he who, on the 10th of September, "not as Minister of Justice, but as Minister of the People," is to congratulate and thank the slaughterers of Versailles.[3161]--After the 10th of August, through Billaud-Varennes, his former secretary, through Fabre d'Eglantine, his Keeper of the Seals, through Tallien, secretary of the Commune and his most trusty henchman, he is present at all deliberations in the Hotel-de-ville, and, at the last hour, is careful to put on the Committee of Supervision one of his own men, the head clerk, Desforges.[3162]--Not only was the reaping-machine constructed under his own eye, and with his assent, but, again, when it is put in motion, he holds the handle, so as to guide the scythe.
He is right; if he did not sometimes put on the brake, it would go to pieces through its own action.

Introduced into the Committee as professor of political blood-letting, Marat, stubbornly following out a fixed idea, cuts down deep, much below the designated line; warrants of arrest were already out against thirty deputies, Brissot's papers were rummaged, Roland's house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in a neighboring department, is deposed in the slaughterhouse.

The latter is saved with the utmost difficulty; many a blow is necessary before he can be wrested from the maniac who had seized him.

With a surgeon like Marat, and medics like the four or five hundred leaders of the Commune and of the sections, it is not essential to guide the knife; it is a foregone conclusion that the amputation will be extensive.