Old "hags," who had just clapped their hands at the slaughtering, stop the guards "violently" as they hurry Weber along, in white silk stockings, across pools of blood: "Hey, guard, look out, you are making Monsieur walk in the gutter!"[3198] In short, they display the permanent qualities of their race and class; they seem to be neither above nor below the average of their brethren, Most of them, probably, would never have done anything very monstrous had a rigid police, like that which maintains order in ordinary times, kept them in their shops or at home in their lodgings or in their tap-rooms.
But, in their own eyes, they are so many kings; "sovereignty is committed to their hands,"[3199] their powers are unlimited; whoever doubts this is a traitor, and is properly punished; he must be put out of the way; while, for royal councillors, they take maniacs and rascals, who, through monomania or calculation, have preach all that to them: just like a Negro king surrounded by white slave-dealers, who urge him into raids, and by black sorcerers, who prompt him to massacre.

How could such a man with such guides, and in such an office, be retarded by the formalities of justice, or by the distinctions of equity?
Equity and justice are the elaborate products of civilization, while he is merely a political savage.

In vain are the innocent recommended to his mercy! "Look here, citizen,[31100] do you, too, want to put us to sleep?
Suppose that those cursed Prussian and Austrian beggars were in Paris, would they pick out the guilty?
Wouldn't they strike right and left, the same as the Swiss did on the 10th of August?
Very well, I can't make speeches, but I don't put anybody to sleep.

I say, I am the father of a family--I have a wife and five children that I mean to leave here for the section to look after, while I go and fight the enemy.

But I have no intention that while I am gone these villains here in prison, and other villains who would come and let them out, should cut the throats of my wife and children.