I have three boys who I hope will some day be more useful to their country than those rascals you want to save.

Anyhow, all that can be done is to let 'em out and give them arms, and we will fight 'em on an equal footing.

Whether I die here or on the frontiers, scoundrels would kill me all the same, and I will sell my life dearly.
But, whether it is done by me or by someone else, the prison shall be cleaned out of those cursed beggars, there, now!" At this a general cry is heard: "He's right! No mercy! Let us go in!" All that the crowd assent to is an improvised tribunal, the reading of the jailer's register, and prompt judgment; condemnation and slaughter must follow, according to the famous Commune, which simplifies things--There is another simplification still more formidable, which is the condemnation and slaughter by categories.

Any title suffices, Swiss, priest, officer, or servant of the King, "the 'worms' on the civil list"; wherever a lot of priests or Swiss are found, it is not worth while to have a trial, the throats of the lot can be slit .-- Reduced to this, the operation is adapted to the operators; the arms of the new sovereign are as strong as his mind is weak, and, through an inevitable adaptation, he degrades his work to the level of his faculties.
His work, in its turn, degrades and perverts him.

No man, and especially a man of the people, rendered pacific by an old civilization, can, with impunity, become at one stroke both sovereign and executioner.