In September, 1792, in the Council at the Commune, he estimates forty thousand as the number of heads that should be laid low.[3141] Six weeks later, the social abscess having enormously increased, the figures swell in proportion; he now demands two hundred and seventy thousand heads,[3142] always on the score of humanity, "to ensure public tranquility," on condition that the operation be entrusted to him, as the temporary enforcer of the justice .-- Except for this last point, the rest is granted to him; it is unfortunate that he could not see with his own eyes the complete fulfillment of his programme, the batches condemned by the revolutionary Tribunal, the massacres of Lyons and Toulon, the drownings of Nantes .-- From the beginning to the end, he was in keeping with the Revolution, lucid on account of his blindness, thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal malady with the public malady, to the early manifestation of his complete madness in the midst of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not climb or only stumbled up.
II.

Danton.
Danton .-- Richness of his faculties .-- Disparity between his condition and instincts .-- The Barbarian .-- His work .-- His weakness.
There is nothing of the madman about Danton; on the contrary, not only is his intellect sound, but he possesses political aptitudes to an eminent degree, and to such an extent that, in this particular, none of his associates or adversaries compare with him, while, among the men of the Revolution, only Mirabeau equals or surpasses him.

He is an original, spontaneous genius and not, like most of his contemporaries, a disputatious, quill-driving theorist,[3143] that is to say, a fanatical pedant, an artificial being composed of his books, a mill-horse with blinkers, and turning around in a circle without an issue.

His free judgment is not hampered by abstract prejudices: he does not carry about with him a social contract, like Rousseau, nor, like Sieyes, a social art and cabinet principles or combinations;[3144] he has kept aloof from these instinctively and, perhaps, through contempt for them; he had no need of them; he would not have known what to do with them.

Systems are crutches for the impotent, while he is able-bodied; formulas serve as spectacles for the short-sighted, while his eyes are good.