Danton had a heart; he had the quick sensibilities of a man of flesh and blood stirred by the primitive instincts, the good ones along with the bad ones, instincts which culture had neither impaired nor deadened, which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practice daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder.

Already in September, "cloaking his pity under his bellowing,"[3176] he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the butchers.

When the axe is about to fall on the Girondists, he is "ill with grief" and despair.

"I am unable to save them," he exclaimed, " and big tears streamed down his cheeks."-- On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of fore-thought.

He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and approaching suicide of the Revolution.
"The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up."[3177]--"Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebiad of political Trappists."[3178]--At the end, he sees more clearly still: "On a day like this I organized the Revolutionary Tribunal: I ask pardon for it of God and man .-- In Revolutions, authority remains with the greatest scoundrels .-- It is better to be a poor fisherman than govern men."[3179] But he has aspired to govern them; he constructed a new machine for the purpose, and, deaf to its squeals, it worked in conformity with the structure and the impulse he gave to it.