The same Tallien tucks a dagger under his wrap-rascal, intended for Robespierre, and declares—
Through ranks of minions this shall reach his heart:
Shall drive o'er seats of dupes and cravens full,
As bounds through herds a bloodhound for the bull.
Neat and appropriate. Barrère is in positive ecstasies at Tallien's eloquence, and thus applauds him:
What peals sublime can truth and reason roll!
Why, here is music ravishes my soul!
No swan-like cadence, but an eagle's strain,
Whose beak swoops screaming for a bison's brain.
Well may Tallien, under such auspices, demand unlimited freedom of speech:
Let my tongue's torrent have nor stay nor stain,
As Arethuse untainted cleaves the main.
Here is a cluster of likenesses, for which we have to thank St. Just:
The Commonwealth from chaos comes, like earth,
And wails, like man, the moment of his birth;
And, like the whirlwind's morrow, springs to light
From the storm's bosom and the womb of night.
We must try to bear in mind this genesis of the whirlwind's morrow, for meteorological and poetical uses. Here is another striking simile, applied by Robespierre to Tallien:
Shame on the Mountain must as mist condense,
Till the blaze burst, and hurl the villain thence.
Tallien pronounces Robespierre
Mute as pest, and mystic as a bier;
and plainly tells him,
The giant gibbet towers,
With bloody tooth, insatiably on high,
To gnash for prey, deforming earth and sky,
Above all law, all conscience, all control—
The type and image, tyrant, of thy soul.
Tallien is for sending him to plead at the Tribunal, on retributive grounds:
As the brass bull, that bellowed o'er a fire,
To enclose the inventor first, and last the buyer.
In style One of Her Majesty's Counsel is at times eminently terse and concise, or aims at being so, even at the risk of obscurity. Robespierre thus warns the deputies against sophistic and hostile counsellors:
There are, who flatter, is, who tells you truth—
Are, who divide you, is, who would unite.
He declares that
Fouquier for France at any shall impeach
All, who corrupt the People, or alarm.
He asks (and answers),
What's fame? A parrot, fowlers teach by rote
The by-word, time records, for dupes to quote.
