He was possessed
of considerable wealth, which he freely spent among the poor, while
famine pressed sore upon them; he was consequently loved, followed, and
obeyed. He was the King of the Faubourgs; and though the most ruthless
in his animosity to the royalists, he was not altogether a bad man,
neither was he by nature absolutely cruel. He had adopted the Revolution
from a belief that the great mass of the people would be better off in
the world without kings, nobility, or aristocrats; and having made
himself firm in this belief, he used to the utmost his coarse, huge,
burly power in upsetting these encumbrances on the nation. His love of
liberty had become a fanaticism. He had gone with the current, and he
had no fine feelings to be distressed at the horrid work which he had
to do, no humanity to be shocked; but he was not one of those who
delighted in bloodshed and revelled in the tortures which he inflicted
on others. He had been low in the world's esteem, and the Revolution had
raised him to a degree of eminence; this gratified his ambition, and
made him a ready tool in the hands of those who knew how to use his
well-known popularity, his wealth, his coarse courage and great physical
powers.
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