"
"Affairs must be greatly altered, Eleanor; many things which are now
undone must be completed, before we walk again for our pleasure: a true
patriot can no longer walk the streets of Paris in safety, while
traitors can come and go in security, with their treason blazoned on
their foreheads."
"And yet do not many traitors expiate their crimes daily?"
"Many are condemned and die; but I fear not always those who have most
deserved death. Much blood has been shed, and it has partly been in
compliance with my counsel. I would that the vengeance of the Republic
might now stay its hand, if it could be so, with safety to the people.
I am sick of the unchanging sentences of the judges, and the verdicts
of juries who are determined to convict. I doubt not that those who are
brought before them are traitors or aristocrats--at any rate, they are
not at heart republicans, and if so, they have deserved death; but I
should be better pleased, if now and then a victim was spared." He
paused for a while, and then added, "The blood of traitors is very
sickening; but there are those Eleanor, in whose nostrils it has a sweet
savour: there are butchers of the human kind, who revel in the horrid
shambles, in which they are of necessity employed.
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