...

The patriotic agents conjured me not to give way....

I did not fully carry out the most imperative orders."[3294] Similarly, the great exterminator of Nantes, Carrier, when urged to spare the rebels who surrendered of their own accord: "Do you want me to be guillotined?
It is not in my power to save those people."[3295] And another time: "I have my orders; I must observe them; I do not want to have my head cut off!" Under penalty of death, the representative on mission is a Terrorist, like his colleagues in the Convention and on the Committee of Public Safety, but with a much more serious disturbance of his nervous and his moral system; for he does not operate like them on paper, at a distance, against categories of abstract, anonymous and vague beings; his work is not merely an effort of the intellect, but also of the senses and the imagination.

If he belongs to the region, like Lecarpentier, Barras, Lebon, Javogue, Couthon, Andre Dumont and many others, he is well acquainted with the families he proscribes; names to him are not merely so many letters strung together, but they recall personal souvenirs and evoke living forms.

At all events, he is the spectator, artisan and beneficiary of his own dictatorship; the silver-plate and money he confiscates passes under his eye, through his hands; he sees the "suspects" he incarcerates march before him; he is in the court-room on the rendering of the sentence of death; frequently, the guillotine he has supplied with heads works under his windows; he sleeps in the mansion of an emigre he makes requisitions for the furniture, linen and wine belonging to the decapitated and the imprisoned,[3296] lies in their beds, drinks their wine and revels with plenty of company at their expense, and in their place.