Taciturn, impassible, keeping people at a distance, as imperious as if the entire will of the people and the majesty of transcendent reason resided in his person, he seems to have reduced his passions to the desire of dashing everything to atoms, and to creating dismay.

It may be said of him that, like the conquering Tartars, he measures his self-attributed grandeur by what he fells; no other has so extensively swept away fortunes, liberties and lives; no other has so terrifically heightened the effect of his deeds by laconic speech and the suddenness of the stroke.

He orders the arrest and close confinement of all former nobles, men and women, in the four departments, in twenty-four hours; he orders the bourgeoisie of Strasbourg to pay over nine millions in twenty-four hours; ten thousand persons in Strasbourg must give up their shoes in twenty-four hours; random and immediate discharges of musketry on the officers of the Rhine army--such are the measures.[32149] So much the worse for the innocent; there is no time to discern who they are; "a blind man hunting for a pin in a dust-heap takes the whole heap."[32150]--And, whatever the order, even when it cannot be executed, so much the worse for him to whom it is given, for the captain who, directed by the representative to establish this or that battery in a certain time, works all night with all his forces, "with as many men as the place will hold."[32151] The battery not being ready at the hour named, Saint-Just sends the captain to the guillotine .-- The sovereign having once given an order it cannot be countermanded; to take back his words would be weakening himself;[32152] in the service of omnipotence, pride is insatiable, and, to mollify it, no barbaric act is too great .-- The same appetite is visible in Collot d'Herbois, who, no longer on the stage, plays before the town the melo-dramatic tyrant with all becoming ostentation.

One morning, at Lyons, he directs the revolutionary Tribunal to arrest, examine and sentence a youthful "suspect" before the day is over.

"Towards six o'clock,[32153] Collot being at table enjoying an orgy with prostitutes, buffoons and executioners, eating and drinking to choice music, one of the judges of the Tribunal enters; after the usual formalities, he is led up to the Representative, and informs him that the young man had been arrested and examined, and the strictest inquiries made concerning him; he is found irreproachable and the Court decided to set him free.
Collot, without looking at the judge, raises his voice and says to him: "I ordered you to punish that young man and I want him out of the way before night.