The things we do!

"[48] What could be more vague than
such a term? What could be more mischievous than such an
institution? -- Renewed every month, deprived of special agents,
composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee,
set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouch?, makes up for its
incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the
Jacobine inquisition.[49] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages
accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them.
Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects
become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic
who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has
found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false
interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes
and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a
coup d'?tat, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal
surprises and arrests;[50] it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in
public session to denounce the whole affair to the National
Assembly.


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