a watch-dog, accepting
or submitting to shepherd and dog, provided these look and act the
part, even if the shepherd be a butcher and the dog a wolf. To avoid
isolation, to rejoin the most numerous herd as soon as possible, to
always form masses and bodies and thus follow the impulsion which comes
from above, and gather together scattered individuals, such is the
instinct of the flock.

In the battalion of federates, they begin by saying that, as the
Constitution is now accepted and the convention recognized, it is no
longer allowed to protect deputies whom it has declared outlaws: "that
would be creating a faction." Thereupon, the deputies withdraw from the
battalion, and, in a little squad by themselves, march along separately.
As they are nineteen in number, resolute and well armed, the authorities
of the market-towns through which they pass make no opposition by force;
it would be offering battle, and that surpasses a functionary's
zeal; moreover, the population is either indifferent toward them or
sympathetic. Nevertheless, efforts are made to stop them, sometimes to
surround them and take them by surprise; for, a warrant of arrest is out
against them, transmitted through the hierarchical channel, and every
local magistrate feels bound to do his duty as gendarme. Under this
administrative network, the meshes of which they encounter everywhere,
the proscribed deputies can do naught else but hide in caves or escape
by sea.--On reaching Bordeaux, they find other sheep getting ready
for the slaughter-house. Saige, the mayor, preaches conciliation and
patience: he declines the aid of four or five thousand young men, three
thousand grenadiers of the National Guard, and two or three hundred
volunteers who had formed themselves into a club against the Jacobin
club. He persuades them to disband; he sends a deputation to Paris to
entreat the Convention to overlook "a moment of error" and pardon their
"brethren who had gone astray."--"They flattered themselves," says a
deputy, an eye-witness,[1168] "that prompt submission would appease
the resentment of tyrants and that these would be, or pretend to be,
generous enough to spare a town that had distinguished itself more than
any other during the Revolution." Up to the last, they are to entertain
the same illusions and manifest the same docility. When Tallien, with
his eighteen hundred peasants and brigands, enters Bordeaux, twelve
thousand National Guards, equipped, armed and