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PARTISAN REVIEW
even
if
he had abolished the guillotine, he would, I think, have de–
veloped secret denunciations still further. In his system, anyone who
refrained from denouncing others was necessarily their accomplice,
and the Republic could rest only on an austere elite, with something
like the GPU as one of its elements.
What he understood by conscience now becomes intelligible. It
is not the moral conscience; it is, strictly speaking, a faith. The Re–
public for
him
is the highest value. Doubtless he was as susceptible
as
his
contemporaries to the appeal of the gloomy sentimentalized
Coliseum which provided the revolution with its decor. But for al–
most everyone-including Napoleon-classical antiquity was a styl–
ized pattern which they followed. It was a literary interpretation of
it which they acted out-Saint-Just also, occasionally. But he alone
strikes the true note of somber magic which was the original source
of this interpretation. He alone was nourished by the She-Wolf who
endowed the great Roman figures with demonic powers. "Caesar was
immolated in full view of the Senate; twenty-three strokes of the
dagger were the only formality, and the only law his executioners
obeyed was the liberty of Rome." Saint-Just seems to be the only
one who realized that it was through the language of blood and not
through that of the theater that the French Revolution harked back
to the Lacedaemonian Rome which haunted them all; and he replied
to Danton as the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky would reply to
Chateaubriand the author of
Genie du Christianisme.
He holds us
spellbound, but he himself is under a spell. In this period, still mis–
taking the statue for the real Brutus (and actually giving Brutus
the attributes of Caesar), Saint-Just bent all his energies on dis–
covering within the confusion of events the fixed star which he called
the Republic. Napoleon was to call this star Napoleon; Lenin, the
proletariat; Gandhi, India; General de Gaulle, France. The world
of appearances becomes history by gravitating around such a star.
If
Saint-Just seemed to be a better actor than the others, it was
because he was not acting at all. As soon as he arrived at Strasbourg
he set up the Revolutionary Committee; "Dishonest officials will
be
shot." Disturbed, the Jacobins dispatched a messenger. Reply: "We
are here not to fraternize with the authorities but to judge them."
In Landau, besieged by the Austrians, he replied to the plenipoten–
tiary who proposed honorable capitulation for the garrison: "The
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