explain.

Robespierre took him by the hand, assured him he had nothing to fear, and
added, "Come, doctor, you, as a professional man, must be well informed
as to the sentiments of the major part of the Parisians respecting me. I
entreat you, my dear friend, frankly to avow their opinion. It may
perhaps serve me for the future, as a guide for governing them."

The physician answered, "I can no longer resist the impulse of nature. I
know I shall thereby oppose myself to your power, but I must tell you,
you are generally abhorred,--considered the Attila, the Sylla, of the
age,--the two-footed plague, that, walks about to fill peaceful abodes
with miseries and family mournings. The myriads you are daily sending to
the slaughter at the Place de Greve, who have, committed no crime, the
carts of a certain description, you have ordered daily to bear a stated
number to be sacrificed, directing they should be taken from the prisons,
and, if enough are not in the prisons, seized, indiscriminately in the
streets, that no place in the deadly vehicle may be left unoccupied, and
all this without a trial, without even an accusation, and without any
sanction but your own mandate--these things call the public curse upon
you, which is not the less bitter for not being audible."

"Ah!" said Robespierre, laughing. "This puts me in mind of a story told
of the cruelty and tyranny, of Pope Sixtus the Fifth, who, having one
night, after he had enjoyed himself at a Bacchanalian supper, when heated
with wine, by way of a 'bonne bouche', ordered the first man that should
come through the gate of the 'Strada del popolo' at Rome to be
immediately hanged. Every person at this drunken conclave--nay, all
Rome--considered the Pope a tyrant, the most cruel of tyrants, till it
was made known and proved, after his death, that the wretch so executed