Free The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire by Doris Lessing Page B

himself in a hundred poor places, foundries, cafés, dens of every sort, made speeches and listened to them, ran through the streets with mobs shouting out
words:
Death … Blood … Liberty … Freedom … Down with … To the Guillotine with … He greedily assimilated every bit of
news
about the King and the Queen, the court, the priests. He was like a conduit for words, words, words, he was in a permanent high fever of Rhetoric, he fell under the spell of all the wonder-workers, the hypnotizers of the public. Then, as words took power completely, and the madness of words had all Paris in its grip, he ran with tumbrils to the places of ritual murder, he shouted filth and abuse at King, Queen, aristocrats, he screamed hatred at former allies like Madame (We-can-be-reborn-only-through-blood) Roland, and soon he was screaming with the mob as former idols fell. It was he who was the loudest, the most vociferous, as Paris exulted in the details of cruelty. When the Parisians, on the call of the Commune, broke into the nine prisons and for five days killed in cold blood fourteen hundred people, itwas he who carried Danton’s message when told of this: ‘To hell with the prisoners, they must look after themselves.’ And he killed, and killed, always chanting as he did, ‘To the death with … death death death …’ After the killing had exhausted itself, and people were sickened, he sang sentimental songs about the fate of the murdered, and ran about the city like a rat or a beetle because running and shouting had him in their power and he was unable to stop. And when the new tyrant took power, he ran and shouted and praised, ‘Up with … Glory to …’ He struggled and lied his way into the armies of the tyrant, for he was now no longer a fervent, handsome, eloquent youth, but a rather fat man bloated with words and indulgence and cruelties, and he marched with armies into country after country, murdering and raping. And, finally, he went with the armies on the tyrant’s last war of conquest, which failed, and he died of starvation in the snow with thousands of others, still mouthing
words,
abuse of the people whose country he had invaded.
    And returned to himself, sitting in the chair opposite me, blinking and staring as the reality of his present situation became stronger than the life he had just left.
    He began to weep. First almost silently, sitting there with blank, frantic eyes, water pouring from them, and then with abandon, lying in his chair, his face in the crook of his arm.
    I left him there and went out into the streets. Everything seemed as usual. That is to say, the better places of the city – gardens, restaurants, cafés – were full of Volyens, and the Volyenadnans crowded the back streets, with their cafés and clubs. There seemed no more of the armed patrols than usual. In the Residency, a single light burned high up.
    I looked in at Incent: he was asleep in his chair.
    I walked across the square to the Residency and asked to see Governor-General Grice. I was informed that he had unexpectedly left for Volyen.
    I left messages for Calder in all the places I knew hefrequented that I was available if he wanted to talk to me, and waited for several days; nothing happened. I listened to Incent, who needed to tell me about the life he had just lived: the fever had – only temporarily, I am afraid – left him. Nothing burning and inspired about these halting, fumbling, painful words. He was shuddering and trembling, sometimes rigid with horror at what he had seen and at what he had done.
    But I need to go to Volyen itself, that is clear. I cannot give Incent any more time to recover. Giving him
choice –
as, of course, I have to do, even when it would be so dangerous for him now to make the wrong one-I told him that he could go with me or stay with Krolgul. But at Krolgul’s name he