Among this new legislative see Condorcet, Brissot; most notable, Carnot.  An effervescent, well intentioned set of senators; too combustible where continual sparks are flying, ordered to make the constitution march for which marching three things bode ill—­the French people, the French king, the French noblesse and the European world.

For there are troubles in cities of the south.  Avignon, where Jourdan coupe-tete makes lurid appearance; Perpignan, northern Caen also.  With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call dechire, torn asunder, this poor country.  And away over seas the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl of smoke and flame; one cause of the dearth of sugar.  What King Louis is and cannot help being, we already know.

And, thirdly, there is the European world.  All kings and kinglets are astir, their brows clouded with menace.  Swedish Gustav will lead coalised armies, Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz, lean Pitt looks out suspicious.  Europe is in travail, the birth will be WAR.  Worst feature of all, the emigrants at Coblentz, an extra-national Versailles.  We shall have war, then!

Our revenue is assignats, our army wrecked disobedient, disorganised; what, then, shall we do?  Dumouriez is summoned to Paris, quick, shifty, insuppressible; while royalist seigneurs cajole, and, as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, king’s veto steps in with magical paralysis.  Yet let not patriotism despair.  Have we not a virtuous Petion, Mayor of Paris, a wholly patriotic municipality?  Patriotism, moreover, has her constitution that can march, the mother-society of the Jacobins; where may be heard Brissot, Danton, Robespierre, the long-winded, incorruptible man.

Hope bursts forth with appointment of a patriot ministry, this also his majesty will try.  Roland, perchance Wife Roland, Dumouriez, and others.  Liberty is never named with another word, Equality.  In April poor Louis, “with tears in his eyes,” proposes that the assembly do now decree war.  Let our three generals on the frontier look to it therefore, since Duke Brunswick has his drill-sergeants busy.  We decree a camp of twenty thousand National Volunteers; the hereditary representative answers veto!  Strict Roland, the whole Patriot ministry, finds itself turned out.

Barbaroux writes to Marseilles for six hundred men who know how to die.  On June 20 a tree of Liberty appears in Saint-Antoine—­a procession with for standard a pair of black breeches—–­pours down surging upon the Tuileries, breaks in.  The king, the little prince royal, have to don the cap of liberty.  Thus has the age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come.  On the surface only is some slight reaction of sympathy, mistrust is too strong.

Now from Marseilles are marching the six hundred men who know how to die, marching to the hymn of the Marseillaise.  The country is in danger!  Volunteer fighters gather.  Duke Brunswick shakes himself, and issues his manifesto; and in Paris preternatural suspicion and disquietude.  Demand is for forfeiture, abdication in favour of prince royal, which Legislature cannot pronounce.  Therefore on the night of August 9 the tocsin sounds; of Insurrection.