Shall eight, or even shall twelve Deputies, our Mirabeaus, Barnaves at the head of them, be whirled suddenly to the Castle of Ham; the rest ignominiously dispersed to the winds?  No National Assembly can make the Constitution with cannon levelled on it from the Queen’s Mews!  What means this reticence of the Oeil-de-Boeuf, broken only by nods and shrugs?  In the mystery of that cloudy Ida, what is it that they forge and shape?—­Such questions must distracted Patriotism keep asking, and receive no answer but an echo.

Enough of themselves!  But now, above all, while the hungry food-year, which runs from August to August, is getting older; becoming more and more a famine-year?  With ‘meal-husks and boiled grass,’ Brigands may actually collect; and, in crowds, at farm and mansion, howl angrily, Food!  Food!  It is in vain to send soldiers against them:  at sight of soldiers they disperse, they vanish as under ground; then directly reassemble elsewhere for new tumult and plunder.  Frightful enough to look upon; but what to hear of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of suspicious minds!  Brigands and Broglie, open Conflagration, preternatural Rumour are driving mad most hearts in France.  What will the issue of these things be?

At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the Townsmen have taken arms; for ‘suppressing of Brigands,’ and other purposes:  the military commandant may make of it what he will.  Elsewhere, everywhere, could not the like be done?  Dubious, on the distracted Patriot imagination, wavers, as a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a National Guard.  But conceive, above all, the Wooden Tent in the Palais Royal!  A universal hubbub there, as of dissolving worlds:  their loudest bellows the mad, mad-making voice of Rumour; their sharpest gazes Suspicion into the pale dim World-Whirlpool; discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent bloodthirsty Regiments camped on the Champ-de-Mars; dispersed National Assembly; redhot cannon-balls (to burn Paris);—­the mad War-god and Bellona’s sounding thongs.  To the calmest man it is becoming too plain that battle is inevitable.

Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broglie:  Inevitable and brief!  Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Constitutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances:  those cannon of ours stand duly levelled; those troops are here.  The King’s Declaration, with its Thirty-five too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened to; but remains yet unrevoked:  he himself shall effect it, seul il fera!

As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in a seat of war:  clerks writing; significant staff-officers, inclined to taciturnity; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hovering.  He himself looks forth, important, impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of Paris, and his warning and earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly on purpose), with a silent smile. (Besenval, iii. 398.) The Parisians