In six hours?  Alas, he who, in such circumstances, cannot resolve in six minutes, may give up the enterprise:  him Fate has already resolved for.  And Menadism, meanwhile, and Sansculottism takes counsel with the National Assembly; grows more and more tumultuous there.  Mounier returns not; Authority nowhere shews itself:  the Authority of France lies, for the present, with Lecointre and Usher Maillard.—­This then is the abomination of desolation; come suddenly, though long foreshadowed as inevitable!  For, to the blind, all things are sudden.  Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.  The dialect, one of the rudest, is, what it could be, this.

At eight o’clock there returns to our Assembly not the Deputation; but Doctor Guillotin announcing that it will return; also that there is hope of the Acceptance pure and simple.  He himself has brought a Royal Letter, authorising and commanding the freest ‘circulation of grains.’  Which Royal Letter Menadism with its whole heart applauds.  Conformably to which the Assembly forthwith passes a Decree; also received with rapturous Menadic plaudits:—­Only could not an august Assembly contrive further to “fix the price of bread at eight sous the half-quartern; butchers’-meat at six sous the pound;” which seem fair rates?  Such motion do ‘a multitude of men and women,’ irrepressible by Usher Maillard, now make; does an august Assembly hear made.  Usher Maillard himself is not always perfectly measured in speech; but if rebuked, he can justly excuse himself by the peculiarity of the circumstances.  (Moniteur (in Hist.  Parl. ii. 105).)

But finally, this Decree well passed, and the disorder continuing; and Members melting away, and no President Mounier returning,—­what can the Vice-President do but also melt away?  The Assembly melts, under such pressure, into deliquium; or, as it is officially called, adjourns.  Maillard is despatched to Paris, with the ‘Decree concerning Grains’ in his pocket; he and some women, in carriages belonging to the King.  Thitherward slim Louison Chabray has already set forth, with that ‘written answer,’ which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek.  Slim sylph, she has set forth, through the black muddy country:  she has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried; and travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with extreme slowness.  President Mounier has not come, nor the Acceptance pure and simple; though six hours with their events have come; though courier on courier reports that Lafayette is coming.  Coming, with war or with peace?  It is time that the Chateau also should determine on one thing or another; that the Chateau also should show itself alive, if it would continue living!