jot down instructions and predictions for a much-straitened King.  To whom, by Higher Order, they will this day present it; and save the Monarchy and World.  Unaccountable pair of visual-objects!  Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century; but your magnetic vellum forbids us so to interpret.  Say, are ye aught?  Thus ask the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of St. Cloud; nay, at great length, thus asks the Committee of Researches, and not the Municipal, but the National Assembly one.  No distinct answer, for weeks.  At last it becomes plain that the right answer is negative.  Go, ye Chimeras, with your magnetic vellum; sweet young Chimera, adust middle-aged one!  The Prison-doors are open.  Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen Chamber of Accounts; but vanish obscurely into Limbo. (See Deux Amis, v. 199.)

Chapter 2.1.VIII.

Solemn League and Covenant.

Such dim masses, and specks of even deepest black, work in that white-hot glow of the French mind, now wholly in fusion, and confusion.  Old women here swearing their ten children on the new Evangel of Jean Jacques; old women there looking up for Favras’ Heads in the celestial Luminary:  these are preternatural signs, prefiguring somewhat.

In fact, to the Patriot children of Hope themselves, it is undeniable that difficulties exist:  emigrating Seigneurs; Parlements in sneaking but most malicious mutiny (though the rope is round their neck); above all, the most decided ‘deficiency of grains.’  Sorrowful:  but, to a Nation that hopes, not irremediable.  To a Nation which is in fusion and ardent communion of thought; which, for example, on signal of one Fugleman, will lift its right hand like a drilled regiment, and swear and illuminate, till every village from Ardennes to the Pyrenees has rolled its village-drum, and sent up its little oath, and glimmer of tallow-illumination some fathoms into the reign of Night!

If grains are defective, the fault is not of Nature or National Assembly, but of Art and Antinational Intriguers.  Such malign individuals, of the scoundrel species, have power to vex us, while the Constitution is a-making.  Endure it, ye heroic Patriots:  nay rather, why not cure it?  Grains do grow, they lie extant there in sheaf or sack; only that regraters and Royalist plotters, to provoke the people into illegality, obstruct the transport of grains.  Quick, ye organised Patriot Authorities, armed National Guards, meet together; unite your goodwill; in union is tenfold strength:  let the concentred flash of your Patriotism strike stealthy Scoundrelism blind, paralytic, as with a coup de soleil.