All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be rammed down there, and shaped stair-wise into as many as ‘thirty ranges of convenient seats,’ firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;—­and then our huge pyramidal Fatherland’s-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped!  Force-work with a vengeance; it is a World’s Amphitheatre!  There are but fifteen days good; and at this languid rate, it might take half as many weeks.  What is singular too, the spademen seem to work lazily; they will not work double-tides, even for offer of more wages, though their tide is but seven hours; they declare angrily that the human tabernacle requires occasional rest!

Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing?  Aristocrats were capable of that.  Only six months since, did not evidence get afloat that subterranean Paris, for we stand over quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were midway between Heaven and the Abyss, and are hollow underground,—­was charged with gunpowder, which should make us ‘leap?’ Till a Cordelier’s Deputation actually went to examine, and found it—­carried off again! (23rd December, 1789 (Newspapers in Hist.  Parl. iv. 44).) An accursed, incurable brood; all asking for ‘passports,’ in these sacred days.  Trouble, of rioting, chateau-burning, is in the Limousin and elsewhere; for they are busy!  Between the best of Peoples and the best of Restorer-Kings, they would sow grudges; with what a fiend’s-grin would they see this Federation, looked for by the Universe, fail!

Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not.  He that has four limbs, and a French heart, can do spadework; and will!  On the first July Monday, scarcely has the signal-cannon boomed; scarcely have the languescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down their tools, and the eyes of onlookers turned sorrowfully of the still high Sun; when this and the other Patriot, fire in his eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself begins indignantly wheeling.  Whom scores and then hundreds follow; and soon a volunteer Fifteen Thousand are shovelling and trundling; with the heart of giants; and all in right order, with that extemporaneous adroitness of theirs:  whereby such a lift has been given, worth three mercenary ones;—­which may end when the late twilight thickens, in triumph shouts, heard or heard of beyond Montmartre!

A sympathetic population will wait, next day, with eagerness, till the tools are free.  Or why wait?  Spades elsewhere exist!  And so now bursts forth that effulgence of Parisian enthusiasm, good-heartedness and brotherly love; such, if Chroniclers are trustworthy, as was not witnessed since the Age of Gold.  Paris, male and female, precipitates itself towards its South-west extremity, spade on shoulder.  Streams of men, without order; or in order, as ranked fellow-craftsmen, as natural or accidental reunions, march towards the Field of Mars.  Three-deep these march; to the