At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister Latour, yet ‘Adored Minister’ Necker, sees good on the 3d of September 1790, to withdraw softly almost privily,—­with an eye to the ’recovery of his health.’  Home to native Switzerland; not as he last came; lucky to reach it alive!  Fifteen months ago, we saw him coming, with escort of horse, with sound of clarion and trumpet:  and now at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs unescorted soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive, are not unlike massacring him as a traitor; the National Assembly, consulted on the matter, gives him free egress as a nullity.  Such an unstable ‘drift-mould of Accident’ is the substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in houses of clay; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest palaces we build of it take wings, and become Sahara sand-palaces, spinning many pillared in the whirlwind, and bury us under their sand!—­

In spite of the forty thousand, the National Assembly persists in its thanks; and Royalist Latour du Pin continues Minister.  The forty thousand assemble next day, as loud as ever; roll towards Latour’s Hotel; find cannon on the porch-steps with flambeau lit; and have to retire elsewhither, and digest their spleen, or re-absorb it into the blood.

Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed fusils, ringleaders of Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi, have got marked out for judgment;—­yet shall never get judged.  Briefer is the doom of Chateau-Vieux.  Chateau-Vieux is, by Swiss law, given up for instant trial in Court-Martial of its own officers.  Which Court-Martial, with all brevity (in not many hours), has hanged some Twenty-three, on conspicuous gibbets; marched some Three-score in chains to the Galleys; and so, to appearance, finished the matter off.  Hanged men do cease for ever from this Earth; but out of chains and the Galleys there may be resuscitation in triumph.  Resuscitation for the chained Hero; and even for the chained Scoundrel, or Semi-scoundrel!  Scottish John Knox, such World-Hero, as we know, sat once nevertheless pulling grim-taciturn at the oar of French Galley, ’in the Water of Lore;’ and even flung their Virgin-Mary over, instead of kissing her,—­as ‘a pented bredd,’ or timber Virgin, who could naturally swim. (Knox’s History of the Reformation, b. i.) So, ye of Chateau-Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope!

But indeed at Nanci generally, Aristocracy rides triumphant, rough.  Bouille is gone again, the second day; an Aristocrat Municipality, with free course, is as cruel as it had before been cowardly.  The Daughter Society, as the mother of the whole mischief, lies ignominiously suppressed; the Prisons can hold no more; bereaved down-beaten Patriotism murmurs, not loud but deep.  Here and in the neighbouring Towns, ‘flattened balls’ picked from the streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes:  balls flattened in carrying death to Patriotism; men wear them there,