in hand on those gentry there, sabre a la main sur ces gaillards la,” (Moniteur, Seance du 21 Aout, 1790.) franticly indicating our chosen Thirty on the extreme tip of the Left!  Whereupon is clangour and clamour, debate, repentance,—­evaporation.  Things ripen towards downright incompatibility, and what is called ‘scission:’  that fierce theoretic onslaught of Faussigny’s was in August, 1790; next August will not have come, till a famed Two Hundred and Ninety-two, the chosen of Royalism, make solemn final ‘scission’ from an Assembly given up to faction; and depart, shaking the dust off their feet.

Connected with this matter of sword in hand, there is yet another thing to be noted.  Of duels we have sometimes spoken:  how, in all parts of France, innumerable duels were fought; and argumentative men and messmates, flinging down the wine-cup and weapons of reason and repartee, met in the measured field; to part bleeding; or perhaps not to part, but to fall mutually skewered through with iron, their wrath and life alike ending,—­and die as fools die.  Long has this lasted, and still lasts.  But now it would seem as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its despair, had taken to a new course:  that of cutting off Patriotism by systematic duel!  Bully-swordsmen, ‘Spadassins’ of that party, go swaggering; or indeed they can be had for a trifle of money.  ‘Twelve Spadassins’ were seen, by the yellow eye of Journalism, ‘arriving recently out of Switzerland;’ also ’a considerable number of Assassins, nombre considerable d’assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol-targets.’  Any Patriot Deputy of mark can be called out; let him escape one time, or ten times, a time there necessarily is when he must fall, and France mourn.  How many cartels has Mirabeau had; especially while he was the People’s champion!  Cartels by the hundred:  which he, since the Constitution must be made first, and his time is precious, answers now always with a kind of stereotype formula:  “Monsieur, you are put upon my List; but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences.”

Then, in Autumn, had we not the Duel of Cazales and Barnave; the two chief masters of tongue-shot meeting now to exchange pistol-shot?  For Cazales, chief of the Royalists, whom we call ‘Blacks or Noirs,’ said, in a moment of passion, “the Patriots were sheer Brigands,” nay in so speaking, he darted or seemed to dart, a fire-glance specially at Barnave; who thereupon could not but reply by fire-glances,—­by adjournment to the Bois-de-Boulogne.  Barnave’s second shot took effect:  on Cazales’s hat.  The ‘front nook’ of a triangular Felt, such as mortals then wore, deadened the ball; and saved that fine brow from more than temporary injury.  But how easily might the lot have fallen the other way, and Barnave’s hat not been so good!  Patriotism raises its loud denunciation of Duelling in general; petitions an august Assembly to stop such Feudal barbarism by law.  Barbarism and solecism:  for will it convince or convict any man to blow half an ounce of lead through the head of him?  Surely not.—­Barnave was received at the Jacobins with embraces, yet with rebukes.