Mindful of which, and also that his repetition in America was that of headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of heart, Charles Lameth does, on the eleventh day of November, with little emotion, decline attending some hot young Gentleman from Artois, come expressly to challenge him:  nay indeed he first coldly engages to attend; then coldly permits two Friends to attend instead of him, and shame the young Gentleman out of it, which they successfully do.  A cold procedure; satisfactory to the two Friends, to Lameth and the hot young Gentleman; whereby, one might have fancied, the whole matter was cooled down.

Not so, however:  Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial duties, in the decline of the day, is met in those Assembly corridors by nothing but Royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs, and open insults.  Human patience has its limits:  “Monsieur,” said Lameth, breaking silence to one Lautrec, a man with hunchback, or natural deformity, but sharp of tongue, and a Black of the deepest tint, “Monsieur, if you were a man to be fought with!”—­“I am one,” cries the young Duke de Castries.  Fast as fire-flash Lameth replies, “Tout a l’heure, On the instant, then!” And so, as the shades of dusk thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne, we behold two men with lion-look, with alert attitude, side foremost, right foot advanced; flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one another.  See, with most skewering purpose, headlong Lameth, with his whole weight, makes a furious lunge; but deft Castries whisks aside:  Lameth skewers only the air,—­and slits deep and far, on Castries’ sword’s-point, his own extended left arm!  Whereupon with bleeding, pallor, surgeon’s-lint, and formalities, the Duel is considered satisfactorily done.

But will there be no end, then?  Beloved Lameth lies deep-slit, not out of danger.  Black traitorous Aristocrats kill the People’s defenders, cut up not with arguments, but with rapier-slits.  And the Twelve Spadassins out of Switzerland, and the considerable number of Assassins exercising at the pistol-target?  So meditates and ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with ever-deepening ever-widening fervour, for the space of six and thirty hours.

The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one beholds a new spectacle:  The Rue de Varennes, and neighbouring Boulevard des Invalides, covered with a mixed flowing multitude:  the Castries Hotel gone distracted, devil-ridden, belching from every window, ’beds with clothes and curtains,’ plate of silver and gold with filigree, mirrors, pictures, images, commodes, chiffoniers, and endless crockery and jingle:  amid steady popular cheers, absolutely without theft; for there goes a cry, “He shall be hanged that steals a nail!” It is a Plebiscitum, or informal iconoclastic Decree of the Common People, in the course of being executed!—­The Municipality sit tremulous; deliberating whether they will hang out the Drapeau Rouge and Martial Law:  National Assembly, part in loud wail, part in hardly suppressed applause:  Abbe Maury unable to decide whether the iconoclastic Plebs amount to forty thousand or to two hundred thousand.