Quick, then!  Let Lafayette roll his drums and fly eastward; for to all Constitutional Patriots this is again bad news.  And you, ye Friends of Royalty, snatch your poniards of improved structure, made to order; your sword-canes, secret arms, and tickets of entry; quick, by backstairs passages, rally round the Son of Sixty Kings.  An effervescence probably got up by d’Orleans and Company, for the overthrow of Throne and Altar:  it is said her Majesty shall be put in prison, put out of the way; what then will his Majesty be?  Clay for the Sansculottic Potter!  Or were it impossible to fly this day; a brave Noblesse suddenly all rallying?  Peril threatens, hope invites:  Dukes de Villequier, de Duras, Gentlemen of the Chamber give tickets and admittance; a brave Noblesse is suddenly all rallying.  Now were the time to ’fall sword in hand on those gentry there,’ could it be done with effect.

The Hero of two Worlds is on his white charger; blue Nationals, horse and foot, hurrying eastward:  Santerre, with the Saint-Antoine Battalion, is already there,—­apparently indisposed to act.  Heavy-laden Hero of two Worlds, what tasks are these!  The jeerings, provocative gambollings of that Patriot Suburb, which is all out on the streets now, are hard to endure; unwashed Patriots jeering in sulky sport; one unwashed Patriot ‘seizing the General by the boot’ to unhorse him.  Santerre, ordered to fire, makes answer obliquely, “These are the men that took the Bastille;” and not a trigger stirs!  Neither dare the Vincennes Magistracy give warrant of arrestment, or the smallest countenance:  wherefore the General ‘will take it on himself’ to arrest.  By promptitude, by cheerful adroitness, patience and brisk valour without limits, the riot may be again bloodlessly appeased.

Meanwhile, the rest of Paris, with more or less unconcern, may mind the rest of its business:  for what is this but an effervescence, of which there are now so many?  The National Assembly, in one of its stormiest moods, is debating a Law against Emigration; Mirabeau declaring aloud, “I swear beforehand that I will not obey it.”  Mirabeau is often at the Tribune this day; with endless impediments from without; with the old unabated energy from within.  What can murmurs and clamours, from Left or from Right, do to this man; like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved?  With clear thought; with strong bass-voice, though at first low, uncertain, he claims audience, sways the storm of men:  anon the sound of him waxes, softens; he rises into far-sounding melody of strength, triumphant, which subdues all hearts; his rude-seamed face, desolate fire-scathed, becomes fire-lit, and radiates:  once again men feel, in these beggarly ages, what is the potency and omnipotency of man’s word on the souls of men.  “I will triumph or be torn in fragments,” he was once heard to say.  “Silence,” he cries now, in strong word of command, in imperial consciousness of strength, “Silence, the thirty voices, Silence aux trente voix!”—­and Robespierre and the Thirty Voices die into mutterings; and the Law is once more as Mirabeau would have it.