In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will do it:  working and shaping, not without effect, though alas not in marble, only in quicksand!—­But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention:  Captain Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas de Calais; with his cold mathematical head, and silent stubbornness of will:  iron Carnot, far-planning, imperturbable, unconquerable; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found wanting.  His hair is yet black; and it shall grow grey, under many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron aspect this man shall face them all.

Nor is Cote Droit, and band of King’s friends, wanting:  Vaublanc, Dumas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love Liberty, yet with Monarchy over it; and speak fearlessly according to that faith;—­whom the thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away.  With them, let a new military Theodore Lameth be named;—­were it only for his two Brothers’ sake, who look down on him, approvingly there, from the Old-Constituents’ Gallery.  Frothy professing Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes, and speechless nameless individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the middle.  Still less is a Cote Gauche wanting:  extreme Left; sitting on the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain, which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands.

Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour.  Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens.  Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio:  hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio.  Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart.  There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is;—­whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities.  For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in his true love’s bower (who indeed was by law another’s), but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out; quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass; (Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on crutches to the end.  Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who, in the hour of menace, shall utter this stern sentence, ’War to the Manorhouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!’ (Choix de Rapports, xi. 25.) Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of Versailles, is welcome here; known since the Opera-Repast and Insurrection of Women.  Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who has many other things to see.  Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by pistol-shot, and so end it.