anarchy everywhere; a combustion most fierce, but unlucent, not to be noticed here!—­Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last, the National Constituent Assembly, having sent Commissioners and heard them; (Lescene Desmaisons:  Compte rendu a l’Assemblee Nationale, 10 Septembre 1791 (Choix des Rapports, vii. 273-93).) having heard Petitions, held Debates, month after month ever since August 1789; and on the whole ‘spent thirty sittings’ on this matter, did solemnly decree that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and His Holiness the Pope should have what indemnity was reasonable.

And so hereby all is amnestied and finished?  Alas, when madness of choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have swung on this side and on that, what will a parchment Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do?  Oblivious Lethe flows not above ground!  Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are still an eye-sorrow to each other; suspected, suspicious, in what they do and forbear.  The august Constituent Assembly is gone but a fortnight, when, on Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the unquenched combustion suddenly becomes luminous!  For Anti-constitutional Placards are up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have shed tears, and grown red. (Proces-verbal de la Commune d’Avignon, &c. in Hist.  Parl. xii. 419-23.) Wherefore, on that morning, Patriot l’Escuyer, one of our ‘six leading Patriots,’ having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan, determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or two:  not to hear mass, which he values little; but to meet all the Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers Church; and give them a word of admonition.  Adventurous errand; which has the fatallest issue!  What L’Escuyer’s word of admonition might be no History records; but the answer to it was a shrieking howl from the Aristocrat Papal worshippers, many of them women.  A thousand-voiced shriek and menace; which as L’Escuyer did not fly, became a thousand-handed hustle and jostle; a thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramplings, with the pricking of semstresses stilettos, scissors, and female pointed instruments.  Horrible to behold; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping round it there; (Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35.) high Altar and burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the natural stone-colour!—­L’Escuyer’s friend or two rush off, like Job’s Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force.  But heavy Jourdan will seize the Town-Gates first; does not run treble-fast, as he might:  on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant; L’Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar; pricked with scissors; trodden, massacred;—­gives one dumb sob, and gasps out his miserable life for evermore.