Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is informed:  by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe.  Sulleau’s Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate; heralding supreme hope.  Durosoy’s Placards tapestry the walls; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by Tallien’s Ami des Citoyens.  King’s-Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading Potentates; in all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting men, with Fifteen thousand Emigrants.  Not to reckon these your daily and hourly desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of whole Companies, and even Regiments, crying Vive le Roi, vive la Reine, and marching over with banners spread:  (Ami du Roi Newspaper in Hist.  Parl. xiii. 175.)—­lies all, and wind; yet to Patriotism not wind; nor, alas, one day, to Royou!  Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while:  but its hours are numbered:  Europe is coming with Four hundred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France; the gallows, one may hope, will get its own.

Chapter 2.5.VI.

Brigands and Jales.

We shall have War, then; and on what terms!  With an Executive ‘pretending,’ really with less and less deceptiveness now, ‘to be dead;’ casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy:  on such terms we shall have War.

Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders.  The Public Service lies waste:  the very tax-gatherer has forgotten his cunning:  in this and the other Provincial Board of Management (Directoire de Departmente) it is found advisable to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable expenditures.  Our Revenue is Assignats; emission on emission of Paper-money.  And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau, of Luckner, of Lafayette?  Lean, disconsolate hover these Three grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of long-necked Cranes in moulting time;—­wretched, disobedient, disorganised; who never saw fire; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine.  War-minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money, always money; threatens, since he can get none,—­to ‘take his sword,’ which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with that. (Moniteur, Seance du 23 Janvier, 1792; Biographie des Ministres para Narbonne.)

The question of questions is:  What shall be done?  Shall we, with a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the sword at once, in the face of this in-rushing world of Emigration and Obscurantism; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till, if possible, our resources mature themselves a little?  And yet again are our resources growing towards maturity; or growing the other way?  Dubious:  the ablest Patriots are divided; Brissot and his Brissotins, or