Chapter 2.6.VI.

The Steeples at Midnight.

For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe.  Thursday is the ninth of the month August:  if Forfeiture be not pronounced by the Legislature that day, we must pronounce it ourselves.

Legislature?  A poor waterlogged Legislature can pronounce nothing.  On Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once again, they cannot even pronounce Accusation again Lafayette; but absolve him,—­hear it, Patriotism!—­by a majority of two to one.  Patriotism hears it; Patriotism, hounded on by Prussian Terror, by Preternatural Suspicion, roars tumultuous round the Salle de Manege, all day; insults many leading Deputies, of the absolvent Right-side; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace:  Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge in Guardhouses, and escape by the back window.  And so, next day, there is infinite complaint; Letter after Letter from insulted Deputy; mere complaint, debate and self-cancelling jargon:  the sun of Thursday sets like the others, and no Forfeiture pronounced.  Wherefore in fine, To your tents, O Israel!

The Mother-Society ceases speaking; groups cease haranguing:  Patriots, with closed lips now, ‘take one another’s arm;’ walk off, in rows, two and two, at a brisk business-pace; and vanish afar in the obscure places of the East. (Deux Amis, viii. 129-88.) Santerre is ready; or we will make him ready.  Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections are ready; nay Filles-Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns down the Feuillant side of it, and is ready too.  Let the unlimited Patriot look to his weapon, be it pike, be it firelock; and the Brest brethren, above all, the blackbrowed Marseillese prepare themselves for the extreme hour!  Syndic Roederer knows, and laments or not as the issue may turn, that ’five thousand ball-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed to Federes, at the Hotel-de-Ville.’ (Roederer a la Barre, Seance du 9 Aout in Hist.  Parl. xvi. 393.)

And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd ye on your side to the Tuileries.  Not to a Levee:  no, to a Couchee:  where much will be put to bed.  Your Tickets of Entry are needful; needfuller your blunderbusses!—­They come and crowd, like gallant men who also know how to die:  old Maille the Camp-Marshal has come, his eyes gleaming once again, though dimmed by the rheum of almost four-score years.  Courage, Brothers!  We have a thousand red Swiss; men stanch of heart, steadfast as the granite of their Alps.  National Grenadiers are at least friends of Order; Commandant Mandat breathes loyal ardour, will “answer for it on his head.”  Mandat will, and his Staff; for the Staff, though there stands a doom and Decree to that effect, is happily never yet dissolved.