Commandant Mandat has corresponded with Mayor Petion; carries a written Order from him these three days, to repel force by force.  A squadron on the Pont Neuf with cannon shall turn back these Marseillese coming across the River:  a squadron at the Townhall shall cut Saint-Antoine in two, ‘as it issues from the Arcade Saint-Jean;’ drive one half back to the obscure East, drive the other half forward through ’the Wickets of the Louvre.’  Squadrons not a few, and mounted squadrons; squadrons in the Palais Royal, in the Place Vendome:  all these shall charge, at the right moment; sweep this street, and then sweep that.  Some new Twentieth of June we shall have; only still more ineffectual?  Or probably the Insurrection will not dare to rise at all?  Mandat’s Squadrons, Horse-Gendarmerie and blue Guards march, clattering, tramping; Mandat’s Cannoneers rumble.  Under cloud of night; to the sound of his generale, which begins drumming when men should go to bed.  It is the 9th night of August, 1792.

On the other hand, the Forty-eight Sections correspond by swift messengers; are choosing each their ‘three Delegates with full powers.’  Syndic Roederer, Mayor Petion are sent for to the Tuileries:  courageous Legislators, when the drum beats danger, should repair to their Salle.  Demoiselle Theroigne has on her grenadier-bonnet, short-skirted riding-habit; two pistols garnish her small waist, and sabre hangs in baldric by her side.

Such a game is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All the Devils!—­And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the Tuileries Garden, ‘is beautiful and calm;’ Orion and the Pleiades glitter down quite serene.  Petion has come forth, the ‘heat’ inside was so oppressive. (Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours:  Recit de Petion.  Townhall Records, &c. in Hist.  Parl. xvi. 399-466.) Indeed, his Majesty’s reception of him was of the roughest; as it well might be.  And now there is no outgate; Mandat’s blue Squadrons turn you back at every Grate; nay the Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties of tongue, How a virtuous Mayor ’shall pay for it, if there be mischief,’ and the like; though others again are full of civility.  Surely if any man in France is in straights this night, it is Mayor Petion:  bound, under pain of death, one may say, to smile dexterously with the one side of his face, and weep with the other;—­death if he do it not dexterously enough!  Not till four in the morning does a National Assembly, hearing of his plight, summon him over ’to give account of Paris;’ of which he knows nothing:  whereby however he shall get home to bed, and only his gilt coach be left.  Scarcely less delicate is Syndic Roederer’s task; who must wait whether he will lament or not, till he see the issue.  Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular Bunyan has it!  They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation; and ’talk of indifferent matters.’