peal.  Saint-Antoine itself does but draw out and draw in; Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe that the Marseillese and Saint Marceau will march.  Thou laggard sonorous Beer-vat, with the loud voice and timber head, is it time now to palter?  Alsatian Westermann clutches him by the throat with drawn sabre:  whereupon the Timber-headed believes.  In this manner wanes the slow night; amid fret, uncertainty and tocsin; all men’s humour rising to the hysterical pitch; and nothing done.

However, Mandat, on the third summons does come;—­come, unguarded; astonished to find the Municipality new.  They question him straitly on that Mayor’s-Order to resist force by force; on that strategic scheme of cutting Saint-Antoine in two halves:  he answers what he can:  they think it were right to send this strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye Prison, and let a Court of Law decide on him.  Alas, a Court of Law, not Book-Law but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors; all fretted to the hysterical pitch; cruel as Fear, blind as the Night:  such Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from his constables; beats him down, massacres him, on the steps of the Townhall.  Look to it, ye new Municipals; ye People, in a state of Insurrection!  Blood is shed, blood must be answered for;—­alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood will flow:  for it is as with the Tiger in that; he has only to begin.

Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysees, by exploratory Patriotism; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting dim-visible.  Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seventeen?  One of those accursed ‘false Patrols;’ that go marauding, with Anti-National intent; seeking what they can spy, what they can spill!  The Seventeen are carried to the nearest Guard-house; eleven of them escape by back passages.  “How is this?” Demoiselle Theroigne appears at the front entrance, with sabre, pistols, and a train; denounces treasonous connivance; demands, seizes, the remaining six, that the justice of the People be not trifled with.  Of which six two more escape in the whirl and debate of the Club-Law Court; the last unhappy Four are massacred, as Mandat was:  Two Ex-Bodyguards; one dissipated Abbe; one Royalist Pamphleteer, Sulleau, known to us by name, Able Editor, and wit of all work.  Poor Sulleau:  his Acts of the Apostles, and brisk Placard-Journals (for he was an able man) come to Finis, in this manner; and questionable jesting issues suddenly in horrid earnest!  Such doings usher in the dawn of the Tenth of August, 1792.

Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had:  sitting there, ‘in great paucity,’ attempting to debate;—­quivering and shivering; pointing towards all the thirty-two azimuths at once, as the magnet-needle does when thunderstorm is in the air!  If the Insurrection come?  If it come, and fail?  Alas, in that case, may not black Courtiers, with blunderbusses, red Swiss with bayonets