As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a stranger Town-Council.  Administration, not of a great City, but of a great Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy, this is the task that has fallen to it.  Enrolling, provisioning, judging; devising, deciding, doing, endeavouring to do:  one wonders the human brain did not give way under all this, and reel.  But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest; leaving all the rest, as if it were not there!  Whereby somewhat is verily shifted for; and much shifts for itself.  This Improvised Commune walks along, nothing doubting; promptly making front, without fear or flurry, at what moment soever, to the wants of the moment.  Were the world on fire, one improvised tricolor Municipal has but one life to lose.  They are the elixir and chosen-men of Sansculottic Patriotism; promoted to the forlorn-hope; unspeakable victory or a high gallows, this is their meed.  They sit there, in the Townhall, these astonishing tricolor Municipals; in Council General; in Committee of Watchfulness (de Surveillance, which will even become de Salut Public, of Public Salvation), or what other Committees and Sub-committees are needful;—­managing infinite Correspondence; passing infinite Decrees:  one hears of a Decree being ‘the ninety-eighth of the day.’  Ready! is the word.  They carry loaded pistols in their pocket; also some improvised luncheon by way of meal.  Or indeed, by and by, traiteurs contract for the supply of repasts, to be eaten on the spot,—­too lavishly, as it was afterwards grumbled.  Thus they:  girt in their tricolor sashes; Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in other.  They have their Agents out all over France; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways and byways; agitating, urging to arm; all hearts tingling to hear.  Great is the fire of Anti-Aristocrat eloquence:  nay some, as Bibliopolic Momoro, seem to hint afar off at something which smells of Agrarian Law, and a surgery of the overswoln dropsical strong-box itself;—­whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him off.  (Memoires de Buzot (Paris, 1823), p. 88.)

Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsically, have for most part plenty of Memoir-writers; and the curious, in after-times, can learn minutely their goings out and comings in:  which, as men always love to know their fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind.  Not so, with these Governing Persons, now in the Townhall!  And yet what most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort, high-chancellor, king, kaiser, secretary of the home or the foreign department, ever shewed such a phasis as Clerk Tallien, Procureur Manuel, future Procureur Chaumette, here in this Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five millions, now do?  O brother mortals,—­thou Advocate Panis, friend of Danton, kinsman of Santerre;